Law Commons^™

Not Just Key Numbers And Keywords Anymore: How User Interface Design Affects Legal Research, Julie M. Jones

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Legal research is one of the foundational skills for the practice of law. Yet law school graduates are frequently admitted to the bar without adequate competence in this area. Applying both information-foraging theory and current standards for optimal web design, Ms. Jones considers, through a heuristic analysis, whether the user interfaces of Westlaw and LexisNexis help or hinder the process of legal research and the development of effective research skills.

Law Library 2.0: New Roles For Law Librarians In The Information Overload Era, Sasha Skenderija

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

WWW has rapidly evolved from a technological into a social medium. Web 2.0 has become a metaphor for the distributed and decentralized collaboration networks on a global scale. With the recent trends of new media development, the sources available have reached a critical mass resulting in an unprecedented information overload. The urgent challenge to all information professionals, in this case law librarians, is no longer availability and direct provision of resources, but rather the filtering and highlighting the ubiquitous Infosphere. The recent transformation of legal information has had more drastic consequences than in many other cases. The Cornell Law Library …

Miroslav Petricek And The Quest For A New Ontology Of Information, Sasha Skenderija

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

Research and academic libraries, as well as academic publishers, belong to the sub-category of the infosphere known as “Institutions of Knowledge.” Libraries, however, have made few contributions to the development and utilization of the Internet, and now face a situation in which Google is replacing libraries as the primary research destination of scholars and students. The theories of leading Czech contemporary philosopher, Miroslav Petricek, may provide a construct for better understanding such developments and providing pathways for situating and developing library products and services within these new infosphere realities.

Where Web 2.0 And Legal Information Intersect: Adjusting Course Without Getting Lost, Matthew M. Morrison

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

For more than a century, the process of legal research remained unchanged. This process was rooted in an established legal information structure. The law was published in standard texts, such as the West reporters, annotated codes, treatises, and the West Key Number Digest. While the advent of computer-assisted legal research was a departure from the print-based model, it did not fundamentally change the structure of legal information or the nature of authority. In fact, in its conservative beginnings, computer-assisted legal research provided a mere format shift as case texts were transcribed to simple online databases. More recently, Web 2.0 technologies …

Legal Research And Legal Education In Africa: The Challenge For Information Literacy, Vicki Lawal

Starr Workshop Papers (2007)

This paper analyses legal research within the context of legal education in Africa, it examines some of the challenges of electronic legal research in view of the influences of online legal electronic resources and Computer Assisted legal Research (CALR) and the importance of information literacy in addressing some of the issues raised especially with regards to undergraduate legal education.

How To Present Web-Based Legal Information: Towards Library Web 2.0, Sasha Skenderija

Starr Workshop Papers (2007)

The World Wide Web has rapidly evolved from a technological into a social medium. Web 2.0 has become a metaphor for the distributed and decentralized collaboration networks on a global scale. With the recent trends of new media development, the sources available have reached a critical mass resulting in an unprecedented information overload. The urgent challenge to all information professionals, in this case law librarians, is no longer availability and direct provision of resources, but rather the filtering and highlighting. As an example of the utilization of Web 2.0 values, the Cornell Law Library (CLL) recently re-launched its website. The …

Keynote Address: Remarks At The Workshop On Tapping Into The World Of Electronic Legal Knowledge , Muna Ndulo

Starr Workshop Papers (2007)

Professor Muna Ndulo of Cornell Law School presented the keynote address at the 2007 Starr Workshop, “Tapping into the World of Electronic Legal Knowledge.” The workshop took place at Cornell Law School October 7-10, 2007 and was co-sponsored by the Starr Foundation, New York University Law Library, and Cornell Law Library.

Professor Ndulo addresses the topic of new information technologies and their importance to legal research and teaching.

U.S. Law And Legal Research, Pat Court

Starr Workshop Papers (2007)

This presentation on the basics of U.S. law offers a general outline of the fundamental sources of U.S. law. With a foundation in the three branches of government and the laws, court decisions, and regulations that flow from them, the speaker demonstrated free and fee-based electronic resources frequently used for legal research. The focus is on Westlaw, LexisNexis, PACER the Public Access to Court Electronic Records), GPOAccess, and the official U.S. Supreme Court web site. While the web has made it possible for universities, governments, courts, and others to put user-friendly law on the web for free, the most extensive …

Demand For Electronic Legal Information At The University Of Botswana , Kgomotso F. Radijeng

Starr Workshop Papers (2007)

The advent of technology has changed the way legal research is conducted. The study looks at the availability of electronic legal information at the University of Botswana, perceptions of the university legal community about such information, challenges affecting access to electronic legal information and recommended solutions to those challenges. The paper also looks at the contribution that the library can make in alleviating the challenges and addressing the different perceptions by the legal community.

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

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

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 …

The Prophecies Of The Prophetic Jurist – A Review Of Selected Works Of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Kissi Agyebeng

Cornell Law School J.D. Student Research Papers

This is a review of the methodology and style of legal research of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., focusing on the ideological and philosophical leanings that informed his scholarship. The review spans selected works of his undergraduate days through his mid-career writings and his representative opinions on the Supreme Judicial Court of the State of Massachusetts and the Supreme Court of the United States.

Victim Impact Statements In Capital Trials: A Selected Bibliography, Jean M. Callihan

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

This bibliography collects and organizes citations to dissertations, chapters in books, journal articles, legislative materials, books, and book reviews from 1980 forward that analyze the effect of victim impact statements in capital cases. The main purpose of the bibliography is to present citations to empirical studies and quantitative evaluations of victim impact statements in the United States and other countries. Because there are few reported empirical studies, the bibliography also contains references to articles that provide qualitative analyses of victim impact statements in criminal trials and of participatory rights of victims in the justice process in general.

Digital Legal Information: Ensuring Access To The "Official" Word Of The Law, Claire M. Germain

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

In the United States today, digital versions of current decisions, bills, statutes, and regulations issued by federal and state entities are widely available on publicly accessible Internet Web sites. Worldwide, official 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. Most of that digital information provides only a right of access, and no ownership, or control over the data, unless it is …

Contents Of Legal Information On The Internet: U.S. Perspectives, Claire M. Germain

Cornell Law Faculty Working Papers

This article examines the contents of legal data and information on the Internet, with a special focus on the United States. It then evaluates the quality of the data, its impact on legal research and access to legal information, and addresses some issues raised by the digital medium, such as its reliability and permanent access concerns.