Oregonians who are facing foreclosure on their homes – or who are attempting to avoid foreclosure – have several resources available that may be immediately helpful. In the past few years, many state/federal agencies and other organizations have partnered together in an effort to help homeowners, so some overlapping of information is to be expected. Consider looking at both regional and national sources for comprehensive options.
OREGON
For all the talk about “it’s all online,” we recently noticed that the Oregon Attorney General’s Administrative Law Manual and Uniform and Model Rules of Procedure under the APA is still available only in print.
(We keep a “not online” list and update it as people ask for things we can’t find or get online.)
It took years to get the Oregon Attorney General’s office to put their full Public Records and Meetings Manual online (and superseded editions are still not online); so the Model Rules may not appear online anytime soon, but it’s never too late to start a “please put it online” campaign.
Visit the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) Justice Case Files website to read this hilarious coloring-book story:
Justice Case File 4: The Case of the Broken Controller is a (PDF) narrative coloring book available to download for free. (Note: the PDF at the NCSC site is almost 8 MB. It can be optimized to under 4 MB if you have Adobe.)
“The National Center for State Courts (NCSC) launched a public awareness campaign several years ago to educate the public about how the courts work. The central effort of this campaign was to develop a series of graphic novels, called Justice Case Files, which engage the reader while giving insight into how judges make decisions, how the courts protect the public, and why courts are so important to a democratic society….”
Law in the News alerts us to this article at Plagiarism Today:
“Update on the Potential Copyright Small Claims Court,” February 28, 2013, by Jonathan Bailey
The author has done an excellent job summarizing the problem and proposed solutions and linking to other sources of information.
About Courthouse Dogs: Mission: “The mission of Courthouse Dogs Foundation is to promote justice with compassion through the use of professionally trained assistance dogs to provide emotional support to everyone in the justice system.”
“Since 2003 courthouse dogs have provided comfort to sexually abused children while they undergo forensic interviews and testify in court. These dogs also assist treatment court participants in their recovery, visit juveniles in detention facilities, greet jurors and lift the spirits of courthouse staff who often conduct their business in an adversarial setting.
If you research the law online, you need to have authenticated, official laws – yes, you do!
There is no point relying on statutes, cases, regulations, and other government legal documents that aren’t correct, aren’t from the year(s) you need, and are missing the source’s official imprimatur.
Most online laws have Disclaimers that advise and warn you to verify what you read online with official, legal text.
Boring (Oregon) and Dull (Scotland) Day Passes Oregon House of Representatives
2013 HB 2352: Designates August 9 of each year as Boring and Dull Day:
Relating to Boring and Dull Day.
Casemaker now has subscriptions for individual, unaffiliated (with a bar association or law school) legal researchers. Visit the Casemaker website for instructions and prices.
In the world of low-cost legal research databases, Casemaker and Fastcase are the primary vendors providing group-rate services to bar associations. This is good for lawyers, clients, and for non-lawyer bar association members.
Other low-cost research databases exist, including LoisLaw, VersusLaw, and others. (See the list on this blog’s sidebar or link directly to the Georgetown Law School Library’s Free and Low Cost Legal Research Guide.
If you are a public law librarian, a public law library trustee, or interested in pursuing a career in public law librarianship, here’s a great book and a book review:
“Public Law Librarianship: Objectives, Challenges, and Solutions,” by Laurie Selwyn and Virginia Eldridge. IGI Global, 2012, 281 pages.
We have a copy in our Law Library and your law library may have one, too.
Are you ready to Spring Forward in Oregon? March 10th is the Day the Clocks Change.
If you want to know why you have to Spring Forward (and if not, risk missing a lot of meals and time checks), read our Fall Back blog post from October 2012.
