Law Commons^™

Redefining Open Access For The Legal Information Market, James G. Milles

James G. Milles

The open access movement in legal scholarship, inasmuch as it is driven within the law library community over concerns about the rising cost of legal information, fails to address - and in fact diverts resources from - the real problem facing law libraries today: the soaring costs of nonscholarly, commercially published, practitioner-oriented legal publications. The current system of legal scholarly publishing - in student-edited journals and without meaningful peer review - does not face the pressures to increase prices common in the science and health disciplines. One solution to this problem is for law schools to redirect some of their …

Leaky Boundaries And The Decline Of The Autonomous Law School Library, James G. Milles

James G. Milles

Academic law librarians have long insisted on the value of autonomy from the university library system, usually basing their arguments on strict adherence to ABA standards. However, law librarians have failed to construct an explicit and consistent definition of autonomy. Lacking such a definition, they have tended to rely on an outmoded Langdellian view of the law as a closed system. This view has long been discredited, as approaches such as law and economics and sociolegal research have become mainstream, and courts increasingly resort to nonlegal sources of information. Blind attachment to autonomy as a goal rather than a means …

Content And Quality Of Legal Information And Data On The Internet With A Special Focus On The United States, Claire M. Germain

Claire Germain

In the United States today, digital versions of current decisions, bills, statutes, and regulations issued by federal and state governments are widely available on publicly accessible Web sites. Worldwide, official (defined as "authoritative," or "the official" word of the law) legal information issued by international organizations and foreign governments is also becoming available on the Web. However, there are currently no standards for the production and authentication of digital documents. Moreover, the information is sometimes available only for a short time and then disappears from the site. No guidelines exist either to promote a uniform way to cite to digital …

Aall's National Advocacy Efforts, Claire M. Germain

Claire Germain

No abstract provided.

Cali Lessons In Legal Research Courses: Alternatives To Reading About Research, Elizabeth G. Adelman

Elizabeth Adelman

No abstract provided.

Researching Georgia Law, Nancy P. Johnson, Nancy J. Adams, Elizabeth G. Adelman

Elizabeth Adelman

No abstract provided.

Mexican Law And Legal Research, Julienne Grant, Jonathan Pratter, Bianca Anderson, Marisol Floren-Romero, Jootaek Lee, Lyonette Louis-Jacques, Teresa Miguel-Stearns, Sergio Stone

Marisol Florén-Romero

No abstract provided.

Proquest Regulatory Insight, Pamela C. Brannon

Pamela Brannon

No abstract provided.

The Structured Writing Group: A Different Writing Center?, Brian N. Larson, Christopher Soper

Brian Larson

This article describes the objectives, development, and some preliminary results of a program the authors led at the University of Minnesota Law School in academic year 2014-15. They wanted the “Structured Writing Group” (SWG) project to achieve some outcomes traditionally associated with writing centers: first, improving the student writing process by facilitating collaboration with a writing expert; and second, exposing students to additional audiences for their writing. We added a third goal of improving the experience and performance of multilingual students in the legal writing program.

Encouraging Engaged Scholarship: Perspectives From An Associate Dean For Research, Sonia K. Katyal

Sonia Katyal

No abstract provided.

Book Review - Florida Legal Research: Sources, Process, And Analysis, A. Darby Dickerson

Darby Dickerson

No abstract provided.

中国法律检索教育新发展, Liying Yu, Ning Han

Ning Han

本文通过问卷调查揭示中国法律检索教学领域的最新状况和发展趋势。该调查是作者2008年调查的继续，以期发现近年来国内该项教学的进展和变化。作者希望以中美法律图书馆员的视角对中国法律检索教学中诸如课程设置、教学方式、学分、考核评估等方面进行具体观察和分析；同时，对法律职业与法律教育者之间的反馈系统、学生对法律检索能力的认知、全国性指导标准等相关方面也有涉及。文章指出，当前，中国法律检索教学局限与机遇并存，特别是伴随信息与数据时代对社会经济文化的全面影响，中国法学教育改革适逢其时，法律检索教育也会不可避免地提到议事日程。而且，作者乐观地认为，中美法律图书馆员在其中的积极与促进作用也是无可替代的。

Legal Research Instruction And Law Librarianship In China: An Updated View Of Current Practices And A Comparison With The U.S. Legal Education System, Ning Han, Liying Yu, Anne Mostad-Jensen

Ning Han

This article follows up on Liying Yu’s 2008 survey exploring the state of legal research instruction in Chinese law schools. The updated survey revisits the state of legal research instruction in China, explores several aspects not previously addressed, and discusses broader issues relevant to law librarianship in China such as management models, funding, staffing, and law librarian faculty status.

Legal Information Management In A Global And Digital Age: Revolution And Tradition, Claire M. Germain

Claire Germain

This article presents an overview of the public policy issues surrounding digital libraries, and describes some current trends, such as Web 2.0, the social network. It discusses the impact of globalization and the Internet on international and foreign law information, the free access to law movement and open access scholarship, and mass digitization projects, then turns to some concerns, focusing on preservation and long term access to born digital legal information and authentication of official digital legal information. It finally discusses new roles for librarians, called upon to evaluate the quality of information teach legal research methodology and be advocates …

Worldwide Access To Foreign Law: International & National Developments Toward Digital Authentication, Claire M. Germain

Claire Germain

This paper was originally presented at the World Library & Information Congress of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), Helsinki, Finland, August 2012, as part of a panel on Promoting Global Access to Law: Developing an Open Access Index for Official Authenticated Legal Information, Part II. Europe. http://conference.ifla.org/ifla78/programme-and-proceedings-day/2012-08-14. It focuses on worldwide access to the official word of the law, specifically to statutes, codes, regulations, court decisions, and international agreements in different foreign countries. The importance of improving global access to foreign law was highlighted at a 2012 joint European Commission/Hague Conference on Private International Law, with …

Citation Literacy, Alexa Z. Chew

Alexa Chew

New lawyers and law students spend a lot of time worrying about legal citation. But most of that time is spent worrying about the wrong thing—formatting. The primary purpose of legal citation is to communicate information to the reader. Thus, legal citations are integral parts of the legal documents that lawyers read and write. But rather than viewing citation as communication, law students, and the new lawyers they become, tend to view it as a formatting sideshow dictated by the Bluebook or other citation style guides. This view is both inaccurate and counterproductive.

I argue that the reason for this …

Moving From A Brandeis Brief To A Brandeis Law Firm: Challenges And Opportunities For Holistic Legal Services In The United States, Judith A. Mcmorrow

Judith A. McMorrow

The need for multidisciplinary approaches to legal services has given rise to increasingly creative service delivery models. The phenomenon is a natural outgrowth of three important ideas that Louis Brandeis developed. First, his work gave rise to the concept of the Brandeis Brief, which in its broader meaning has become a metaphor for the relevance of such social science insights to legal problem-solving. Second, Brandeis introduced the concept of “counsel for the situation” to capture a vision of lawyering that provided a broader identification of the interests involved, again with an orientation on problem-solving. A third idea championed by Brandeis …

Why Write?, Erwin Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky

This wonderful collection of reviews of leading recent books about law provides the occasion to ask a basic question: why should law professors write? There are many things that law professors could do with the time they spend writing books and law review articles. More time and attention could be paid to students and to instructional materials. More professors could do pro bono legal work of all sorts. In fact, if law professors wrote much less, teaching loads could increase, faculties could decrease in size, and tuition could decrease substantially. The answer to the question "why write" is neither intuitive …

Communication Conundrums: Theories About And Tips For Effective Decanal Communication, 48 U. Tol. L. Rev. 211 (2017), Darby Dickerson, Marjorie Buckner

Darby Dickerson

Clear and effective communication is essential for any organization, including a law school, to operate effectively. But communication is often one of the trickiest skills a law dean must seek to master. Once a person adds “Dean” to the front of his or her name, communication norms change. A dean must be sensitive to power structures—whether real or perceived— that exist within the law school. A dean also must be vigilant about how she communicates with others, and how others communicate on her behalf. And she must understand that people will communicate differently with her than with others in the …

Free & Low-Cost Legal Research Options - Presentation Outline, Lee A. Ryan

Lee A. Ryan

Free & Low-Cost Legal Research Options - Slides, Lee A. Ryan

Lee A. Ryan

An Inspired Classroom Or Meeting: Re-Inventing Yourself & Your Approach, Jennifer R. Mart-Rice, Caroline L. Osborne, Alyson Drake, Alexis Fetzer, Franklin L. Runge

Jennifer Mart-Rice

Researching Foreign Law: A Presentation For Usf's Comparative Law Class, Spring 2017, Lee A. Ryan

Lee A. Ryan

Ethics On The Web: An Annotated Bibliography Of Legal Ethics Material On The Internet, 28 Stetson L. Rev. 369 (1998), Darby Dickerson

Darby Dickerson

No abstract provided.

An Un-Uniform System Of Citation: Surviving With The New Bluebook, 26 Stetson L. Rev. 53 (1996), Darby Dickerson

Darby Dickerson

No abstract provided.

Citation Frustrations--And Solutions, 30 Stetson L. Rev. 477 (2000), Darby Dickerson

Darby Dickerson

Working with citations is a fact of life on law journals. Because citation work is detail-oriented, requires great concentration, and is sometimes perceived as "drudge work,"' it often generates a high level of frustration among law review staff, editors, and authors.
This Article will address the primary frustrations suffered by each group and will propose solutions for alleviating those frustrations.

Facilitated Plagiarism: The Saga Of Term-Paper Mills And The Failure Of Legislation And Litigation To Control Them, 52 Vill. L. Rev. 21 (2007), Darby Dickerson

Darby Dickerson

No abstract provided.

Fifth Colonial Frontier Legal Writing Conference Drafting Statutes And Rules Pedagogy, Practice, And Politics (Foreword), Jan M. Levine

Jan M. Levine

Bluebook Bootcamp Spring 2017

Khelani Z.A. Clay

No abstract provided.

Assessing Academic Law Libraries' Performance And Implementing Change: The Reorganization Of A Law Library, Linda Kawaguchi

Linda Kawaguchi