Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Follow The Money! What Are You Spending On Research Sources? Part Iii: Teaching Old Resources To Do New Tricks, Shannon Kemen, Emily Janoski-Haehlen

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Don't Reinvent The Wheel: Legal Research Guides And Bibliographies Will Save You Valuable Time And Effort, Matt Novak

Marvin and Virginia Schmid Law Library: Faculty Publications

When researching unfamiliar areas of law it is often helpful to consult research guides and bibliographies. These resources can expedite the research process by identifying, compiling, and explaining the various tools needed to successfully research a legal topic. Research guides and bibliographies can be found in a number of online and print sources. By using a variety of specialized tools, one can quickly locate quality legal research guides and bibliographies no matter where they are.

Legal Research In The Digital Age: Authentication And Preservation Of Primary Material, Matt Novak

Marvin and Virginia Schmid Law Library: Faculty Publications

Most legal professionals have used free online resources to help in the legal research process. Whether it is an opinion downloaded from a court's Web site, a federal statute located using Cornell's Legal Information Institute (LII), an article on Wikipedia, or a post on someone's blawg, the quantity and variety of free online resources seems to grow on a daily basis. Some have even wondered if these resources can one day replace the need to subscribe to a computer-assisted legal research (CALR) service such as Westlaw or LexisNexis. Late last year, the "blogosphere" was abuzz with this question after Google …

Leveraging A Library Collection Through Collaborative Digitization Ventures, Femi Cadmus, Fred Shapiro

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Change And Continuity (Rip Van Winkle's Reference Office), Mary Whisner

Librarians' Articles

How much has law librarianship changed over the past twenty years? Ms. Whisner imagines coming back to her library after being asleep for twenty years, and concludes that while our tools have changed, the basics of our jobs have remained remarkably stable.

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 …

Leveraging A Library Collection Through Collaborative Digitization Ventures, Femi Cadmus, Fred Shapiro

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Finding The Middle Ground In Collection Development: How Academic Law Libraries Can Shape Their Collections In Response To The Call For More Practice-Oriented Legal Education, Leslie A. Street, Amanda M. Runyon

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

To examine how academic law libraries can respond to the call for more practice-oriented legal education, the authors compared trends in collection management decisions regarding secondary sources at academic and law firm libraries along with law firm librarians’ perceptions of law school legal research training of new associates.

Persuasive Arguments For Establishing An Institutional Repository, James M. Donovan, Carol A. Watson

Presentations

Presents the business case for creating an institutional repository (IR), including a comparison of the advantages and disadvantages with Social Science Research Network (SSRN); offers advice on obtaining faculty buy-in to the project in order to obtain content; reviews copyright right issues involved in depositing published materials into the repository; and suggests ways in which creating a repository can build relationships beyond the institution.

Should You Use It? Tips On Authenticating Online Legal Sources, Emily M. Janoski-Haehlen

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Rss: The Hov Lane On The Information Highway, James M. Donovan

Presentations

Today’s world suffers from no lack of readily available information. The challenge is rarely the finding of information; it is rather laying your hands on just the right piece at just the right time. While attorneys have a duty to be well-informed about the state of the law, remaining current can be difficult. The goal should be to have information delivered and organized in a timely, convenient way that both maximizes exposure—assuring that you aren’t missing that perfect nugget that will give you the competitive edge—yet minimizes time-investment in retrieval and scanning through items that may be of no use …

Just The Facts, Ma’Am: Make The Web Your Investigative Partner, Anne Burnett

Presentations

The web is a handy investigative tool, allowing a researcher to obtain information about persons, property and things. One can find email addresses, home addresses, telephone numbers, criminal records, military service information, property records, vital statistics information, photographs and more. This information may help locate a missing heir, reveal useful information about a potential expert witness, confirm the legitimacy of a business, determine who owns a piece of property or expose the litigious nature of a potential client. The focus in these program materials is on free resources, but I also cover a few fee-based services that can be accessed …

Helpful Resources For Handling A Domestic Relations Case, Emily M. Janoski-Haehlen

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

For Your Dining Pleasure: A Menu Of Legal Websites, Wendy E. Moore

Presentations

The focus of this paper is to explore websites that you may find helpful in your daily work and research. There are 40 featured websites drawn from governmental, educational, and commercial information resources. Consider these websites a good jumping off point to familiarize yourself with the types of information available to assist you in your Internet legal research needs.

'Formerly The Property Of A Lawyer’: Books That Shaped Louisiana Law, Florence M. Jumonville Ph.D.

Library Faculty Publications

Books are indispensable to lawyers and judges, containing as they do the official record of the laws that define rights, liberties, and behavior, as well as the accumulated wisdom with which those laws have been interpreted. Law books were particularly important during the formative years of the American nation, from its founding until the Civil War, as the young federal government and each state developed its unique legal literature. This study focuses on the sources that shaped Louisiana law by examining collections that were developed during approximately the first fifty years after the Louisiana Purchase by six New Orleans attorneys, …

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.

Bluebook, Citations, And All That Jazz, Frederick W. Dingledy

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Going Beyond Google: Researching News Online, Emily M. Janoski-Haehlen

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

What's In A Name? A Gen Xer And Gen Yer Explore What It Means To Be Members Of Their Generations In The Workplace, Lauren M. Collins, Elizabeth A. Yates

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In the NextGen Librarian's Survival Guide by Rachel Singer Gordon, the author cites several reasons this time is different than times before in librarianship. Those that are most relevant to law librarianship include:

• Flattening workplace hierarchies and participative management increase the input of newer librarians in workplace decision making

• New technologies require changing skills that affect attitudes toward the integration of those technologies into our daily work

• Outside pressures, such as the prevalence of the Internet, impose a need for librarians to continually prove our relevance and improve relations with younger patrons

• The much talked about …

The Ownership Delusion: When Law Libraries "Buy" Electronic Documents, Are They Getting More, Or Simply Paying More?, Simon Canick

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores the issues surrounding electronic document ownership in academic libraries. It discusses the guidelines of AALL with regard to licensing electronic materials, and how it measures up to what vendors are willing to offer. The author takes a critical stance on who benefits from the electronic document ownership agreements.

Why Re-Invent The Wheel? Utilize Appellate Court Briefs Databases, Emily Janoski-Haehlen

Law Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Creating Online Tutorials: Five Lessons Learned, Lauren M. Collins

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

In the fall of 2005, two librarians, a legal research and writing program director, and an instructional technologist at Wayne State University received a grant to create online tutorials introducing novices to the basics of legal research. Tutorials were planned on subjects that the library and the legal research and writing program had traditionally covered jointly via library workshops, coordinated with classroom instruction for first-year law students. Since the mission of the law library is to support campus-wide activity and to assist members of the general public with legal research needs, the content of the tutorials was designed to serve …

Mandarin Chinese: An Annotated Bibliography Of Self-Study Materials, Duncan E. Alford

Faculty Publications

The People’s Republic of China is currently the seventh largest economy in the world and is projected to be the largest economy by 2050. Commensurate with its growing economic power, the PRC is using its political power more frequently on the world stage. As a result of these changes, interest in China and its legal system is growing among attorneys and academics. International law librarians similarly are seeing more researchers interested in China, its laws and economy. The principal language of China, Mandarin Chinese, is considered a difficult language to learn. The Foreign Service Institute has rated Mandarin as “exceptionally …

Navigating Through The Fog: Teaching Legal Research And Writing Students To Master Indeterminancy Through Structure And Process, Spencer L. Simons

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Ria Federal Tax Handbook 2006 (Book Review), Elizabeth Outler

UF Law Faculty Publications

Review and explanation of the features of the RIA Federal Tax Handbook.

Trademark Searching Tools And Strategies: Questions For The New Millennium, Jon R. Cavicchi

Law Faculty Scholarship

The intent of this discussion is to raise questions about trademark searching which will be discussed in future issues of IDEA. I will lead you through the questions raised by my journey through primarily legal literature in treatises and periodicals on the Lexis and Westlaw platforms.

Keeping Up To Date With Ip News Services And Blogs: Drowning In A Sea Of Sameness?, Jon R. Cavicchi

Law Faculty Scholarship

It seems like so many IP related Websites you visit invite you to join their free email list to keep you up to date. Sources span a wide spectrum including governmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, educational institutions, consulting services, law firms, commercial publishers and more. These sources span the spectrum from free, to low fee to premium pricing. With all of this information overload and choices, how do you differentiate and choose news sources?

The goals of this article are twofold. Goal one is to present a survey of types and categories of IP news tools available to IP researchers. Since …

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

Journal Articles

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 …

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

Library Staff Publications

No abstract provided.