Articles Posted in July, 2007

Lots of attorneys are licensed and practice in more than one state and some practice and are licensed in no state (and we hope your attorney is not in this latter group). If you want to know if your attorney is licensed, here’s a list of state licensing boards. Notice that not every licensing board is called the [State] Bar Association, though a lot of them are.

A web link for the Oregon State Bar is missing from the list, but here it is.

“Among other provisions, the proposed legislation seeks to ensure that victims of identity theft can recover the value of the time lost attempting to repair damage inflicted by identity theft. Under current law, restitution to victims from convicted thieves is available only for the direct financial costs of identity theft offenses.”

Full excerpt from beSpacific July 19th post, which links to DoJ press release 07-521:

“The Department of Justice today submitted to Congress new proposed legislation that seeks to update and improve current laws aimed at protecting Americans from the increasingly sophisticated crime of identity theft. The proposed bill, titled the Identity Theft Enforcement and Restitution Act of 2007, was a significant recommendation included in the final strategic plan from the President’s Task Force on Identity Theft released in April 2007. The strategic plan was the result of an unprecedented federal effort to formulate a comprehensive and fully coordinated plan to attack identity theft at all levels in the public and private sectors. Among other provisions, the proposed legislation seeks to ensure that victims of identity theft can recover the value of the time lost attempting to repair damage inflicted by identity theft. Under current law, restitution to victims from convicted thieves is available only for the direct financial costs of identity theft offenses.”

To continue the discussion (albeit one-sided 🙂 of legal research strategy:

Both Lexis and Westlaw are owned by foreign companies. American Lawyer and the National Law Journal are about to be owned by foreign companies. (Incisive Media and ALM merger)

If you are wondering why even in our electronic age, ordinary people (and lawyers) don’t have free and easy access to their state court judges’ opinions, read this article. You will see that some people do, and you will see what it took to make it possible (not all that much to tell the truth, except clear vision, cooperative effort, and smarts – though these are more rare than we like to imagine).

Serendipity also has a role to play when you perform legal research. While searching for something else, I came across this from George Mason’s Objections to the Constitution.

George Mason’ Objections to the Constitution (excerpt):

… The President of the United States has no Constitutional Council, a thing unknown in any safe and regular government. He will therefore be unsupported by proper information and advice, and will generally be directed by minions and favorites; or he will become a tool to the Senate–or a Council of State will grow out of the principal officers of the great departments; the worst and most dangerous of all ingredients for such a Council in a free country; From this fatal defect has arisen the improper power of the Senate in the appointment of public officers, and the alarming dependence and connection between that branch of the legislature and the supreme Executive.

I read this article recently : “Why do we ask the same questions? The triple helix dilemma revisited,” by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, 99 Law Library Journal 307 (2007). (This whole issue of 99 LLJ is terrific, especially for legal research geeks.)

The article reminded me of a lesson I teach legal research students, but explains the whys and wherefores better than I ever could. In essence, the lesson is, don’t let legal publishers, or anyone else for that matter, do your research for you.

This is a liberating position to take. No longer do you just have to plod through the digests, the reporters, etc. You now have permission to read history, philosophy, literature, science fiction, and anything else you may want. Answers to questions, past and future, will be found if you read widely.

In my previous life, in academic law libraries, it was easy to keep up with current law journals, newspapers, and newsletters. Print and online subscriptions came right to my desk, which also wasn’t in a fishbowl so I had time to read and talk to colleagues about what we were all reading. But in the small public law library world, and the small law firm world too, it’s not so easy to keep up. But you still need to. It’s one thing to know how to find the law (and that’s hard enough), but sometimes you need a new legal theory or a jump start to get your mind racing in creative circles, which is where reading legal literature comes in. Your clients deserve nothing less.

Current Law Journal Content is a fun and easy way to follow some of the legal literature. Play around with it. It looks a bit cryptic at first glance, but try it out, fill in different profiles, and you’ll see how useful it is.

PI Buzz Database of the Day has links to the Palfrey client lists that have been made public. PI Buzz has lots of other useful information my law library patrons seem to need or want. As a former madam (or maybe it was a database vendor) once observed, “vat a business! You got it, you sell it, and you still got it.”

A recent Oregon Government Standards and Practices Staff Opinion (07S-005) is a useful vehicle for explaining some basics of legal research to the novice legal researcher. And if you’re not a novice researcher, but are an Oregon government employee, you might want to read the opinion or ask your supervisor, manager, or HR or legal department representative.

In a nutshell, there are primary sources of law and there are secondary sources. Primary sources of law (not to be confused with what historians mean when they talk about primary sources) refer to actual laws, e.g. statutes, cases, and administrative laws. There are also constitutions, but it is the administrative laws that give new researchers the most difficulty. The executive branch can be very creative when making law (as can be seen in the most recent Vice President: Executive v. Legislative argle-bargle).

Years ago when I taught administrative legal research to law students I would sometimes take a story from the newspaper (the Washington Post on the latest goings on in the Executive Branch was always filled with good teaching examples) and highlight the dozens of “administrative documents” that were referred to – sometimes in one story. I’d then challenge the law students to figure out what the documents were and where to find them. (This was pre-web days so it was a little more difficult than it is now – but only a little.)

Yoga and Oregon go together so why shouldn’t yoga and Oregon lawyers go together? This posting from the Legal Sanity blog, “Yoga for Lawyers” should get you back in the cool, calm, legal downward facing beagle, groove.

Thanks to the most excellent Stark County Law Library blog for the link.