Law Commons^™

Fastcase Features: A Quick Guide For Former Casemaker Users, Baylee Suskin

Publications

No abstract provided.

Against The Wind: James Boyd White And The Struggle To Keep Law Alive, Todd M. Stafford

Publications

No abstract provided.

Westlaw’S Key Number System, Aamir S. Abdullah

Publications

No abstract provided.

Hunting And Gathering On The Legal Information Savannah, Susan Nevelow Mart, Adam Litzler, David Gunderman

Publications

This article asks, what is it like for novice researchers to research real-world legal problems using four platforms: Bloomberg Law, Fastcase, Lexis Advance, and Westlaw? The study findings produced some surprises, as well as some clear implications for teaching legal research.

7 Everyday Useful Westlaw Tips. Plus, Bonus Trick List!, Aamir S. Abdullah

Publications

No abstract provided.

Researching Colorado Employment Law, Jill Sturgeon

Publications

No abstract provided.

Introduction To The Symposium: The Stakes For Critical Legal Theory, Elizabeth S. Anker, Justin Desautels-Stein

Publications

No abstract provided.

A Novel Response: How Law Libraries Adapted To The Pandemic, Aamir S. Abdullah

Publications

No abstract provided.

A Grammar Of Legal Thought, Derek H. Kiernan-Johnson

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Bar Exam Taught Me Something! Or How Bar Prep Advice Helps Me Manage Life In Lockdown, Heather Varanini

Publications

There’s a refrain from most law school graduates: law school taught me nothing about the practice of law and the bar exam didn’t test any of the skills that will make me a good lawyer. But what about the other things you learned in the process?

De-Democratizing Criminal Law, Benjamin Levin

Publications

No abstract provided.

From The Courtroom To The Classroom: How A Litigator Became A Transactional Drafting Professor, Amy Bauer

Publications

No abstract provided.

A Reconsideration Of Copyright's Term, Kristelia A. García, Justin Mccrary

Publications

For well over a century, legislators, courts, lawyers, and scholars have spent significant time and energy debating the optimal duration of copyright protection. While there is general consensus that copyright’s term is of legal and economic significance, arguments both for and against a lengthy term are often impressionistic. Utilizing music industry sales data not previously available for academic analysis, this Article fills an important evidentiary gap in the literature. Using recorded music as a case study, we determine that most copyrighted music earns the majority of its lifetime revenue in the first five to ten years following its initial release …

The Architecture Of Drama: How Lawyers Can Use Screenwriting Techniques To Tell More Compelling Stories, Teresa M. Bruce

Publications

Hollywood writers have a secret. They know how to tell a compelling story—so compelling that the top-grossing motion pictures rake in millions, and sometimes billions, of dollars. How do they do it? They use a simple formula involving three acts that propel the story forward, three "plot points" that focus on the protagonist, and two "pinch points" that focus on the adversary. The attached Article argues that lawyers should build their stories in the same way Hollywood writers do. It deconstructs the storytelling formula used in movies and translates it into an IRAC-like acronym, SCOR. Attorneys who use SCOR will …

Inside The Black Box Of Search Algorithms, Susan Nevelow Mart, Joe Breda, Ed Walters, Tito Sierra, Khalid Al-Kofahi

Publications

A behind-the-scenes look at the algorithms that rank results in Bloomberg Law, Fastcase, Lexis Advance, and Westlaw.

This Book Is Just My Type, Jennifer Babcock

Publications

Jennifer Babcock reviews Typography for Lawyers by Matthew Butterick (2d ed., O'Connor's 2015), 240 pages.

Bloomberg’S Points Of Law: Can They Compete With Headnotes?, Jill Sturgeon

Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review, Anna Spain Bradley

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Consensus Myth In Criminal Justice Reform, Benjamin Levin

Publications

It has become popular to identify a “consensus” on criminal justice reform, but how deep is that consensus, actually? This Article argues that the purported consensus is much more limited than it initially appears. Despite shared reformist vocabulary, the consensus rests on distinct critiques that identify different flaws and justify distinct policy solutions. The underlying disagreements transcend traditional left/right political divides and speak to deeper disputes about the state and the role of criminal law in society.

The Article maps two prevailing, but fundamentally distinct, critiques of criminal law: (1) the quantitative approach (what I call the “over” frame); and …

Dethroning The Hierarchy Of Authority, Amy J. Griffin

Publications

The use of authority in legal argument is constantly evolving—both the types of information deemed authoritative and their degree of authoritativeness—and that evolution has accelerated in recent years with dramatic changes in access to legal information. In contrast, the uncontroversial and ubiquitous “hierarchy of authority” used as the cornerstone for all legal analysis has remained entirely fixed. This article argues that the use of the traditional hierarchy as the dominant model for legal authority is deeply flawed, impeding a deeper understanding of the use of authority in legal argument. Lawyers, judges, and academics all know this, and yet no scholarly …

Understanding The Human Element In Search Algorithms And Discovering How It Affects Search Results, Susan Nevelow Mart

Publications

When legal researchers search in online databases for the information they need to solve a legal problem, they need to remember that the algorithms that are returning results to them were designed by humans. The world of legal research is a human-constructed world, and the biases and assumptions the teams of humans that construct the online world bring to the task are imported into the systems we use for research. This article takes a look at what happens when six different teams of humans set out to solve the same problem: how to return results relevant to a searcher’s query …

What A Technical Services Librarian Wants Their Library Director To Know, Georgia Briscoe

Publications

Promoting the value of technical services librarians in the digital age.

The Potemkin Temptation Or, The Intoxicating Effect Of Rhetoric And Narrativity On American Craft Whiskey, Derek H. Kiernan-Johnson

Publications

No abstract provided.

Researching Colorado Health Law, Kerri Rowe

Publications

No abstract provided.

Results May Vary, Susan Nevelow Mart

Publications

No abstract provided.

Tracking Colorado Legislation, Robert Linz

Publications

No abstract provided.

Two Pedagogies In Search Of Synergy, Lisa Schultz, Susan Nevelow Mart

Publications

Anyone who has taught a first-year legal research course understands the dilemma: How do we weave research skills into the writing program without sacrificing the quality or quantity of either discipline? In fact, it is difficult and time consuming to interweave any serious legal research instruction into a first-year writing course. What the students need to know is not just how to do a little case law research or how to find a statute: they need to also know how to formulate a research plan, how to evaluate a database, what kind of search works in different information environments, and …

Introducing Govinfo: A New Source For Federal Government Documents Online, Erik Beck

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Chow: Depictions Of The Criminal Justice System As A Character In Crime Fiction, Marianne Wesson

Publications

Having been honored by a request to contribute to a Symposium honoring my talented friend Alafair Burke, I composed this essay describing the various ways the criminal justice system has been depicted in English-language crime fiction. This survey, necessarily highly selective, considers portrayals penned by writers from Dickens to Tana French. Various dimensions of comparison include the authors’ apparent beliefs about the rule of law (from ridiculously idealistic to uncompromisingly cynical), the characters’ professional perspectives (private detective, police officer, prosecutor, defense lawyer, judge, victim, accused), and the protagonists’ status as institutional insiders or outsiders or occupants of the uncomfortable middle. …

Every Algorithm Has A Pov, Susan Nevelow Mart

Publications

When legal researchers search in online databases for the information they need to solve a legal problem, they need to remember that the algorithms that are returning results to them were designed by humans. The world of legal research is a human-constructed world, and the biases and assumptions the teams of humans that construct the online world bring to the task are imported into the systems we use for research. This article takes a look at what happens when six different teams of humans set out to solve the same problem: how to return results relevant to a searcher’s query …