The Librarian at Law

Yet Another Cautionary Tale Of Bad Legal Writing

2012-01-27T09:00:00.000-08:00

The ABA Journal reports another case in which an attorney has been raked over the proverbial coals for poor writing. The title to the article - Federal Judge’s Footnote Hits Employment Lawyer for TMI in Legal Briefs - is perhaps slightly misleading. No one was actually hit. Instead, there was an unkind discussion in a footnote about the attorney's inability to get to the point and to state his case concisely. The TMI does not refer to Three Mile Island but to Too Much Information. District Judge Pratt's full opinion is here. Look for footnote 1 at the bottom of p. 2. Reading the entire footnote leads one to consider the possibility that the footnote itself might not be sufficiently concise. Excerpts from the scathing footnote -

Plaintiff’s counsel needlessly complicated the Court’s task of summarizing the relevant facts. ... Rather than identifying potential factual disputes in a concise fashion, Plaintiff’s counsel unfurled an 18-page narrative that is replete with argument and a 15-page surreply that is no better as it contains a great deal of immaterial information. ... And, for reasons that remain unclear, the brief devotes a paragraph to explaining the 15th century origin of the phrase “cat’s paw,” a legal doctrine that is inapplicable to the present matter. ... Accordingly, the Court had unnecessary difficulty excising the arguments from the facts when piecing together the background section.

ABA Law School Transparency Site

2012-01-20T07:32:00.000-08:00

If you're interested in the new ABA transparency guidelines you might want to check out the LST - Law School Transparency - web page. The Winter 2012 Transparency Index Report is ready. This is the first Transparency Index Report. The full report is here. The following is a direct quote from the Execute Summary of the Report. It appears that many schools are still disclosure-challenged:

- 27% (54/197) do not provide any valuable information on their websites for class of 2010 employment outcomes. Of those 54 schools, 22 do not provide any employment information on their website whatsoever. The other 32 schools demonstrate a pattern of consumer-disoriented behavior.
- 51% of schools fail to indicate how many graduates actually responded to their survey. Response rates provide applicants with a way to gauge the usefulness of survey results, a sort of back-of-the-envelope margin of error. Without the rate, schools can advertise employment rates north of 95% without explaining that the true employment rate is unknown, and likely lower.
Only 26% of law schools indicate how many graduates worked in legal jobs. 11% indicate how many were in full-time legal jobs. Just 1% indicate how many were in full-time, long-term legal jobs.
- 17% of schools indicate how many graduates were employed in full-time vs. part-time jobs. 10% indicate how many were employed in long-term vs. short-term jobs. 10% of schools report how many graduates were employed in school-funded jobs.
- 49% of schools provide at least some salary information, but the vast majority of those schools (78%) provide the information in ways that mislead the reader.

Duncan Law School Sues ABA

2011-12-23T06:15:00.000-08:00

No surprise here. Duncan Law School, the Tennessee law school featured in last Sunday's NY Times article about the business of law schools has lost their bid for accreditation. See the post here for a link to that article and some details.

In today's article - New Law School Sues Bar Association - David Segal reports that one of the reasons for the ABA's refusal to accredit Duncan is that admission standards are not high enough to satisfy the current ABA standard. As Segal writes -

Specifically, the council found that Duncan, which is part of Lincoln Memorial University, fell short of a standard that prohibited the school from enrolling students who did not appear “capable of satisfactorily completing its educational program and being admitted to the bar.” The standard, say legal scholars, is to protect students from schools that are trying to cover their costs by admitting people who are unlikely to succeed.

Duncan's Dean, Sydney Beckman disagreed. As Segal notes -

Mr. Beckman countered that the median Law School Admission Test score of Duncan’s incoming students is 147 (out of a possible 180), which he said met or exceeded the scores of eight accredited schools. He added that the grade-point average of incoming students met or exceeded roughly 30 A.B.A.-approved schools.

Of course, if the students at Duncan are willing to practice only in Tennessee the school need not be accredited by the ABA. California has a number of law schools that are only state accredited. As financial realities continue to impinge on the ideal it is possible that more students will forgo the ABA accredited school in favor of lower tuition. That would be a free market economy development that might actually change the law school business model.

Yet Another Article About the Future of Law Schools and the Profession

2011-12-19T11:05:00.000-08:00

Once again, the NY Times has printed a lengthy article about the problems associated with legal education. Sunday's article by David Segal - For Law Schools, a Price to Play the A.B.A.’s Way - is yet another examination of the current law school environment, especially the business of running a law school. The article focuses on the Duncan School of Law in Tennessee. Duncan is looking for ABA accreditation but they find that in order to get accredited they must comply with a series of onerous and arcane ABA regulations -

That means complying with a long list of standards that shape the composition of the faculty, the library and dozens of other particulars. The basic blueprint was established by elite institutions more than a century ago, and according to critics, it all but prohibits the law-school equivalent of the Honda Civic — a low-cost model that delivers.
Instead, virtually every one of the country’s 200 A.B.A.-accredited schools, from the lowliest to the most prestigious, has to build a Cadillac, or at least come close.

The net result is that the American people are under-represented. As Segal puts it -

...the United States churns out roughly 45,000 lawyers a year, but survey after survey finds enormous unmet need for legal services, particularly in low- and middle-income communities. This year, the World Justice Project put the United States dead last among 11 high-income countries in providing access to civil justice.

In the end, it is the ABA's stranglehold on legal education that is feeding the current crisis in law schools: law graduates with an unsustainable debt load. Complying with the ABA regulations isn't cheap and it is higher tuition that foots that bill...

ABA Acts on Recent Graduate Employment Data Collection

2011-12-12T06:14:00.000-08:00

As expected, the ABA Legal Education Section Council approved a new questionaire designed to elecit more accurate information about recent graduate employment from law schools. The full story from the ABA Law News Now is here. The article detailed the contents and purpose of the new questionaire thus:

The revised questionnaires will also require law schools to report how many graduates are working in various job types and their status, including how many are in jobs requiring a law degree, how many are in other professional or nonprofessional jobs, how many are pursuing graduate degrees and how many are unemployed and either seeking or not seeking work. Schools will also be required to report information about graduates' employment location, whether a position is short-term or long-term and whether it is funded by the school from which the job-holder graduated.

This means, of course, that law schools will no longer be able to temporarily hire their own graduates in order to boost their postgraduate employment stats. And, they will need to disclose when a fully employed graduate is actually fully employed as a barista or waiter.

Lawyers May Use The Cloud

2011-11-29T06:12:00.000-08:00

According to a BNA Law Week article by Lance Rogers - Caching Client Information in ‘Clouds'
Is Permissible With Proper Precautions - the Iowa bar's ethics committee has ruled that lawyers may store information in the computing cloud. According to Rogers:

Iowa lawyers may store client information and other data on a third-party vendor's servers rather than their own computers, so long as the lawyer has unfettered access to the data and can reasonably verify that sound methods are being used to protect the information...

Iowas attorneys who want to use the cloud must due diligence in choosing a vendor and in examining the terms of the storage agreement.

Putting confidential client information in the hands of third parties has always been a problem. Cloud computing and data storage raise this and other many interesting questions for attorneys. As we move forward into a brave new electronic world the rules of ethical behavior may need to be reconsidered as each new technological advance occurs.

The full article can be found at 80 USLA 715. If you are a Rutgers-Newark Law student you can access the article by going to the Library's main page > Resources > Databases > BNA Web. Scroll down to find US Law Week. The full Iowa ethics opinion can be found here.

Law Schools Still Not Teaching Lawyering

2011-11-23T05:56:00.000-08:00

Despite the Carnegie and MacCrate reports, the NY Times reports that law schools are still not teaching law students the art of lawyering. Last Sunday's article by David Segal - What They Don't Teach Law Students: Lawyering - is yet another call for a more practice oriented curriculum in law school. The article details the efforts by law firms to teach first year associates how to actually practice law.

According to the article, the old model of having firms teach associates how to practice may be permanently broken:

... for decades, clients have essentially underwritten the training of new lawyers, paying as much as $300 an hour for the time of associates learning on the job. But the downturn in the economy, and long-running efforts to rethink legal fees, have prompted more and more of those clients to send a simple message to law firms: Teach new hires on your own dime.

Clients just won't stand on having an unqualified attorney handle any part of their case:

Last year, a survey by American Lawyer found that 47 percent of law firms had a client say, in effect, “We don’t want to see the names of first- or second-year associates on our bills.” Other clients are demanding that law firms charge flat fees.

Readers of this blog may recall a recent post about value billing. This is a direct result of this kind of client attitude and the need to measure the client's reaction to the firm's rate structure.

The net result? Again, from the article:

The legal services market has shrunk for three consecutive years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Altogether, the top 250 firms — which hired 27 percent of graduates from the top 50 law schools last year — have lost nearly 10,000 jobs since 2008, according to an April survey by The National Law Journal.

This is all part of a discussion that may actually result in some positive change in favor of a more practice oriented curriculum.

Fee vs. Hourly Rate

2011-10-24T06:32:00.000-07:00

A recent post by Toby Brown in 3 Geeks and a Law Blog - When Raising Rates - discusses the difference between increasing hourly rates and the final fee for the work performed. Brown says:

"Have conversations with clients about pricing, versus rates. At the end of the year, or end of a case, what really matters to a client is the fee. How much did the case or deal cost them? Your rate could be $10 per hour, but if you took 100’s of hours to complete a task, the fee is going to be high. A challenge here is that clients tend to compare pricing on a rate level, instead of a fee level. Use the price conversation to help the client shift their thinking towards fees. In the long-run this will greatly benefit them and solidify your relationship with them."

And, he's right. What really counts is the final bill for services. The hourly rate is just a benchmark on the way to the final fee. Lawyers with a niche specialty can charge a higher rate because the depth and breadth of their expertise will justify the final fee. There is no profession (except, perhaps medicine) where the final result justifies the price of services so much as the legal profession. If an attorney can obtain the right result in a complex case with a minimum of effort the fee, if not totally out of line, is secondary. The result justifies the fee.

GOP Candidates Ready to Dismantle Federal Judiciary

2011-10-24T06:05:00.000-07:00

The GOP primary contenders appear ready to tear the federal judiciary apart:

- Perry wants to have term limits on the USSC justices.
- Bachman and Paul want to forbid to the USSC from considering cases involving same sex marriage (although for different reasons, of course).
- Gingrich and Santorum want to abolish the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

An article by Adam Liptak and Michael Shear in this morning's NY Times - Republicans Turn Judicial Power Into A Campaign Issue - details the GOP's opposition to some or all of the federal judiciary.

Criticism of “activist judges” and of particular Supreme Court decisions has long been a staple of political campaigns. But the new attacks, coming from most of the Republican candidates, are raising broader questions about how the legal system might be reshaped if one of them is elected to the White House next year.
The complaints are in line with the candidates’ general opposition to federal authority. Like the elected branches of the federal government, they say, the federal judiciary has become too powerful and intrusive.

Liptak and Shear take pains to outline why many of these anti-judiciary positions are completely out of the question. Perry's suggestion about term limits would, of course, require amending the Constitution since Article III, Section 1 confers lifetime tenure on the federal judiciary. Perry's proposal that Congress would have the right to overturn a USSC decision by a 2/3 majority would mean the abrogation of Marbury v. Madison - something Gingrich thinks would be a good thing.

Still, there may be a way for Congress to limit the power of the federal judiciary. Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution provides that the USSC, “shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations as the Congress shall make.” These and other Constitutional waters remain untested.

ABA Begins Action to Curb Law School Reporting Abuses

2011-10-21T06:17:00.000-07:00

In the wake of the scandals at Illinois and Villanova, reported here, an article in the online ABA Journal reports that the ABA Legal Education Section has decided to consider rules designed to penalize misrepresentation of admissions data by accredited law schools.

The Section recently announced a change in the questionnaire designed to elicit more accurate information regarding placement and employment data. For a sample of commentary about the misrepresentation of placement and employment data read the post here in Balkinization.

Westlaw on the Ropes?

2011-10-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

The Three Geeks and a Law Blog has made a provocative post about the economic viability of Thomson Reuters. Westlaw is, of course, a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters. There has been speculation about this before. See an earlier post on this possibility. One potential reason for the possible demise of Thomson is competition from Bloomberg.

More on University of Illinois Law School Ethical Challenges

2011-10-03T05:47:00.000-07:00

Readers of this blog may recall an earlier post regarding the misbehavior of the administration at the University of Illinois School of Law. Here's a follow-up post from the ABA Law Journal. And, here's more on story with some insightful commentary from Law Librarian Blog and from Above the Law.

When the USN&WR rankings begin to drive admissions policy you know there's something wrong with the system. The rankings are a useful tool for one school to measure itself against its peers. But it should not become the raison d'etre for any school.

Kindle Loosens Library Policy

2011-09-22T05:28:00.000-07:00

Readers of this blog may recall two earlier posts regarding the ability of library patrons to borrow both Kindles and the eBooks that are in the library's collection. The first post addressed issues concerning the restrictive license that Amazon, maker and distributor of the Kindle, puts on eBooks downloaded from their site. The second post dealt with Amazon allowing libraries to check out the electronic reader i.e., the Kindle itself. In both cases it was argued that market forces, rather than legal action, would encourage Amazon to allow use of the Kindle in a traditional library setting.

Now, according to a NY Times article by Julie Bosman - Kindle Connects to Library E-Books - it appears that Amazon is on the way to allowing public library patrons to use their own Kindle or borrow a library Kindle, and to download ebooks that are in the library's collection. The conditions are not overly restrictive and are in line with typical library practice; for example, if a library buys 5 copies of a particular ebook it can only lend 5 copies. Just like lending print books.

There are two major problems that have yet to be resolved:

1. The new Amazon program is limited to 11,000 libraries. Great. But there are 122,000+ libraries in the United States. So, less than one percent of all US libraries will be affected.

2. Some publishers are still reluctant to get with the program. These publishers fear that library usage will cut into their traditional business model (a concern that has been around since the advent of the book iself). Perhaps it is time for publishers to change their business model. One possible business model publishers can adopt is the Netflix model. Unlimited views (think Netflix Instant) for a monthly fee.

PACER Fees Go Up

2011-09-19T10:42:00.000-07:00

According to Ericka Wayne and a US Courts press release, the price per page to retrieve a document from PACER has just gone up from 8 cents a page to 10 cents a page effective November 1st. (The price increase is noted in paragraph 5 of the press release. Talk about burying the lead.) This may not seem like a lot until you begin downloading some of records and briefs from a federal district court web site. PACER has slowly morphed into a valid legal research tool. A 25% increase in fees may actually affect download statistics.

Pressure From The Rankings Leads To Cheating By Law School Administrations

2011-09-19T05:31:00.000-07:00

Most know by now that some law school administrations have an unhealthy obsession with the US News & World Report Law School Rankings. Paying attention to the rankings is one thing. They do, after all, serve as a way for schools to compare themselves with others and to catch trends. Cheating in the pursuit of higher rankings, however, is beyond the pale. Past cheating scandals include the miserable attempts by at least one school to cook their stats via late admissions of candidates with lower GPAs and LSATs.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to paying attention to the USN&WR rankings, Villanova was caught taking their GPA and LSAT admissions scores last February. Now, it may be Indiana's turn. A lengthy quote from the Law.com article -

The law school world was scandalized in February when Villanova University School of Law announced that its former dean and admissions officials had for years inflated the Law School Admission Test scores and grade-point averages of the school's incoming classes.
On Sept. 11, officials at the University of Illinois announced that they were investigating the veracity of the same statistics reported by its College of Law after getting a tip that the numbers released for its new class were wrong.

It remains to be seen whether Illinois did, in fact, report bogus numbers this year or in the past, or whether it was done on purpose. But the fact that a second law school had fallen under suspicion within a year raised questions. How widespread is the inflation of the academic credentials? What is being done to ensure law schools are honest?

What indeed? You can and should read the whole story here.

Searching for a Comment/Note Topic? Try US Law Week

2011-09-13T05:31:00.000-07:00

If you are faced with the age old problem of finding a topic for a journal comment or note you might consider using the Circuit Split feature in BNA's US Law Week. This week's Circuit Splits section notes nine new circuit splits encompassing antitrust to the Establishment Clause. That could translate into nine different comments/notes.

Not interested in writing something for a journal? This could still be fertile ground for any upper class writing project.

Regardless, BNA US Law Week is a great way to stay in touch with what is happening in the law across the nation.

Rutgers students can sign up to get email alerts by going to the Rutgers BNA page here. Just scroll down, click on the US Law Week link. You can sign up for email alerts by using the link on the right side of the page. It's the last link in the right hand column - could they make it any more difficult to find? Make sure you sign up for email alerts while you are on campus. It just works better that way.

Delayed Birth Certificate in New Jersey - Bureaucratic Overkill?

2011-09-09T06:33:00.000-07:00

Here's a heartwarming story about how Chief Judge Alex Kosinski of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals helped an attorney who was looking for a judge to witness the signing of an affidavit in aid of filing a Certificate of Delayed Birth for a child born in New Jersey. The story is reported in Above the Law and on the ABA Journal site.

The form requires that if the affidavit in support of the Certificate is being signed in a state other than New Jersey it must be signed before a judge. The New Jersey statute that imposes this requirement, of course, is NJSA 26:8-32 (b)(2). According to the ABA Journal and Above the Law, this requirment was deemed either "perplexing" or "unusual."

Justifiable or bureaucratic overkill? You be the judge. So to speak.

More Bad News on the Attorney Job Front

2011-06-15T13:58:00.000-07:00

Gawker reports more bad news for attorneys looking for jobs. According to Gawker blogger Neil Hamilton -

Life as an American attorney these days is little more than a steady progression of more and more degrading news stories about the ever-declining status of your job, and, by extension, the rapid downward spiral of your worth as a human being.

Well. Things aren't that bad. But at least one recent trend is disturbing. Hamilton quotes a Wall Street Journal article on an uptick in "legal temp" jobs. Young attorneys are doing document review during the graveyard shift in highly regimented surroundings. This is not the job most law students think they will have when they graduate.

We are all used to contract attorney jobs. The WSJ description of these new "legal temp" jobs takes that idea to a whole new low.

Need for Regulation of Law Schools Intensifies

2011-05-01T06:44:00.000-07:00

Today's NY Times article by David Segal's article - How Law Students Lose the Grant Game as Law Schools Win - once again points to the need for additional regulation of law schools. The article details the process by which law schools woo students with high GPAs and LSAT scores with promises of grants only to have those grants dry up when the students find they can't make the grade.

Here's how it works. Highly qualified students are awarded what amount to fully paid tuition scholarships. The only catch is that they have to continue to maintain a high GPA in law school in order to continue receiving the grant. What the schools don't disclose is that it is extremely difficult for a student to make the grade. A large percentage then lose the scholarship. How is this a problem?

First, transferring from one law school to another is truly difficult. Once you're in a school, you're usually in for the full three years. If you got hooked with free tuition for a year you might suddenly find that you are enrolled at a school with tuition so high you can't afford to finish the last two years or finishing becomes an even greater financial burden.

Second, the motivation of the school in failing to make the disclosure is highly suspect. By admitting students with higher GPAs and LSAT scores, that school's US News and World Report ranking can go up. Students may find themselves to be pawns in a huge game of rankings chess.

In fairness, it should be noted that students could be better consumers. A little investigation would show how grades are awarded.

And, a quick reality check would indicate that the likelihood of maintaining the same kinds of grades as a law student as an undergrad is unsustainable. Students forget that everyone applying to law school has high grades. Good performance as an undergrad is no guarantee of good performance as a law student.

Still, this is an easy issue to resolve. Law schools should be required to disclose to the uninitiated that classes are graded on a curve and that many students lose their grants after the first year. Readers of this blog may recall earlier posts about post law school employment here, here, and here. Law schools appear to be incapable of self regulation in their pursuit of higher rankings. It is time for the ABA to take a closer look at this entire area.

Part of the Kindle & Libraries Problem Solved

2011-04-23T13:39:00.000-07:00

Readers of this blog may recall a previous post regarding Kindles and libraries. That post pointed out two library problems associated with Kindles - loaning the Kindle itself and allowing eBooks to be downloaded (loaned) to the reader's Kindle from the library.

The first problem - libraries loaning out a Kindle - does not appear to be resolved. Again, it seems likely that market forces will eventually resolve this issue. Maybe.

The second problem - allowing a library patron to download a library eBook onto their own Kindle seems to have been resolved. Check out (pun intended) this article by Julie Bosman in the NY Times - Coming to Your Kindle: Library Books. The key factor - think "market forces" - appears to be summarized rather neatly in this simple observation by Bosman:

Amazon’s dedicated e-reader is not compatible with library e-books, leading many new e-reader buyers who are interested in borrowing e-books from the library to purchase a Nook from Barnes & Noble instead.

How long will it take for Amazon to come to terms with the fact that readers will need to borrow not only the eBook but the device they need to read it?

SSRN Takes a Giant Step Forward

2011-04-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

SSRN - the Social Science Research Network - has always been a good source for researchers to find either specific articles or to search for articles about a particular topic. One of the strengths of SSRN has been its willingness to be electronically crawled by the search engines. That's why you can find an article on SSRN through a Google, Bing, or Yahoo search.

On Friday morning SSRN made a quantum leap forward in providing an enhanced platform for legal research. The SSRN CiteReader program has now become available. The CiteReader program allows researchers to mine the footnotes associated with any posted article - even articles posted in PDF. The majority of the references and citations are coming from articles posted on the LSN - the Legal Scholarship Network. LSN is the database where most articles, whether in progress or accepted for publication, are posted before they are published in student edited law journals.

Most researchers consult law review articles for two reasons: the analysis and the footnotes. A law review article is a powerful secondary source to find primary law and other relevant secondary sources. This new feature is a real game changer for SSRN.

From the announcement sent this morning by email:

We have been working on extracting references from all SSRN papers for 5 years as part of the CiteReader™ project that SSRN has undertaken with our development firm, ITX Corp. We have created a system to extract references and footnotes from PDF files on SSRN and to have that extracted data proofread by human beings. While this project is not yet complete, we are now announcing the release of over 6.7 million references extracted from the reference sections of over 182,000 papers on the SSRN site as well as over 4.2 million citations that we have linked to SSRN papers.

– The references from each SSRN paper (where we have been able to extract them) can be found on the REFERENCES tab on the public abstract page for each paper.
– The citations we have matched to each SSRN paper are available on the CITATIONS tab on the public abstract page for the paper.
– These reference links provide an excellent way for any reader to go back in the literature in any area, and the citation links provide an excellent way to go forward in the literature.

Lady Liberty Stamp an Object Lesson for Researchers

2011-04-15T08:48:00.000-07:00

If you buy a stamp with what appears to be a picture of the face of Lady Liberty on it - think again. The NY Times reports that the picture on that stamp was not taken at the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor. Instead, it was taken in Las Vegas in the parking lot of New York - New York Casino. Sharp-eyed stamp collectors noticed the difference.

How did the USPS make this mistake? Photographs are for sale online from image brokers like Corbis, iStock, Getty, and many others. To help purchasers find the image they want, most of these brokers attach some form of metadata to the image. See this article for a full definition of the term Metadata. The ability to find a particular image is directly related to the kind of metadata attached to the image. Since you can't search the pixels in an image itself you must rely on the words associated with that image, that is, the metadata.

Think of cataloging as the ultimate form of metadata. Being able to use the words associated with ("attached to") a book, a periodical, or a looseleaf to search for that item helps the researcher find it in the collection being searched. Some collections are huge. Without the ability to search the metadata even the best researcher could not find exactly what is in a collection. This is why a library catalog is such a useful tool when you are doing any research including legal research. Without the catalog you miss materials that are out there for you to find or you won't be able to find the exact item you are looking for.

And, it is the metadata in the catalog that keeps you from making a bonehead mistake like the one the Postal Service made. If the image that they chose had been correctly identified and cataloged in the first place they wouldn't have picked a picture of a half-size ripoff of a national icon to put on their stamp.

Scalia's Traffic Stop...

2011-03-30T06:42:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday morning, Justice Scalia was in a minor fender-bender on the George Washington Parkway. Never one to do things halfheartedly, Scalia's driving error caused damage to four cars including his own. No one was injured. You can read all about it in several locations - Gawker, Above the Law here and here, Beneath Their Robes, the Huffington Post, and the Washington Post.

Scalia was issued a ticket for following too closely. There is no word on whether he will be fighting the ticket on the grounds that the original framers did not include liability for such an offense in the Constitution.

Scalia is undoubtedly the most interesting of the extant USSC justices. He is witty, combative, erudite, and just plain fun to read. To his lasting credit, he made it to Tuesday morning's oral arguments and participated.

Preview of Lexis Advance for Associates

2011-03-08T10:02:00.000-08:00

The preview and some cogent analysis is here on Three Geeks and a Blog.

There's not much doubt that this constitutes the Lexis response to WestlawNext. The screenshots of Lexis Advance show folders, an enhanced results screen, a new form of search tool called the "issue trail," integrated Shepard's results, and much more. Many of these features are also on WestlawNext.

Like WestlawNext, all material now available on Lexis will not be available when the new search system debuts this fall.

When combined with Lexis for Microsoft Office this may finally bring Lexis in line with the most recent trends in legal research. Lexis has undergone two major changes in the last year in its quest to challenge Westlaw for legal research primacy.

Careful reading of the Lexis promotional material makes it clear that Lexis designed this product to fit the way associates are now conducting legal research. This confirms the new acceptance that legal search engines need to adapt to their users' abilities and styles of use. A close review of the sample pages show the kind of Web 2.0 functionality that modern users of research tools demand.

As technologies continue to change apace, it is likely that we will continue to see new versions of old products. We may be looking at a new version of Lexis or Westlaw every few years. The vendors are changing their business model to comply with demand from new markets.

Content Farms Defined

2011-03-08T05:54:00.000-08:00

So. What is a content farm? Why does the content in a content farm impact the use of legal information?

There are several definitions of a content farm. Since Google is changing its search algorithm the best place to look might be on the Google Blog. See this post by Matt Cutts dated January 21, 2011 - Google search and search engine spam. Cutts says that content farms "...are sites with shallow or low-quality content." It is probably better to say that the definition of a content farm is evolving. See this article by Allan Graves writing for the Website-Article site dated February 11, 2011 - What Is A Content Farm - A Comprehensive Definition. Graves makes reference to Cutts' post on the Google Blog but adds additional factors for determining when a website can be considered a content farm. His list of factors is reproduced in full:

Multiple writers producing large amounts of content
Authors are paid and may not be experts on what they are writing
Content is written around currently popular/profitable long-tail keyword phrases and optimized heavily for those phrases
Content is of low quality and/or shallow (subjective)
Content is "spammy" (subjective)
Content does not link to authority websites or accurate resources
Content can be considered "intra-domain duplicate content" by the newly upgraded search engine document indexer
Content is diminutive, without supporting information or resolution
Website or section of website contains large and growing number of articles
Pages are designed to drive traffic to other monetized web pages or lead forms
Content is designed to drive traffic to other monetized web pages or lead forms
Content is surrounded by multiple advertisements, lead generation forms, contextual adverts, affiliate links or any other monetization techniques

Search engine optimization is a constant concern for all of the major players - Bing, Yahoo, Google, Chrome, Baidu or whoever. Should any site that fits this definition be sent to the bottom of the search results? Will persistent search engine users find the sites anyway? Is there a place for content farms in general when dispensing legal information?

New Google Algorithm Hides Relevant Results

2011-03-07T05:15:00.000-08:00

Google has taken steps to suppress what many casual users of its search engines might consider to be relevant results. This February 25th article by Claire Miller in the NY Times - Seeking to Weed Out Drivel, Google Adjusts Search Engine - details some of the changes to the Google algorithm.

Google's problem appears to be what it perceives as poor quality or low-quality pages. The targeted sites are commonly referred to as "content farms." The content farms use online inquiries made to search engines and, through the use of their own algorithm, post short easy to read articles that attempt to answer those questions. Miller takes a adverse view of content farms. She claims that such sites -

"...churn out sometimes mindless articles based on what people are searching for..."

Miller must be using a different Internet than the rest of us. Some people would say that most of the articles that are accessible by casual searching on the Internet are mindless. Weeding through irrelevant results has always been the bane of any search engine user's existence.

Google's problem is that it has noticed that producers of content farm material have found a way to game the existing Google algorithm to make their sites appear at the top of the results list without paying for that privilege. Others seem to have a problem with the quality of the results. Librarians, however, know that every user has his or her answer (see Raganathan's Five Laws or Noruzi's application of the five laws to the Internet). Who, other than the user, has the right to determine whether a particular result is a good one or not?

What does all this have to do with information and the law? Well, some legal futurists see the freely accessible electronic resources that the search engines find as the means by which potential clients will get their legal information, starting now. With the pace of change in information development it should come as no surprise that these content farms are fielding legal questions. So. Why bother to hire an attorney when you can find the answer to your specific question online for free?

Judicial Branch Libraries - Crisis Over or Just Beginning?

2011-02-07T09:51:00.000-08:00

A review of the budgetary crisis facing the Connecticut Judicial Branch Law Libraries from 2008 - 2010 appears in the February 2011 issue of AALL Spectrum. The article - Saving Connecticut Judicial Branch Law Libraries - by Jonathan Stock is a summary of what occurred and a timely review of the potential looming crisis in funding public law libraries and maintaining public access to legal information. Stock's review of why the crisis happened is a classic exposition of the problems facing all law libraries and is well worth reading. One of Stock's telling points is that there are simply too many naive expectations that useable legal information is available for free on the Internet. Any serious researcher will tell you that this is simply not true.

Libraries and the Kindle Licensing Problem

2011-02-05T08:39:00.000-08:00

The primary reason why libraries seem reluctant to loan out Kindles and the ebooks that can be downloaded onto them, appears to be the license agreement that comes with the Kindle. This blog post by Erika Wayne on Legal Research Plus - Kindles and Libraries - discusses two reasons why loaning a Kindle and ebook content is or will become problematic.

1. The first, the method of payment and access via Apple Apps, is an impending issue. It is outlined in the blog post and at this NYTimes story - Apple Moves to Tighten Control of App Store. This issue will undoubtedly be resolved by the market. Apple and Amazon will reach some kind of agreement in which they share fees for ebook downloads.

2. The second, and more serious reason discussed by Wayne in her post, concerns the restrictive license that Amazon places on use of the Kindle and on the ebooks from the Amazon Kindle site. As part of her discussion she cites a recently published article in the Baltimore Law Review by Gregory Laughlin - Digitization and Democracy: The Conflict Between the Amazon Kindle License Agreement and the Role of Libraries in a Free Society. Wayne quotes from Laughlin's article:

“Amazon, in the license agreement to which a purchaser of a Kindle e-book must assent prior to downloading the e-book, retains ownership of the “Digital Content” (i.e. the e-book), and imposes a number of restrictions that are inconsistent with transfer of ownership to the purchaser, including prohibiting redistribution. If libraries are not owners of the Kindle e-books they acquire, then by the explicit terms of the Amazon license agreement, as well as Section 106 of the Copyright Act, they may not lend the e-books to their patrons.”

This is not a new issue. Peter Hirtle in the Library Law Blog, raised this issue last June in his post - May a library lend e-book readers? This appears to be an intractable problem that will not be resolved by the market. Instead, unless Amazon relents in its insistence on strict compliance with the terms of the license agreement, a change in law will be required.

Adoption of WestlawNext by Big Law

2011-02-05T05:14:00.000-08:00

It has been a year since the February 8, 2010 launch of WestlawNext. Thomson Reuters has decided to celebrate this anniversary with a press release carried by PR Newswire and picked up by CNBC here.

The release is interesting both in what it says and what it doesn't say. First,

"...since its launch on Feb. 8, 2010, over 15,000 law firms; corporate law departments; and law departments in federal, state and local government organizations have upgraded to WestlawNext..."

But, 15,000 new subscribers is a drop in the proverbial bucket of the total number of law firms, corporate law departments, etc., etc., that are out there. A far more interesting figure would be what percentage of their total subscribers have upgraded to WestlawNext.

Next (no pun intended), they say that 33 of 100 Am Law 100 firms have upgraded to WestlawNext. The Am Law 100 is a construct of the ABA and includes the largest 100 firms in the United States. But if 33 of the largest firms - those most likely to have sufficient assets to acquire and actually use WestlawNext - have upgraded what about the the other 67 firms? Have they rejected WestlawNext, are they still negotiating their new subscription agreement, or are they waiting until all the beta issues are resolved? Who knows. What we do know is that we are only seeing part of the entire picture.

Our real concern should not be with those "Big Law" firms from the Am Law 100. Our real concern should be with the small firms, the medium sized firms that are the actual backbone of the practice of American law. How many of them have upgraded to WestlawNext?

Arizona Bill Defacto Secession?

2011-02-03T13:33:00.000-08:00

Probably.

You can see a copy of Arizona Senate Bill 1433 here courtesy of a link from this KPHO.com page. The purpose of the bill is to support Arizona state nullification of federal law that a committee - The Joint Legislative Committee on Nullification of Federal Laws - finds to be objectionable.

Legal researchers will take particular interest in Section 2 of the bill which provides for enactment of the legislative intent as part of the bill. Section 2 is an extended polemic about states' rights.

Section 3 provides that,

"The Secretary of State shall transmit copies of this act to the legislatures of the several states to assure that this state continues in the same esteem and friendship as currently exists and that this state considers union for specific national purposes and particularly those enumerated in the Constitution of the United States to be friendly to the peace, happiness and prosperity of all the states."

Thus allowing Arizona to be part of the Union when it finds it acceptable to be so.

Law School Dean Searches

2011-02-03T07:19:00.000-08:00

Dan Filler at the Faculty Lounge blog has posted his annual compendium of ongoing law school dean searches. For those who keep track of such things the lists for the two prior years are here and here. For those are are really interested, the comments to the annual post are often a surprising source of information, disinformation, and well-reasoned speculation.

US - China Deal Article Part of the "New" Legal Scholarship

2011-02-02T06:09:00.000-08:00

Steven Davidoff is referred to as the "Deal Professor" by the NY Times in its regular Deal B%k feature of the business section. Today's article - Actions of U.S. and China Will Shape Deals to Come - is an outstanding and timely example of the changing face of legal scholarship.

Davidoff's article appears, on first reading, to be a standard op-ed piece, hardly rising to the level of what can be considered "traditional" legal scholarship. Closer reading of the article, however, supports a deeper analysis of the trade issues that exist between China and the United States. This analysis could hardly be possible without Davidoff's true scholarly roots. Thus, the foundations of his analysis and argument are based on his prior scholarship.

Davidoff's entire body of work, including his more "traditional" writing, his "popular" writing, and his more "casual" writing must be considered as part and parcel of his total scholarly output. Indeed, all such work by any member of the legal academy should be so considered if it rises to necessary level of academic discourse.

There might not be any footnotes in today's article but the academic mind is clearly in evidence. It is not mere reportage: it is reportage with an academic twist. Can't make up your mind? Consider his previous articles here, here, here, and here. Consider the body of work, not the individual article standing alone.

A recent trend in legal academic publishing has been the well-supported extended op-ed article or book. That kind of writing is clearly considered as scholarship by tenure committees and, increasingly, by the legal academy as a whole. Compare that kind of article with the article in question - it is all scholarship. The only real difference is one of degree, not kind.

Full Disclosure - Davidoff is a member of the faculty at the University of Connecticut School of Law.

United States Code - Area 51

2011-01-31T06:06:00.000-08:00

As Brian Huddleston, Senior Reference Librarian at Loyola New Orleans, points out, Congress has just added the 51st Title to the United States Code. Title 51 - National and Commercial Space Programs - was created by Public L. 111-314, signed into law by the President on December 18, 2010. Having more than 50 titles to the USC is an alien concept. As Brian aptly points out, "Now every legal research book is out of date and there's a lot of handouts to change."

So true. But, the creation of Title 51 is all part of the Office of Law Revision Counsel's plan for world domination, er, Positive Law Codification. In fact, we can look forward to Title 52 - Voting and Elections: Title 53 - Small Business: Title 54 - National Park System: and Title 55 - Environment. Since world domination is easier to explain than positive law codification this quote from the Law Revision Counsel's website will have to suffice for now:

Because many of the general and permanent laws that are required to be incorporated into the United States Code are inconsistent, redundant, and obsolete, the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the House of Representatives has been engaged in a continuing comprehensive project authorized by law to revise and codify, for enactment into positive law, each title of the Code. When this project is completed, all the titles of the Code will be legal evidence of the general and permanent laws and recourse to the numerous volumes of the United States Statutes at Large for this purpose will no longer be necessary.

Their nefarious plan is laid out here:

Positive law codification bills prepared by the Office do not change the meaning or legal effect of a statute being revised and restated. Rather, the purpose is to remove ambiguities, contradictions, and other imperfections from the law. For more information about the process of positive law codification generally, see the brochure Positive Law Codification in the United States Code.

Apparently PL 111-314 is only the latest in a long line of decisions designed to:

Spread chaos throughout the law librarian universe.
Force hapless legal research instructors to revise their PowerPoints, handouts, and lecture notes.
Provide unlimited income for legal publishers who are now forced to sell law libraries new volumes of the USCA or USCS containing Title 51. And then, Titles 52, 53, 54, and 55...

Yes Brian, you may retire now.

Reality Check - LSAT Apps Down

2011-01-25T17:03:00.000-08:00

Yes, applications to take the LSAT have decreased. Mark Giangrande, writing on the Law Librarian Blog, has made a post about the decrease here - LSAT Applications Down. He cites from the LSAC President's report here. Will this mean a better new lawyer to job ratio in three years making it easier for this potential crop of graduates to find jobs? Maybe. But as Giangrade points out, there will still be a glut of JD graduates.

Lawsuit Loans - Regulation Required

2011-01-17T05:34:00.000-08:00

In today's NY Times, Benyamin Appelbaum continues his brilliant series on lawsuit loans. Today's article - Lawsuit Loans Add New risk for the Injured - details abuses by this niche market industry. Readers of this blog will recall four previous posts here, here, here, and here.

Lenders argue that they should not be covered by existing lending laws because borrowers don't repay the loans unless they recover in their suits. Some states are fighting back. Colorado recently filed suit against two lenders - Oasis and LawCash. From the story -

“It looks like a loan and smells like a loan and we believe that these are, in fact, high-cost loans,” John W. Suthers, the state’s attorney general, said in a recent interview. “I can see a legitimate role for it, but that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t be subject to regulation.”

"High-cost" is a real understatement. In fact, according to a survey by the Center for Public Integrity, some of these loans appear to accrue interest at the rate of 100% annually plus fees. The lenders, through their industry spokesman, argue that these are risky loans because the plaintiffs (the injured) may never recover. This is a disingenuous argument. As discussed in previous posts, these loans are carefully vetted by the lender (or investor if you will) before one dime is sent to the injured plaintiff.

How big is the market for these loans? Just consider that the industry has hired a spokesman. That's a pretty good indication that this market has reached critical mass and is ready for national regulation.

The Need for Law Student Financial Counseling

2011-01-12T06:19:00.000-08:00

Yet more fallout from the story last Sunday in the NY Times - Is Law School a Losing Game? - by David Segal.

The article highlights the sad story of one Michael Wallerstein. This student (with what Segal calls a "surfer dude" mentality) appears to have been more than slightly irresponsible in his excellent law school adventure. He attended a for profit stand alone law school that charges high tuition - Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego. Here's the Top-Law-School.com profile. The Top-Law-School profile shows that -

The average TJSL law student graduates with an overwhelming $131,800 in law-school-related debt, giving the school the honor of saddling its graduates the highest debt load in the nation. Thomas Jefferson School of Law does not offer its students a loan repayment assistance program.

Segal describes how Wallerstein chose this school -

WHEN he started in 2006, Michael Wallerstein knew little about the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, other than that it was in San Diego, which seemed like a fine place to spend three years.
“I looked at schools in Pennsylvania and Long Island,” he says, “but I thought, why not go somewhere I’ll enjoy?”

Segal goes on to detail some of the debt that Wallerstein proceeded to incur while a student. Apparently, Wallerstein was not in the mood for "austerity" during his education -

... Mr. Wallerstein rented a spacious apartment. He also spent a month studying in the South of France and a month in Prague — all on borrowed money. There were cost-of-living loans, and tuition of about $33,000 a year. Later came a $15,000 loan to cover months of studying for the bar.

In the end it appears that Wallerstein owes about $250,000 for his legal education. The figure is approximate because, as Wallerstein admits, “I’m not really good at keeping records.” Is this the kind of person you want planning your parent's estate?

But this student's attitude is only part of the problem. Apparently, the school in question failed to offer or require any form of financial counseling; not an uncommon situation in most law schools. So, is this the student's fault? Some may say so. The Subprime JD blog perceptively refers to this as a form of cognitive dissonance - delusional thinking on the part of the law student. And, the #Crasstalk blog calls this The least sympathetic 'I have lots of student debt" story ever.

But the larger fact is that many schools have no incentive to provide or require financial counseling or to put any kind of realistic constraints on the borrowing habits of their students. Private for-profit schools are especially under scrutiny right now. As mentioned Sunday, it may only be a matter of time before the ABA or the Department of Education begin to take a closer look at law schools.

Can You Get Your Law School Tuition Back?

2011-01-11T05:26:00.000-08:00

Well. You can certainly ask for it. And that's exactly what one law student did. Readers of this blog will recall a recent post on this issue here. As mentioned in the story from Sunday's NY Times - Is Law School a Losing Game? - a BC law student asked the Dean of that school for his tuition back. The story was originally reported in a Times blog onNovember 8th - Tuition Reimbursements for Jobless Graduates. Here's a copy of the letter to Interim Dean Brown at Boston College Law School as posted in the student online newsletter the EagleiOnline. BC's response is here.

But this is not a new story. Read the Wall Street Journal article from September 24, 2007 about the increasingly difficult job market for law school graduates - Hard Case: Job Market Wanes for U.S. Lawyers.

The story of the BC student went virtually viral in October of 2010. Here are links to the Boston Herald story, the CTI Career Search blog, the BrainTrack blog (Universities Colleges and Careers), the Consumerist blog (Shoppers Bite Back), the NECN New England cable news site (complete with video!), the Tax Prof Blog, and, of course Gawker (with humorous posed photograph). These are just a few of the dozens of posts.

More to come...

Is Law School a Losing Game?

2011-01-09T07:54:00.000-08:00

Maybe. At least that's the premise behind this Sunday's article in the NY Times by David Segal. The lengthy article includes interviews with former students who don't know how they are going to pay off their student loans and educators who feel the need to change the system. The main culprit appears to be the U.S. News and World Report rankings -

"Enron-type accounting standards have become the norm,” says William Henderson of Indiana University, one of many exasperated law professors who are asking the American Bar Association to overhaul the way law schools assess themselves. “Every time I look at this data, I feel dirty.” It is an open secret, Professor Henderson and others say, that schools finesse survey information in dozens of ways. And the survey’s guidelines, which are established not by U.S. News but by the American Bar Association, in conjunction with an organization called the National Association for Law Placement, all but invite trimming.
A law grad, for instance, counts as “employed after nine months” even if he or she has a job that doesn’t require a law degree. Waiting tables at Applebee’s? You’re employed. Stocking aisles at Home Depot? You’re working, too.
Number-fudging games are endemic, professors and deans say, because the fortunes of law schools rise and fall on rankings, with reputations and huge sums of money hanging in the balance. You may think of law schools as training grounds for new lawyers, but that is just part of it.

The U.S. Department of Education recently proposed regulations that require certain kinds of for-profit schools to disclose post-graduation placement and employment statistics and to establish some kind of nexus between the school's curriculum and real-world employability. Here's a NY Times article that's on point. Maybe it's time to force law schools to follow suit.

Open Access Online Casebook Preview

2011-01-08T13:49:00.000-08:00

At last - an open access legal text.

A preview of the first open access legal casebook is now available on the eLangdell site. The Legal Informatics Blog reports -

The preview — which consists of portions of Roger C. Park and Douglas D. McFarland’s Evidence for Civil Procedure Students — is available in several formats: ePub, mobi, PDF, and HTML, and is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0 license.

This is a monumentally positive development for law students. The price of casebooks has reached dizzying heights in recent years. Open access casebooks and text will almost certainly be the norm in a few short years.

As a rule, unless a casebook reaches some kind of cult status, most academic authors are not particularly well paid. To produce and publish an open access casebook is akin to publishing an articles in a student edited journal. Thus, publishing open source becomes yet another way to achieve and maintain tenure while benefiting the primary casebook consumers - law students.

You can almost hear shifting of the foundations of the casebook industry.

WestlawNext and the 2010 Buzz

2010-12-29T06:58:00.000-08:00

The West-maintained blog, Legal Current, has noted that WestlawNext created a "buzz" in the legal research community in 2010...

So much so that Massauchsetts lawyer, writer and media consultant, Robert Ambrogi recently announced that his post titled “A First Look at WestlawNext” was the most widely read entry on his popular legal blog LawSites for all of 2010.

Ambrogi is, indeed, a leader in keeping track of online tools, practices, and electronic developments in the legal field. His blog, Law Sites, is well worth reading for the material about online legal research alone.

Legal Current also links to its post from early 2010 that recaps comments in the blogosphere about WestlawNext. These links, mostly posted at the time of the introduction of WestlawNext, all seem to be positive. Well. That's no surprise.

Juror Behavior In the Social Media Age

2010-12-27T06:02:00.000-08:00

Ken Strutin has posted a compilation of news and case reports in which juror behavior in the information/social media age is considered. The article, on one of the premire legal information websites, LLRX.com, can be found here - Juror Behavior in the Information Age.

Strutin correctly makes the point that if one of the virtues of the jury system is that the jury itself is comprised of our peers, it is logical to assume that members of the jury will ordinarily do internet research using Google or Bing and may maintain a blog, a Facebook page or a Twitter account. It is also logical to assume that these jurors might be inclined to use these resources before, during, and after the trial. Strutin's article provides specific instances in which these activities came to light and how the courts dealt with this kind of activity.

The online misconduct of jurors seems to be categorized to four general areas -

Publishing or distributing information about a trial, e.g., tweeting or posting updates on a social media site.
Uncovering information about the case by searching the Internet, entering social networking sites or visiting virtual crime scenes.
Contacting parties, witnesses, lawyers or judges via social networking for example.
Discussing or deliberating the merits of the litigation prematurely or inviting outside opinions.

Stetin gives current examples of all four. He poses this question -"The revolutions in technology, especially social media, invite the question of how litigants can hope to find a jury of impartial strangers in a world where everyone is connected?"

Links to news reports, cases, and legal articles make this a good place to start research on the issue of juror conduct in a digital age.

Readers of this blog may recall a recent post that discussed the issue of how evolving technology can affect the role of jury, counsel, and court when faced with certain kinds of evidence. It seems increasingly clear that social media and the Internet will necessarily affect the way in which jurors are to be instructed about their duties.

Law Professors Sue for Defamation - Win $5+ Million

2010-12-22T09:37:00.000-08:00

The case of Rudovsky v. West has resulted in a stunning victory for the plaintiffs. In 2009, Professor David Rudovsky of the University of Pennsylvania Law School and Professor Leonard Sosnov of Widener Law School sued West for publishing a poorly researched 'sham' pocket part to a Pennsylvania criminal law treatise they had written. Even though it had been prepared by the West staff, the pocket part featured the names of Rudovsky and Sosnov. Late last week the jury in the case found West liable for defamation and returned a verdict for $90,000 in compensatory damages and $2.5 million in punitive damages for each professor. You can find the verdict form here on Google Docs.

The treatise, Pennsylvania Criminal Procedure: Law, Commentary and Forms has been in print since 1991 and is a part of the West Pennsylvania Practice Series - quite similar to the Connecticut Practice Series. In 2008 Rudovsky and Sosnov wanted to revise and republish the 2001 edition. You can read the Declaration of David Rudovsky here from Justia Dockets. You can review the full Complaint here. Each new pocket part had, for years, included citations to 100 - 150 new cases, code sections, rules and, of course, expert commentary. West resisted the preparation of a revised edition and, without the participation of the professors, indeed, without their knowledge, published a new pocket part that did not contain the numerous changes that had taken place in Pennsylvania law since the publication of the last pocket part. According to West, there is a contractual provision that allows them to publish an update without changing the names of the authors. Regardless, it seems clear that the jury adopted the plaintiff's argument that West's actions constituted defamation per se.

Possibly the best overall review of the litigation is by Erika Wayne here on the Legal Research Plus blog. A good explication of all of West's mistakes during the litigation is here on the Law Librarian Blog. There is another concise review here on Jonathan Turley's blog, Res ipsa loquitor. Turley's post also addresses the probability that the verdict will be reduced.

A pre-verdict review of the case is here on the online version of the ABA Journal. The National Law Journal published an insightful article early on and you can find it here. For other comments see posts here on the Legal Skills Prof Blog, and here on 3 Geeks and a Blog, both of which helped develop the story and provided links to the relevant documents.

Although, as Turley points out, the verdict will almost certainly be reduced this will be a clear opportunity for the Court of Appeals to comment on what many consider to be West's hubris and greed

Legal Travails of Superheros and Supervillians

2010-12-21T07:54:00.000-08:00

Here's a super-duper new blog to add to your RSS reader: Law and the Multiverse - Superheros, Supervillians and the Law. Here's the description of the blog by the originators:

"If there’s one thing comic book nerds like doing it’s over-thinking the smallest details. Here we turn our attention to the hypothetical legal ramifications of comic book tropes, characters, and powers. Just a few examples: Are mutants a protected class? Who foots the bill when a hero damages property while fighting a villain? What happens legally when a character comes back from the dead?"

This is a new blog but some of the universe-shattering topics discussed so far include -

Supervillians and Insurance: Who's Gonna Pay for That? - Is it an insurable risk when the Joker blows up half of Gotham City?

RICO and the Legion of Doom - Acting in concert to destroy the universe may very well subject the individual members of a group of supervillians to federal prosection.

Is Batman a State Actor? - Does Batman's close working relationship with Commissioner Gordon make him a state actor subject to constitutional guarantees and protections?

Still not convinced? Here's a review on Lowering the Bar (the blog of legal humor) and for the more serious minded (sort of) the Volokh Conspiracy. And, you'll like the interview with the originators of the blog here at the NY Times Arts Beat section. Here's the take from Above the Law. They like it(?).

Bing - Google Comparison Tool

2010-12-20T11:41:00.000-08:00

If you are interested in seeing the differences in the results of a Google search and of a Bing search you can use this site from Black Dog, a German web optimization company. Just put your search terms in the top (English) box. You will get a side-by-side comparison of Google and Bing.

You might find it interesting that more often than not, where your search can best be answered by a Wikipedia article, that article will be listed as the top relevant result. Try "quantitative easing" or "double jeopardy" or "district of columbia gun ban."

Bing v. Google Heats Up

2010-12-17T17:39:00.000-08:00

John Cook at Tech Flash (Seattle's Technology News Source) reports that Bing is making movement against Google in search market share. According to Cook -

"Bing accounted for 25.27 percent of U.S. Internet searches for the four week period ended November 27th, up two percent from October, according to Experian Hitwise. (The numbers include the integration of Yahoo, but even separately both Yahoo and Bing showed some growth). Google remains on top with 70.1 percent of searches, but it showed a small one percent drop."

These are not stunning figures but if they continue it could be an interesting trend. Now Bing will just need to add a Bing Book feature, Bing Docs, and, for us legal researchers, Bing Scholar.

A word of advice to Bing - when you get ready to work on your legal search engine make sure you talk to some law librarians. First rule? Make sure every user can understand why they are getting the results they they get. How a legal researcher gets the results is just as important as the results themselves. In law, process is as important as conclusion.

USSC - Kindle vs. iPad

2010-12-16T16:59:00.000-08:00

Law is, of course, information driven. Now it appears more and more to be technology driven. The Law Librarian Blog has posted a snippet of the C-SPAN interview with Justice Kagan in which she admits to using a Kindle to read briefs. Then she lets it slip that Justice Scalia uses an iPad to do the same.

Doug Berman at the Law School Innovation blog asks if USSC justices are using Kindles and iPads when will law students? As Berman points out it is only a matter of time - coming soon - that the casebook as we know it will be available on either platform.

As the USSC Kindle vs. iPad news goes viral check out the post at the Young Lawyers Blog. There Brian Malcom wonders "... what's on Justice Scalia's playlists in the background of his iPad while he peruses briefs."

We already know the answer to that from an earlier post. It's do wop, of course; more specifically, Sh-Boom by the Chords, Scalia's favorite song.

Zimmerman Updates Connecticut

2010-12-15T17:10:00.000-08:00

Zimmerman's Research Guide, sponsored by Lexis, is one of the best (and vendor neutral) commercial research guides available. As noted in the Gothic Column blog Zimmerman also has a blog (the ZRG blog) to keep you aware of developments on the Research Guide site. There are two recent posts about Connecticut resources here and here.

Zimmerman's Connecticut page itself is a valuable resource for all Connecticut practitioners. In his periodic review of Connecticut resources it looks like Zimmerman stumbled across one of the big gaps in public access to Connecticut law. Here's the comment -

"One surprise: The Connecticut administrative code is apparently not available free online from the State of Connecticut or anyone else."

That's right. There is no one source for online access to the administrative code - the only source is on the individual agency's websites. And that access is, frankly, hit or miss.

WestlawNext Promotes a New Form of Social Media

2010-12-14T17:18:00.000-08:00

Westlaw has just announced a new feature for WestlawNext - folder sharing. You can see their pitch for this new product here on their blog, Legal Current. According to the post

-...anyone in an organization can create, share, and modify legal research folders, whether across the office or across the country. Each member of a team can now quickly share information, review research materials, and participate in the strategy of the organization’s matters.

Think of a law firm as a closed, finite society. When you introduce peer-2-peer file sharing you introduce a new form of information and data sharing dependent on social networking. Can an informal user hierarchy and problems maintaining privacy be far off? Not likely.

More Bets on Lawsuits

2010-12-14T05:59:00.000-08:00

If you thought the bubble was over, think again.

Now dozens or hedge funds and investment firms are placing bets on the returns from the Madoff case. In this morning's NY Times an article by Peter Lattman & Diana Henriques - Speculators are Eager to Bet on Madoff Claims - gives a full account of how speculators are buying claims of Madoff's victims on the chance of big returns.

Many of the victims can't wait for the years it may take for Irving Picard, the trustee in the Madoff bankruptcy to bring a suit to a successful conclusion. So, speculators are out to buy those claims.

Betting on claims in bankruptcy has been going on for years. Each bet (or "investment" if you will) is certainly well considered and researched. These bets are not made to finance the suit itself. Picard, as trustee, has virtually no option but to file the suits and has probably already amassed a litigation fund from the proceeds from the sale of Madoff assets. These bets are more like laying wagers at the race track. If you can accurately judge a horse's abilities your chances of winning can make wagering pay off.

Financing Lawsuits - A Sound Investment?

2010-12-13T10:42:00.000-08:00

Readers of this blog may have seen two recent posts on financing of lawsuits here and here. But it would be wrong to say that this is a recent trend. In fact, the financing of lawsuits by third parties has been a growing trend that began even before the start of the current recession in 2008.

Take a look at this NY Times article from 2006 – Hedge Funds Find Returns in Making Small Loans. Investing in lawsuits appears to be a profitable holdover from the prerecession low interest rate bubble. Now that rates are even lower than they were in 2006 the investment is even more attractive. If you read through the 2006 article by Jenny Anderson and Julie Creswell, you will see that the return on one of the loans mentioned in the story is set at 30%.

From the investment point of view there is probably nothing wrong with businesses – hedge funds and the like – loaning money to parties where the lawsuit has already been filed. An independent evaluator of the suit (the attorney who took the case, investigated the facts, found the relevant experts, and made a judgment about the merits of the case) has taken the initial step in determining whether a suit will result in a favorable settlement or verdict. The attorney’s risk is the investors’ risk. Individual investors will probably not look closely at the actual merits of the case but will look to the attorney’s experience and win rate, and the awards in the relevant jurisdiction to make their own determination of the risks involved. But there will, inevitably, be frivolous cases that will be financed by these loans/investments. Will the investors be safe from sanctions? Will a whole new form of jurisprudence spring up to protect society from big-money lawsuits? Or, will we renew and revise the old common law crime of barratry?

A lawsuit is always an uncertain thing. Recovery can turn on a witness' change of story, the plaintiff's whim, a change in the underlying law, or an attorney's off day. There is no "sure thing" in law or litigation. But then, of course, there have always been people ready to bet on a long shot. That's like buying derivatives made from sub-prime mortgages.

Taking a Cut of the Marital Estate

2010-12-12T11:11:00.000-08:00

Readers of this blog may recall an earlier post about how investors are lining up to finance major tort litigation. Predictably, a service now exists that will help finance a divorce for certain parties.

The story, by Binyamin Appelbaum, reporting in last Sunday's the New York Times, tells of yet another instance in which parties to a lawsuit can seek outside help in financing litigation. Taking Sides in a Divorce, Chasing Profit, details the efforts of an investment company, Balance Point, to turn a profit by investing in divorce cases. So far, Balance Point seems to represent (1) women, (2) who do not have jobs, (3) who are raising small children, and (4) whose husbands run their own businesses.

Anyone who has ever handled a divorce case for such a client will immediately recognize the problems. The owner of a business, in full control of the financial records and the ability to hide assets, can stonewall discovery until the other party cannot sustain the litigation and must settle for less than their full due. Balance Point charges a percentage of the total amount of the settlement. To be profitable, Balance Point is only financing cases in which the net worth of the parties is somewhere between $2 mill and $15 million.

Regardless of the justice that might flow from such an arrangement there are recurring, troublesome ethical issues. For example, who is controlling the settlement? How dedicated are the investors? Are they in it for the long haul or do they look for short term returns on their money?

As Appelbaum points out in this series, this is a whole new development in the law. He writes -

While this business is in its infancy, Balance Point is part of a bigger trend — the growing industry that invests in other people’s lawsuits, arming plaintiffs with money to help them win more money from defendants. Banks, hedge funds and boutique firms like Balance Point now have a total of $1 billion invested in lawsuits at any given time, industry participants estimate.

The Price of Justice?

2010-12-11T13:40:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has seen the movie, A Civil Action, starring John Travolta and Robert Duvall, will realize that the cost of justice can sometimes hover just out of reach. The movie and the book chronicle a suit against industrial giant W.R. Grace for pollution of the ground water in and around Woburn, Massachusetts. As the suit moves forward, plaintiff's lawyer, Jan Schlichtmann, finds it increasingly difficult to finance the suit. How can he pay for depositions and expert witnesses? Ultimately, he is forced to settle the case.

Financing a lawsuit has always been difficult. As you might expect with the current recession, financing a suit has become increasingly problematic. But, American investors, despite coming off making some of the worst bets ever on the subprime mortage market, seem willing to invest in what must be one of the riskiest bets yet - major suits against major tortfeasors.

A story in the NY Times outlines the continuing trend. Putting Money on Lawsuits, Investors Share in the Payouts, by Benyamin Appelbaum, details how hedge funds and investment firms are lending money to plaintiff's attorneys so that these big suits can move forward. The investor's motives are not, as you might expect, altruistic. Instead, they take a hard look at the facts, the law, and the possibility of a positive results.

There are a number of ethical, practical, investment, and social issues that are raised by this kind of activity.

Will Technology Force a Reconsideration of the Relevancy Rule?

2010-12-10T05:27:00.000-08:00

The rule regarding the admission of relevant evidence in the United State is almost universal. The terms of Federal Rule of Evidence 403, for example, are simple and representative of the law as a whole. It sets out a classic balancing test between the probative value of the evidence to be admitted and the prejudicial value that evidence may have. Rule 403 states in part -

Although relevant, evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice...

But, with each year that balancing act, in the right kind of case, becomes more difficult to apply. As John Schwartz and Katie Zezima point out in With Video Everywhere, Stark Evidence is on Trial, an article fromThursday's NY Times, the sheer ubiquity of video images are subjecting that balancing act to its own trial.

Consider the case from Massachusetts in which the trial judge has ruled that the video capture of a young boy at a gun show shooting himself in the head with an Uzi will be admissible in the prosecution of the organizer of the event. Judge Velis will allow the video but is still considering whether the audio will be heard. The video briefly went viral on the Internet until it was taken down by YouTube as being too grisly.

Quoted in the story, Stephen B. Bright, the president of the Southern Center for Human Rights, said -

"Every law student learns that there is a delicate balancing test to see if the prejudicial impact outweighs the probative value before such evidence is admitted,” but “they quickly learn that in practice the balance always comes out in favor of admitting gruesome crime-scene photos, autopsy pictures, 911 calls, everything."

The rules of evidence should be sufficiently flexible to withstand the test. But can the jurors? Schwartz and Zezima discuss the impact of such evidence on the juror in a case where such evidence is admitted. Some jurors admitted to a feeling of potential post traumatic stress. One way to prepare the jury is to voir dire for the emotional stress such evidence will certainly cause.

Valerie Hans, a law professor at Cornell, said the power of video evidence has to become part of jury selection — to find people who can withstand the emotional battering of the evidence and still do the job before them and not be “dominated by vengeful thoughts.”

“We really ask our jurors to do a lot,” Professor Hans said.

Google Provides $2 Million to law.gov

2010-09-26T08:35:00.000-07:00

There is some pretty good news for those who support free and open access to U.S. government documents. Google has announced that they are providing $2 million to Public Resource.com to help finance the Law.gov project. Here is a description of the project from the Law.gov website -

Law.Gov is an idea, an idea that the primary legal materials of the United States should be readily available to all, and that governmental institutions should make these materials available in bulk as distributed, authenticated, well-formatted data.

Google announced the grant last Friday on the Google Blog, here. The grant is part of their Project 10^100 which lives on their website, here.

Right now there are several government websites that disseminate authenticated data (GPO, Regulations.gov, and others) but they are not always comprehensive or easy to search. Law.gov may be exactly what is needed to promote transparency in government.

Third Branch of Government Takes a Stand

2010-08-24T05:35:00.000-07:00

With the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a/k/a H.R. 4173, and now known as PL 111-203, a cleaner, more accountable and open financial industry, seems to be at hand. This is particularly so for what now pass as "banks." [Of course, a banker from the 1930's whisked to 2010 by a time machine would be hard pressed to equate his definition of a bank what what we consider to be a bank today.]

But laws mean nothing without enforcement and enforcement, even of existing law, seems lacking at times. Well, here comes the third branch of government to the rescue. As reported in this articles from morning's NY Times - Judges Sound Off on Bank Settlements - federal district judges are declining to approve settlements offered up by the Justice Department to resolve cases pending against banks. From the story -

In a scene that is becoming increasingly common, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of Federal District Court chewed out federal prosecutors at a hearing in Washington last week for a proposed settlement with Barclays.
“Why isn’t the government getting tough with banks?” he asked.
Just one day earlier in the same courthouse, Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle refused to sign a settlement between the government and Citigroup, demanding, “Why would I find this fair and reasonable?” She ordered government lawyers to return with answers next month.
The scoldings from the bench are a striking departure from a long tradition of judicial deference to settlements formulated by federal agencies, reflecting broad disenchantment not just with Wall Street, but with its government overseers.

As populist, anti-establishment, anti-bank fervor grips the country it seems almost incongruous that what is often considered the most conservative branch of government is taking the lead in bringing the financial industry to heel. Will this trend of judicial concern continue?

More on the Move of Legal Jobs to India

2010-08-13T13:58:00.000-07:00

You may recall the last post about the outsourcing of legal jobs to India. Here's another post on that same theme this time by Larry Ribstein at Forbes in his op-ed Where Have All the Lawyers Gone? His concise and spot on summary of the situation can be found in this comment:

The days when associates fresh out of law school billed hundreds of dollars an hour to learn their trade have been ended by global competition for legal services. Clients once stayed with the same big law firm for generations because they needed the comfort of the brand. Then law firms got greedy and imagined their brand could justify billing out the time of associates in perpetuity. Clients got leaner and more cost-conscious, and their in-house legal departments became much more sophisticated consumers of legal services. Global transportation, communication and computing got cheap enough that legal projects did not have to be done in a single physical space.

Ribstein makes probably the most telling characterization of graduating law students to date when he calls them "canaries in the coal mine."

Outsourcing Legal Work Continues to Evolve

2010-08-06T07:02:00.000-07:00

We all know by now that outsourcing of legal work, including legal research, has become a legitimate part of the current practice environment. See this previous post about domestic and offshore outsourcing. Now outsourcing seems to have taken the next step toward becoming even more important and useful. According to this NY Times story - Outsourcing to India Draws Western Lawyers - attorneys more familiar with the landscape of American legal practice are moving to India to direct the outsourcing efforts.

The story highlights, among others, the efforts of Christopher Wheeler, a former assistant attorney general for New York, to manage a team of 100+ Indian lawyers that is providing services that are traditionally performed by incoming associates. According to the story:

The number of legal outsourcing companies in India has mushroomed to more than 140 at the end of 2009, from 40 in 2005, according to Valuenotes, a consulting firm in Pune, India. Revenue at India’s legal outsourcing firms is expected to grow to $440 million this year, up 38 percent from 2008, and should surpass $1 billion by 2014, Valuenotes estimates.

“This is not a blip, this is a big historical movement,” said David B. Wilkins, director of Harvard Law School’s program on the legal profession. “There is an increasing pressure by clients to reduce costs and increase efficiency,” he added, and with companies already familiar with outsourcing tasks like information technology work to India, legal services is a natural next step.

At this point it appears that only "Big Law" firms and in-house counsel divisions of major corporations are affected but if the trend continues outsourcing may become even more prevalent as smaller firms become more comfortable with the notion and discover the economic benefits.

The Yahoo!-Bing Search Alliance

2010-08-04T09:15:00.000-07:00

Readers may recall yesterday's post about the "features war" between Google and Bing. But don't think that's all there is. Coming soon to a computer near you, is the Yahoo!-Bing Search Alliance. Yahoo! is Beta testing Bing powered search results on its platform. According to Search Engine Land blog, the change should be completed by September or October of this year. Right now the primary thrust of the Search Alliance is for commercial purposes. In fact, some commercial software companies are selling packages to ease that transition.

Ultimately, however, the conjoining of parts of the search functions of Bing and Yahoo could produce a new form of search engine. Right now Yahoo is providing Bing organic search results for 25% of their traffic. (An organic search result is a result that is relevant to the search terms. A non-organic search result is commercial based, i.e., advertisement based. Any search on any search engine will bring up both. The organic results usually bear some relation to the original search terms while the advertisement results may not.)

One of the most powerful parts of the Yahoo search interface has always been the ability to use of the Yahoo hierarchy, or what's left of it. Admittedly, as searching behavior has changed, a hierarchical structure is not as important as it once was. Still, for legal researchers, imposing a Yahoo-like hierarchy onto a search engine algorithm may produce something that looks and feels like the West digest system. Think about the power of using a hierarchical system (like the digest) that is supplemented (think focus or locate - distinctly Westlaw and Lexis terms) by the use of keywords. Only time will tell if this is what the final product will look like or act like but it does present the possibility of an intriguing future.

Google v. Bing

2010-08-03T09:33:00.000-07:00

This story - Bing and Google in a Race for Features - published in the NY Times on Monday puts the escalating war between Google and Bing in some context. The story focuses on the features that users of these search engines might see. This is where the competition between Google and Microsoft will be being played out for the majority of casual users.

For sophisticated researchers, however, the real benefit of these changes is not in what the interface looks like but in the result set. And, although the Times story focuses on what a user sees, that is, the interface, the story does point out that for some purposes, Bing appears to be (for now) the better search engine. The authors note that according to Danny Sullivan - the EIC of the Search Engine Land blog - as well as other analysts Google has been making "significant but subtle behind-the-scenes changes that make it better at responding to obscure and complex queries." These changes include "tweaks to its secret search algorithm last year..." This is one way of saying that Google, in its race with Bing, is improving not only the way the page looks but the kind of results you get.

For legal researchers this change has been immediately apparent in the functionality of Google Scholar. Results just seem better. By going toe-to-toe with Bing in the fight for user share it is possible that members of the legal research community may be the unintended beneficiaries of Google's efforts.

Best Law School Rejection Letter

2010-05-28T06:57:00.000-07:00

Hmmm. It appears that this law school applicant was not aware that Princeton does not have a law school. Things have become significantly more complicated since 1957. Still, one wonders if Princeton has a special office to deal with law school applications. And where would applicants send their LSAT scores?

Legal Clinics Under Fire

2010-04-13T06:42:00.000-07:00

In a recent New York Times story, Ian Urbina reports on four significant challenges to law school clinics. Legal clinics at the University of Maryland School of Law, Tulane Law School, the University of Michigan, and Rutgers University have been attacked for the way they are handling cases or the information they have acquired while representing clients.

This is a recurrent theme. Tulane, for example, has an Environmental Law Clinic that was in a major fight with the petrochemical industry in 1998. As a result, the Louisiana Supreme Court restricted the cases that students could handle in state courts. (Louisiana Supreme Court Administrative Rule XX.)

Complaints against school-based legal clinics will continue to increase as long as they continue to expand the role they take in the legal system. When clinics were only representing certain kinds of low income clients there was not much controversy. When clinics file class action suits that affect major industries they will draw fire. When they represent unpopular high profile clients they will draw fire.

Outsourcing Redux

2010-02-26T05:31:00.000-08:00

A law firm that decides to outsource some of its work is making a decision that is in step with the times. Although outsourcing is not right for every firm, there are factors that weigh heavily in favor of a considered approach. At least that's what Ron Friedman argues in this recent LLRX post - Law Firms Now Outsourcers? Friedman's short article draws together a number of sources that review the state of outsourcing today. Friedman makes two points to ponder:

Using outsourcing can certainly save your clients money. Obviously, it costs less for legal talent from Cleveland than the same talent from New York.
Ethical issues still abound. Friedman quotes Professor Stephen Gillers - "There is no problem with offshoring because even though the lawyer in India is not authorized by an American state to practice law, the review by American lawyers sanitizes the process." The answer may not be that simple. A more complete analysis is set out in Mark Ross' article on LLRX - Ethics of Legal Outsourcing White Paper.

This is a complicated issue. The fact that firms are seriously entertaining the idea of outsourcing - whether offshore or domestic - is a sign of the difficult economic times and maybe a harbinger of the change in the shifting paradigm of what it means to practice law.

Best Jucicial Decisions of 2009?

2010-02-25T06:17:00.000-08:00

Since 2005, The Green Bag has published the annual Green Bag Almanac & Reader. Find it here in our collection. This is a compendium of "good legal writing from the past year, selected by the luminaries and sages on our board of advisers." This year, those "luminaries" chose the following lead opinions as the best judicial decisions of 2009:

Frank H. Easterbrook - Buchmeier v. United States, 581 F. 3d 561 (7th Cir. 2009) Found via Google Scholar.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg - United States v. Hayes, 129 S. Ct. 1079 (2009) From the USSC official website.

Jed S. Rakoff - SEC v. Bank of America Corp., 2009 WL 2916822 (S.D.N.Y. 2009) From the Southern District of New York website.

Which one is best? You be the judge. So to speak.

Coming soon - the best concurrences and dissents.

You Know the Recession is Bad When...

2010-01-18T12:00:00.001-08:00

You know that the recession has really hit the legal profession hard when the latest article about the legal job market - No Longer Their Golden Ticket - is in the Styles section of the NYTimes. There have been many articles in such law-related publications as Above the Law with its weekly (what else) feature This Week in Layoffs. But when the fortunes of recent law school graduates begin to share space with the Wedding Page you've got to know that this downturn has really reached the mainstream. The Styles article even mentions LawShucks with its famous (or infamous) Layoff Tracker.

What's the alternative? Take a look at this short video that accompanies the online version of the article in Styles. It seems that some new lawyers are doing what many law students originally had in mind when they applied for law school - provide services for the poor.

They're Singing Scalia's Song

2010-01-16T13:11:00.004-08:00

And what is it? Well. After a night at the opera, reported here in the NYTimes, Scalia, once reluctant to give any interviews, gave one to WQXR, the NYC classical music station. As reported by the Law.com on Friday, Scalia, in a far-ranging discussion with Gilbert Kaplan, told all - his favorite rock and roll song is Sh-Boom, a 1954 classic from the Chords. His comment about Sh-Boom? Another classic. Apparently, it was the last pop piece, "that I really remember liking before rock descended into noise and ugliness." See for yourself...here's an acapella version from a 1980 show.

Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop - Westlaw on the Ropes?

2010-01-07T16:21:00.004-08:00

Is it possible that Westlaw has come to the realization that it must change its business model? The last few years have not been kind to the legal research division of Thomson-Reuters. Let's begin to connect the dots. Here are the first four...

1. In early December, Westlaw laid off 240 legal division workers in North America - 120 in the West bastion city of St. Paul alone.

2. Follow this link to Richard Leiter's analysis of Thomson-Reuters stock price back in March and his further analysis later that month. Some may say that this is only a function of the recent recession. In fact, Thomson-Reuters stock appears to have begun its slide in mid-2007, before this recession was a recession. The stock price has recovered since March but not on par with the rest of the market. See for yourself - on the NYSE the Thomson-Reuters symbol is TRI.

3. Competitors have started coming out of the woodwork. Changes in research behavior at the lawfirm level may move the low cost research providers to the forefront. Readers may recall this post from September in which LOISlaw, the newly revitalized Kluwer-Wolters research system, figured prominently. You may recall from this January 1st post, the threat from the upstart Google Scholar LOJ as a first-choice free legal research research system cannot be ignored.

4. And, how long can West continue its current business model when major academic libraries like Stanford are reviewing their subscriptions of West print resources? When Stanford starts to cut subscriptions it won't be long before others follow.

New competitors, economizing customers, layoffs ... are these symptoms of the need for a minor mid-course correction or the beginning of a long term decline? Regardless, it seems clear that Westlaw needs to begin a serious review of its business model.

Google Scholar LOJ - Tectonic Shift in Legal Research?

2010-01-01T08:32:00.003-08:00

Many practitioners (and students) are still unaware of the new Google Scholar Legal Opinions and Journal (LOJ) search features. As we transition into the new year it is worth taking a moment to remind ourselves that this new legal research tool could become as popular as Google itself, i.e., a ubiquitous free "first search" tool for the legal community. If it does, it will certainly fulfill its promise of being a legal research game changer.

Researchers still need to become more familiar with LOJ. There have been several blog posts by law librarians about LOJ functionality and searching issues. For a quick refresher about how the new LOJ search works you should probably read this fine summary by David Tsai and Courtney Minick on LLRX.

Not unlike Google itself, the actual functionality of Google Schoolar LOJ will remain a secret but, with a little use, it has not been too difficult to figure out the broad strokes. The main problem will always be the same: as attorneys we are tasked with the difficult job of being accurate and thorough. Using Google Scholar LOJ does not change that obligation. We must still exercise care in using any search engine and Google Scholar LOJ is no exception. You might be able to find an answer by using LOJ; but, is it the right answer? You can certainly start with LOJ but you must be prepared to use traditional research methods to make sure you are being thorough.

Tracking the Congressional Response to Iqbal

2009-12-10T05:49:00.005-08:00

Last week's Senate hearings regarding the impact of Iqbal and Twombly (see posts here and here) were in aid of the Notice Pleading Restoration Act of 2009, S. 1504. The pending bill is reproduced here on the GPO website in PDF. The bill is mentioned in Senator Feingold's opening statement.

There are several new ways to track pending bills in Congress. You might be interested in using GovTrack.us or OpenCongress.org. Both allow for the free tracking of individual bills. You can see previous posts about these Web 2.0 tools here on LLRX, and here and here. Unfortunately, Thomas, while providing a feed for a daily digest and for Senate and House floor action, is not yet providing feeds for individual bills.

Senate Considers Iqbal Impact

2009-12-09T12:01:00.007-08:00

Hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee began last week to determine if legislative action would be appropriate to overturn the USSC rulings in Ashcroft v. Iqbal and its predecessor, Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly. You can find the relevant Judiciary Committee page here. Look to the right hand column to see links to PDFs of the recently posted prepared testimony before the Committee.

Look here for a post that contains excerpts from the hearings regarding the overall impact of Iqbal and Twombly. One witness went to far as to say that the decisions were "an assault on our democratic principles" (from the prepared testimony of John Payton, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund).

Interestingly, the testimony of Gregory Garre, former Solicitor General, addresses the actual impact of Iqbal on cases pending in federal court. That impact was also discussed here in a previous post.

Garre makes reference to and provides a link to the preliminary report prepared by its Rules Law Clerk for the Civil Rules Committee and the Standing Rules Committee Concerning the “Application of Pleading Standards Post-Ashcroft v. Iqbal.” Unfortunately, the link that Garre give to the report is broken (http://www.uscourts.gov/rules/Memo%20re%20pleading%20standards%20 Nov30.pdf.). Garre, in his testimony, maintains that it is too early to judge the effect of Iqbal.

Iqbal is apparently of sufficient interest and potential impact, however, that a Committee was established to study its effects...

Iqbal Impact Update

2009-11-24T09:53:00.005-08:00

Now, a little more than six months after the USSC issued its opinion in Ashcroft v. Iqbal, the impact of the decision is still being felt. Readers of this blog may recall a previous post indicating that Iqbal was arguably the most important case decided last term. That statement was based on the fact that Iqbal promised to have a systemic effect. To date Iqbal has not disappointed. It has been cited frequently by federal courts. A quick check using KeyCite shows -

1. A total of 7032 documents (cases, briefs, treatises, articles, etc.) have cited Iqbal.

2. Headnote 12, the headnote that deals with the new threshold test - to survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint must contain sufficient factual matter, accepted as true, to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face - i.e., the new "plausibility" test, has been cited by 2789 federal courts apparently for the purpose of examining plaintiff's case for possible dismissal.

3. Headnote 12 has also been cited by four state courts and one tribal court for the same proposition. States that have rules of civil procedure based on the FRCP may be moving to adoption of Iqbal or at least some consideration of the the viability of the Iqbal plausibility requirement to state procedural analysis.

Of course, Iqbal is a complex case that deals with many issues not the least of which is governmental liability. We can't tell without a close examination of all 2789 federal cases that apply Iqbal if it is being used solely as a means to dismiss cases. More likely, it is being used even-handedly to weed out factually weak cases. Regardless, it seems clear that every future Memorandum in support of a 12(b)(6) motion will have to cite it.

Lexis Apps On Your iPhone

2009-11-13T06:46:00.003-08:00

That's right. After Westlaw made Black's Dictionary into an iPhone app, Lexis has decided to do the same with Get a Document and Shepardize. Mixed reviews but it seems to be another step forward.

BTW, the iPhone app for Black's costs $49.99. The iPhone app for Shepard's is FREE as long as you have a valid Lexis ID and password.

LII Posts a Response to Berring

2009-11-08T14:24:00.002-08:00

Last week's post highlighted a WestCast video of Bob Berring talking about how commercial resources will endure while volunteer legal resources, like Cornell LII, will not. Well. Here's LII's measured response posted on YouTube. You might be interested in subscribing to the LII blog, here. There is also a post by Paul Lomio on the Stanford blog Legal Research Plus about his Advanced Legal Research class and the similarities of Bob Berring and Tom Bruce, here.

Berring on Free Legal Resources

2009-11-01T10:03:00.004-08:00

Here's a link to a short video of an interview with Bob Berring about the future of free legal resources. West posted it on YouTube and maintains a link to it from their blog here. If you read through the comments at the end of this post, make sure you get all the way to the end. Apparently, there will be another beer summit in D.C. in the near future.

Free resources are here to stay, voluntary or not. It is impossible to disagree with Berring about the value of the editorial features on both West and Lexis but the use of low cost / no cost resources may be the only way to stay alive in the current market. Watch the video for yourself and see what you think.

West has been making some interesting posts lately including one about how cases and headnotes are edited and published. If you are interested in developments in legal research you might be interested in setting up an RSS feed to their blog, Legal Current.

File Sharing Leads to Disclosure of House Ethics Report

2009-10-30T05:41:00.003-07:00

There are several reports out this morning regarding the leak of a preliminary report generated by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, aka the Ethics Committee. See the report on the NPR site here, and on the NYTimes site here.

Although one representative deemed this to be "cyber-hacking" it appears, instead, to be a simple case of a staffer releasing the report via a peer-to-peer file sharing site. Cyber-hacking would mean, of course, that the security of the Committee's electronic files had been breached. The Committee statement about the leak is here.

This is nothing new. There have been government leaks before. What is new is that the speed and ease of the dissemination of the leaked material was facilitated by use of the Internet in ways that Congress could not foresee. If the fired staffer had used a large enough email list he would have had the same effect. We can look for hearings and possible legislation on this issue. The answer is not to put additional restrictions on file sharing or to beef up their network. The answer is for Congress to vet its employees more carefully.

Wex - Substitute for Blacks Dictionary?

2009-10-28T05:49:00.002-07:00

For research purposes the answer is probably no. But for 1Ls who don't want to buy Blacks the answer may be yes.

Wex is the online dictionary/encyclopedia available on the Cornell LII website. The dictionary is here; the encyclopedia is here. Most students will find the Wex "all" browse page the easiest to use because you don't need to worry about variant spellings. There is a handy search function you can use if you like.

Why would this work for 1Ls? First, it's free; and free is good. Second, it's simple and simple can be very good when you are starting out.

But for those using the dictionary or the encyclopedia for research the latter reason is exactly why it is not yet suitable for anything but the most simple research tasks. As yet, there is insufficient material to handle any significant research. And, if you did use it how would you cite to it?

Wex works and works well. It does not appear to be the intended to be the ne plus ultra of legal research. As long as you know that, it is a valuable tool to add to your research and 1L study tool belt.

Searching HeinOnline

2009-10-26T05:15:00.003-07:00

There were two new posts late last week about more effective searching on HeinOnline. The first is from Shawn Nevers at the HWHLL Blog and a follow up from the HeinOnline Weblog.

It seems likely that the real reason why this mode of searching has become possible is because of Hein's efforts to improve the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) function thereby allowing dependable and reliable word searching.

Although Shawn and Hein are quite correct about the usefulness of the "new" search features the results display (the hit list) may still discourage many researchers. Most students (and faculty!) will continue to use the browse feature to find quality scans of law review articles and other materials that they have found using other search methods.

We are not ready to stop our subscriptions to WilsonWeb (Index to Legal Periodicals) or LegalTrac. Not yet.

Federal Agency Blogs

2009-10-25T09:01:00.003-07:00

Readers of this blog may recall previous posts about practitioner blogs here and here. The original post about the Native American Legal Update blog is here.

The latest niche current awareness service may be the federal government blogs available from an old favorite, USA.gov. The new government blog page is here. Obviously, not every blog is worth following, but for researchers interested in what their favorite regulatory agency is up to, this might turn out to be a new resource.

Are these posts nothing more than press releases? Some are. But the Department of Justice seems to be taking the idea of blogging seriously. Look at the right column for an array of Web 2.0 tools. And, here is a post about the recent memorandum sent to US attorneys about prosecuting medical marijuana cases. The new memorandum containing formal guidelines for federal prosecutors in states that have enacted laws authorizing the use of marijuana for medical purposes is set out in full.

Legal Kindle?

2009-10-09T05:40:00.004-07:00

West is now offering 29 of its legal publications on Kindle. The list includes such diverse offering as Scalia's book Making Your Case and the Nutshell on bankruptcy. Check out the press release here.

So. Where does the pocket part go?

TOH - TR Halvorson

CT Office of Legislative Research

2009-10-07T07:31:00.004-07:00

Connecticut's counterpart to the United States Congressional Research Service is the Office of Legislative Research. Like the CRS, the OLR is a non-partisan research service.

The reports on the OLR website are a potential source for Connecticut legislative history. Remember, the Assembly asked the OLR to prepare these reports so it is at least possible that the Assembly read them and had them in mind when enacting legislation. The OLR deals with Reports in distinct ways:

OLR posts recent reports here. Right now, the reports for September are available. These include, inter alia, newly issued reports on Strict Liability, Boater's Liability Insurance and more. Selected past reports are here. Right now, these include reports from August. "Backgrounder" reports are here. These are reports that cover issues of long term interest.

Reports are searchable by topic and there is an archive of past reports and other documents generated by the OLR. Finally, you can search the reports by full-text here.

Next time you are trying to decide what the Connecticut Assembly had in mind when it passed a new law, see if there is an OLR report that can help you.

Law Schools Cutting Part-Time Programs

2009-10-07T07:06:00.003-07:00

As Brian Leiter says, this was certainly predictable. As Leiter points out here, at least one law school, dismayed with its recent US News & World Report ranking, has decided to cut back its evening program by limiting admissions. The school is George Washington and their blog post is here. By admitting fewer evening students George Washington apparently hopes to regain its former #20 ranking. Since the new USN&WR rankings (which factored in part-time students separately) were unveiled, George Washington slipped to #28.

Three things to notice:

1. As a group evening students have traditionally had lower GPAs and LSATs than day students. By having higher admissions standards for part-time students it is at least theoretically possible to maintain (or regain) a higher ranking.

2. Having evening students with higher GPAs and LSATs also has the side benefit of maintaining a higher part-time program ranking. Now that USN&WR ranks the part-time programs separately I suppose there will be a race to the top in that catagory.

3. It is somewhat disingenuous for the GW administration to claim that the change in the way the rankings were compiled was "unannounced." USN&WR telegraphed that change long ago for anyone who was willing to pay attention.

Discrimination Against Laid Off Lawyers?

2009-10-05T15:38:00.003-07:00

Possibly. Here's an interesting post from today's Above the Law. The article says that some firms that are hiring don't want to interview associates that were laid off because of the recession. In other words, if you got laid off for financial reasons, potential employers still think you were somebody else's problem...

Keeping Up with the USSC

2009-10-04T06:46:00.003-07:00

Today is the first Monday in October and that means it is time to become United States Supreme Court watchers. Not that we don't already do that. But, October is the time when we begin to pay even closer attention than usual.

And how to we begin to pay attention? How do we follow the Court? Staying current is always a problem for lawyers. We can read newspapers, listen to NPR, and watch the news on Fox television. But these generalized sources can be unsatisfactory. They do not give lawyers sufficient detail, analysis, or access to the primary documents to allow us to stay up to date.

If we are interested in one particular case we can, of course, set up an Westlaw or Lexis alert of some kind (and there are several kinds, all very effective). But if we want to follow the trends in the Court, see how the current Term of Court is progressing, or find about about issues that we might not have been aware of, we have to hew to some middle ground between popular media pablum and the laser-like and tunnel vision focus of RSS feeds.

Three ways of staying current with the general workings of the Court are immediately apparent.

First, there is the USSC website itself. Over the years this has been revised on several occasions. In fact, a new redesign appears to be in the works. The Court posts its own decisions its own docket calendar, short summaries of questions presented in pending cases and links to briefs and oral argument transcripts. Free.

Second, there is the BNA service, Supreme Court Today, a feature of US Law Week. BNA's product page is here. It is fair to say that Supreme Court Today is and has been the traditional current awareness service for the USSC; it continues to do a superlative job. Decisions are posted within minutes of filing and there are links to briefs and argument transcripts. There is also extensive analysis and summaries of pending cases. Law Week (into which Supreme Court Today is bundled) covers much more because it takes on the whole national legal environment.

Third, there is the relative newcomer - SCOTUS Blog with its direct links to SCOTUS Wiki. It also has analysis and summaries, full text decisions and briefs, and tracks the current docket. It also covers national law news. But it's free.

So which is better? If you are just interested in keeping track of the USSC which of these three will serve you best? Take a look and decide for yourself. This is a dark time for attorneys and the lure of free materials is strong. You may have to decide if your time is better served keeping current or in working on billable projects.

WestCast Shows How Headnotes are Generated

2009-10-03T11:51:00.003-07:00

Here's a somewhat revealing video posted to YouTube by West. This one describes how the headnotes for District of Columbia v. Heller (the DC gun control case) were generated and then assigned Topics and KeyNumbers.

ThomsonReuters is calling this a WestCast. This is clearly an attempt by West to utilize Web 2.0 to push their products. Despite the fact that the West employees seem like a pretty bland bunch this marketing device could be effective.

In the late 1970's, just when Westlaw was starting up, being chosen to go to Minneapolis to write and classify headnotes was a big deal.

New Challenge to Military Commissions

2009-09-12T09:03:00.002-07:00

Follow this link to a post on the SCOTUSblog about the latest challenge to the ongoing military commission trials taking place at Guantanamo. The new challenge argues that the Congress had no authority to set up the commission system. Regardless, the suit alleges, the commissions system unconstitutionally treats aliens charged with acts of terrorism differently than the way a US citizen would be treated. Four points to be considered outside the merits of the case:

1. Take a look at the Circuit Court's Order. The three judge panel is acting sua sponte to set the stringent time deadlines.

2. Note the time on SCOTUSblog post - 10:23 pm on Friday, September 11th. It appears that there was no story about this filing or the Court's ruling in any major US newspaper this morning. Thus, the informal and instant nature of blogs as news source continues to scoop the major news gathering services. And, this is an important ruling. The government must reply to this new challenge by noon next Tuesday, September 15th. This is a fast moving story and it will be interesting to see how quickly the news services cover it.

3. The blog post is accompanied by scanned copies of the original documents filed in the case. If you are interested in legal news, this is the kind of thing that helps you understand what is going on. Why rely on the analysis from a blog post or news story when you can read the documents actually on file with the court? You can make up your own mind about what's happening.

4. Somebody at the Office of the Convening Authority for the Military Commissions is going to be working overtime this weekend.

More Congressional Tracking via Web 2.0

2009-09-05T13:18:00.003-07:00

Since last week's post about using Web 2.0 to track Congress I've found two other blogs with posts about the same thing.

First, there is an excellent post by Peggy Garvin on LLRX here that reviews the recent changes in GovTrack.us and OpenCongress.org. She also reviews various Twitter feeds that focus on what happens to a bill after it leaves Congress. Apparently, the Office of the Law Revision Counsel is tweeting as are others. Even better, she reveals new RSS feeds from Thomas that allow tracking of House floor action, Senate floor action, and the Daily Digest from the Congressional Record.

Second, the RIPS blog has a similar post here. Jason Sowards also details GovTrack and OpenCongress. He includes a new blog, MapLight, a site that tracks who gave what money to which legislator with what result...

Congress comes back from its August ("Townhall Meeting") recess next week, Advanced Legal Research and Specialized Legal Research classes are starting up, and many of these sources have made substantive changes over the summer. No wonder there are a veritable plethora of posts on these new resources. It will be interesting to see which ones last and which ones will continue to evolve.

9th Circuit RSS Feed

2009-09-04T17:38:00.002-07:00

So. How do you know when a federal Circuit Court has issued an opinion about a case that you've been following? There are two ways with the 9th Circuit:

First, the Court set up a general RSS feed to help practitioners, scholars, and reporters find out what cases have been decided each day. That feed can be subscribed to here.

Second, if you are following a particularly important and newsworthy case, you can subscribe to the Cases of Interest feed here. The Al-Kidd v. Ashcroft case was posted via this feed.

Unfortunately, there is a slight disconnect. The Al-Kidd case was not reported via the general feed (shouldn't that be every case?). And, the Mohamed v. Jeppeson Dataplan amended opinion (the extraordinary rendition case) was not reported via the Cases of Interest feed (isn't the rendition case considered a case of interest?).

Oh well. The Circuit Courts are just coming to the Web 2.0 world. There will be an adjustment period.

Iqbal Case Distinguished in Al-Kidd

2009-09-04T16:40:00.002-07:00

The 9th Circuit has ruled that John Ashcroft, former Attorney General, can be sued for post 9/11 detention abuses. In an opinion issued today, the 9th Circuit said that, unlike the Iqbal case, the plaintiff can show a concrete connection between his detention and Ashcroft's specific statements about the use of the federal material witness statutes. See a previous post about Iqbal here including a link to that USSC decision.

The 9th Circuit said that the claims made in Al-Kidd's complaint "plausibly suggest" that Ashcroft purposely used the material witness statute, 18 USC §3144, to detain suspects whom he wished to investigate and detain preventively. The Iqbal case, of course, set out what must now be considered the "plausibility standard" of review.

It is relatively easy to find recent opinions issued by federal Circuit Courts. All courts now have a website with links to their recent decisions. Here is the 9th Circuit opinions page. In this instance it was also easy to find the relevant code section. It is mentioned specifically in the opinion but can be found in full at the CornellLII US Code Collection page using the browse feature. And, its all free...

Stevens to Retire from USSC?

2009-09-04T07:29:00.003-07:00

Idle speculation or fact? Here's a post from SCOTUS Blog that links to others about the possibility of Justice Steven's retirement.

Read this news with a grain of salt. Is the number of clerks hired a real indicia of Steven's intent to retire? Or, are we just reading tea leaves?

LOISLaw Gains Ground

2009-09-04T05:40:00.005-07:00

It should come as no surprise that LOISLaw, a Wolters-Kluwer online legal search engine, is gaining favor among financially stressed law firms. Check out this ATL article that ran in February. One major firm, Locke, Lord, Bissel & Liddle (sounds like a small, philosophical yet religious vacuum cleaner) issued a memo to its attorneys requiring the use of LOIS before using Westlaw or Lexis in non-billable situations.

You might also take a look at this post by Julie Jones on the official blog of the UConn Law Library. Not only does she link to the ATL article but to a recent article on law.com that addresses how firms are saving money by gathering metrics on DB use.

Better still, take a look at this survey compiled in 2008 by Paul Lomio and Erika Wayne from the Stanford Law School library. You will find that a substantial number of responding law firms (about 30%) wanted LOISLaw taught as part of a legal research curriculum.

And now for the caveat - LOIS is really a database for primary law research. There are some secondary source materials available on LOIS but not enough for most thorough researchers. Should this deter a researcher from starting with LOIS? No. Here's a quote from the LLB&L memo:

It [LOIS] is not viewed as a substitute for Lexis or Westlaw, but as a tool to be used to familiarize yourself with precedent related to new cases or issues or simply to find cases, statutes or regulations.

Looks like good advice from a managing attorney with two goals: saving money and providing good client research service.

Web 2.0 Goes to Work Tracking Congress

2009-09-01T05:51:00.002-07:00

In the next few days, this blog will discuss a series of new Web 2.0 tools that can be used to track Congressional activity. We are all familiar with Thomas, the website developed by the Library of Congress. These are new kids on the block, many have been developed in the last year, some in the last few weeks.

For today, consider setting up an RSS feed to some of the tracking available through GovTrack.us. This is another official site from our government. And, they freely admit to using material from Thomas. But, GovTrack.us makes use of a veritable plethora of Web 2.0 tools to allow tracking bills, resolutions, the activities of members of Congress, voting records, actions by Congressional committees.

You can set up RSS fees and add widgets to your own webpage. That last feature is of particular interest to practitioners. Many firms that with a niche practice set up a webpage to keep their clients informed about recent developments in their practice area. This new feature from GovTrack.us allows you to put a widget on your site to channel relevant information to your clients.

And, if you and your clients are into social networking, there is nothing stopping you from putting that widget on your Facebook page. Web 2.0 feeds off of Web 2.0...

It's a whole new world out there.

Most Important Case of Last USSC Term - Iqbal

2009-08-31T05:44:00.004-07:00

It now appears that the most important case decided by the USSC last term will be Ashcroft v. Iqbal. This case clearly resets the standard for filing a complaint in federal court. You can see it on the USSC site or at 129 S.Ct. 1937.

Under the terms of FRCP 8 the only requirement for a complaint is that it contain a "short and plain statement of the claim." This has been the standard since the FRCPs first came into existence in 1938. Under Iqbal, however, the complaint must now contain a "plausible claim for relief." Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 1950. To make that determination requires the federal District Court ''to draw on its judicial experience and common sense.'' This is carte blanche for any District Court to dismiss a case that does not plead specific concrete facts.

A quick review of KeyCite or Shepard's will show that Iqbal has been cited by 1388 times, primarily to support the dismissal of a complaint in federal court. So far, only three courts have declined to extend the case or have distinguished it.

This seems to be a case that was determined by the Court on the basis of its political underpinnings. According to Justice Kennedy, all that the Iqbal complaint plausibly showed ''is that the nation's top law enforcement officers, in the aftermath of a devastating terrorist attack, sought to keep suspected terrorists in the most secure conditions available.'' Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 1952.

Although the USSC is a political body, it seems to have carried this political ruling too far into the realm of practical law.

Proliferation of Practitioner Blogs Continues

2009-08-29T12:46:00.002-07:00

Readers of this blog will recall previous posts here and here about the trend toward current awareness through niche practice blogs. Here's another one to consider - California Securities Fraud Lawyer Blog. This one is from the Acala Law Firm.

If you were practicing in this niche area wouldn't you want to know about posts to this blog? Practitioner blogs may never fully replace other more formalized current awareness mechanisms. Still, this is exactly the kind of blog that should make BNA think about what they are producing and how much they are charging for it. Look for more niche blogs like this...

Meanwhile, Joe Hodnicki at the Law Librarian Blog continues to post links to practitioner blogs. Using one blog to find others. Is that a Web 2.0 idea or what?

Latest Westlaw v. Librarian Tempest

2009-08-28T05:37:00.002-07:00

Here's the latest spat between Westlaw and the Law Librarian community. ATL has posted an article about the Westlaw advertisement sent to thousands of lawyers.

In what must be the most bone-headed decision since the Dred Scott case Westlaw decides that attorneys who consult their firm librarians are wasting their time. Everyone knows that West delivers everything you need to do legal research right to your desktop. Right? They don't mention the material available only on Lexis. They don't mention all of the free online research resources. Oh, and why did we buy all those books for the law firm library?

Considering yesterday's post you might be right in thinking that Westlaw is getting a little desperate.

Stanford Law Library Cutting West Publications

2009-08-27T09:28:00.002-07:00

It should come as no surprise. West is pricing themselves out of the market. Paul Lomio, Director of the Stanford Law Library explains his rational here.

If this develops into a trend will Lexis see a resurgence of its fortunes? Hmmm. Don't forget that they have all of the Matthew Bender secondary material - a very powerful research tool.

BTW, Lomio's blog, Legal Research Plus, does an excellent job of tracking the fortunes (and misfortunes) of the legal research world.

You Know Its Real When...

2009-08-27T04:00:00.002-07:00

Well. You know the market for new associates is tough when it becomes national news. Take a look at this article from the first page of the NYTimes Business section.

But, read closely before falling into despair. The downturn in hiring affects large firms, i.e., the ones paying those mega-salaries. Now is the time to consider exploring other options - a smaller firm, a judicial clerkship, an in-house position.

Legal Profession Responds to Technology (at last)

2009-08-25T05:22:00.003-07:00

Nicole Black, in a short article on LLRX, analyzes the slow acceptance of technology by lawfirms. According to her the big firms are the big losers right now - the small boutique firms are reaping the benefits of embracing emerging technology. How will it all end? She has some interesting predictions.

If you are interesting in technology and the law you should take a close look at LLRX.com and subscribe to their RSS feed. Their tag line is - "Law and technology resources for legal professionals." Law truly is a profession that is driven by information.

Practictioner Blogs - the Future is Now

2009-07-18T16:19:00.003-07:00

As the very nature of legal information changes it seems obvious that outliers or fringe reporters will proliferate - particularly in the area of current awareness. From Joe Hodnicki's Law Librarian Blog follow the links to two good examples of what is possible: the San Diego Criminal Attorney's Blog and the Florida Mortgage Modification Lawyer Blog. Both are excellent non-traditional current awareness tools.

Readers of this blog may remember the post about the Native American Legal Update Blog made back on January 17th. Niche blogging appears to be the future of current awareness.

This is how ATL and SCOTUSBlog got started. From small beginnings come great things.

NPR - Best Sotomayor Daily Wrap?

2009-07-14T16:32:00.003-07:00

NPR provides a truly comprehensive summary of each day's activities at the Sotomayor confirmation hearings. Check out the wrap from today. You'll find analysis, photographs, links to related stories, and audio links to the day's testimony.

Audio of hearings is also available on the Judiciary Committee's Webcasts Archive here. Since coverage is gavel to gavel, the official webcasts are the full record. NPR's coverage divides the audio into discrete organized sections, e.g., Senator Leahy Defends Sotomayor Against Allegations of Bias - a 1 minute 40 second speech. You need to decide if you want sound bites or the full meal deal...

Sotomayor Hearings Witness List

2009-07-11T16:39:00.003-07:00

Senator Leahy's office has issued a witness list for Monday's hearings. You can find it here on Leahy's site. You can also find it here on the Judiciary Committee's site. Note that Frank Ricci is listed as a minority witness. Is that ironic or what?

Three Websites to Watch During Sotomayor Hearings

2009-07-09T05:28:00.003-07:00

This is certainly not an exhaustive list. These three sites seem, instead, to be dedicated to coverage of the entire process. Their reportage seems to be unbiased, relevant and timely.

Blog of LegalTimes. They are doing reporting like this: Law Professors Line Up Behind Sotomayor and this: ABA Committee Sotomayor Top Rating.

SCOTUSBlog. Of course. They are posting like this: Over 1000 law professors join letter endorsing Sotomayor. Take a look in the right hand column for links to other stories.

The National Law Journal. 12 Things to Watch at Sotomayor's Hearing.

High quality current legal information continues to move inexorably, relentlessly online