Articles Posted in General Legal Research Resources

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We have haiku and we have six-word stories – and we have Baseball in under 150 Words (and don’t forget Rafe Esquith’s beautiful 132-word description), so why should we all be wailing about 140 character Tweets? (And, here (from Future Lawyer) is one reason to know how to Twitter. No one is forcing you, but it might be a very good thing to know, not unlike knowing how to drive a car with a manual transmission.)

I’m wondering, though … can I respond to a legal research question in fewer than 141 characters – and have the question answered satisfactorily, if incompletely?

It does depend on the question and on the glibness of the response too, I suppose. The classic example is the response to the Question: How Does One Get to Carnegie Hall? Answer: Practice, practice, practice. (Elephant jokes also have wonderfully pithy responses.)

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This is the time of year when we start getting questions from people wanting the 2009 Oregon statutes or laws.

This is also the time of year when we explain:

1) The 2009 Oregon Legislature is still in session and unless there is a serious emergency requiring immediate legislative action, no 2009 Oregon legislation will have an effective date (click on Other Information) before July 1, 2009 and likely not before January 1, 2010:

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“Social director” used to be viewed as a job for the boss’s wife or a job for paid “social butterfly.” but the 21st century “social media” director has education, imagination, writing skills, and respect. The life of a PIO will never be the same again.

Multnomah County has opened up a job for a “Chair’s Office Communication Director/Multnomah County Social Media Coordinator.” It closes on 5/20/09, so don’t dawdle.

“Do you tweet and use Facebook? Are you experienced with building social communities? Can you crank out news releases, editorials, and web content on tight deadlines? Have you been a one-person video crew? Are you a stickler for grammar and punctuation? Do you know your way around web tools, web development and search engine optimization?

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KCLL Klues posted this Positive Law and other U.S. Code Mysteries a little while ago and it reminded me that some of my own readers are new to legal research and also curious about such things. What IS positive law anyway?

No, positive law isn’t law in your favor, but that’s not a bad guess. Nor is it law that says, “yup, it’s yours, all yours, and you can do what you want as long as you don’t scare the horses,” rather than those pesky “thou shalt NOT” laws. It’s also not the opposite of negative law!

(Just as “legal” isn’t really the opposite of “illegal” though we’ve come to accept it that way. It’s all legal on this legal research blog, and it’s all lawful too, but not all legal blogs behave lawfully.)

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I like looking at new law book catalogs, especially those with the scholarly books I don’t get to see or read much anymore. Some people dream of bigger houses, faster cars, expensive jewelry, extensive travel. I am one of that other group who dream of more time to walk, read, sleep, perchance to eat — in a nutshell, I dream of a little more leisure time (who doesn’t!). (For those of you still laboring under such a delusion, no, librarians do not get to read much on the job.)

I saw these titles in the Hart Publishing catalogue; they will serve a reminder that titles are as important as the literature they cover (as in, you can tell a book (and a comic book) by its cover).

My favorite: “I Have to Move My Car: Tales of Unpersuasive Advocates and Injudicious Judges” by David Pannick, QC. From the publisher’s blurb:

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For a lesson on how Oregon has heretofore interpreted legislative history (and intent) – and how they will do so henceforth:

Oregon v. Gaines (SC S055031), April 30, 2009

“…The question presented — i.e., whether defendant’s conduct, as described, constituted a “means of * * * physical * * * interference or obstacle” within the meaning of ORS 162.235(1) — poses an issue of statutory interpretation. The methodology that Oregon courts follow in interpreting statutes is a distillation of settled interpretative principles, some of which have been codified in Oregon statutes since early statehood and others of which have been articulated in this court’s case law for many years. Mastriano v. Board of Parole, 342 Or 684, 691, 159 P3d 1151 (2007). The methodology, as outlined in PGE v. Bureau of Labor and Industries, 317 Or 606, 610-12, 859 P2d 1143 (1993), entails three sequential levels of analysis to determine the legislature’s intent. First, the court examines the text and context of the statute. Id. at 610-11. If the legislature’s intent is obvious from that first level of analysis, “further inquiry is unnecessary.” Id. at 611. “If, but only if,” the legislature’s intent is not obvious from the text and context inquiry, “the court will then move to the second level, which is to consider legislative history[.]” Id. at 611.(2) If the legislature’s intent remains unclear after examining legislative history, “the court may resort to general maxims of statutory construction to aid in resolving the remaining uncertainty.” Id. at 612.

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The newly redesigned Washington County (Oregon) website is up and running, however …

One of the many perils of migrating to a new county webpage is that links from this Oregon Legal Research blog to research guides on the Washington County (Oregon) Law Library’s (WCLL) webpage will be misdirected. Not all of them, but too many. I am slowly making my way through the cleanup, including updating previous blog post links to some of our most frequently used research guides.

Here is the list so far, with correct links for the guides I’ve been told are not linking properly from old posts. (You can also get to these guides from the WCLL webpage.)

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An excellent, and fast, tutorial on free and low cost legal research tools is available from the Duke University law librarians: The Unexploded Cow’s Guide to Legal Research

My previous posts on free and low-cost legal research are here and here (with additional imbedded links).

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We’ve been getting excellent feedback on the ABA’s “Buying, Selling, Merging and Closing a Law Practice”.

When law partners part amicably, they may find that a how-to book is useful, but when they part less than amicably, they must have a book, forms, checklists, and sometimes more – a referee maybe?

In Oregon, attorneys also have the incomparable PLF staff members who advise Oregon attorneys on all sorts of legal practice, and getting out of practice, issues. New Oregon attorneys don’t automatically think about PLF and about just how many services are provided by the PLF. The PLF really wants to keep you out of trouble so they offer a lot of preventative care! Use them – the PLF, that is.

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