Legal Writing and Research Commons^™

Tracking Colorado Legislation, Robert Linz

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No abstract provided.

The Consensus Myth In Criminal Justice Reform, Benjamin Levin

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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 …

Publishing Basics: How To Get Started & Where To Begin: Tips For First-Time Writers Looking To Get Published, Shamika Dalton, Michele A. L. Villagran

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No abstract provided.

The Algorithm As A Human Artifact: Implications For Legal [Re]Search, Susan Nevelow Mart

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The results of using the search algorithms in Westlaw, Lexis Advance, Fastcase, Google Scholar, Ravel, and Casetext are compared. Six groups of humans created six different algorithms, and the results are a testament to the variability of human problem solving. That variability has implications both for researching and teaching research.

Administrative Dissents, Sharon B. Jacobs

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Commissioners, like judges, dissent. They do so at length, with vigor, and with persistence. Yet while separate judicial decisions are the subject of a rich literature, their administrative counterparts have long languished in obscurity. A closer look is warranted, however, because studying administrative dissent can enhance our understanding of internal agency operations as well as the relationships between agencies and other actors. This Article presents the results of an original review of separate statements at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission dating back four decades. It uses these findings to move beyond two common generalizations about …

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

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No abstract provided.

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

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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. …

The Value Of The Restatement Of Employment Law, Based On 50-State Empirical Analyses And The Importance Of Clarifying Disputed Issues – But With Caveats About The Restatement’S Imperfect Work Product, Scott A. Moss

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No abstract provided.

Is Legal Scholarship Worth Its Cost?, Paul Campos

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No abstract provided.

Every Algorithm Has A Pov, Susan Nevelow Mart

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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 …

Research Algorithms Have A Point Of View: The Effect Of Human Decision Making On Your Search Results, Susan Nevelow Mart

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No abstract provided.

From The Editor, Susan Nevelow Mart

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No abstract provided.

An Introduction To Foreign And International Legal Research Tools, Nick Harrell

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No abstract provided.

Mental Illness In The Library: Ten Tips To Better Serve Patrons, Nick Harrell, Cindy Guyer

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No abstract provided.

Research Analysis And Planning: The Undervalued Skill In Legal Research Instruction, Robert M. Linz

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This article describes a method of research analysis and planning for legal problems. It introduces the framework of research plan, log, and product and provides a detailed research plan and log that students can use as a template for learning research. The article suggests how to teach the method in legal research classes, shares some of the author's experiences in teaching the method, and addresses some possible criticisms of this approach.

Research Strategies Using Headnotes: Citators And Relevance, Susan Nevelow Mart

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No abstract provided.

Cu Law Library Launches New Resource For Historical Colorado Statutory Research, Robert M. Linz

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No abstract provided.

The Accidental Archivists: Lessons Learned From A Digital Archive Project, Robert Linz, Karen Selden, Georgia Briscoe

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This article tells the story of the University of Colorado Law Library’s successful effort to develop its first digital archive. The sudden death of the Law School’s Dean was the catalyst for this project, with a goal to unveil the archive at a memorial symposium scheduled nine months in the future. The Law Library staff had never tackled a project of this type or scale before. This article discusses the technological, cataloging and management issues which were encountered during the project. It also provides advice and tips on how librarians in their own institutions can accomplish such a project.

Congratulations To The 2014 Recipients Of The Oakley Advocacy And Pagi Awards!, Susan Nevelow Mart

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No abstract provided.

Uelma - Another First For Colorado, Susan Nevelow Mart

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No abstract provided.

The Case For Curation: The Relevance Of Digest And Citator Results In Westlaw And Lexis, Susan Nevelow Mart

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Humans and machines are both involved in the creation of legal research resources. For legal information retrieval systems, the human-curated finding aid is being overtaken by the computer algorithm. But human-curated finding aids still exist. One of them is the West Key Number system. The Key Number system’s headnote classification of case law, started back in the nineteenth century, was and is the creation of humans. The retrospective headnote classification of the cases in Lexis’s case databases, started in 1999, was created primarily - although not exclusively - with computer algorithms. So how do these two very different systems deal …

(In)Competence In Appellate And District Court Brief Writing On Rule 12 And 56 Motions, Scott A. Moss

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No abstract provided.

The Missing Link: Making Research Easier With Linked Citations, Nick Harrell

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No abstract provided.

Self-Congratulation And Scholarship, Paul Campos

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Professor Jay Silver’s criticism of the reform proposals put forward in Brian Tamanaha’s book Failing Law Schools displays some characteristic weaknesses of American legal academic culture. These weaknesses include a tendency to make bold assertions about the value of legal scholarship and the effectiveness of law school pedagogy, while at the same time providing no support for these assertions beyond a willingness to repeat self-congratulatory platitudes about who professors are and what we do. The high costs for our students of the current scholarly expectations at American law schools are clear. What is not clear is whether those costs are …

A Shift To Narrativity, Derek H. Kiernan-Johnson

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Slipshod, inconsistent use of core Applied Legal Storytelling terminology muddles its discourse and hampers its growth. Refining the field’s vocabulary is essential, but insufficient, as exclusive focus on the field’s objects of inquiry, such as story and narrative, and the means of creating or conveying them, such as storytelling and narrating, risks losing the “A” in ALS. We need a new focus, one unburdened by the ambiguities and negative associations of existing options that more accurately reflects Applied Legal Storytelling scholars’ unique contributions. A shift to narrativity. Narrativity, as imagined here, is a top-level quality of a legal text or …

The Digital Collections At Colorado Law, Robert M. Linz

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No abstract provided.

Book Review, Derek Kiernan-Johnson

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No abstract provided.

Quality Of Academic Law Library Online Catalogs And Its Effect On Information Retrieval, Georgia Briscoe

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Quality in online catalogs is generally presumed to be high. Ms. Briscoe examined a number of online catalog entries and documented the accuracy of selected bibliographic records. After finding a high level of errors, she surveyed reference librarians to determine if they believed that these errors would affect their ability to answer reference questions.

Telling Through Type: Typography And Narrative In Legal Briefs, Derek H. Kiernan-Johnson

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Most legal authors today self-publish, using basic word-processing software and letting the software’s default settings determine what their documents will look like when printed. As these settings are not optimized for legal texts, they do so at their peril. The default font Times New Roman, for example, as Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook warns, is "utterly inappropriate for long documents [such as] briefs."

Commentators have started urging a more deliberate approach to legal typography. Their suggestions, however, have been content-neutral, intended for all legal texts and focused on goals such as legibility and readability.

Typography, however, has much greater potential. The …

The Relevance Of Results Generated By Human Indexing And Computer Algorithms: A Study Of West's Headnotes And Key Numbers And Lexisnexis's Headnotes And Topics, Susan Nevelow Mart

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This article begins the investigation into the different ways results are generated in West's "Custom Digest" and in LexisNexis's "Search by Topic or Headnote" and by KeyCite and Shepard's. The author took ten pairs of matching headnotes from important federal and California cases and reviewed the results sets generated by each classification and citator system for relevance. The differences in the results sets for classification systems and for citator systems raise interesting issues about the efficiency and comprehensiveness of any one system, and the need to adjust research strategies accordingly