Take your research skills to the limit:
1) Read “The Cybersleuth’s Guide to the Internet: Conducting Effective Investigative & Legal Research on the Internet” 12th edition (as of 8/12)
2) Read: “Competitive Intelligence – A Selective Resource Guide – Completely Updated – July 2012,” by Sabrina I. Pacifici, Published on July 14, 2012:
Lawyers and other legal researchers rely on the West Key Number system and the Lexis equivalent headnote system to find relevant case law.
If you want to know how these indexing systems work “behind the scenes,” here’s an article for you:
“The Case for Curation: The Relevance of Digest and Citator Results in Westlaw and Lexis,” by Susan Nevelow Mart and Jeffrey Luftig.
Sincere apologies, but there is no way to make this a short blog post for those new to this task, so bear with me.
This blog post will cover these topics:
I) Online Court Documents: A Brief Primer
In case you were wondering (and especially if one day you ask me if I remember when and where this article was published):
Zack Mazur, “Crime and Contempt: One of these things is not like the other,” Oregon Defense Attorney, July/August 2011, vol. 32, No. 4., pp. 6-7
This is a copyrighted publication from OCDLA so you may need to get a copy from them or from a law library that subscribes to the publication – though for now, OCDLA very kindly and generously makes previous issues available publicly at their website.
Now that WWDTM (Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me) has included this case in their radio quiz program, maybe I should catch up on blogging about it – especially since the contestant didn’t know the answer.
On July 18th, 2012, Multnomah County Circuit Court Judge David Rees acquitted John E. Brennan of an indecent exposure charge.
The decision (order or opinion) is not at the Multnomah County Circuit Court website so you’ll need to contact the court if you want a copy. (Look for a future OLR blog post about e-Court and locating circuit court documents.)
Let this be a lesson for us all:
US Executive Branch Closure Crawl (from Free Government Information (FGI))
Toddle over to Federal Government Blogs for more websites.
For more educational fun than you can imagine: Acronym Finder (for acronyms, abbreviations, or initialisms)
For extra credit, visit the Ref Desk.
Another blog-media lawsuit:
“Beaverton Grace Bible Church v. Smith,” from the Citizen Media Law Project, July 10, 2012, includes a copy of the complaint and other court documents.
See also:
Of course they do! They have had the most time to “ripen,” so to speak. You can see the full list of the Most-Cited in All of Time and links at Gallagher Blogs.
For even more summer reading, make sure you also read the article’s lists of the” Most-Cited Law Review Articles of Recent Years (Five Most-Cited Articles by Year of Publication for Each Year from 1990 to 2009),” compiled by Fred R. Shapiro.
Thank you to Gallagher Blogs: Cite-Seeing for the nice blog post and the tip.
Future Lawyer gives us this blog post: “Search Public Records on the Cheap”
Oregon Legal Research Blog