Law Librarian Blog

Do lawyers still advertise in the Yellow Pages in the age of Web 2.0?

That's the question being asked on the Lawyerist Blog.

The Yellow Pages has never seemed like a particularly good investment—for me, at least.

A colleague in a similar line of business–and therefore a good test case for the kind of clients I am after—does use the Yellow Pages, and reports getting only a couple of leads per month. In fact, I have not heard any Yellow Pages success stories in a very long time, except from the occasional criminal defense or personal injury lawyer with a full-page spread.

The blogger has asked readers to comment and some of the observations are quite interesting.  Here's a sampling:

1.  "While the struggles of some [Yellow Pages] have been well documented, I think to broad stroke the entire industry as dead is a mistake. . . . .  The value prop is that there are millions and millions of people searching for products and services through various different methods.  [The Yellow Pages] needs to have a complimentary set of offerings that give your customer the most targeted exposure at an affordable investment. . . .   There’s a ton of value in [Yellow Page] and I expect as the good ones re-invent themselves, they will continue to be major players for a long time."

2.  "I showed my teenage kids the yellow pages, and they looked at it like, what is that for, and why would anyone use it? If it’s not online, they are not interested. That’s the future. They have also never used a card catalog, and they don’t have much experience with dictionaries or encyclopedias either."

3.  "Last year I spent AUS $60,000 on a full page spread in my city’s Yellow Pages (Perth, Western Australia) – including advertisement under Solicitors, Barristers & Debt Collection Agents. We also advertised in Country WA Yellow Pages – all regions.

I cannot think of a single client that was brought in by this. No doubt we got some phone calls, but the conversion rate was very low. I tend to think that if people go to YP – then they are shopping around, and if that happens you have to come from behind to win the client.

All of our success stories, came from other sources of work.

I think clients are more computer savvy these days – and the YP is overpriced & obsolete. Furthermore, online marketing levels the playing field. While Google and Facebook certainly have market share now – the market quickly changes as soon as these search engines/social networking sites become ‘old hat’ and the next ‘cool’ thing comes along."

You can read the rest of the article and reader comments here.

(jbl)

 

 

Amount of time Americans spend on social networking sites up 6% from last year.

SiliconValley.com is reporting that according to a recent Nielsen survey, Americans are spending 17% of their internet time on social networking and blogging sites like Facebook and Blogger, respectively. This represents a 6% increase from last year. Further, the report estimates "that ad spending on leading social-network and blogging sites more than doubled year over year, to about $108 million for the month. This happened even as several industries decreased their overall ad spending."

You can more about the Nielsen findings here.

Hat tip to BNA Internet Law News.

(jbl) 

Google Scholar Bad for Scholars, OK for Everyone Else?

Peter Jacso has an interesting article in Library Journal, Google Scholar's Ghost Authors, Lost Authors, and Other Problems.  He cites an even more interesting essay by Geoffrey Nunbeg, Google's Book Search:  A Disaster for Scholars, published in the Chronicle of Higher Education.  The common complaint, and I admit up front that I am generalizing extensively, is that metadata for entries in Google Scholar and Google Books is a mixed bag with a significant number of wrong associations; that automatic scanning and/or crawling leads to inaccurate author and date attribution due to bad parsing of the digital object; and that citation counts listed with results in Scholar are wildly unreliable, among other complaints.

As a librarian, I'm shocked, but I'm not.  It should offend my sense of order and classification for a random pile of books and articles hiding on myriad servers scattered across any number of continents.  I'm not shocked because there is still value in locating material by keyword search, as lowest common denominator that technique may be.  I recognize that scholars have an investment in their work, its proper attribution, and the level of distribution afforded by the copyright laws.  Books and Scholar, however, are not simply the playground for scholars to look up their own works and to see who cited it.

The mainstream educated public uses these tools to locate relevant material on a subject for one reason or another.  For the majority of these people, the results they get, sadly, are good enough for them.  Tim Barton (head, U.S. division of OUP), in his essay (Chronicle of Higher Education subscription required) defending the Google Book Settlement noted a study where college students cited an older volume as part of a research project even though there were more recent writings.  Why? Because the older work was in Google Books.  From a scholar's standpoint this is either good, because a previous work on the subject is uncovered for review, or bad, because students limit themselves to what is easily available as opposed to possible.  This is not so different from the same individual walking to a shelf in a library and pulling different volumes and limiting their research to what is there.  Google Books and Google Scholar may actually be better alternatives because it transcends library locations and holdings.  This may not satisfy the scholar but it does seem to satisfy the student.  Feel free to shake a few heads in dismay at the reality underneath that statement.  

Google does understand the problem.  Jon Orwant, the manager for the Google Books metadata team detailed some of the metadata problems in a comment response to a blog post by Nunberg on the Language Log.  Orwant says that a lot of the mistakes come from commercial companies that provide metadata to Google.  It is hard for them to reconcile incorrect data when presented with alternative information.  Library catalogs seem more standardized what with copy cataloging.  There are regular revisions to catalog metadata, and these are conducted by humans rather than machines.  But Google is not a library, and Orwant pretty much says that as part of his statement.  Nonetheless, Google remains sensitive to the inaccuracies and works to correct them.  Orwant's comments address Google's responses to metadata issues.  That may not please those who expect perfection straight up.  Many people who use Books and Scholar don't use that standard in measuring their value to them.

I want to be clear that I'm not advocating sloppy research habits with these points.  Different factors affect the research process, including how much time is available, what are the accessible resources, the cost factor for viewing a book or article, and how that measures against the need for the actual substance.  Books and Scholar works in this context for most people with a problem to solve.  If, for example, a librarian is looking for a maritime case from a volume of Nova Scotia Reports published in the 1850s and it shows up for download in the first several pages of results in Google Books, that should be a small victory no matter how accurate the metadata may be.  Let the scholars say "meh."  [MG]

An Aha Moment for William Safire

William Safire died Sunday. He was 79. Those of us old enough to recall, those of us full of senior moments, will remember that he wrote many of President Nixon's speeches on the economy and Vietnam who became a Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist for The New York Times. Today, he is most likely to be remembered for his New York Times On Language column, a "Malaprop’s treasury of articles" as characterized by this New York Times obituary. A collection of Safire's On Language columns published in The New York Times can be found here.

Politics still played out in Safire's On Language columns, See, for example, Safire's September 3, 2009 column entitled Channeling. It was prompted by Hillary Clinton's "I'm not going to be channeling my husband" response to a Congolese student's question that was translated as “What does Mr. Clinton think through the mouth of Mrs. Clinton? ... ” In that context, one finds the Secretary of State's response to be much more understandable than the fevor it caused in the unthinking press.

The Times will be hard-pressed to find someone to replace this oracle of language for what was my most favorite column in the newspaper. On Language Columns by others who filled in for Safire from time to time never hit the bulls-eye as consistently as Safire did.

In Memory of William Safire's Career

Senior moment is growing riper as the population ages, especially in its association as precursor to the aha! moment. ... We forget. But after that embarrassing senior moment, perhaps — in “a payoff to daydreaming” — another, happier instant flashes on like one of those cool, compact fluorescent light bulbs: the aha! moment.

From Safire's On Aha and Senior Moments. See also the New York Times slideshow presentation, The Career of William Safire, for more memories. [JH]

C.U.N.Y. Law School Gets a New Home

In the news today, the City University of New York announced that it has found a new home for this Queens, N.Y. based law school with a special mission: public interest.  As a resident native of N.Y.C., I am particularly pleased that an arrangement was made for C.U.N.Y. Law to move into a 14-story green building in Long Island City, Queens (just a hop, skip, and a jump from Manhattan).  The current location of the school makes it difficult to travel to school for the aspiring lawyers who intend to work for the public good upon graduation.  In addition, the building needed significant refurbishing.  Congratulations to Library Director Julie Lim as well as the Deans and faculty at C.U.N.Y. for making this happen. It will be so much easier for me to visit Julie now! (VS)

American Lawyer's The Global 100 Law Firms for 2009 Released

A snip from the lead story, The Great Game by Richard Lloyd, "our Global 100 rankings, compiled in conjunction with London's Legal Week, provide a glimpse of the impact of the financial meltdown on the world's largest firms ... The recession may force firms to assess their presence in some markets, but no one is expecting the expansion that dominated the past ten years to unravel."

Publicly available rankings include Most Lawyers 2009 and  Most Revenue 2009, For more, see the ranking's launch page. [JH]

Library of Congress Tests the Federal Cloud with DuraSpace Project

Federal News Radio's Francis Rose interviews LC's Bill LeFurgy about DuraSpace, a pilot project to store some LC records in the federal cloud. You can listen to the 14 minute interview here. Hat tip to ResourceShelf. For recent federal cloud computing developments, see LLB's Securing the Federal Cloud. [JH]

Copyright as Information Policy: Balancing Creative Works and Technologies Used to Duplicate and Manipulate Them

When it comes to issues of online infringement, copyright policy protects the incentives copyright has long served to provide authors, and at the same time facilitates the emergence of innovative Internet services and equipment that might be used to duplicate creative work. In Copyright as Information Policy: Google Book Search from a Law and Economics Perspective [SSRN] UCLA law prof Douglas Lichtman uses the Google Book Search litigation as a lens through which to study copyright law’s efforts to serve these two sometimes-competing masters. From the abstract:

The Google case is an ideal lens for this purpose because both the technology implications and the authorship implications are apparent. With respect to the technology, Google tells us that the only way for it to build its Book Search engine is to have copyright law excuse the infringement that is today by design part of the project. With respect to authorship, copyright owners are resisting that result for fear that the infringement here could significantly erode both author control and author profitability over the long run. I myself am optimistic that copyright law can and will balance these valid concerns.

Recommended. [JH]

Immersion Therapy for Professional Legal Education

If there's one professional education model that produces students with a firm grounding in professional education, it has to be found in the medical school-hospital residency system. Patients will die if freshly-minted MDs don't know what they are doing. In law, clients may just get bad legal advice, lose their lawsuits, or go straight to jail without passing Go if new JDs are left unattended. Playing Legal Monopoly is the ABA-AALS cartel's modus operandi; it is only restrained by the bar exam, the gateway to the JD labor market.  

In Legal Learning for Life: Legal Immersion Fluency Education, 43 Harv. C.R.-C.L. L. Rev. 605 (2008), Beth Cohen writes that "the law in general, and legal education in particular, are in urgent need of revitalization" ... "students who are immersed in the language and the culture of the law will become fluent in its nuances." From the article:

The concept of ‘thinking like a lawyer,’ the focus of traditional law school study, takes too narrow a view of how lawyers practice and the range and reach of legal work. Although critical legal thinking is important, it is merely one component of effective lawyering. In addition to learning how to ‘think like a lawyer,’ law school is the place where students learn the language of the law. As such, law schools should take advantage of the best known and most effective approach to learning a new language—the immersion method. The primary characteristic of the immersion method is teaching language and culture in contextualized combination. By creating an engaging learning environment where law students become fluent in the language and practice of effective and compassionate problem solving, the health and well-being of individual lawyers and the legal profession will improve.

The best way to learn a new language is to go to the place where the language is spoken. Therefore, adopting the approach of Legal Immersion Fluency Education, law schools, like good language immersion and student-exchange programs, will immerse students in the vast community of lawyering. Law students will routinely be living in the law by experiencing it in context, rather than spending time primarily in the classroom. This immersion into the community of lawyering includes, but is not limited to, integrating volunteer work, clinical work, externships, court visits, and shadowing practitioners into and throughout the legal education, breaking down the barriers that currently exist between doctrinal and experiential learning.

Total Immersion in the Life of the Law. It sounds like a good idea but is it good enough? I think it is too haphazard to leave solely in the hands of the legal academy; law schools have "been there, done that" but it isn't enough even though such experiential offerings are oftentime the most enjoyable learning experiences students have in law school. Something more formalized and rigorous along the lines of hospital residency progrmas would work better -- total immersion in the life of the law. Of course, law students might complain about adding a year to their education by having to participate before being let loose into the world but they probably would come out with better lawyering skills.

Formalizing the entire process nationwide sounds like a daunting task but it could be administered by the ABA and state bar associations and it could be a requirement for admission to the bar. It could also lead to a new outcome metric for law school accrediation standards, namely evaluation by participating full-time intern program employers. See LLB's earlier post, The "Long Walk" to Learning Outcomes Standard: Discussion Draft of ABA's Assessment of Learning Outcomes Standard Fundamentally Flawed in External Assessment Metrics.

Considering the current labor market for JDs, low-income employment for a year is participating law firms, federal and state agencies, legal clinics, etc., is a better alternative than unemployment. It certainly would lead to better law school "output," namely more qualified freshly-minted JDs. Unrealistic? Probably but see What's Old -- Legal Apprenticeships -- is New Again. [JH]

Kudos to Jack Borden

Texas attorney Jack Borden, 101, has been practicing law for the better part of 70 years and still spends about 40 hours a week at his office handling estate planning, probate and real estate matters. Last month, Experience Works honored Borden as America's Outstanding Oldest Worker for 2009. Here's an interview with Borden. [JH]

Rate Your Legal Resources Vendors: BNA, LexisNexis, West and Wolters Kluwer

The little survey I am about to ask you to take is just an attempt to see where the law library community stands with respect to our relationships with our vendors, the big two, LexisNexis and West, and the not as big but eager to increase market share two, BNA and Wolters Kluwer. It is an overly simplistic and admitting unscientific survey but it offers a little something for everyone by asking participants to rate legal publishing vendors by customer service, pricing and contracting, products and services value, and the impact our collection development decisions may have on our patrons' current research practices.

Like previous LLB polls, this one is idiosyncratic in the sense that the questions asked address issues that pop into my always befuddled head. They may not be the best questions -- my blog widow says I'm an idiot most of the time -- but they are the result of what happens when you think out loud in the blogosphere. This survey is a follow-up to LLB's (1) April 2009 Should LexisNexis and Thomson West Be Worried About the Economy's Turbulence? Results of the LLB Poll; (2) February 2009 Tough Times Ahead for Law Library Budgets poll results; and (3) recent email communications from some law librarians who prefer to response to blog posts directly to me instead of by adding comments to posts.

Responses need not be limited to one representative per institution. You may not have an opinion on every question but you probably have opinions for some and each question offers survey takers the opportunity to add their own narrative about the issue presented. Results will follow in about a month or so and republication of any comments will remain anonymous.

So here it is: LLB's Rate Your Legal Resources Vendors. [JH]

What Are "Online-Only Works"? Newspaper Association of America Comments on Copyright Office's Proposed Mandatory Deposit of Published Electronic Works Rule

As reported earlier in LLB, the Copyright Office is proposing to amend its regulations governing mandatory deposit of electronic works published in the United States and available only online. The amendments would establish that such works are exempt from mandatory deposit until a demand for deposit of copies or phonorecords of such works is issued by the Copyright Office. They would also set forth the process for issuing and responding to a demand for deposit, amend the definition of a ‘‘complete copy’’ of a work for purposes of mandatory deposit of online–only works, and establish new best edition criteria for electronic serials available only online.

Submitted comments are now online, including ALA-ARL's cursory comment that supports LC's proposed rule in an obligatory fashion. More interesting is the comment submitted by Newspaper Association of America  because NAA actually put some thought into its response. One snip:

The rule does not define "online-only works." It is not entirely clear whether or at what point, for example, a newspaper website that may be substantially different from the newspaper print edition would constitute an "online-only work" for mandatory deposit purposes, or for purposes of group registration practices such as group registration of serials or online-only newspapers.

See also the Association of American Publishers comments. The final date for receipt of reply comments has been extended to Friday, October 16th. [JH]

Legal Journalism, Then and Now: ALT's David Law Interviews Steve Brill, His Generation's Lat

David Lat, founder of Above the Law, was interviewed as part of the ABA Journal's Legal Rebels series recently. His blog now receives 8-10 million page views a month, with roughly 600,000 unique visitors a month. I never made the connection between ATL and American Lawyer until the ABA Journal asked Lat to interview Steve Brill who indeed is "in many ways, his generation's David Lat." I, for one, remember when Brill started publishing American Lawyer back in the days when National Law Journal and Legal Times were the primary outlets for legal journalism. Back then, American Lawyer was to legal journalism what  Rolling Stone was to music journalism when Rolling Stone first began publication.

The Lat-Brill interview covers how much legal journalism has and has not changed in the last 30 years. "For anyone interested in the business of law, the business of publishing or the business of blogging, these videos are well worth your time," writes Robert Ambrogi in Two Rebels of Legal Journalism Have a Chat. See also Bruce Carton's Legal Blog and Journalism Leaders Discuss 'New Media & the Law' post. [JH]

New and Updated GlobaLex Legal Research Guides

The September release of GlobaLex research guides covering international, comparative, and foreign law includes the following:

New:

• The Indonesian Legal System and Legal Research by Alamo D. Laiman, Ronald Lengkong, Sigit Ardiyanto, Dewi Savitri Reni

Updated:

• Researching Cameroonian Law by Charles Manga Fombad
• An Introduction to the Czech Legal System and Legal Resources Online by Michal Bobek
• The Basic Structure of the Ecuadorian Legal System and Legal Research by Maria Dolores Miño
• Researching French Law by Stéphane Cottin and Jérôme Rabenou

[JH]

Boston College Law Students Spoof Fitzgibbon's Anti-Gay Marriage Ad

And here it is:

Hat tip to ATL's Elie Mystal who is also reporting that BC law prof Scott Fitzgibbon has not responded to calls for public debate about the matter, has refused to answer questions from the Eagleonline, a publication for Boston College law students, but appears to be willing to discuss his views on gay marriage with laypeople. See LLB's earlier post for background: Back Inside the Cave: Eyebrows Raised Over Shadows Presented in Boston College Law Prof's Anti-Gay Marriage Ad. [JH]

Response to a Reader Question

A reader writes:

I don't know if you seen this yet, but the Wall Street Journal just published a great piece making an argument that Google -- considered a proponent of net neutrality -- isn't exactly an innocent bystander in the whole ordeal:

I think this segues into a few things; notably that while Google pretends to be against internet gate keeping, it does some questionable gate keeping of its own:

1. Google picks winners and losers online through a search algorithm that no one can see and that constantly changes,

2. Google discriminates in favor of corporate partners (through sponsored search results) and their own value-add services (by making YouTube videos, Google Maps results and other products prevalent in its search results), and

3. Google discriminates against protected political speech (countless examples here and abroad).

So the FCC has an important question to ask: as it considers revamping the rules of the online road, should it look at anticompetitve behavior among dominant Internet firms? The DOJ certainly seems to think so. And if the FCC believes antitrust law is sufficient to protect against misbehaving content/applications providers, is it not sufficient to curb bad behavior from ISPs?

If I can summarize the position of Holman Jenkins, author of the WSJ piece, it's that competition will force ISPs to offer the same type of wired access services over wireless connections (smart phones, tablets, and other portables) over time.  Net neutrality only protects the business model of Google and it's kind at the expense broadband providers.  The usual argument is that ISPs will have less incentive to innovate or invest in their networks if they are limited in how they can profit from them. 

Net neutrality proponents worry about providers becoming content providers (U-verse, for example) and favoring their own content over that of third parties.  Or, in the latest snit between AT&T and Google, would AT&T dare to up the ante and slow down connections to Google?  I doubt the latter, but if Comcast wins its suit against the FCC over slowing down peer-to-peer traffic, then the legal possibility exists that AT&T can do just that under the guise that Google/YouTube traffic exacerbates traffic congestion.  Oh, any by the way, AT&T partners with Yahoo as the portal of choice for its broadband customers.  Yahoo is the most visited web site on the web, but somehow AT&T never complains about the volume of traffic Yahoo generates.

Let's return to the points raised by our reader.  As for Google picking winners and losers, I suppose that's true in one sense.  Then again, so does every search engine.  If Bing is the first "decision" engine, I suspect that some sites will be disappointed by Microsoft's placement.  This has come up in lawsuits against Google, in fact.  In one suit where Google was accused of page ranking manipulation by lowering a site's location in results, the site conceded that Google had a First Amendment right to do so.  Note also that Google did this because the site tried to game Google's system to increase visibility for itself and its clients.  Slate called this Google's page ranking monopoly.  By that standard, every site is its own monopoly for the content it offers and its choice of display.  I have a monopoly on what I choose to address in a post.  There have been other cases, notably the Kinderstart case which also claimed Google harmed a site by lowering its ranking.  Plaintiffs tried to get the case certified as a class action.  It was ultimately dismissed because the Court found that any conduct on the part of Google does not significantly threaten or harm competition.  Yes, Google picks winners and losers.  Courts find that legal, so far.

Google has admitted in some of these proceedings that it may place competitor results lower than its own properties.  Courts were not shocked enough to do anything about it.  I assume that Microsoft, who defaults to Bing in every copy of Windows it sells, and Yahoo who would rather a searcher use Flickr rather than Picassa for photosharing are guilty of the same conduct.  If I remember my popular culture, Santa Claus was involuntarily committed to a mental institution for daring to suggest that a desired toy was at a competitor store in Miracle on 34th Street.  There is a long commercial history over favoring oneself when alternatives exist.

As to the third point, readers, help me out here.  I am aware of the China situation where dissidents were rounded up for political speech via cooperation of US search engines.  I'm not aware, however, of accusations that Google discriminates against political speech.  I would think, however, that our friends at Fox News, the Daily Show, and the Colbert Report might have concerns if Google was legally liable for favoring one view over another.  I think from a moral perspective, given the company's size and the number of people who use it, that Google would not want to be seen as an agent of censorship.  If any actions in this area by Google are beyond normal commercial practices all search engines favor, please send them to me.

The FCC certainly cares about competition, but I think the purview is not in content but in access to content.  The closest it has come in battles at the Commission is the media ownership rules for concentration in television, radio, and newspapers.  There are such a vast number of web sites out there promoting one idea or another that I can't see the FCC getting involved in web sites that compete on the basis of content or even search.  There are obvious Constitutional arguments against it.  The DOJ and FTC will get involved in market practices of the Internet giants.  Google's foray into book selling certainly got their attention.  The approach that the FTC and the DOJ will take will involve dominant market position for a type of business, internet advertising, book sales, search, etc.  Any proceeding by the FCC in the area of net regulation will certainly draw comments from these two agencies with their perspective on the outcome.

If I were an ISP, I would be worried more about Google buying one of them.  I doubt Google would do that, however.  Microsoft tried selling Internet access and it's just a money drain for them.  I think ISPs may have to be content (no pun intended)  with being the pipes.  I don't believe a metered Internet is in the cards here or anywhere else.  Tiered access charges based on speed and aggregate user download are possible, if reasonably priced.  The tests so far by Time Warner and others suggest the companies are both greedy and unreasonable.  The market alone could test these ways for pricing if there were more "pipe" companies in more places.  That's when the FCC would likely leave the ISPs to their own devices.  Broaden competition with more players in more places and you may have something.  [MG]

The "Long Walk" to Learning Outcomes Standard: Discussion Draft of ABA's Assessment of Learning Outcomes Standard Fundamentally Flawed in External Assessment Metrics

The Discussion Draft of the 300 Standards prepared by the Student Learning Outcomes Subcommittee of the ABA Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar's Standard Review Committee was made available at the Legal Education at the Crossroads Version 3.0: A Conference on Assessment, held September 11-13, 2009 at the University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law.

The 300 series of Accreditation Standards includes substantial changes, most notably the addition of Standard 303, Assessment of Learning Outcomes (reprinted below; the current Standard 303 would be renumbered as Standard 304). The Assessment of Learning Outcomes Standard features adaptations from Accreditation Standards and Guidelines for the Professional Program in Pharmacy Leading to the Doctor of Pharmacy Degree and Commission on Dental Accreditation's Outcomes Assessment.

Do note Interpretation 303-1. "Assessment activities and tools are likely to be different from school to school and law schools are not required by Standard 303 to use any particular tools." With respect to external assessment of learning outcomes tools, bar exam passage rates, placement rates, surveys of attorneys, judges, and alumni, and assessment of student performance by judges, attorneys or law professors from other schools "when properly applied and given proper weight, are among the tools generally regarded to be valid and reliable."

External Assessment Metrics for Measuring Learning Outcomes. While internal assessment tools may need to be law school specific, there is no need for external metrics to be so. The crux of the matter is the "when properly applied and given proper weight" provision. This is a huge gaping hole that allows plenty of room for law school gaming. Bar passage rates may not be subject to manipulation but unaudited placement rates are already gamed. Survey and performance assessment methodologies are sufficiently complex that one has to wonder whether the legal academy will turn to their on-campus counterparts in the education and opinion research fields for advice. Doubtful.

To make external survey metrics work, standardized tools need to be developed by the ABA-AALS cartel, required to be used by law schools, reported annually directly to the ABA, audited by the ABA, and publicly disclosed annually otherwise we might as well just reply on the Assessment Score by Lawyers/Judges found in the US News Law School Rankings.

Excepted from Discussion Draft:

Standard 303. ASSESSMENT OF LEARNING OUTCOMES
(a) A law school shall develop and carry out assessment activities to measure achievement of the identified learning and other outcomes and shall gather data demonstrating that its students have, by the time of graduation, achieved those outcomes. Consistent with sound pedagogy, the assessment activities must employ a variety of valid and reliable measures systematically and sequentially throughout the course of the students’ studies. A law school shall provide feedback to students periodically and throughout their studies as to their progress in achieving learning outcomes with a view towards encouraging proficiency in each student. There shall be broad-based involvement of the faculty of the law school in developing and carrying out assessment activities.

(b) A law school shall periodically and systematically evaluate its curricular structure, content, organizations and outcomes. As part of the review, a law school shall review whether the outcomes it has selected and the assessment tools it has selected are sufficient to ensure that its students are prepared to participate effectively, ethically and responsibly in the legal profession. The law school shall use the analysis of outcome measures and results for
systematic improvement of the curriculum and its delivery.

Interpretation 303-1
Assessment activities and tools are likely to be different from school to school and law schools are not required by Standard 303 to use any particular tools. Learning and other outcomes should be assessed using tools both internal to the law school and external to the law school. The following internal tools, when properly applied and given proper weight, are among the tools generally regarded to be valid and reliable to assess student performance: completion of courses with appropriate assessment mechanisms, performance in clinical programs, performance in simulations, preparation of in-depth research papers, preparations of pleading and briefs, performance in internships, peer (student to student) assessment, compliance with an honor code, achievement in co-curricular programming, evaluation of student learning portfolios, student evaluation of the sufficiency of their education and performance in capstone courses or other courses that appropriately assess a variety of skill and knowledge. The following external tools, when properly applied and given proper weight, are among the tools generally regarded to be valid and reliable: bar exam passage rates, placement rates, surveys of attorneys, judges, and alumni, and assessment of student performance by judges, attorneys or law professors from other schools.

See the complete text of the Discussion Draft in Steve Bahls' (Chair of the Student Learning Outcomes Subcommittee of the American Bar Association Section of Legal Education and Admission to the Bar’s Standards Review Committee) conference presentation entitled Shifting to an Outcomes Measure Approach for Accreditation Standards for Law Schools. Link to a video of his presentation here.

The ABA is only "beginning this long walk..." (quoting from the video).

Hat tip to Robert Richard's Legal Informatics Blog post, which includes links to many additional resources related to the Conference. [JH]

Academic Libraries of the Future: Little More Than Special Collections and Study Areas in 7 to 10 Years?

Daniel Greenstein, vice provost for academic planning and programs at the University of California System, told a room full of university librarians last week at Baruch College of City University of New York that the university library of the future will be sparsely staffed, highly decentralized, and have a physical plant consisting of little more than special collections and study areas according to this Inside Higher Ed report.

“We're already starting to see a move on the part of university libraries... to outsource virtually all the services [they have] developed and maintained over the years,” Greenstein said. Now, with universities everywhere still ailing from last year's economic meltdown, administrators are more likely than ever to explore the dramatic restructuring of library operations. Librarians in the University of California System take note. Greenstein predicted this transformation will only take 7 to 10 years to complete.

Some in the audience disagree. “I think that's not a very accurate depiction of what I see happening at research libraries,” said Deborah Jakubs, vice provost for library affairs at Duke University. “I see the exact opposite happening, that libraries are taking on new roles — [such as] working with faculty in introducing technology into teaching... there's a lot more intersection with libraries and faculty than he would lead you to believe.”

Someone better send Greenstein this link to JISC's documentary on academic libraries of the future before he eviscerates library budgets in the University of California System. 

Changing Harvard University Library System a Necessity. Meanwhile Bloomberg News is reporting that Harvard University President Drew Faust is "pushing to knock down traditional budgeting barriers among the school’s independent divisions, after the school lost $11 billion of endowment value last fiscal year." Harvard’s 70 libraries, for example, must work together to increase savings, she said in a campus speech. Snips from the Bloomberg report:

“Curious practices have grown up as the system has grown - - obstacles to sharing and coordination,” [Faust said]. Economic arrangements at the libraries discourage them from working together, she said.

“Change in our library system is not a choice, but a necessity,” she said. “We need to ensure that we make that change in the wisest way possible.”

[JH]

Demolishing PACER's Pay Wall One Brick at a Time

In case you missed it (sorry Erika, I did), check out Stanford Law School Library Deputy Director Erika Wayne's National Law Journal Article entitled What Public Access? Law School Libraries Should Not Have To Pay for PACER. Wayne argues that providing free access to PACER at federal depository libraries is an appropriate and very logical first step toward demolishing PACER's pay wall.

Even though PACER is operated by the U.S. government, and even though the records it contains are public records, most law school libraries simply cannot afford to give their students and faculty direct access to PACER. Why? Because using PACER can get expensive, and this makes PACER's "public access" debatable.

And a hopefully immediate second step would be the elimination of PACER charges at all public libraries regardless of federal depository status.

On recent PACER developments, see Wayne's Legal Research Plus post entitled Electronic Public Access Program/PACER Assessment Begun. See also Ars Technica's Federal courts now offer hearings online as MP3 files ("how should the courts charge for access to these files in order to cover bandwidth and other expenses? By length of the recording? Flat fee?") JH]

CRS Reports: The Long and the Short Takes on Federal Qui Tam Statutes

Qui Tam: The False Claims Act and Related Federal Statutes presents a "brief discussion" of the constitutional questions raised by qui tam provisions; of the history of such provisions; and of the three existing federal qui tam statutes—the False Claims Act as amended iby the Fraud Enforcement and Recovery Act of 2009, P.L. 111-21; the false marking patent statute, 35 U.S.C. 292; and the Indian protection provisions of 25 U.S.C. 201.

For Members of Congress and their staffers who don't have the time to read about qui tam legislation that has recovered more than $20 billion since 1986, CRS offers an abridged version "stripped of the footnotes, quotations, appendix, and most of the citations found in the longer report." See Qui Tam: An Abbreviated Look at the False Claims Act and Related Federal Statutes. Hat tip to beSpacific. [JH]