Willamette Week’s Murmers this week (5/21/08) notes a recent study (May 2008) titled, “Which States Have the Best (and worst) High Courts,” by Stephen J. Choi, Mitu Gulati, and Eric A. Posner.
The WW Murmur links to the report and the official link is from the University of Chicago Law School, Olin Working Paper #405 or Public Law and Legal Theory working paper series #217.
1) I missed this local event. Beer and Blog’s: Sifting through your traffic stats for value (but I have been to the Green Dragon (half a block away from the Belmont 15 bus stop) :-). The topic is a great idea for an Oregon lawyer blogger gathering.
2) Lawyers blogging and marketing … LawyerCasting™ including articles like these:
a) How to Avoid Weird Characters in Email Subject Lines,
b) Lawyer White Papers: The Top 10 Best Practices,
c) and this one, Lawyer Blog Directories
Do you ever wonder If There’s a Law about the “Broadcast of Telephone Conversations?” There is!
Excerpt from full report, The Public and Broadcasting: How to Get the Most Service from your Local Station
“Broadcast of Telephone Conversations. Before broadcasting a telephone conversation live or recording a telephone conversation for later broadcast, a station must inform any party to the call of its intention to broadcast the conversation. However, that notification is not necessary when the other party knows that the conversation will be broadcast or such knowledge can be reasonably presumed, such as when the party is associated with the station (for example, as an employee or part-time reporter) or originates the call during a program during which the station customarily broadcasts the calls. For additional information on the rule concerning the broadcast of telephone conversations, see http://www.fcc.gov/eb/broadcast/telphon.html....”
Wondering about what homestead exemptions are? (See Steve Duin’s column in May 15th, 2008 Oregonian, Sleeping dogs and the Berkman trial.)
Note: Exemptions generally, in the context of debtor-creditor law (bankruptcy, debt collection, etc.) can get very tricky, so if you are more than curious, i.e. you are looking your creditors in the eye or over your shoulder, please consult a legal professional for advice.
These are not “stupid” questions. Yes, I’m sure there are “stupid” questions, but they usually come out of my mouth (why don’t people in the sun-belt and the middle-east corner the market on solar energy technology?), not the mouths of people who visit my library.
Answers to questions can be found almost anywhere, from t-shirts to novels one reads on airplanes. One place I find a lot of practical advice, simply presented, is at iLibrarian. They are masters of the Top Ten, Top Thirteen, 18 Different Ways to Do x lists. (Law librarians love finding other people who have already done half the research 🙂
These (CMS and website cost) are two questions that could be answered plenty of other places, but at iLibrarian I often read the answer right before someone emails my library with the question.
Pro se litigants, and new lawyers, will ask us questions about how to “publish a legal notice.” Does it have to be in the newspaper? Which newspaper? What does the notice have to say?
Here are a few pointers, but as always, you’ll need to do some additional legal research and drafting yourself:
1) Oregon Revised Statutes (use index, including but not limited to Chapter 193)
(I last posted about this dispute here.)
Ars Technica: Fight shaping up over Oregon state law copyright claim (May 13th) (I’m not too sure about Nate Anderson’s “Out West” and the “tumbleweed” references, but we need all the lightness we can get when tempers get hot. I’m a Shane gal myself 🙂
The law librarian wonk (me) also has this to say:
Selected recent (April and May) postings on this dispute, about which I posted previously here :
1) Loaded Orygun has a summery posted 5/12/08.
2) From ZDNet Government: Oregon says its law is copyright (and a link to the letter with the June 2nd deadline notice from public dot resource) (and other ZDNet posts with Oregon tags).
I looked at my original blog Oregon Legal Research (OLR) description (aka header) (unchanged since I started blogging in October 2005) and gave a small shudder. I then read through a sampling of my OLR blog posts over the intervening years and wondered, “what HAS this OLR blog been about anyway?”
Here is my May 2008 rewrite (leaving room for future rewrites :-):
The “Oregon Legal Research” (OLR) blog explores the world through the (decidedly non-linear) mind of an Oregon public law librarian (and guests). Legal research tips, advice to the legal blawger/blogger, commentary on reading material (online and print), not a small amount of humor, and a few digressions will be included. A regional flavor will prevail, primarily Oregon and Portland-metro area, though the OLR bloggers reserve the right to post about places once lived and experiences savored – all with a legal research connection, of course (we can rise to that challenge!). [It has been edited a bit more to fit into the 500-word limit required by Blogger. Surely one doesn’t need more than 500!]
Do Blog Descriptions matter? Maybe. Some aggregators (e.g. here and here) include your blog’s description in their indexes, so to me, yes, it matters. Will it change the world? Probably not, but who knows? Maybe thinking about it, and asking other people to think about their own blog descriptions, will serve to raise the Blog World to new heights. (And now all I have to worry about is how to change the Old to the New on all those aggregator sites– tomorrow is another day.)
As one of a small, but growing, number of Oregon legal bloggers (aka blawgers), I’m asked often to talk about blogging. (I’ve posted some of what I say here and here and here and here.)
It occurred to me that I haven’t blogged for the New Blawger about blog Comments (though I do talk about Comments when I talk to lawyers and librarians about blawging).
So, here goes:
Oregon Legal Research Blog