Legal Research

eBooks to Libraries Without DRM?

Posted on November 05, 2010
Is it possible for a major publisher to offer eBooks to institutional customers without DRM or other similar restrictions? Apparently yes. Springer offers 40,000 eBook titles to libraries without any form of DRM. They don't even grouse about it, compared...

Jason Wilson: The digest is dead. So why isn?t the headnote?

Posted on November 04, 2010
A great deal of ink has been spilled over the last 25 years or so on the topic of West?s Digests and Key Number System, how those systems have influenced legal research and shaped how lawyers think about the law,...

Library Journal Interview with Carl Malamud on LAW.GOV

Posted on November 04, 2010
Debbie Rabina, Associate Professor at the Pratt Institute School of Information & Library Science and Depository Library Council member recently interviewed Carl Malamud for Library Journal. A snip: Debbie Rabina: What kind of solutions do you see? Is this just...

Cuil We Hardly Knew Ye

Posted on November 04, 2010
Has anyone use the search engine Cuil lately? Probably not. That's because it unceremoniously shut down on September 17th of this year. I would not have known but for the fact that someone asked me in reference to a lecture...

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Google News Election 2010 Scoreboard

Posted on November 03, 2010
Here's the link to the Google News Election 2010 Scoreboard for Senate, House and Governor election results and news reports. The Democrats' defeat in the House means the end of Nancy Pelosi's tenure as Speaker of the US House of...

Are Case Headnotes at Risk of Extinction?

Posted on November 03, 2010
The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the group. Will the headnote become extinct when the last print reporter is cancelled? In The Future of Headnotes, Eric Appleby, Maritime Law Book,...

On Student Learning Outcomes: Legal Writing Profs Give ABA Standards Review Committee Lesson in Drafting

Posted on November 03, 2010
On September 30, 2010, the Association of Legal Writing Directors submitted a letter to the ABA Section of Legal Education & Admissions as a comment on the May 5, 2010 draft of proposed revisions to the ABA Accreditation Standards with...

Some Thoughts on the Bar Exam

Posted on November 03, 2010
A November report on IOMA takes an interesting perspective on the bar exam. Elizabeth Wurtzel suggests that bar exam passage is not the best predictor of success for lawyers. She uses examples of exceptionally bright and successful people who failed....

Boulder Statement on Legal Research Education: Signature Pedagogy Statement

Posted on November 02, 2010
The Boulder Statement on Legal Research Education: Signature Pedagogy Statement (republished below; download official document here) is an outcome of the 2010 Conference on Legal Information: Scholarship and Teaching. Very interesting and, in my opinion, a valuable contribution aimed at...

How Much Longer for 19th Century Legal Print Relics: What legal reference and research tool titles are obsolete and when will they disappear from sales catalogs?

Posted on November 02, 2010
Time to follow up on an issue posed in LLB's Are Reporter Advance Sheet Services Obsolete? (After a 34% Price Increase is Stanford Law Going to Cancel West's S. Ct. Advance Sheet Subscription?) That post cites to Stanford Law Paul...

Reminder: Law Student Research Competency Task Force's Online Discussion Is Underway

Posted on November 02, 2010
Time for eveyone fed up with the quality of legal research instruction in the legal academy to chime in --- and no, I am not pointing a finger at academic law librarians because they do not control of the curriculum....

Opening: Electronic Services Librarian, Univ. of San Diego Legal Research Center

Posted on November 02, 2010
As a member of the public services team, the Electronic Services Librarian proposes and implements the Legal Research Center's (LRC) electronic information services and policies; investigates, procures and maintains electronic databases; provides outreach and training to students, staff, and faculty...

How Google Searches the Books Database

Posted on November 02, 2010
There's an article on The Atlantic web site that offers a bit on insight into how Google creates a result set for searches in Google Books. The method is different from the standard Google web search where all kinds of...

TRI CEO Tom Glocer on 2010 3Q Financial Performance: "Boringly Positive" Trends; Just Plain Boring Cut-Back Print Spend & Wait-n-See WestlawNext Business as Usual in This Economy for Law Library Institutional Buyers

Posted on November 01, 2010
"Boringly positive" is quoted from this brief Oct. 28 2010 Financial Times article reporting on TRI's 2010 3Q financial report and presentation (free registration required). TR Legal's 3Q 2010 results: Third-quarter revenues were up 3% from the prior-year period...

Time to Vote for AALL Officers and Executive Board Members

Posted on November 01, 2010
Voting online is available 24/7 beginning on Monday, Nov. 1, 2010, and ending at 11:59 p.m. Central Time, Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2010. Successful candidates will begin their terms of office in July 2011. Vice President/President-Elect Jean M. Wenger, Government Documents/Foreign...

Kudo's to W&L's Caroline Osborne

Posted on November 01, 2010
We're a little late on this announcement, but Caroline Osborne was named Director of the Law Library at Washington & Lee School of Law back in September. She was formerly the Research & Instruction Services Librarian at W&L before serving...

Stealing From a Law Library is Bad

Posted on November 01, 2010
I usually enjoy reading posts on the Above The Law blog. Friday's ATL post concerned the apprehension of an Ohio State law student who is allegedly stole 200 books over a period of time from the Mortiz Law Library and...

Four-Year-Olds May Be Capable of Negligence, Can be Sued Under New York State Law

Posted on October 31, 2010
Two four-year-old children were racing their bikes under the supervision of their mothers when they struck and allegedly "seriously and severely injured" a 87-year-old woman who reportedly suffered a hip fracture caused by the accident. Justice Paul Wooten of State...

First Law Firm with Drive-Thru Service?

Posted on October 30, 2010
The Kocian Law Group has taken over a former fast food joint for a branch office of sorts. Clients can pick up and deliver documents via the drive-thru window staffed by a paralegal who is also available to answer some...

Is AALL Lobbying Against Free Online Law Services?

Posted on October 29, 2010
A Oct. 27, 2010 tweet from Carl Malamud: Amazed AALL lobbyists making rounds on Hill arguing against free law services like Justia because they aren't "trustworthy." Context? I'm thinking (hoping) AALL was lobbying for authentication. [JH]

Friday Fun: The Haunted Meeting

Posted on October 29, 2010
Fire up that Powerpoint! There's no such thing as a bad idea in a staff meeting. Let's have a 2-fer, a meeting and a conference call at the same time. It's the haunted meeting from the Bob & Tom Show....

Students Prefer pTextbooks over eTextbooks

Posted on October 29, 2010
Hat tip to Villanova Law prof Louis J. Sirico on Legal Skills Prof Blog for calling attention to a recent consumer study conducted by the National Association of College Stores which found that 76% of surveyed students prefer pTextbooks over...

Evolution Can Be a Bitch

Posted on October 29, 2010
Hey, I'm only quoting from a heading used in a Nov. 2010 AALL Spectrum article. It must be OK to use the B-word when AALL publishes it, right? The article, Hula Hooping with the Alphabets, outlines differences and similarities between...

Not Just True but Tried: Darnton on the Prospects for a National Digital Library

Posted on October 28, 2010
"Despite the complexities, the fundamental idea of a National Digital Library (or NDL) is, at its core, straightforward. The NDL would make the cultural patrimony of this country freely available to all of its citizens," writes Robert Darnton, Harvard University...

The Google Book Settlement as Copyright Reform: On Google's possible motivation to settle the Authors Guild lawsuit

Posted on October 28, 2010
Berkeley Law Prof Pamela Samuelson has made her forthcoming Wisconsin Law Review article, The Google Book Settlement as Copyright Reform, available on SSRN. Here's the abstract: An intriguing way to view the proposed settlement of the copyright litigation over the...

Opening: Head of Public Services, Touro Law Center

Posted on October 28, 2010
The Gould Law Library of Touro Law Center is accepting applications for the position of Head of Public Services. The successful candidate will work directly with the library director, Associate Dean April Schwartz, to build upon a tradition of excellent...

Starting to Fill the Practical Skills Niche in the Legal Blogosphere

Posted on October 28, 2010
Dennis Kennedy, who needs no introduction to most legal information professionals, recently wrote in Starting to Fill the Practical Skills Niche: My ?beat? on [Legal Skills Prof Blog] will, not surprisingly, given my long history of writing and speaking about...

Law Student Research Competency Task Force Hosts Live Online Discussion - Nov 1st-12th

Posted on October 28, 2010
Please join the Law Student Research Competency Task Force for an online discussion November 1-12. The task force would like to engage in a dialogue with members about legal research competency standards for law students. The results of the discussion...

More Law Graduate Job Market Commentary

Posted on October 28, 2010
Slate Magazine has jumped on the no-jobs-for-law-grads bandwagon with a story titled A Case of Supply v. Demand. Ha ha, get it, supply versus demand. It's like the title of a case. Sorry, that was my inner Yakov Smirnoff coming...

Unmasking the Ego at Durham

Posted on October 28, 2010
On Friday, Duke Law held a conference, Implementing the Durham Statement: Best Practices for Open Access Law Journals. It was a full house with student law review editors, law librarians, law review advisers, publishers, and others who are interested in...

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