Update: See this 4/30/09 OLR Blog post for new links to guides.
In addition to the usual source, Oregon State Bar (OSB) Information and Referral Service, don’t forget there are other sources of referrals. For example:
KCLL Klues reports that Washington State appellate court briefs from June 2006 forward are now online.
For Oregon appellate court briefs, see the guide on How to Find Oregon Appellate Court briefs. (And see here for more information on appeals in Oregon courts.)
Appellate court briefs are a terrific source of information for all legal researchers.
This recent post at f/k/a will take you to previous ones on lawyer billing, all worth reading. It will also take you to a definition of agita, a condition not unknown to those of us who don’t get a chance to get it all out of our systems (though blogging does help).
This leads me to my current lament (but no agita), which is: “why isn’t there a satisfactory legal equivalent to The Best American Science Writing?” (I’m working through the 2008 edition now.) Or is there?
There are a lot of “The Best American xxx Writing”: science and nature writing, short stories, mystery stories, comics, erotica, political writing, plays, sports writing, etc. Why not law?
How do you declare someone dead when there is no body?
I should probably save this for a Day of the Dead post, but, appearances notwithstanding, I’m blogging about Legal Research and the Living so … full speed ahead. (Previous posts about road kill & zombie debt.)
1) Check your state laws, forms, and procedures first and, if you are a lawyer, ask your lawyer colleagues for shortcuts and anecdotes too.
It won’t be the first time (nor the last) that I connect dots in a way that makes your eyes cross, but work with me here:
(First, here is some comic relief from Courtoons (thanks to Jim Calloway for the lead!).
Now, full speed ahead:
First things first: If your lawyer dies, call his/her law firm. If your lawyer dies and the law firm has died too (e.g. if the lawyer was a solo practitioner) and you want to know what happened to your case files, if the law firm no longer exists, or any other similar scenario occurs … call the Oregon State Bar (OSB): 503-684-3763. They will advise you.
Second things: Lawyers do think about these things (or they should) and they even get wonderful honky-tonk titled articles out of their deliberations on the subject:
From Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips blog, you’ll go to:
For many of us, keeping on top of federal case law is a lower priority than tracking changes to our state’s laws. But we still like, and need, to stay in the loop, especially since these cases affect our day-to-day lives as much as our own state laws do: family law, criminal procedure, employement law, etc.
For U.S. Supreme Court opinions (and other courts’ opinions too), you have a number of quick ways to stay current, one of which is the Willamette Law Online service:
“Willamette Law Online functions as a notification service, alerting users to legal decisions and trends, and is neither intended to be a comprehensive resource of case law nor a substitute for in-depth legal research….”
In case you were wondering about the 17th Amendment (from here):
Amendment XVII
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each state shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the state legislatures.
If you haven’t explored RefDesk dot com recently, take a tour, from their site map or their FAQ, from their Ref Site of the Day, or however else you want to wander.
1) The Oregon Constitution has been wikified, but not just here (or the Ballotpedia version or this Indopedia version) but also by the good people at WikiProject Oregon who are wikifiing the Oregon Constitution, creating a Wikisource edition.
2) How to Find the Most Current Additions to the Oregon Constitution:
a) Given our rather interesting (you can’t make me use those other adjectives that spring to mind) system of amending the Oregon Constitution, I thought a few remarks on finding the most current version of the Oregon Constitution might be in order:
b) The version at the Oregon Legislature’s website does not now (as of this date) include changes to the Constitution made in Special Sessions. For example, as of today, the Oregon Legislature’s Constitution is dated 2007. However … there were changes in the 2008 Special Session.
Oregon Legal Research Blog