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How did we answer that? Guardianship of a Minor

I had a patron come in looking for information about becoming the legal guardian of their grandchildren. The parents were no longer available and the grandmother was looking to get legal guardianship of the children, to be able to make legal and medical decisions, and to enroll them into the local school.

In Oregon, the Oregon Judicial Department puts out some forms. The OJD forms are accepted at any circuit (county) court. Additional forms may be available depending on the county/local court. For Guardianship, the state has extremely limited form options. Every county has the option of providing additional forms, guidance, or instructions. As we are in Washington County, our circuit court’s guardianship (called probate guardianship) options are pretty much the same as the state.

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A federal criminal indictment has been in the national news recently. But federal criminal law and procedure is not something most of us know much about. So how can you learn more about federal criminal indictments and federal criminal procedure?

First one could look at the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure. These are the rules that attorneys and the federal courts follow for federal criminal matters. Rules six through nine govern the indictment process. Other rules cover various aspects of the proceedings before, during, and after trial.

For more analysis and explanation of criminal justice proceedings, one could look at HeinOnline’s Criminal Justice & Criminology collection. This collection includes several law journal articles, books, Department of Justice publications, Congressional hearings, and Congressional Research Service reports, among others. WCCLS library card holders can access HeinOnline remotely.

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The Oregon State Bar recently launched Free Legal Answers in partnership with the American Bar Association that uses volunteer Oregon attorneys to answer legal questions for free for qualifying patrons.

The site can help get answers to questions on Oregon topics such as family law, eviction, and consumer law. If you are interested in getting a question answered the website will guide you through the process. After the disclaimers on the first page, you will be taken to a page that gives more details on who qualifies and what is done with your information. This site is geared to help low-income patrons so be prepared to provide income information and to answer other questions. You can submit your question if you qualify.

There is a limit of 3 different legal questions per year and you must meet the qualifications each time you use the websites.

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How did we answer that? Legislative History

I had a woman come in asking for help doing a legislative history. She didn’t get into details with what she wanted beyond needing to know the history of one of the statutes about whistleblowers.

When doing a legislative history, the first thing to do is find which statute you want to know the history of. In this case, the woman already knew the exact statute. I got her onto one of our legal databases (there are many options out there, but at WCLL our main ones are Lexis and Westlaw). Conveniently, the statute she was looking at only had one bill to research for changes. Had there been more, she would have done the same following steps, but repeated for each bill.

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We routinely get calls from attorneys who are looking to get rid of law books. They may be retiring or downsizing. The answer has evolved, but it is generally harder to find a home for law books now than in the past.

The first recommendation we make is to post on email lists for other lawyers. The Oregon State Bar’s section email lists can be a great way to find a newer attorney looking to make their office look lawyerly, or build a law library.

We have referred people to The Lawbook Exchange, an east coast company that specializes in used law books. Another large used book vender, although it doesn’t specialize in law, is Better World Books. One can also check with local used book stores, or possibly antique dealers for older books.

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As COVID restrictions ease across Oregon, the state’s circuit courts are resuming in-person trials. We have been getting questions about serving on a jury. Each county circuit court has their own procedures and rules, so it is always a good idea to contact the circuit court directly to get answers to your questions. Here are some sources that I found online that answered some of those questions.

The Oregon State Bar has a Juror handbook which answers in plain language many questions a prospective juror may have.

On the Oregon courts webpage they have posted a Juror Orientation video. It has comments from judges, attorneys, and former jurors about jury duty and re-enactments of parts of jury selection and a trial. There is also a FAQ section on the site about jury duty in general (not county-specific information) and a section on court etiquette.

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Finding a good lawyer – Answering patron questions about finding a good lawyer in Oregon

A common misconception about law library services is that we can help with lawyer referrals. Many people come in thinking we have a list of lawyers in the area and that we know if they are good or not. As wonderful as it would be to have this information available and to be able to point people towards “the best” lawyer, this is outside of our wheelhouse. However, there are resources we can point people to that have some of that information.

One way to find a lawyer is to ask for a referral from someone you know and trust. Even if that referral is a lawyer who practices in another area of law, they may still be able to make a referral to the specialist lawyer needed.

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May is Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Therefore, we will highlight an important intersection of legal history of significant impact to the Japanese-American community: the Japanese internment camps, the Korematsu v. US Supreme Court case, and its subsequent legal treatment.

On February 19, 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the removal of Japanese Americans from the west coast of the United States, which resulted in their relocation to internment camps.

The legality of this order and removal was challenged by Fred Korematsu, and the related curfew challenged by Minoru Yasui of Oregon and Gordon Hirabayashi. In all three cases the Supreme Court upheld the right of the government to exclude Japanese Americans and impose a curfew on them.

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As a techno geek I’ve been fascinated by the concept of Artificial Intelligence (or “AI” as it also known). Maybe it’s the Star Trek-iness of it, but the I like idea of having a bot do some of the work for me. The advertising for Google’s Bard AI system says it can help you write your novel. In a recent article a Londoner asked Bard to plan a weekend in London (including what they should wear!). Even if you don’t get the information you were hoping for, at least it provides for an amusing anecdote.

Lately I’ve seen articles published about using AI to aid in legal research and was wondering what the consensus was about using an AI platform to do legal research.

Above the Law has an interesting piece on how AI is transforming legal research, including a brief history of legal research all the way back to the “Unwieldy Rocks” of Hammurabi’s Code.

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