Articles Posted in General Legal Research Resources

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If you are thinking about a career in “legal information” or advancing your career in “legal information,” this is a useful birds-eye snapshot of the profession(s):

“AALL/ILTA Digital White Paper: The New Librarian,” 10/15/12:

“The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) has collaborated to create a white paper on the set of skills needed for today’s librarian and information services professionals. Whether it is Knowledge Management, working with Practice Groups, Competitive Intelligence, Electronic Books, or the evolving trends within Legal Research or Emerging Technology, ….” [Link to full 3 Geeks and a Law Blog post.]

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The “Law via the Internet Conference” will be held in Ithaca, NY, October 7-9, 2012:

Among other programs, this one promises to be provocative:

“Can We Trust What’s Online? Conclusions from the National Inventory of Legal Materials.”

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Gavel to Gavel blog (a review of state legislation affecting the courts) had this September 4th post:

“Oregon Measure 78 clarifies: does Oregon have a judicial branch? A judicial department? Both? What does your state have?”

Excerpt:

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Law librarians teach law students and new lawyers that state and federal appellate court briefs are treasure troves, but they are not the easiest documents to search.

For example, in Oregon, unless you have a subscription to Lexis or Westlaw, and can afford to buy into their briefs databank, and need to search only relatively recent briefs, you have to resort to needle-in-a-haystack types of research. (A law librarian can recommend some research tips, but the research still takes time.)

Web-based, publicly-accessible, moderately priced, and searchable digital briefs banks rise and fall, but that’s a good thing. One needs to experiment a lot to find the right online business model and database.  To read about a recent effort:

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Justice Bedsworth’s take on these matters makes as much sense as anyone’s – and maybe a little more. And he’s a real judge! (Associate Justice of the California Court of Appeal.)

OC Lawyer, A Criminal Waste of Space: September 2012: Schools by the NCAA

Excerpt: “…. So we, greenhorns all, learned the rules of evidence and the complexities of human nature by trying misdemeanors. If you dropped the blood vial in a driving-under-the-influence case and watched it shatter on the floor—as actually happened to one of my contemporaries—you were not turning a puppy-raper loose on society. If you over-prosecuted a petty theft case, it was unlikely your mistake would change the earth’s rotational rate.

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On September 13th, 2012, California Governor Brown signed SB1075 into law, enacting the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act in California (UELMA).

From Law Librarian listserv:

“SB1075 provides that the California Constitution, the state statutes, and the California codes will be authentic and permanently available online to the citizens of California.   The bill, sponsored by the Senate Committee on Rules, leaves open the option to include additional categories of material through amendment and it establishes that the Legislative Counsel Bureau is the official publisher.

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We are working with our 9th Circuit Court of Appeals law librarians to update our existing guide to briefs from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In the meantime:

1) In a nutshell, you will find 9th Circuit Court of Appeals briefs filed since 2008 on PACER.

2) Read the previous blog post, “How Do I Find Federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Briefs?”

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An interesting book review by Richard A. Posner (Judge on U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit) of:

“Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts,” by Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner
(Thomson/West, 567 pp., $49.95)

Excerpt: “The Incoherence of Antonin Scalia, by Richard Posner, by Richard A. Posner, August 24, 2012, The New Republic:

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I was visiting the ever-enlightening FGI blog (Free Government Information) and came across a blog post about this treasure: State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States

You can link directly to the State Agency Databases Across the Fifty States and if you do, make sure to click on the Oregon link, which was set up by the very talented Oregon librarian, Liz Paulus.

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