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Court reporters have to be some of the nicest and most patient people you’ll ever find in a courtroom. They also perform magic when transcribing their recordings. Heaven knows lawyers, judges, and witnesses mumble, garble, and otherwise mangle our fair tongue.

Evan Schaeffer’s Trial Practice blog (as opposed to his Legal Underground one), has a post, Treating Court Reporters Right:

“An article titled “What court reporters want” from the Illinois Bar Journal contains these tips from reporter Andrea Trippi Else—“ (Read post and link from here.)

The Multnomah Bar Association has posted the results of their “Generation Gap” survey, “Bridging Generations: Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Gen Xers, and Net Gen.” From the introduction:

“The Multnomah Bar Association (MBA), hearing concerns among attorneys about the “Generation Gap,” with some experienced attorneys questioning the work ethic of newer attorneys and some newer attorneys expressing displeasure about the life requirements imposed by their firms, decided to launch a project to understand the challenges and find solution . . . at the very least to replace complaining with constructive discussion.

The Managing Partners and Young Lawyers Section of the MBA formed a joint subcommittee to formulate and implement a plan to study the issue, report findings, and make recommendations. The committee members discussed their own experiences and observations during a lengthy process of developing a membership fact-finding survey. The survey was sent to 3,609 members of the MBA, 1,325 or 36% of whom responded …”

Julie Tripps’ column in Sunday’s Oregonian, 10/21/07, “IRS could toughen on like-kind exchanges,” is interesting to read next to the Oregon Supreme Court opinion from 10/18/07, Logan v Sivers (S54251). A Media Release summary is here.

The IRS on Like/Kind Exchanges.

I’m not sure how I missed AltLaw, but thanks to all the others (including this one) who did not miss it, here you go. Altlaw, in their own words:

“The law is meant to belong to the people, but it can be surprisingly hard to find. Case reports, a major part of the laws of the United States, are hard to get at, and even when on the Internet, rarely searchable. To get full access you generally need either a library of law reports, or an expensive subscription to an online database, which can cost hundreds of dollars per hour.

AltLaw is a small effort to change that—to make the common law a bit more common. AltLaw provides the first free, full-text searchable database of Supreme Court and Federal Appellate case reports. It is a resource for attorneys, legal scholars, and the general public.”

I’ve blogged before here at Oregon Legal Research about free and low-cost legal research databases, so add AltLaw to the pool.

I haven’t looked at online translation services lately, but luckily for you, the Bates Information Service has. Here is their October InfoTip on Translation Tools.

KOIN online has this story today (10/16/07), “Kicker Tax Refund ‘Phishing’ Scam.”

“If you get a phone call or e-mail asking for your bank account number so that your kicker refund can be electronically deposited in your account, don’t believe it.

It’s not you. The Oregon Constitution is truly the proverbial Dog’s Breakfast (aka dog’s dinner, i.e. a mess and a muddle (edible but maybe not so eatable)). Everyone has known this for a long time and the Oregonian also Says It’s So in its October 11th, 2007, article by Janie Harr, “Tinkering with the constitution an Oregon tradition.”

Given how long the Oregon Constitution has been a dog’s breakfast, should that fact alone determine which way you vote (and there are always other facts to consider)? Or, maybe, we need a committee, commission, task force, whatever, to clean it up. And then again, maybe not. Our Constitution won’t fit into a nice neat pocket version (like this one), but that’s ok – maybe. You have to admit, pocket-size ones entice you to read them, but one the size of a small phone book, not so much.

When was the last time you read the Oregon Constitution?

As if it’s not tough enough enforcing money judgments stateside, you may also have to think about enforcing them north of the border. The October 2007 Oregon State Bar (OSB) Bulletin has an article by Michael Bertoldi (contact information in the article), “Show Me the (Canadian) Money” that tells you how.