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‘Aux Armes, Citoyens!:’ Time for Law Schools to Lead the Movement for Free and Open Access to the Law, by Ian Gallacher, published here.

From the article’s abstract:

“This article is a manifesto that outlines the principles of the open access to legal information movement and sounds a call to action for law schools to become leaders in that movement. … . After considering the need for open access to the law for pro se litigants, scholars from outside the legal academy, and practicing lawyers, after considering and rejecting courts and legislators as viable guarantors of open access, … the article concludes that America’s law schools have both the opportunity and obligation to provide an alternative to the commercial legal information sites and make America’s law freely available to all. The article ends with a series of proposed principles that might guide such an open-access legal information site.”

HALT has a new online booklet, Guardians and Guardianships: A Primer.

Oregon-specific guardianship resources can be found at the Oregon State Bar (OSB), Legal Aid Services of Oregon (LASO), and at your local county law library (OCCLL).

What happens when 21 law students analyze and redraft a sample company contract? Did blood flow? Did heads roll? Did anyone roll over? Read the story (by Ken Adams) of a legal writing instructor’s contract-drafting exercise with his students:

A Report on the Penn Law 2007 Contract-Redrafting Project

“Each semester that I teach, I inflict a series of drafting assignments on students in my Penn Law contract drafting class. This semester, the final assignment—the grand climax!—consisted of redrafting the first five pages of a master services agreement submitted to me by a major financial-services company in response to this invitation I posted on this blog. The company—let’s call it Acme—uses this contract as the template for its company-wide services procurement….”

How do you pick a good URL? One place to start is Good URL, Bad URL. (A sense of humor is always appreciated.) Worst URLs, additional URL resources, and Best Practices are included.

(There are lots of blogs, websites, and print business writers willing to tell you how to name your domain and optimize your web presence (I like to start here). Go to libraries and search engines to find them. (Oh, and good content helps, too.)

Portland is apparently second to Austin in blogging. I saw the story in the Oregonian (12/13/07), but had to look to other stories to find out “according to whom.” The Whom is apparently, Scarborough Research, which has lots to say about other subjects, including hybrid owners, organic food consumers, and eBay visitors.

Here is the California companion to my Washington State post.

Good starting points for California legal research:

1) When in doubt about where to start your research, ask a public law librarian: Council of California County Law Libraries (see especially their Self-Help and Legal Links)

A local lawyer blawger (Insurance Coverage Blog), Portland attorney David Rossmiller, is profiled in the Wall Street Journal Online. Bet you wouldn’t have thought insurance law could be so interesting.

If you research local government law and haven’t yet explored the growing collection at the University of Oregon Scholars’ Bank, now is the time. The Cities collection is here and the Counties one here.

You will also find other treasures, such as this Oregon Practice Materials annotated bibliography. Click on the view/open option to see the PDF.

This is dry stuff, but maybe not if you are a party to a case and federal regulations rule. But how do you find the CFR Appendices online? See the Ross-Blakely Law Library blog post on Hidden Appendices and Supplements, for a handy research tip on searching CFR at GPO Access.

Thanks also to Tom Mighell for his Inter Alia Blawg of the Day service (priceless!), where I found this link and many others – fun ones too.

Conversion and coupon information from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), including Coupon Rules.

Your tax dollars at work: for a Countdown of the days, hours, minutes, and seconds to the conversion, visit the DTV Transition web page.

(And thanks to the Wisconsin State Law Librarians for the idea and links for this post. They have a terrific monthly newsletter, with information useful even for those of us who don’t live is beautiful Wisconsin.)