Articles Posted in Legal Self-help Community

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Are there free, online, downloadable, official forms you can use to write a legally enforceable Oregon will?

Sorry, but the answer is no, at least not if you want your will to do what you intend and be legally enforceable. Oregon wills, and other estate planning documents, are not Wash & Wear, Click & Go, One-Size-Fits-All, or Eat and Run.

Will-drafting cannot be done on the fly, on Twitter (though I’m sure it has been tried – and may one day soon be tried in court), or with anything other than serious thought, study, and drafting skill. This is not to say one can’t draft a will oneself, or write one quickly in an emergency.

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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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The Feb/March 2009 issue of the Oregon State Bar (OSB) Bulletin has an interesting editorial by Oregon attorney John Gear: A Better Beginning:

There is no shortage of commentary on the life, death, and value of bar exams (including bar exam humor from Blawg Review), but that is as it should be.

Excerpt: “As a transplant attorney, still fairly new to Oregon, it is with some trepidation and thoughts of tilting at windmills that I write to propose fundamental changes to the state’s bar admission practices. However, after reading the December bar Bulletin, I find I must.

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Public law librarians frequently (sometimes it seems daily) get the question: Where can I find a Power of Attorney form (and preferably one online)?

Please don’t try to short circuit this important, critical, legal protection. Here’s a sample response to the question:

I don’t meant to sound lawyerly or librarian-ly(?), but it depends on what you mean by “standard form,” what kind of power is being granted, who the parties are, what state everyone lives in, etc.

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Our neighbors to the north (Washington) and south (California) are often a step or two ahead of us when it comes to legal information and legal service to the people. (We are ahead in other ways (and don’t fare too poorly on the free legal service front), so please don’t read this post as anything but Legal Research News – it’s not an arms race.)

1) In Washington State, their Supreme Court is “being blogged,” to be distinguished from blogging themselves. This may make for a more interesting blog, though not necessarily more useful – only time will tell:

See stories at King County Law Library blog, which links to the Trial Ad Notes blog, which links, whew, to the Supreme Court of Washington Blog.

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This class for Landlords only: Landlord Study Hall 2009

Previous Oregon Legal Research blog posts about free Oregon legal information, here and here and here.

(And for those of you of a certain age or of a certain frame of mind, remember Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book, which, of course you can find free on the web.)

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Two news articles that ran this week in the Oregonian shared a theme that I wish would carry through to another story I’ll tell in a separate blog post. Before getting to that, I’m talking about these two stories:

1) Multnomah County’s drug court faces budget ax, by Aimee Green, The Oregonian, Tuesday March 10, 2009

“A county department that funds a world-recognized drug rehabilitation program is offering to sacrifice it to help balance Multnomah County’s budget.

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The incarcerated-wealthy have hard-time coaches – why not everyone else? Say what you will (and I bet there is a lot to say), this story is very interesting, very funny (in a very dark sort of way), and a whole lot provocative. (And, I posted before about a Jailhouse Lawyer’s Manual, but need to update the link to this .)

About to do time? Meet your best pal: Real estate scammers and other first-timers get a crash course in prison survival from enterprising ex-cons, by Mike Anton, February 27, 2009, Los Angeles Times.

Excerpt:

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Information on bankruptcy for people who do not have lawyers is available from a U.S. Court website, Filing for Bankruptcy without an Attorney. (You can also link to the United States Bankruptcy Court, District of Oregon.)

Thanks to the Lane County Law Library Newsletter for the lead!

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Oregon, and especially the Portland-metro area, is awash in lawyers talking about the law to all and sundry – for no charge. (You don’t even have to buy them lunch – how much better than that can it get?)

There are pedestrian and bicycle legal clinics, bankruptcy clinics, small business legal clinics, homebuyer clinics, patent law programs (e.g. at CubeSpace), expungment clinics, and many more.

You just need to know where to look for the announcements. Despite what you think, many lawyers are just not that good at marketing. Until some of us figure out a way to maintain a website or blog where these programs can be posted, here are some tips on how to find them. Like most things that are worthwhile, it will take some effort, but it may surely pay off in the end:

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