Articles Posted in General Legal Research Resources

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How did we answer that? Guardianship of a Minor

I had a patron come in looking for information about becoming the legal guardian of their grandchildren. The parents were no longer available and the grandmother was looking to get legal guardianship of the children, to be able to make legal and medical decisions, and to enroll them into the local school.

In Oregon, the Oregon Judicial Department puts out some forms. The OJD forms are accepted at any circuit (county) court. Additional forms may be available depending on the county/local court. For Guardianship, the state has extremely limited form options. Every county has the option of providing additional forms, guidance, or instructions. As we are in Washington County, our circuit court’s guardianship (called probate guardianship) options are pretty much the same as the state.

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The Oregon State Bar recently launched Free Legal Answers in partnership with the American Bar Association that uses volunteer Oregon attorneys to answer legal questions for free for qualifying patrons.

The site can help get answers to questions on Oregon topics such as family law, eviction, and consumer law. If you are interested in getting a question answered the website will guide you through the process. After the disclaimers on the first page, you will be taken to a page that gives more details on who qualifies and what is done with your information. This site is geared to help low-income patrons so be prepared to provide income information and to answer other questions. You can submit your question if you qualify.

There is a limit of 3 different legal questions per year and you must meet the qualifications each time you use the websites.

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How did we answer that? Legislative History

I had a woman come in asking for help doing a legislative history. She didn’t get into details with what she wanted beyond needing to know the history of one of the statutes about whistleblowers.

When doing a legislative history, the first thing to do is find which statute you want to know the history of. In this case, the woman already knew the exact statute. I got her onto one of our legal databases (there are many options out there, but at WCLL our main ones are Lexis and Westlaw). Conveniently, the statute she was looking at only had one bill to research for changes. Had there been more, she would have done the same following steps, but repeated for each bill.

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Finding a good lawyer – Answering patron questions about finding a good lawyer in Oregon

A common misconception about law library services is that we can help with lawyer referrals. Many people come in thinking we have a list of lawyers in the area and that we know if they are good or not. As wonderful as it would be to have this information available and to be able to point people towards “the best” lawyer, this is outside of our wheelhouse. However, there are resources we can point people to that have some of that information.

One way to find a lawyer is to ask for a referral from someone you know and trust. Even if that referral is a lawyer who practices in another area of law, they may still be able to make a referral to the specialist lawyer needed.

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May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Therefore, we will highlight an important intersection of legal history of significant impact to the Japanese-American community: the Japanese internment camps, the Korematsu v. US Supreme Court case, and its subsequent legal treatment.

On February 19, 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of Japanese Americans from the west coast of the United States, which resulted in their relocation to internment camps.

The legality of this order and removal was challenged by Fred Korematsu, and the related curfew challenged by Minoru Yasui of Oregon and Gordon Hirabayashi. In all three cases the Supreme Court upheld the right of the government to exclude Japanese Americans and impose a curfew on them.

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As a techno geek I’ve been fascinated by the concept of Artificial Intelligence (or “AI” as it also known). Maybe it’s the Star Trek-iness of it, but the I like idea of having a bot do some of the work for me. The advertising for Google’s Bard AI system says it can help you write your novel. In a recent article a Londoner asked Bard to plan a weekend in London (including what they should wear!). Even if you don’t get the information you were hoping for, at least it provides for an amusing anecdote.

Lately I’ve seen articles published about using AI to aid in legal research and was wondering what the consensus was about using an AI platform to do legal research.

Above the Law has an interesting piece on how AI is transforming legal research, including a brief history of legal research all the way back to the “Unwieldy Rocks” of Hammurabi’s Code.

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Your local law library may provide some online resources you can access at home. Below are some examples from Washington County, Oregon. You can check with your local county law library to see what they offer.

The Washington County Law Library offers LexisNexis Digital Library. Patrons can sign up using an online form. Once registered they can access the digital titles subscribed to via a web link or the Digital Library app. LexisNexis Digital Library is relatively easy to use, and they offer robust online help to navigate the platform. It is important to remember this is an eBook platform, not a legal research platform. Among the titles patrons can access are Oregon Evidence, Employment in Oregon, LexisNexis Practice Guide: Washington Family Law, Military Family Law, Understanding Bankruptcy, The ABA Spanish Legal Phrasebook, and Trial: A Guide from Start to Finish.

The Washington County Law Library also subscribes to HeinOnline. Anyone with a Washington County Cooperative Library Services library card can access it remotely via the WCCLS HeinOnline page. If you don’t have a WCCLS card you can sign up for their digital card. HeinOnline has a large collection of law journals, federal legal materials, and subject specific collections (such as LGBTQ+ rights or gun laws).

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How did we answer that?

By Paula Simon

We had a younger patron come into the library who was interested in the process to become emancipated from their parents. What is emancipation? According to the Washington County Juvenile department, emancipation means “that a 16- or 17-year-old person can be given certain rights and responsibilities of an adult or 18-year-old person.”

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How did we answer that?

Sometimes someone comes in and what they want is outside of the scope of what we offer, or we have a very limited ability to help. So, what do we do when that happens?

I had a patron come in a couple of weeks ago wanting to know if the person named in a case was the same person he knew. He had found an appeal online where the name matched someone he knew. The appeals court was in a small Midwest area not highly populated and the name in the case was not common to the area and he was wondering if there was a way to confirm an identity match. He had all of the vital statistics of the individual including an address.

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How Did We Answer That?

We had a patron whose mother died in Kentucky. This was during the pandemic so travel from Oregon to Kentucky was not very practical. His sister still lived in the area, so he contacted us asking for ideas on how to help his sister with the estate. He wanted to do some research on finding a lawyer, being an executor of the will, and if there was anything he could do to help remotely.

Even though he was interested in Kentucky procedures, there were still some things we could point him to here in our library that he could read and let his sister know about. There are many NOLO books (which both law libraries and public libraries usually carry) dealing with wills and estate planning. Since NOLO books are not state specific these were a good primer for the patron and his sister. In Oregon we have access to NOLO books online thanks to the State of Oregon Law Library. A public library may have information about a similar problem in another state.

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