Law Librarianship Commons^™

Generative Ai And Finding The Law, Paul D. Callister

Faculty Works

Abstract

Legal information science requires, among other things, principles and theories. The article states six principles or considerations that any discussion of generative AI large language models and their role in finding the law must include. The article concludes that law librarianship will increasingly become legal information science and require new paradigms. In addition to the six principles, the article applies ecological holistic media theory to understand the relationship of the legal community’s cognitive authority, institutions, techné (technology, medium and method), geopolitical factors, and the past and future to understand the changes in this information milieu. The article also explains …

Introducing The Dispute Financing Library – A Free Online Resource, Ingrid Mattson

Library Staff Online Publications

NYU Law School’s Center on Civil Justice has developed an online collection of documents and media related to third-party litigation funding called the Dispute Financing Library. The Center’s goal is to create a collection of material on the topic and includes statutes, case law, journal articles, bar reports, news, best practices, and more.

Law, Artificial Intelligence, And Natural Language Processing: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Search Results, Paul D. Callister

Faculty Works

Renowned legal educator Roscoe Pound stated, “Law must be stable and yet it cannot stand still.” Yet, as Susan Nevelow Mart has demonstrated in a seminal article that the different online research services (Westlaw, Lexis Advance, Fastcase, Google Scholar, Ravel and Casetext) produce significantly different results when researching case law. Furthermore, a recent study of 325 federal courts of appeals decisions, revealed that only 16% of the cases cited in appellate briefs make it into the courts’ opinions. This does not exactly inspire confidence in legal research or its tools to maintain stability of the law. As Robert Berring foresaw, …

The Corpus Juris Civilis: A Guide To Its History And Use, Frederick W. Dingledy

Frederick W. Dingledy

The Corpus Juris Civilis is indispensable for Roman law research. It is a vital pillar of modern law in many European nations, and influential in other countries. Scholars and lawyers still refer to it today. This valuable publication, however, may seem impenetrable at first, and references to it can be hard to decipher or detect. This guide provides a history of the Corpus Juris Civilis and the forms it has taken, states why it is still an important resource today, and offers some tips and tools for research using it.

A Golden Opportunity: Legal Research Simulation Courses, Leslie A. Street, Shawn G. Nevers

Leslie A. Street

No abstract provided.

Dapp Legal Research Presentation 5-24-2019 Final.Pptx, Anne Hudson, Heather Hummons

Anne Hudson

Food Waste Legislation Scholarship: A Mapping Study, Angela Hackstadt

University Libraries Faculty Scholarship

The purpose of this study is to examine research activity on food waste legislation published in law journals to identify top sources and experts cited by recent scholarship. Searches for "food loss" and "food waste" were conducted in three legal research databases for law journal articles published between January 2013 and January 2018. The core list of selected articles consists of 13 law journal articles. The citations from each of the core articles were collected to form a database, which was analyzed to determine what kinds of resources legal scholars rely on when conducting research in food waste legislation. Government …

Book Review Of Finding Answers To Legal Questions, Second Edition, Susan David Demaine

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Diversity Attorney Pipeline Program - Legal Research, Anne Hudson, Heather Hummons

College of Law Faculty

Living your best (Research) Life: How to Quickly and Efficiently Perform Legal Research. A Bootcamp for scholars from law schools across the country.

Chinese And American Forum On Legal Information And Law Libraries: Highlights From Hangzhou, Ning Han, Evelyn Ma, Wei Luo

Ning Han

The Fifth Biennial Conference of the Chinese and American Forum on Legal Information and Law Libraries (CAFLL) was held in Hangzhou, China, June 1-2, 2017. More than sixty law school deans, law librarians, and law professors from more than fifty law schools in China attended the conference. Overseas attendees included more than twenty-five law librarians and library directors from Germany, Canada, as well as the presidents of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and International Association of Law Libraries (IALL).

The Corpus Juris Civilis: A Guide To Its History And Use, Frederick W. Dingledy

Library Staff Publications

The Corpus Juris Civilis is indispensable for Roman law research. It is a vital pillar of modern law in many European nations, and influential in other countries. Scholars and lawyers still refer to it today. This valuable publication, however, may seem impenetrable at first, and references to it can be hard to decipher or detect. This guide provides a history of the Corpus Juris Civilis and the forms it has taken, states why it is still an important resource today, and offers some tips and tools for research using it.

A Golden Opportunity: Legal Research Simulation Courses, Leslie A. Street, Shawn G. Nevers

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

The Distractions Of Technology, Kimberly Mattioli

Articles by Maurer Faculty

Since the moment I became a librarian, I have had a problem with technology. It’s not that I can’t keep up with the developments or that I can’t figure out ways to incorporate technology into my work. My problem is much simpler in a way—I find technology too distracting. With my desktop, my phone, and my iPad sitting in my office, how could I not be drawn to the glowing screens and the limitless websites before me? The Internet is never-ending, and so too, it seems, is my ability to be distracted by it. With a little dedication, however, I …

Sailing Through Law School: Assessing Legal Research Skills Within The Information Literacy Framework, David H. Michels

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

In this study I ask the question: Can standardized information literacy tests help assess and benchmark the learning of information skills by Canadian law students? This study replicates an earlier study that found that a standardized test of information literacy competencies, SAILS, was not an effective measure of law student information literacy levels. By applying the same test under similar conditions to another group of law students, I found that while the test did not measure legal research competencies, it was effective in measuring basic information literacy skills in law students with often surprising results. I argue that legal research …

Creative Assessment: Connecting Legal Research Training And Instruction To Results (Review Of Aall Program), Kimberly Mattioli

Articles by Maurer Faculty

As academic law librarians, we should all be concerned with identifying whether our students are meeting AALL’s Principles and Standards for Legal Research Competency. I was excited to attend this session on Creative Assessment so that I could learn new ways in which librarians can evaluate their students to see if they are adequately trained in these core competencies. The panelists were Pamela Rogers Melton, Associate Director for Administration at the University of South Carolina, Gail Partin, Interim Director at the Dickinson School of Law Library, and Barbara Gabor, Senior Research and Reference Specialist at WilmerHale.

A Brief Guide To Finding International Treaties, Jennifer Sekula

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Splitting Hairs: What Subtle Distinctions Teach Us About Authority, Benjamin J. Keele

Library Staff Publications

Legal researchers constantly deal with issues of authority. Did the police have authority to search the car? Is this court of appeals decision binding authority on my case? What statutes are authoritative in my jurisdiction? These questions are important, and librarians often help find answers. The question of authority that librarians are best equipped to answer, however, is “How authoritative is this source?”

Book Review Of Finding The Answers To Legal Questions, Benjamin J. Keele

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Research At Your Own Risk: Free Online Statutory Codes Are Widely Available But Are They Good Enough To Meet Users' Needs?, Paul Hellyer

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Time To Blossom: An Inquiry Into Bloom’S Taxonomy As A Hierarchy And Means For Teaching Legal Research Skills, Paul D. Callister

Faculty Works

Within law librarianship and legal education, there has been far too little scholarly engagement on the underlying pedagogy at the heart of legal research instruction. To correct this deficiency, law librarianship needs to open a dialogue and should consider adapting Bloom’s Taxonomy as a common schema for a collaborative effort.

This paper was initially presented at the "Conference on Legal Information: Scholarship and Teaching," held at the University of Colorado Law School on June 21-22, 2009, as part of its Boulder Summer Conference Series. It follows the author's own recently published challenge to law librarianship and legal research instructors to …

The Changing Shape Of Legal Information, David H. Michels, Mark Lewis

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

As IT, Reference and Instruction librarians, we have experienced significant changes to the shape of legal information over the past five years. The changes are to both the very nature of legal information and how we perceive it. This can be illustrated by our use of the phrase "legal information". Depending on your age and life situation, the words "legal information" will have created specific images in your mind. These changes in perception challenge how we develop our programs of legal research instruction.

Thinking Like A Research Expert: Schemata For Teaching Complex Problem-Solving Skills, Paul D. Callister

Faculty Works

The difference between expert and novice problem solvers is that experts have organized their thinking into schemata or mental constructs to both see and solve problems. This article demonstrates why schemata are important, arguing that they need to be made explicit in the classroom. It illustrates the use of schemata to understand and categorize complex research problems, map the terrain of legal research resources, match appropriate resources to types of problems, and work through the legal research process. The article concludes by calling upon librarians and research instructors to produce additional schemata and develop a common hierarchical taxonomy of skills, …

Six Steps To A Smaller World: Finding International Law From Your Desktop, Jennifer Sekula

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Nothing Dismal About It: Researching Environmental Law Without Getting Swamped, Jennifer Sekula

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of The Process Of Legal Research, 6th Ed., Paul Hellyer

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Assessing The Influence Of Computer-Assisted Legal Research: A Study Of California Supreme Court Opinions, Paul Hellyer

Library Staff Publications

Mr. Hellyer reviews the literature regarding CALR and identifies several hypotheses regarding quantitative differences in the results of print-based research and CALR. He then analyzes California Supreme Court opinions to determine CALR's effect on the quantity, recency, and types of legal authority cited by the court. The data fail to support the commentator's hypotheses.

Beyond Training: Law Librarianship's Quest For The Pedagogy Of Legal Research Education, Paul D. Callister

Faculty Works

The paper (I) outlines the nature and extent of the dissatisfaction with legal research instruction and demonstrates that the problem predates computer-assisted legal research, (II) presents the history of the debate (focusing on a heated exchange between advocates of a "process-oriented" approach and proponents of the traditional, "bibliographic" methods), and (III) presents the requisite elements of a satisfactory pedagogical model, discussing various issues surrounding each of these elements.

In part III, the paper proposes that a complete pedagogical model requires (A) an identifiable and fully understood objective in teaching legal research (which objective must distinguish between the kinds of research …