From Inter Alia in the past few weeks, links to some interesting new blawgs, including:
Counterfeit Blog
Online Liability Blog
RICO Law Blog
Law of the Game Blog
Would a records check on you erroneously show a criminal conviction? If it did, what steps would you take to clear your record?
For example, what would you do if in the course of applying for a mortgage or a job or looking for an apartment, the bank, employer or apartment manager told you, “forget about it” because a background or credit check came up with a criminal conviction on your record. So you didn’t know you even had a “record” did you? Well think again. This type of identity theft (or besmirching) is happening, again and again.
Trying to fix this type of criminal record error makes clearing your financial record after a financial identity theft look like a walk in the park (ok, a really big park, with a lot of really steep hills). This is partly because the reason for the error can be located anywhere from the criminal impersonator (if there is one) to errors by a law enforcement agency, by the database vendor, or by whomever is contracting for the information. (There are probably others in this chain.)
Librarians, public and law, hear a lot of people complaining about their own or their community’s problems, but few who want to take the next step, or the next, or the next. But some do – and some are downright amazing. It’s hard to take on the system, city hall, and even harder to change legislation. A story a couple of weeks ago by Su-Jin Yim in the September 27th, 2007 Oregonian, “Two Tough Moms,” was one of those stories, about two people who went from knowing nothing about lawmaking to becoming informed and outspoken citizens – and went on to change the world.
‘A few years ago, neighbors Pauline McGuire and Julie Volpel were doing what moms do. Juggling kids’ schedules and work. Caring for elderly parents. Creating a patchwork of family life and community work that underpins all of American society.
Over the years I’ve heard from more than a few lawyers who have had rental car or other travel “legal adventures” while out of the country. (Law librarians learn an awful lot from the trouble other people get into.) Here’s a new one for you, linked to from an Oct 8th Ernie the Attorney post, “International law of golf car rental.” It’s funny, but not so much either.
The Oregon State Bar (OSB) has published their 2008 Law Library Values grid.
A letter by attorney Frederic Cann in the October 2007 OSB Bulletin makes several important points about attorney ghostwriting, the subject of a July 2007 OSB Bulletin article, “The Ethics of Unbundling.”
Here’s an excerpt from the letter:
“The past few years have seen many articles in the OSB Bulletin about ‘unbundling’ legal services. In the consumer law area the expense of full-service legal representation means unbundled legal services are here to stay. However, lawyers providing unbundled legal services in litigation do have to navigate a “minefield,” because they often are unable to control the ultimate use or presentation of their work product.
The Oregonian ran an interesting story by Helen Yung on October 10, 2007, “Who pays the piper when musicians visit?” From the story:
“The way the state sees it, musicians like Kristin Hersh of Rhode Island and John Wesley Harding of New York were employed in Oregon.
Both internationally known artists performed for an evening at Mississippi Studios in North Portland. And those few hours, the state contends, made them — as well as the hundreds of other musicians who performed there in the past three years — employees of the club and subject to normal unemployment taxes.
…
The reason? Oregon statute 657.506, which states that musicians are employees of venues unless the contract expressly states that the musicians are responsible for filing reports and paying their own taxes. Language declaring the musician an independent contractor is not sufficient, said department spokesman Tom Fuller.”
No, you can’t always believe what you read (you didn’t know this already?), but this is not cause for despair. While print authors remain forever frustrated when they notice errors after publication, especially those who know they aren’t likely to be corrected in future printings, online authors, and especially journalists, have an easy if imperfect fix. Jonathan Franzen of Corrections fame, has nothing on newspaper Corrections. There is even a “corrections” blog, Regret the Error, which on top of being very funny, has links to the corrections pages of many major newspapers.
Our Oregonian doesn’t have a link at Regret the Error, but it does have a Corrections section on its web page (and in the print edition).
Bloggers have the best “correction” options of all. We can edit, include the correction in a Comment, or the mother-of-all-corrections – we can delete (though imperfectly). This, as you can imagine, is why law librarians want the laws printed on paper. Shenanigan-free (mostly).
There are lots of uses for online videos, especially when you want to show and not just tell via picture rather than word – and YouTube is not the only game in town (at least in the librarian “town”).
Jason the Content Librarian presents a pithy comparison of YouTube and blip.tv in his Oct 8th “Exploring Internet Video Resources” post.
Tip of the day: there are always other games in town just as there are always other fish in the sea (figuratively speaking that is – I can’t promise this in real life)
Washington State Bar Association has posted a link to this amazing Breast Cancer Legal Resources Guide. While a lot of the information is Washington State-specific, there is a lot of relevant general and federal information as well. (I haven’t yet found an equivalent guide for Oregonians.)
Here’s my earlier post on the Breast Cancer Legal Advocacy Project of Oregon.
Oregon Legal Research Blog