Oregon Legal Research Blog

Plutocracy vs. Plutoectomy: On a lighter but still law-worthy note, if you don’t read Blawg Review each week, you are missing something special. (Keep in mind that I grew up with great parents who somehow made us think that work, e.g. doing the dishes or washing the car or even homework, was fun, which explains a lot about me. Yeah, yeah, I’ve since read Tom Sawyer 🙂

You may, or may not, need a couple of visits to get into the swing of Blawg Review, but then you will just plain cruise with it. This week the topic is Workplace / Employment law.

Last week Blawg Review featured Ernie the Attorney, whose link to this article on Pluto and Constitutional Law by Mark Graber made me laugh because this past weekend every time I put on the radio someone was talking about Plutocracies, which can be very confusing if you’re half asleep and spent the better part of your holiday weekend awake (drinking and eating)-hours talking about Poor Pluto’s demotion. Pluto’s demotion was not unlike Poor George Washington’s demotion when he was bumped in favor of another president when someone decided to rename an airport, which to me will always be [George!] Washington National Airport no matter what anyone else says. And Pluto will always be a planet to me – but I’m not planning to lose any sleep over it so it will only be in my dreams.

Security Breaches and Your Small Legal Practice: Do you think that just because you are a small business that you are immune from security and identity theft breaches or from claims by clients who believe you didn’t take reasonable precautions to protect their personal data? I’m sure you don’t, but …

Do you have a laptop or desktop computer with client files? Is it encrypted and password protected? Do you ever carry personal files in your car – and leave them there while you walk away? Do you have any files, paper or digital, with personal data that ever leave your sight and control? Do you ever send faxes or email messages with personal data on the documents – and do you (or your legal assistants) double check, triple check the recipient phone number or the email address? Do you always confirm receipt of the document by the appropriate party? Do you take your outgoing mail to the Post Office or is your mail ever delivered to a location that others have access to? Do you spend more time and tech-staff money on filtering spam from “Nigerian” scam artists than on other equally, or more, vulnerable privacy and security weak points in your business and home? Do you dispose of your old cell phone responsibly?

You don’t have to get paranoid but just use common sense. Learn from other people’s mistakes. Keep up with identity theft and security and privacy breach news. It’s not hard. Stories about data theft are over the newspapers, blogs, and official web sites. Take basic steps to protect your clients’ data the same way you would to protect your own – and maybe even more. Remember the golden rule, i.e. do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you, so treat your clients’ personal data the way you would want them and everyone else to treat yours. And every time you read about a data security breach, your first thought should be, “that could be me and if it had been, could I have prevented it and what steps would I take to recover from it?”

Profiling and the Law Stories: Bruce Schneier had a post on behavioral profiling in his August 21st blog posting. Anecdotal and scientific information on profiling is useful for lawyers defending clients who have been profiled, for lawyers confronting / challenging eye-witness testimony, and for lawyers who work with law enforcement and security agencies trying to come up with ways to keep us all safe.

Everyone has a story about being profiled or even just “getting the sense” that someone is up to no good. We’ve all heard police officers being ridiculed for saying that they “knew by looking at the guy that he was up to no good.” But it happens to us all. The recent local story reported on KATU’s web site about the young woman who was stopped by a man who claimed to be an “undercover cop” is an example. Her instincts told her there was something wrong (that and his tee-shirt that had “Undercover Police” written on it was a dead give-away – ya think?). And she was right, but was just law-abiding enough not to pay attention to her own survival instincts.

My own notable story was back in the 80’s while working in a Philadelphia jail as a bail interviewer. The defendant’s fingerprints came back clean so it looked as if he had no record. But as I talked to him I had a funny sense that he had been there before. So I sent out his fingerprints to be rechecked. Bingo. They had read them incorrectly. The defendant was no first-timer. If he had been interviewed by someone newer than I or less willing to challenge the fingerprint readers (who were in truth quite nice and more than willing to recheck their work), less “intuitive,” or just not as confident in her intuitions and intangible observations (paying no attention to the young, clean-cut, glad-handing type guy he appeared on the surface) then this defendant would have been free as the wind, ROR (released on own recognizance).

AMAZING RESEARCH TOOL (for finding books and more): If you haven’t tried Worldcat.org (NOT dot com), then prepare to be astounded, amazed, and thrilled – and not just you bibliophiles out there. It’s easy to say it’s just an Internet catalog, but it is so much, so very much more. I’ll give you an example:

Let’s say you need a book your local library doesn’t have – we’ll call this book, “Handbook of Forensic Psychology.” You have a couple of choices. You could start checking the web catalogs for all your local libraries or you could call your local librarians and ask them to check. OR, you could use Worldcat.ORG. So you go to Worldcat.ORG (I’ll keep repeating it :-), and type in the title. From the list that appears, click on the book with the title that is a match. Then, you type in your zip code. Prepare to be thrilled (librarians get excited about the strangest things) – a list of the libraries in your area that own the book pops up. [Insert a “Like Wow Man” here.] NOW you can get on the phone, which you should do first instead of getting in your car (you MAY however get on your bicycle), because the book might be checked out and you’ll waste a trip (one never wastes a bicycle trip, especially on a beautiful day, which is just about every day in the Pacific Northwest).

DOT ORG, Worldcat.ORG, Worldcat.org, worldcat.org (NOT dot com)

Check Your P’s, Q’s, Facts, and Cites: Reading the incomparable Bedsworth today reminded me of something I see far too often with legal (and other) researchers and writers. They don’t always check the accuracy or relevance of the cites or facts they refer to in their writings. Law students on law reviews check cites and facts obsessively, but oddly enough, they didn’t always do it for their own writings for classes (though one (but not I) could argue that maybe it didn’t matter in that context, i.e. something only a professor would read). They’d blithely cite to something someone else cited to, without checking the original. (Insert a law librarian’s “oh dear,” here :-).

This isn’t wise. It may be expedient, but sooner or later you’re going to be caught, and you sure don’t want to be caught by a judge or in front of a jury. So check your cites and verify your facts. Don’t assume someone else did and don’t assume “papers of record” are accurate – they aren’t always. Try and go to the source when possible. It’s time consuming, but you have librarians in your town, don’t you? One of the things we try and do is to save you a little time.

(If you’re wondering why reading Bedsworth reminded me of this, it’s because I found myself not long ago with friends at a weekend pub lunch and caught myself saying, “did you know that people who live in cold climates are less likely to behave warlike or violently?” I then stopped and realized what total hogwash that was and that by some mysterious process of Beds-mosis, I’d absorbed his insane comedy and was pushing it out again as if his words were fact. The laugh that gave me alone was enough to make my day. So read Bedsworth. You’ll live longer than without him.)

2006 OSSA Civil Process Manual: The long-awaited, newly revised, 2006 OSSA Civil Process Manual & Forms is available from the Oregon State Sheriffs’ Association. It is on CD-ROM, $350 for one user permit, and you can order it from them at 800-624-4405.

Keeping Up With The Law: Lawyers and non-lawyers alike want to keep up with current caselaw. Visit the OJD Media Releases site regularly to read the latest Oregon Supreme Court and Oregon Court of Appeals decisions. You can reach the full text of the decisions, among other things, here.

Law Librarian – Do you have what it takes?: Ever think about applying for a job as a law librarian? Here’s a job description from a recent posting for a law school reference librarian (not supervisory, not managerial, not directorial, all of which would require additional skills).

Required: Master’s degree in library science from an ALA-accredited institution is required. Demonstrated experience with legal research materials, techniques and strategies; especially electronic resources. Substantial knowledge of web-based subscription services, web-based instructional technology tools, and Internet resources. Knowledge of HTML and web-authoring tools; demonstrated experience with creating and maintaining web pages.. Strong service orientation, ability to work well independently, and with others. Excellent interpersonal, organizational, and communication skills. Strong organizational and planning skills. Ability to establish and maintain a good working relationship with colleagues. Strong public service philosophy.

Preferred: JD from an ABA-accredited institution is preferred, however relevant and directly related experience may be considered. Experience with database design and previous experience working in a law library is a plus. WESTLAW and LexisNexis knowledge is a plus. Demonstrated familiarity with library computer applications and internet based-communication tools such as blogs, wikis, and podcasting.

If you want to see more job law librarian job descriptions, visit the American Association of Law Libraries web site and click on the Job Hotline. Jobs as paraprofessionals in law libraries often require substantial skills too. I’ll talk more about those later, but don’t even think about asking “do you have any openings for jobs where I can sit at the desk and read?” That happens only in the movies, on TV, and maybe in libraries that are going to be in big trouble in a few years.

Writing, Law, Blogs: I browse through a lot of blogs over the course of a week. You might think I would be an RSS user, but I’m not. One day I’ll try and articulate why not. But I am an RSS advocate so don’t feel you need to sell me on its merits. I probably just prefer the randomness of my own system for keeping up with my favorite blogs, though I suspect there is more to it than that. In any event, from all of today’s blogs-pickings (see the intriguing Language Log posting on Plural Shifting) the one that keeps coming back to me is from LLRX. The specific posting is this one on “Reining in your inner change freak.” The author (Connie Crosby, a worthwhile read any time) pulls this wonderful and pithy quote from Jim Frazier:

“Change is NOT inherently good. Stop believing that. Change is, without question, inevitable. But it is not good or bad. It just is. Change is not the issue. It is what conditions you are changing and what alternatives you are offering that should be the real topic of discussion. (p. 7)”

First, I think it is funny that we need permission to feel this way – but the truth is we sometimes do. Second, click on Connie’s link to the quote’s source. Apart from the simple pleasure of browsing the document for the odds and ends that are also “wonderful and pithy,” what really jumped out at me was how the creator of this publication did what few others do. He sized the PDF to fit onto a computer screen so one didn’t have to scroll down a full screen of an 8-1/2” x 11” page. Online is not print. He Got It in 2000, which was when this was written. Imagine that.

Jury Duty Scam Returns: KOIN reports that the jury-duty scam is back.