Oregon Legal Research BlogNew(ish) Oregon Insurance Law Blog: Visit David Rossmiller’s blog, here. It looks good! I marvel at blawggers who can come up with an appealing blog layout and design, not to mention filling it with serious content (and a little humor). All that with family and a day (hah!) job.
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Creative Lawyering or You’re Not in Your Grandpa’s Law Firm Anymore: The mantra of this decade (and probably beyond) could probably be summed up as this (I know it’s not very snappy, but it looks better on a t-shirt :-):
My Business Model is in Flux
In any event, take a look at Robert Ambrogi’s blawg, including posts on outsourcing with Law Sourcing, online mock juries with TrialJuries, and the School of Podcasting. Add a visit to Dennis Kennedy now and again, with a smidgeon of FutureLawyer, and an off-road meal break at Jim Calloway’s, and the world’s your legal oyster.
You snooze, you looze.
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Oregon State Capitol Now Wireless: Just in time for the 2007 session, the Golden Man is casting a wireless cloud over our Legislative Assembly. See the story from KOIN, here.
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Homesteading Whatchamallit or The Perils of Providing Email Legal Reference Service to Non-Attorneys
A posting a while ago on Shlep reminded me of this: Non-attorney patrons often ask for legal information the way I ask for things at the automotive-parts store. We both use the wrong words, lots of gestures, tell confusing stories of things gone wrong, and do our darnedest to communicate a problem in search of a solution to someone who we hope and pray has a clue what we are talking about. (You can see why the Car-Guys are geniuses. They do all this over the phone. They are too smart to try and do it by email so why are we trying? Legal reference, unless it’s of the simple Q&A variety, which it seldom is, is not meant for email, though we continue to try our best.)
For example, I recently had a 3rd-hand email legal reference request from someone who wanted “homesteading forms.” When someone is here in my library, in-person with flesh-and-blood and facial-expression, it can take a little time but we can usually figure out what someone really needs or wants (yes, there is a difference). Second-hand and beyond can get a little tricky, which is why email legal reference work is fraught with all sorts of perils. It’s hard enough explaining to people that seldom are there any easy answers in the law, no irrefutable answers, even fewer checklists, and whether or not the sentence will be 3 months probation or 10 years hard-time or whether or not the statute of limitations has tolled, but to have to translate the question over the “Internet Pipes” 3rd-hand can make even a determined public law librarian’s head hurt. We just want to help, but sometimes it can take a really long time and sometimes there just isn’t an answer. And there we are on the front line, taking the heat for the court, the lawyers, and the legislators who are probably most to blame but the furthest away at the crucial moment.
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Global Warning Isn’t the Only Future Event To Fret Over: Even Popular Mechanics is talking about the “Digital Ice Age” (thanks to Library Link of the Day for the link). Librarians, historians, and archivists have been talking (and warning) about this for a couple decades now. Be prepared for a lot of historical black holes in the future – convenient for some, inconvenient for others.
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What’s a Consumer To Do?: It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, so consumers beware. Librarians are often front and center (today may be shaping up to be a Run With the Clichés Day, so bear with me) when ordinary people (and this sometimes includes attorneys I might say), visit their local public or law library to ask, “How Do I Get Out of This Mess?” or “The #%^& Ripped Me Off!.”
It’s not easy and there are more consumer law resources than I could possibly begin to list here, but a little advice first and then sources of information:
First, think logically. If the problem is with your cable company, start with the cable company and work forward (or backward as the case may be). Look on the web or ask at your local library to find out which government office, if any, regulates the business, the service, the product. If the problem is with a defective item you ordered through the mail, at a local restaurant, with your car, or with anything else (including services) you purchased, sit down and gather facts and develop a strategy for fixing the problem. Plan to do a little research first. It will save you time and aggravation.
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Tis the Season, Part Two – Food Law:If I hadn’t become a law librarian instead of practicing law after law school I imagine I might have practiced school, government, or food law. For an appetizer, here are some Food Law links (sorry to put you off your food or your turducken, but … someone had to do it):
Mad Cow Blog (via Inter Alia) and Food Law
In a town of foodies and food handlers, you can’t be too careful.
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Foreign & International Law: For those of you who must stray beyond Oregon legal research, for curiosity or for work, here are three links you might want to add to your collection:
1) Directorate of Legal Research at the Library of Congress: Story by Michael Ravnitzky, here, and link to Directorate, here.
2) These two link to F&I resources, one a U.S. site and the other a U.K. one.
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Tis the season to read briefs – and to eat Turducken?
A couple of years ago (long before I began Blorking) as we were gearing up to digitize the state’s appellate court briefs I wrote an article for our county bar association newsletter and in it I compared briefs to Turducken (no, I don’t imagine it really does need to be capitalized). Here is a fragment of that article:
“According to Laura Orr, the Washington County Law Librarian, appellate court briefs are the overlooked middle children of the legal research process. Quiet and unassuming, they sit there watchfully or more often obliviously, happy to be left alone. Many law librarians, and a few lawyers, know about the treasures within briefs. One can find sample pleadings, tables of cases, factual details that surpass and legal arguments that outnumber those found in their corresponding judicial opinions. To Laura, briefs are the Turducken of the legal world. (“For those who never heard of Turducken, it is a chicken, within a duck, within a turkey holiday main dish. I have heard some people then put the Turducken inside a pig. It may have a vegan counterpart, though I doubt it is quite as alarming as the carnivore’s version. I could be mistaken though.”)
(Note: If you are wondering about those digitized Oregon appellate court briefs: we did set up a great system, even with my small staff (2.5) and limited budget, but there wasn’t much interest so I’ve given up, though we still have about 7,000 briefs in the database. It was a nice little project though, efficient, cost-effective, and it is a joy to send a brief to an attorney in about 3 minutes – it used to take much more than that – hours sometimes if it was on microfilm. My incredibly supportive local bar association law library board and my county’s IT staff were champs all the way. But no more – very sad. The State Law Library is going to step into the breach, but we don’t know when.
(Note 2: Microfilm is the only way to go for archival purposes, but digital is the only way to go for easy access to the documents.)
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Proposed Changes to ORCP: The Council on Court Procedures (CCP) is proposing a number of Rules changes – you can find them here, with instructions on how to submit comments. The CCP will meet and take final action on these proposals on December 9, 2006. (Other notices of Rules Amendments can be found here.)