Law librarian colleagues brought a Legal Informatics Blog post to my attention: Susskind on the End of Lawyers.
There are a zillion links to commentary on the book. I found Carolyn Elefant’s 3/24/09 My Shingle blog post and Comments particularly interesting – and practical: And what it means for solos.
Jim Calloway blogs about 3 free directory assistance numbers to program into your phone.
I’ll add at least one more: your public library’s quick reference line. It will be useful only during those hours your public library has reference hours, but in some places that’s a lot of your working hours. You could also just plug a Library per Time Zone into your phone.
My own favorite local library reference line is:
Legal Research Plus has a blog post: Best Guide to Canadian Legal Research (September 3, 2009, by Sergio Stone) that links to the, uh, Best Guide to Canadian Legal Research webpage.
I’m the last person ever to agree that a self-selected “Best” designation is of any use or value, except of course to put the cynics amongst us on guard from the start, but you can decide for yourself if the Best Guide … really is “The Best.” But it is always useful to have a starting place for any specialized research.
This National Law Journal article about the case, Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida (S. Ct. Docket number: 08-1151) caught my eye:
“Setting boundaries for property rights: The Supreme Court will decide whether Florida ran roughshod over beachfront landholders,” by Timothy Sandefur, August 31, 2009
Excerpts: ‘The U.S. Supreme Court surprised many when it decided it would review an unusual Florida property rights dispute this fall. That case, Stop the Beach Renourishment v. Florida, involves some of the most profound questions about the judiciary’s role in protecting private property rights.
…
I recently posted about the King County (Washington State) debt collection research guides and woefully neglected to link my readers to the excellent OREGON debt collection legal research guides at the Lane County Law Library. Use their Research Guide Index to find Debt Collection and many other useful guides.
If you’ve read the recent (last week, last year, last decade, last century) stories about relatives, caregivers, and others who are charged with theft, elder abuse, and other crimes against the fragile or elderly people they are allegedly caring for …,
If you ever wondered why public law librarians and lawyers go pale when people use Fill-in-the-Blank forms for things like Powers of Attorney and Advance Directives, to name only a couple …,
Here’s an excellent article from the Oregonian’s Brent Hunsberger’s It’s Only Money column (Sunday, 9/7/09, Business section, p. D-1) that will explain why.
It also has some valuable tips on how to protect yourself and loved ones. (Oregonlive version: Protect yourself now against elder financial ripoffs, Posted by Brent Hunsberger, The Oregonian September 05, 2009.)
Many years ago a teacher of management reminded his students that the people least in the loop, the ones who don’t know what is going on in their companies (or government agencies), are the ones at the top, its managers and directors. He, of course, had many excellent examples of this.
No one on the front line of any business operation, or any consumer for that matter, is surprised to hear that those at the top “haven’t a clue” what systems and procedures work (or don’t work), but it is hard to know who to fault when the information that CEOs (and the rest of us) need to have is just not available.
A law librarian colleague brought this Law Technology News article to our attention and it provides another example of the problem:
Some (maybe all?) Oregon courts are offering TurboCourt online document preparation for Small Claims litigants. I haven’t seen TurboCourt in action.
Visit the Washington County (Oregon) Circuit Court website and their TurboCourt link. Or, visit your own county’s Circuit or Justice Court to find out if they too have TurboCourt.
In the future, however, Oregon Judicial Department’s eCourt may be where document filing will take place. Here’s a press release on the rollout, which started in Yamhill County in June.
The King County (WA) Law Library has an excellent: Debt Collection Lawsuit Research Guide. The state law links are to Washington State laws, but the other information and federal law links apply to everyone. There is also a podcast with additional information on this subject.
Excerpt from the research guide: “What is a Debt Collection Lawsuit?
A debt is a sum of money owed by one person to another. A lawsuit is a legal action by one person or entity against another person or entity, which is decided in a court of law. A debt collection lawsuit is started in a court by a “cause of action” as the particular amount of money owed. The person or entity starting the lawsuit is the plaintiff. (Definition from: http://dictionary.law.com/).
From the Great Public Speaking blog, news of a scam (September 1, 2009, post):
Curious.
