Oregon Legal Research Blog

The OSB’s 2007 Law Library Values list is out.

Who knew! Thanks to Isaac Laquedem we learn that Oregon’s Legislative Counsel has a sense of humor (not that we didn’t love their work already :-). Visit their ORS web site or link to it through Isaac Laquedem’s posting on the “Healing Power of Oregon Law …”

“Just having this extraordinarily impressive-looking set in your office will make you smarter and even more attractive.* …

*Sentences marked with an asterisk are probably not at all true. Contact the Office of the Legislative Counsel with your questions and complaints. “

Lawyers for two cases that originated in Oregon appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, 1/16/07, to discuss the finer points of insurance law. Saveco v Burr (06-84) and Geico v Edo (06-100).

Today’s Oregonian (1/17/07) ran a story about the cases in the print edition on page two, but the story seems to have escaped their online edition. Maybe it will show up eventually. (Jeff Kosseff of the Oregonian wrote it.) Maybe we can blame the snow and ice (it seems as if little else is in the news in the Portland metro area). Ross Runkel has a useful summary of these insurance cases and links to supporting documents. (Thanks, Ross!). And don’t forget law blogger, David Rossmiller for other insurance law news.

The Thurgood Marshall Law Law (always dear to my heart – they hired me when I was a wet behind the ears, newly hatched law librarian, and nurtured me kindly, patiently, and with much skill) has on their web site this database: “Historical Publications of the United States Commission on Civil Rights.”

“In conjunction with the Thurgood Marshall Law Library’s strategic plan to enhance its civil rights collection in support of the School of Law’s teaching and research mission, the Library has worked since 2001 to create a complete electronic record of United States Commission on Civil Rights publications held in the Library’s collection and available on the USCCR Web site. The publications are made available over the Internet as page image presentations in PDF format. Each item is linked to the appropriate bibliographic record in the Catalog. Publications are also searchable by keyword and accessible by date and title.”

Links from beSpacific and Law-Lib (the law librarian listserve)

Thanks to Paul Lomio, Director of the Stanford Law Library, for alerting us to this, “Legal Research: The Movie,” created by some of their advanced legal research students. The secret is out: law school can be fun.

“I’m My Own Grandpa.” Remember the song? (Link to versions of it here, here, and the Wikipedia entry, here.) Well, small town law librarianship is not unlike the song. You might work half time as the town law librarian and half time for the public defender whose aunt works half time for the sheriff whose chief deputy is the town’s part-time prosecutor, who also happens to work 10 hours a week as the city solicitor. Her husband works part time as county counsel and part time in private practice. Their son is in law school and their daughter used to practice corporate law but came back to her hometown to practice juvenile law. Her husband is a Justice of the Peace, part time of course, and runs the local coffee shop/internet café the rest of the time with the their two kids, one of whom is nothing but trouble. The other works in the law library, after school and a couple hours a month doing odd jobs for the bail bondsman.

Now, you’re the law librarian and all of these people somehow ended up involved in one way or another caught up with the same lawsuit and they are now all showing up in the law library to do research. You can’t leave town and you darn well better know how to keep your own counsel.
This is a little bit exaggerated, though I bet there are some small town law librarians out there who would say, no not in the least – you didn’t go far enough. You left out Uncle Nunzio who blew into town after living in NYC for 23 years, the high school art teacher who was in love with Uncle Nunzio when they were in high school together, her current husband who is co-owner of the company building the new landfill over on the west side of town, his sister who thinks her kids are addled due to wastewater that’s been leaking from the old landfill, etc., etc., etc.

The latest Bedsworth (Justice William W. Bedsworth) is out and you won’t want to miss it. Who knew being a judge could be so much fun, though fun might not really be the word to use. Nu?

I’m not sure why I follow some of the news I do, but my instincts generally are good. Following Shlep’s links to the BRB Public Records Blog (and don’t hurry past this entire posting of David’s on public records at Shelp), I found out that Garda has acquired Kroll’s international security division. I haven’t a clue why this is useful information, but past experience tells me it will be. Anyway, doing a [very] loose search for more information lead me to this, and then this interesting story on what security experts should know about ethics. It takes one back to Watergate when the response to suggestions that the White House staff should receive ethics training led one wag to remark, yes, but one needs to have the “aptitude” for the subject to benefit from any teaching. Hmmm. (Yes, I promise to look for the exact quote one day.)

I’m going to be talking a lot over the next couple of months about “How to Find a Lawyer,” (I have at least two public presentations on the subject coming up). In the course of preparing for it, I’ve learned a lot about the Lawyer end of referrals, as opposed to the potential client end. Here’s a posting on the subject, which I linked to from the Stark County Law Library blog, always a source of useful law practice and legal research information – they sure save us a lot of blog-surfing!