Articles Posted in Legal Subject Area Guides

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If the Oregon Legislature passes 2011 HB 2710, as amended on 6/27, it will increase the jurisdictional limit of Small Claims Court to $10,000.

You can find this bill (HB 2710 B-engrossed, June 27, 2011) from the Legislature’s Measure Search or Bills website.

Legal minds will differ on this, but my informal tally so far shows that there are an awful lot of consumer-friendly lawyers worrying about this increase in jurisdictional amount from $7,500 to $10,000, without some corresponding court-managed small claims case preparation assistance made available (the way the courts provide family law assistance for self-represented litigants).

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The Oregon State Bar (OSB) Bulletin, June 2011, has a useful article in their Legal Practice Tips column: “Get it Right the First Time: Settling Ownership of Vehicles,” by William Leslie.
Excerpt: “Handling a titled vehicle in a divorce, bankruptcy or estate doesn’t have to be hard, but simple mistakes are made by new and experienced attorneys alike….
Here are some common mistakes made by attorneys in handling vehicles. The concepts apply equally well to boats, airplanes and anything else with a title issued by a state agency….” [Link to full article.]
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My law library now has a copy of the DVD (2 disks):
Alaska Bar Association: “Excerpt from 2011 Convention, Fairbanks, AK: The Balance Between Security & Civil Liberties in War Times,”
featuring UC-Berkely Law Professor John Yoo (former White House attorney under George W. Bush) and Steve Wax (Oregon Federal Public Defender)
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Some of us here at the Oregon Legal Research blog are recently returned from the 2011 Virtual Reference Summit, where many Oregon library staff go to share an interest in the triad of reference, service, and technology issues and ideas we regularly encounter in the field. Some fun and potentially useful sites were presented that our readers might enjoy:

EasyBib: Free automatic bibliography and citation maker for books, websites, newspapers, and so on. The usual style suspects are included: MLA, Chicago, APA.

OttoBib: Same thing, for books only; but creates the citation/bibliography immediately using just the ISBN and also can provide a permanent URL for the bibliography.

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More than 3,700 Oregon nonprofits have lost their tax-exempt status due to a Failure to File.
The Nonprofit Association of Oregon (formerly known as TACS) has posted the news.
DATABASE: You can search the IRS database, titled: Automatic Revocation of Exemption List (use those keywords in your search engine if this link stops working) or link to it from the main IRS website for Charities and Nonprofits.
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All Oregon county circuit courts (and most if not all county, justice, and municipal courts) allow free on-site (in the courthouse) access to OJIN.Few if any public libraries will subscribe to OJIN. It is not an easy database to use, due primarily to the fact that it was designed many decades ago for court staff and lawyers. Keep in mind also that few full-text documents are in OJIN. If you need copies of actual documents filed in a particular case, rather than just reading the docket entry, you would have to go to the courthouse file room or clerk’s office anyway, so remote access will not save you a trip to the courthouse.Some county law libraries have OJIN subscriptions, but not many, for the same reason – the actual documents are only at the courthouse so lawyers, litigants, or researchers may as well be right in the court’s file room when they do their searches – and where they can get expert search assistance.Note, OJIN is not like PACER, the federal electronic case filing database, which does have full text. But it too requires you to register – and there are charges, with some exceptions.

None of these public databases is free. It is very expensive to create and maintain good databases and people who use them are asked to help pay for them, even if all taxpayers contribute most of the money to support these databases.

Online databases, of any kind, are not free or even cheaper than paper files – they just allow greater access, at a cost. The price of remote access is high since you need skilled and experienced programmers and designers and network specialists who can build databases that everyone can use – not to mention the skills, hardware, and software that are needed to keep a database secure and properly backed up – and have 24/7 user support. These skilled workers cost a whole lot more than people who sort and file paper documents.

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You can find lots of free telephone and address information from:
1) “The Internet” (your search engine of choice, e.g. google, bing, yahoo, etc.).  If you want to find a telephone number and you have internet access, search the business or agency or person by name, for example: if you want the Washington County (Oregon) Watermaster, type this into your search engine: washingon county oregon watermaster.  You’ll get up to date contact info (especially if you make sure you click on your search engine’s link to get the most current info).
2) Your local public library information and quick reference lines during their open hours (e.g. Multnomah County public libraries and Washington County public libraries) and don’t forget L-net, the statewide online reference service).
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Excerpt: “”There is no comprehensive federal privacy statute that protects personal information. Instead, a patchwork of federal laws and regulations govern the collection and disclosure of personal information and has been addressed by Congress on a sector-by-sector basis….” (Link to full beSpacific blog post.)
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The short answer is, “it depends on the business.”  You can bet that Jeffrey Archer worked on his novels while in prison, but I’m pretty sure Bernie Madoff isn’t “investing” (or whatever he called it – what’s a verb for running a Ponzi Scheme?) anyone’s money, although one can never be too sure with some people.
It also depends on the crime for which you have been incarcerated, the prison, and the state’s laws, regulations and prison policies.  It’s not inconceivable that if you invent, say, a better mousetrap, while incarcerated, you might be granted more leeway than if you invent a designer high-tech shiv (just sayin’), but whatever you do, please read up on the law, ask the prison authorities, and ask a lawyer.
Here in Oregon that means starting with the Oregon Revised Statutes (ORS) and the Oregon Administrative Rules (OAR), e.g. Chapter 291 Department of Corrections, perhaps including but not limited to 291-105-0015 Rules of Misconduct.
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