Link to the Oregon Foreclosure Avoidance Mediation Program website.
From “About the Program”
“Senate Bill 1552 (2012) directed the Attorney General to establish a residential Foreclosure Avoidance Mediation Program.
The Law Library of Congress has digitized its collection of pre-1923 piracy trials. The full texts of these titles are available at the LLoC website, including:
1) A select and impartial account of the lives, behaviour, and dying words, of the most remarkable convicts, from the year 1700, down to the present time ….
2) Trial of Capt. Henry Whitby, for the murder of John Pierce, with his dying declaration. Also, the trial of Capt. George Crimp, for piracy and manstealing…
Future Lawyer gives us this blog post: “Search Public Records on the Cheap”
You might not be able to take the “Power Searching with Google” class (nor will SCOTUS Justices) but you can learn a few apparently “awesome” Google research tricks from investigative reporter John Tedesco (and the diagram search is especially awesome):
How to solve impossible problems: Daniel Russell’s awesome Google search techniques
Thanks to 3 Geeks and iLibrarian for the tips.
Legislators don’t draft statutes, which should be a surprise to no one. (Have you ever tried to read your state or federal statutes?! Just as bad, try reading the Oregon Constitution in order to find an answer to a simple question.)
Drafting statutes is an art and a craft and we should be thankful that our state and federal legislators don’t do the actual drafting, although, it would be nice if they made sure the final statutes themselves made sense, not just listened to and voted on what was “intended.” But we are all human, or most of us are in any event, and there is a limit to how much we can fit into 24 hours.
Anyway, legislative staff members, lobbyists, and sometimes ordinary citizens draft or participate in the drafting of statutes, and it sometimes starts with op ed pieces proposing new legislation, like this:
Eminent domain often gets a bad rap, sometimes for good reasons, but … would you consider this creative idea?
“Housing’s Last Chance?” by Joe Nocera, New York Times, July 9, 2012
“.… It has also been clear for some time that the best way to keep troubled homeowners in their homes is by reducing the principal on their mortgages, thus lowering their debt burden and more closely aligning their mortgage with the actual value of the home.
Read the official “Report of the Special Investigative Counsel Regarding the Actions of The Pennsylvania State University Related to the Child Sexual Abuse Committed by Gerald A. Sandusky,” at the Free Report on the Pennsylvania State University website.
The State of Oregon Law Library gives us this tip about how to find FDAB Orders (Fair Dismissal Appeals Board):
FDAB Orders are not (yet) available online. DOJ provides hard copies to the Supreme Court Law Library and the three law school libraries. But they are working on a web site and will be posting the orders online at that web site. Link to the FDAB web site where some of the orders will be found in the fullness of time.
Oregon family law attorneys give away a lot of free information and collaborate to make available lots of free family law forms.
The Oregon Judicial Department Family Law Facilitators offer free advice and invaluable services to many self-represented litigants, but family law can become complex very quickly when there are children, substantial financial assets, or simply whenever there is no meeting of the minds.
Family law attorneys also provide lots of information, which you can find on their websites. I’ve come across this one recently, a Northwest law firm that has a collection of articles and a guide to divorce in Oregon, all free.
From Free Government Information (FGI) (and check out their blogroll):
“Sunlight releases Scout to help track legislative/regulatory process”
“Today, our pals at the Sunlight Foundation released Scout, a new tool that allows you to create customized keyword alerts to notify you whenever issues you care about are included in legislative or regulatory actions — at both the state and federal level! They’ll also soon release their Open States tool to target the legislative process of all 50 states….” [Link to FGI and Scout at Sunlight.]
Oregon Legal Research Blog