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August 31, 2010
The Debate, Again, On Teaching Lawyering Skills In Law School
The National Law Journal site published an article yesterday on one of my favorite topics: practical legal education. The article focuses on the article Preaching What They Don't Practice: Why Law Faculties' Preoccupation with Impractical Scholarship and Devaluation of Practical Competencies Obstruct Reform in the Legal Academy by Brent Evan Newton of the Georgetown University Law Center. Newton is concerned with the trend that law schools hire faculty who have little lawyering and practice skills. Their real job is to write interdisciplinary law review articles while teaching becomes a secondary purpose. The practice skills component is dumped on clinicians, legal writing instructors, and adjunct faculty.
As Newton says:
Especially at law schools in the upper echelons of the U.S. News & World Report rankings, the core of the faculties seem indifferent or even hostile to the concept of law school as a professional school with the primary mission of producing competent practitioners. Attempts by law schools to compensate for the decreasing number of tenure-track professors with practical backgrounds or inclinations by allocating practical teaching to a discrete, small pool of clinicians and LRW instructors and also by outsourcing such teaching to adjunct professors have not achieved and will not achieve a healthy balance within modern law faculties. Rather, such practical components of the faculty possess a separate-and-unequal status in the vast majority of American law schools. The gulf between the main faculty and these second- and third-class members of the legal academy in terms of practical experience and inclination is widening at the very time when it needs to be shrinking.
My own feeling is not to dismiss theoretical scholarship. It's not as if competent faculty member can't write theoretical articles about torts and yet teach concepts that contain ideas about procedure and evidence of a claim. Theoretical scholarship, by itself, however, does not inform the potential lawyer of what to do when writing the complaint and standing before a judge. Is this particular knowledge relegated to the form books and the legal encyclopedias? I also have question as to what extent theoretical scholarship actually informs the law, as in the law as it is created and enforced.
I attended a conference recently on how lawyers can work as effective lobbyists in Illinois. I had the opportunity to discuss the legislative process with legislators and the outside players. My impression was that what is written in the law reviews these days has little to do with policy considerations behind proposed laws. Dare I say it, my conversations with legislators and lobbyists who attended the conference suggest that a significant number of laws are proposed and written by people who have a direct interest in their passage with the sponsor acting as the vehicle to enactment. It's not necessarily a noble process, but nonetheless, a highly effective one. I'm also sure that this practice is not limited to Illinois.
For example, the RIAA and the MPAA are arguing loudly these days that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is not working for content producers. It's too much effort for them to search the Internet for infringement and file actions according the law, they say. The DMCA doesn't meet their expectations for protecting their business practices. They are actively lobbying for legislation to gut the DMCA's safe harbor provisions to give them a more convenient way to prosecute infringement. Put the onus on the ISPs and the sites, they say. I'm guessing the lobbying efforts by the trade associations will have more of an impact on future IP legislation than an article on the philosophical issues of criminalizing infringement within the copyright law.
The NLJ article notes Kristen Holquist as opposing Newton's views:
Writing on PrawfsBlawg, Kristen Holmquist, the academic support systems director at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, wrote that she is frustrated by the viewpoint that "the ideas explored in interdisciplinary scholarship — ideas at the intersection of law and psychology and economics and sociology, for example — are somehow irrelevant (or not very relevant) to 'practical' lawyering."
Her paper, Challenging Carengie, suggests that interdisciplinary approaches to legal teaching will offer a broader context to the concept of "thinking like a lawyer." The experience gained by expanding doctrinal teaching could better inform a law student/potential practitioner when advising clients working a practice. Law schools should not just teach doctrine, technique, and method, but expand by informing on the lawyer's role in society, which includes problem solving. That last point struck me, as many of the lawyers I know see problem solving in the context of their client's interest rather than the interest of society as a whole. Maybe there is room for teaching law as law, law as a skill, law as a business, and law as a way of framing societal interaction and produce productive lawyers. The effects of the current recession on law graduate hiring suggest that law school instruction is not the right mix, whatever it should be. [MG]
August 31, 2010 in Law School News & Views | Permalink | Comments (1)
LexisNexis Launches Another Integration with Microsoft Applications
Following up on the Spring launch of Lexis for Microsoft Office, comes LN's InterAction 6.0 for Microsoft Outlook. The service will launch in December 2010 and provides users with access to their firm’s InterAction CRM data directly within the e-mail, calendar and contact functions inside Outlook. See the "How InterActive 6.0 Works" section in the Company's press release.
Initially I didn't think much of Lexis for Microsoft Office, but I'm beginning to think this is a smart move that integrates in-house KN with Lexis resources. As for InterAction, who knows. Meanwhile, watch you email for webinar announcements ahead of the launch of Classic Lexis interface changes if you didn't see the demo in Denver. See also Coming Soon, The Interface of Classic Lexis Gets a Tweak. [JH]
August 31, 2010 in Products & Services | Permalink | Comments (0)
Legal eBooks and the Institutional Buyer: An LLB Poll on Use, Acquisition Interest and Market Penetration
Since the advent of full-text search in the late 1970s-early 1980s, law libraries have tended to be at the forefront of technological innovation in the provision of resources to its users. When one reads what general public libraries are doing with respect to eBooks, one has to wonder if law libraries are "behind the curve" in providing legal eBooks. By legal eBook, I am not referring to the fantasy island that is the "there's a legal app for that" mentality. Nor am I referring to research apps for providing access to reliable legal database search services, such as iPad apps for WestlawNext, Fasecase, etc. I'm referring to the legal eBook comparable to what is sold by popular, trade and textbook publishers regardless of distribution channels used.
Where Do We Stand in Use, Acquistion Interest and Market Penetration?Legal eBooks for purposes of this utterly unscientific LLB poll may include hornbooks and casebooks for instruction, primary source materials such as topical statutory, regulatory and court rule compilations, and secondary legal sources including but not limited to legal practitioner materials such as practice handbooks and treatises, etc. The below questions may not answer all facets of legal eBooks but the answers may be a measure of where we are and where we may be heading. As some of our major vendors start executing unannounced until shippped print format switcheroos like the one mentioned in yesterday's LLB post, law librarians can easily see where these print format changes are probably heading.
If you have a moment, please take our poll and thanks in advance for participating. Sorry about the ads. Our blogware provider's "improved" composing interface has made a mess of the free pollware we used in the past. If this pollware works and if the Blog Widow allows, future polls will be ad free. [JH]
NB: After voting, hit the back button to return to this post to take the next question.[JH]
August 31, 2010 in Academic Law Libraries, Collection Development, Electronic Resource, Government & Public Law Libraries, Law Firm News and Views, Law School News & Views, Polls, Products & Services, Publishing Industry | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 30, 2010
There is Still Time to Propose an AALL Program
I have bemoaned the lack of suitable AALL programming for private law librarians. So this year instead of just submitting my one program and leaving it at that, I have become a member of both the PLL Program Committee and the RIPS Program Committee. Deadlines for submitting to these committees are upon us and I am disheartened to see that there are so few submissions. I believe approximately 9 programs have been submitted to PLL and 8 programs submitted to RIPS. If you have an idea, its not too late. Rochelle Cheifetz and Jennifer Berman of the PLL Program Committee will take late submissions. I have also spoken with Kris Helge, Chair of the RIPS Program Committee and they will also take late submissions. But please keep in mind the deadline for submitting to AALL is September 15th and both Committees can make suggestions that will increase the chances of your program being selected. So please take this opportunity to make a difference in the programming.
Caren Biberman
August 30, 2010 in Education & Professional Development, Library Associations, Meetings | Permalink | Comments (1)
OED May Be Going All Digital
Reports are that the next editions of the venerable Oxford English Dictionary will skip the print stage and go directly to subscription based online access only. As this article in PC World notes, the second edition weighs in at 137.72 pounds for some 20 volumes compared to two-thirds the space of a CD-ROM for the same material. A subscription at $295 would pay for slightly more than 4 years of access compared to the cost of purchasing the second edition. I don't think I will miss the Compact Edition with the tiniest of tiny print and the magnifying glass should this come to pass.
The OED information website notes as well that the the dictionary's content will change somewhat with the launch of the new OED subscription site in December, 2010. One change will be the integration of the Historical Thesaurus of the OED. allowing readers to click through from entries to synonyms by date. More details on added functionality and differences are available at the OED Online Relaunch FAQ page. [MG]
August 30, 2010 in Books | Permalink | Comments (0)
U.S. News & World Report's measures compared
The Chronicle of Higher Education kicked off a series that will explore quality in higher education over the next few months. One of the accompanying pieces includes a fascinating interactive map demonstrating that each ranking entity has its own emphases and, in fact, few measures are shared by two or more ranking entities. The "measures" dialogue continues . . . [BA]
August 30, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)
A TR Legal Print Format Switcheroo: More to Come?
From last Friday's mail:
Dear Valued Subscriber
As a current subscriber you will notice a change in format with the update of this product.
This shipment contains a brand new pamphlet that replaces your current looseleaf binder and contents. [Yada Yada omitted]
The conversion to pamphlet format stems from customer feedback West received regarding the benefits of pamphlet over looseleaf format. [More Yada Yada omitted] You will no longer need to flip back and forth between the main content and the supplement to verify whether the material you are reading is current. [A lot more Yada Yada omitted]
Sincerely
West, a Thomson Reuters Company
In our little county law library, we received that form letter [Download full text here] with our shipment of the new "Summer 2010 Softbound Pamplets" for Ribstein and Keatinge on Limited Liability Companies that included instructions to toss the three volume "loose-leaf" set contents in the recycle bin because the twice yearly pamplets are how TR Legal will be publishing this work now. I wonder how many more of these letters we will be receiving in the coming weeks, months, etc. We also received a postcard "Customer Survey" that came with this unannouced until shipped format switcheroo. Is it just me or is TR Legal's new postcard-ing so 19th Century? What's next, telegrams?
Here's what I think about all this and no, I am not wasting any time to send in the postcard, because it is just another example of the one-way street that is TR Legal's rebranded "customer experience & education."
As for the so-called customer feedback, well there would be no flipping back and forth if TR Legal published inter-filed loose-leaf supplements but all the Company has been basically doing is spitting out pocket-part supplements for many of its titles with three holes punched in the pages. As you can read above in the filled-out but not worth my time to send postcard, there are some but limited exceptions to this printing practice and LexisNexis is doing the same thing with some of its titles.
Do note, TR Legal may be having a fire sale on Ribstein and Keatinge on Limited Liability Companies. At least as of last Friday something -- loose-leaf or pamphet edition -- was being offered on West's website bookstore at a discount. Image below annotated with a "Buyer Beware" caution.
Endnote. Apparently Bob Azman, Senior Vice President of Customer Experience & Education, has decided it is unwise to have his name slapped on a TR Legal boilerplate letter to institutional subscribers.
Correction: As we were packing up the pamphlets for return to West, we found a CD. [JH]
August 30, 2010 in Products & Services, Publishing Industry | Permalink | Comments (3)
August 29, 2010
Round-Up of Practitoner Blogs
Tax Controversy Lawyer Blog
http://www.taxcontroversylawyerblog.com
http://www.taxcontroversylawyerblog.com/index.xml
Examines tax law cases, news and opinions in South Carolina. Published by the Turner-Vaught Law Firm, LLC.
Jacksonville Immigration Attorney Blog
http://www.jacksonvilleimmigrationattorneyblog.com
http://www.jacksonvilleimmigrationattorneyblog.com/index.xml
Covers immigration law news, legislation and reports in Florida. Published by Lena Korial-Yonan, PA.
New Jersey Employment Lawyer Blog
http://www.njemploymentlawfirmblog.com
http://www.njemploymentlawfirmblog.com/index.xml
Provides opinion on employment law news, cases and legislation in New Jersey. Published by Resnick & Nirenberg, PC.
New York Criminal Lawyers Blog
http://www.new-york-criminal-lawyers-blog.com
http://www.new-york-criminal-lawyers-blog.com/index.xml
Discusses criminal law cases, reports and opinions in New York. Published by the Law Offices of Michael H. Joseph, PLLC.
Atlanta Veterinarian Blog
http://www.atlantaveterinarianblog.com
http://www.atlantaveterinarianblog.com/index.xml
Provides insight on veterinary care news, treatments and opinions in Georgia. Published by the Four Paws Animal Hospital.
August 29, 2010 in Web Communications | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 28, 2010
"Good Earner" Joins the TR Legal "Family:" Launch of Findlaw UK
Findlaw UK was launched earlier this month. On Binary Law, Nick Holmes writes:
[I]t’s uninspiring and unoriginal and will add little to human web-happiness. Let’s be honest this site exists to churn out “good” content which will be well regarded by Google, attracting punters who won’t find answers on the site but many of whom will ultimately use the Contact Law (or other) service on the site thus earning FindLaw commissions.
One of the few bright spots in TR Legal's "family" is repeated references to Findlaw's revenue and earnings growth in its financial reports these days. No doubt Findlaw UK will be a "good earner" to quote Tony Soprano. Do take a look at the UK site and compare it to Findlaw US. Personally I think the UK site is better designed. [JH]
August 28, 2010 in Products & Services, Publishing Industry, Web Communications | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 27, 2010
Northwestern Law's Dean Van Zandt Appointed President of The New School
Yesterday, The New School announced that David Van Zandt, dean at Northwestern's School of Law since 1995, has been appointed its eighth president, effective Jan. 1, 2011. Hat tip to Chicago Law's Brian Leiter who writes
Van Zandt was going to be on [my list] of 'ten' transformative law school Deans over the last decade. I won't preempt everything I plan to say then, but will observe that very few law school Deans have stamped a law school with as clear an identity as Van Zandt did during his tenure. It will be interesting to see whether his successor tries to change course or to build on the directions on which Van Zandt launched Northwestern over the last decade especially.
Anyone beside me thinking DePaul Law's ousted dean Glen Weissenberger would be a good appointment at Northwestern? See LLB's post, Honesty Not the Best Policy at DePaul: Law Dean Fired for Disclosing Required Information to ABA Accreditation Committee; Associate Dean Resigns in Protest. [JH]
August 27, 2010 in Law School News & Views | Permalink | Comments (0)
Firday Fun: "Just Don't Ever Make a Mistake:" Control-Self-Delete
Advice from Stephen Colbert ... get rid of your friends, family, and everything you have ever searched on the Internet using Google after you have surgically disfigured your appearance. Sound like good and pretty comprehensive advice circa August 24, 2010. Hat tip to LLB's co-editor, Mark Giangrande. [JH]
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| The Word - Control-Self-Delete | ||||
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||||
August 27, 2010 in Friday Fun | Permalink | Comments (0)
Friday Fun Part 2: Welcome the New 1Ls and First Year Associates with This "I Can Read You Mind" Test
And an explanation of how the test works here. [JH]
August 27, 2010 in Friday Fun | Permalink | Comments (0)
Beyond the Walled Garden of Very Expensive Online Legal Research: Glassmeyer's Law Student Guide to Free Legal Research on the Internet with a no opt-out required offer to TRI's Tom Glocer
If you missed Sarah Glassmeyer's recent law-lib post, do check out her Law Student Guide to Free Legal Research on the Internet. It is sponsored by Cornell's Legal Information Institute and Justia and is hosted by CALI. It is meant to provide alternative online legal resources to WEXIS offerings in a way that may attract law school students to look beyond the walled garden.
Glassmeyer's Guide includes a librarian section that will provide teaching and instructional resources to introduce law students and practitioners to the world beyond WEXIS. Do note that the librarian page includes is a brief survey on how, when and if you teach free law resources. Please take the 30-seconds to fill that out. It will help Sarah and the developers of this guide figure out what resources they should be providing.
For additional information, see Austin Groothuis' inaugural blog post, and Sarah's blog post. In her post, Sarah writes:
Here’s a couple things I believe:
- There are several providers of free legal information out there that are reliable enough to recommend to my patrons to use.
- Librarians need to collaborate and communicate more with information vendors – all information vendors…Wexis, ILS providers, independents and non-profits.
- Most legal research educational materials suck. They’re dry and the publisher bias contained within some is almost laughable.
- Legal information vendors use tactics to get law students hooked on their products that would make a drug dealer blush.
Sarah v. Tom. I would like to see someone debate those issues with Sarah because my money is on her kicking the opponent's butt. Perhaps TRI's CEO Tom Glocer would accept an invitation to debate Sarah at Philly (Cream Cheese or Cheesesteak?) 2011: Transparency and Accountability in the 21st Century or care to comment to her blog post; here's the link, Tom.
Alternatively, Glocer could accept LLB's open invitation to legal vendors to answer the question, "What does LAW.GOV mean to you?" Because he's one busy guy, here's some background reading just in case Tom is up for this unsolicited offering from the catalog of institutional buyer issues -- no need to return an opt-out postcard:
- For Westlaw and Lexis, an AOL Moment: Fastcase's Ed Walters on LAW.GOV
- The Mindset Divide: Distinguishing Between Traditional and Non-Traditional Legal Information (Professional Services) Vendors
Does anyone really think someone from TR Legal would debate Sarah or accept LLB's invitation?
Endnote. Do feel free to contact Sarah at sarah.glassmeyer(at)gmail.com to offer your suggestions or constructive criticism of Law Student Guide to Free Legal Research on the Internet. [JH]
August 27, 2010 in Electronic Resource, Legal Research Instruction, Publishing Industry | Permalink | Comments (0)
Top 10 Law Faculty Based on American Academy of Arts & Sciences Membership
Chicago Law School's Brian Leiter reports on the ten law schools with the highest percentage of faculty elected to one of the scholarly sections of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences here. The list ranges from #1 Yale with 36% of faculty (6% of AAAS members are over the age of 70) to #10 Duke with 8% (25% over the age of 70). Leiter writes
the Academy tends to be a bit “chummy”—schools already “rich” with members get “richer,” not always on the merits—though the sins tend to be of omission rather than inclusion. Faculty also tend to be elected later in their careers (though, on average, female faculty are elected at younger ages than male faculty) and untenured faculty are never elected.
[JH]
August 27, 2010 in Law School News & Views | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 26, 2010
New Google Phone Call Service Works Well
Google yesterday added the ability to make free or low cost phone calls to Gmail. Calls to the United States and Canada landline or mobile phones are free, while international calls are very low cost. Some international calls to landlines are 2 cents per minute or less. The option to make calls appears in the chat list, just below the Gmail account holder's name. The first -time click sends the user to a page to install drivers. The installation is painless and simply requires a browser restart. Clicking on the link this time brings up a dialer. Calls use the computer's speaker and attached microphone to make the call. It's that easy. Upgrading the account to Google Voice gives the computer the ability to receive calls as well. That upgrade is free for U.S. customers.
I tried the service yesterday and it worked as advertised with no glitches or surprises. The voice quality was surprisingly good and the connection via DSL was stable. I like the idea of using a microphone as it means a more casual, hands free call. One thing I discovered is that if I played music through an installed media player, the sound was transmitted with the call. That may be something generic to the driver or just the way my machine was set up. I'm not sure. But the idea that I could play back audio from the machine along with my voice made for some intriguing possibilities. Imagine punctuating statements with incidental music offering dramatic tension or whatever. I know it sounds far fetched, but it is something more than hey, check out this new song I just acquired.
Some reviewers questioned the value of this new Google feature. Are they competing with Skype? I don't think so. I think it's just an alternative way to making a phone call that doesn't use up minutes or credits, or whatever. In fact, it's easier than Skype and all of the other ways or making all. There aren't any contracts or limitations. The rates don't change after 9 PM. Google has stated that it will keep the service free for the U.S. and Canada at least until the end of the year. Conceivably the fees from foreign phone calls will subsidize domestic calls beyond the end of the year. The Call Phone feature seems like another example of Google introducing a product and seeing where it goes. People who use it should simply see how it fits into their habits. And they are. Google said that they processed over 1,000,000 calls on the first day of availability. I wouldn't be scared if I were AT&T or Verizon, at least not yet. More information is available at the Official Gmail Blog. There are no indications so far that Google plans to monitor calls and serve up ads based on the conversations. [MG]
August 26, 2010 in Web Communications, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)
Time for Librarians to Make Noise: Public Library System Closures Due to Budget Cuts
Seattle PI is reporting that the Seattle Public Library System will be shutdown Monday, Aug. 30 through Sunday, Sept. 5 due to citywide budget cuts in the city's effort to deal with a $67-million budget shortfall. The library system will reopen after the Labor Day holiday on Tuesday, Sept. 7
The system wide closure, expected to save about $650,000, is one of a number of measures the Library is implementing to achieve $3 million in cuts for 2010. A week-long closure last year saved a similar amount of cost.
The closure will mean salary reductions for nearly 650 employees who will not be paid during that week. The remaining savings is being met through reductions in branch hours, management and administration, the budget for books and materials, staff computers and staff training.
According to the report the library system's shutdown was timed when library use is typically lower than at other times in the year. The library's website lists what will and will not be available during the closure. Downloadable media including including 42,000 e-books and audiobooks, 3,000 downloadable music titles and 5,000 downloadable movie titles will be available. Access to 70 premium databases also. Patrons can search the library catalog online and check their library record but won't be able to place holds on items. Access to library computers will not be available because patrons will be locked out of the library. Book drops also will not be open. At least no borrowed materials will be due and no fines will be accrued. For more, see the Resource Shelf's Fast Facts: Seattle Public Library Mobile App (Cost to Produce & No. of Downloads) & For a Second Year, SPL Will Close For a Week.
See also Jodi Lampert's LA's Librarians Demand Noise to protest the closure of Los Angeles public libraries on Mondays. Image below. [JH]
August 26, 2010 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (0)
Why Can't Johnny Research Practice Law? Is Johnny thinking like "Chad," the LRW instructor, instead of thinking like a law librarian?
Michael Murray is the co-author of the legal research textbook I refuse to identify since he once said that librarians shouldn't teach legal research because librarians research differently than lawyers according to David Walker's recent LLB post. "This book obviously wasn't intended for law librarians since one of the authors believes that we shouldn't be teaching legal research in the first place." (Try to pick which of the two images, left or right, is the author.) Hello Sarah, please go give "Chad" a good swift kick in the pants for me. My next trip to Chicago is months away so I won't be able to turn off I-65 to drop by Valpo anytime soon to do so myself.
The competency of LRW instructors who are not law librarians to teach legal research is mixed at best. Thanks to the younger ones' own exposure to online legal resources, it is improving although most may still fail to grasp the theoretical framework that exists. In the bad old days, the typical LRW instructor repeated the same bad advice his or her uninformed LRW instructor taught him/her in law school. Student obsession with writing assignments also doesn't help. Research and writing, in my opinion, should be bifurcated into two unrelated required courses. Let the legal writing profs teach writing. Let professional law librarians teach legal research.
Thinking Like Law Librarians. Don't most of us wish law school grads come out of the legal academy with a research skill set that makes them think like law librarians? It's about access points and routes to legal resources that in the 1980s I used to teach in a format neutral context to BigLaw's newbie attorneys one-on-one and by way of guest lecturing instead of the typical "toolbox" approach to legal research -- "this is a digest [hold up for everyone to see] and this is how to use it [display a page]".
I even demonstrated the approach as late as the mid-2000s in a legal research workshop for Cincinnati Law students to show to one older and one younger law librarian how they should be instructing our students to "think like law librarians." Both took notes; it was a "teachable moment." It registered with one, not so much with the other who claimed that the ways and means of teaching legal research was one of those so-called "academic freedoms" protected by tenure. You guess which. We sent one of the two off to take an ALR course because displaying and commenting on a bibliography as a teaching method, as good as the bibliography was by circa 19th Century standards, just did nothing for creating teachable moments in legal research instruction.
Legal Research Principles Exist.There are principles of legal research that can be drummed into law student heads by law librarians who apply what they learned in LIS bibliographic description and subject access classes. We used to call them cataloging classes; those of us who learned cataloging from galley proofs of the first iteration of AACR2 learned a new terminology for thinking about research that was applicable regardless of publishing medium. Remember youngsters, the task before AACR2's editors in the late 1970s was to craft uniform principles and rules to address the explosion of publishing formats. One unintended consequence was that AACR2's vocabulary provided a way to restructure the principles of research to apply to all publishing formats. The best researcher remains, IMHO, a cataloger metadata specialist or a reference librarian who did not snooze thru cataloging, or whatever that is called these days, classes because that's how to think like law librarians who research. They also make the best legal research instructors, not withstanding what's-his-name brain dead opinion.
Most reference librarians, I hope, at least realize that even if they don't make this conscious association, this is how we think when we perform legal research. See, e.g., Christopher G. Wren & Jill Robinson Wren, The Teaching of Legal Research, 80 Law Library Journal 7 (1988), Theodore A. Potter, A New Twist on an Old Plot: Legal Research in a Strategy, Not a Format, 92 Law Library Journal 287 (2000) and the unfortunately subtitled, J.D.S. Armstrong & Cristoperher A. Knott, Where the Law Is: An Introduction to Advance Legal Research, (1st ed., West, 2004). Unfortunately subtitled because their work should be the required text for all 1L legal research and writing classes. Toss all others, all the old familiar "brands" and the above unmentioned one, into the Reserve Collection.
I do, however, wish someone would produce a new and long overdue edition of Price & Bitner's Effective Legal Research, the best damn text for law librarians which could be the best damn required text for ALR course adoption. Now, who gobbled up Little, Brown's law titles? Ah well, if the readers of this post aren't members of my generation, law librarian or vendor book acquitions editor, they may not even know what the damn I am talking about. Oops, three "damns" in one paragraph! Well, damn it all to hell, who owns the copyright to Price & Bitner? Oops, make that four. Grab a damn copy from the stacks Gen X-Y'ers, if unfamiliar with the title that has been around for over 50 years and get to work because there are royalties, print and e-text, to be earned. Damn, there I go again... what's the record for one paragraph? I'm thinking the Blog Widow will have to engrave "helped reintroduce a frank, if "non-professional" discussion of issues in law librarian 'literature'" as my epitaph. But I already know there will be no tombstone and I will be sitting on the mantle in an urn alongside past and current pets until the next husband arrives on the scene... . I'm "toast," both literally and figuratively.
Dump the Tool Box Approach to Legal Research Instruction. Non-law librarian legal research and writing instructors have been awakened from this Kantian dogmatic slumber that is the toolbox approach by the advent of the Internet in the context of Google-gen law school students but not sufficiently in many (most?) cases to avoid the toolbox approach completely. At least academic law libraries aren't wasting a perfectly good recession to re-think their collection development policies and practices. Hopefully no one is doing the "this is the Shepard's and West's Digest" things anymore using their print versions. That can be eliminated by print cancellations!
I, for one, wonder how behind the curve testing legal research skills will be if the MBE settles on multiple choice questions should research skills become part of the Bar Exam. Can you really test the research thought process in a multiple choice answer format. What the heck, let law librarians draft state-specific questions as essays so they can grab a little cash for grading them.
Starting with the Basics for "Chad's" Benefit. Richard Buckingham, Electronic Services and Legal Reference Librarian, Suffolk University Law School, recently posted Thinking Like a Librarian: Tips for Better Legal Research [SSRN]. It does not address teaching research principles. It is, however, one very good reading assignment for 1Ls because, in his words,
The research techniques described are not new and have been written about by others. But too often they appear in publications read primarily by librarians or introductory legal research textbooks that are several hundred pages long, where their importance is lost on first-year law students. The goal of this article is to share these research tips with a larger audience in a way that demonstrates their usefulness.
And yes, for 1Ls, law school grads and even "Chad," Buckingham's research recommendations are fundamental and so utterly essential they are taken as givens by law librarians. Hat tip to Legal Research Plus for calling attention to Buckingham's article.
Endnote About Those Folks Who Dwell in Law Library Back Offices.Tech services professionals sit in back offices working day in and day without the ego-strokes that come from patron "thank you's." But public services professionals ought to remember, also day in and day out, that without their work, they would not be able to perform their tasks and receive the benefits of patrons' "thank you for your help." Unfortunately, I've known quite a few who don't give a thought to the research infrastructure Tech Services staff create and maintain. These days this unseen staff includes many IT specialists, too.
Previous posts in LLB's Why Can't Johnny Practice Law series:
- Would you hire a law prof to represent you?
- Academic law libraries are not wasting a perfectly good recession to develop collections that look more "real world."
[JH]
August 26, 2010 in Legal Research Instruction, New Publications, Tech Services | Permalink | Comments (4)
August 25, 2010
Are e-Books Cost Effective and Where to Find Them for Free
The Wall Street Journal today features a column by Brett Arends analyzing the cost of e-books over their print counterparts. He points out that the market share of e-books is growing, from 3% to 8% of consumer books, and describes that as "dramatic." He also notes that even with e-book reader prices dropping, the devices are not really cost effective for the casual reader. One would have to buy at least 30 to 75 titles (depending on the savings over print copies) to break even on the cost of the printer. He goes on to note that e-book prices are not always less expensive than the print copies despite the lower overhead costs in preparing and distributing them. He's not arguing against electronic readers as much as suggesting that e-reading isn't a direct money saver except for book lovers who would buy the titles anyway. Then again, for casual readers there is an acceptable price premium paid for convenience, I suppose. Nonetheless, a single paperback is pretty convenient as well.
There are, of course, a lot of free titles that, much to a publisher's dismay, are out of copyright and freely available online. The WSJ article and many of the comments point to Project Gutenberg as a source. Another place to look is the Internet Archive's Digital Lending Library. As the title implies, the site loans books for a two week period using Overdrive technology. A library card from an Overdrive participating library is required. Other books, when cleared of author or publisher rights, are available for free download. Many of the scans I sampled were either from Microsoft's (since abandoned) or Google's scanning project. Hooray to both of them for these contributions.
Other sources for e-books or online books include the Online Books Page from the University of Pennsylvania. The site catalogs titles and locations where they may be viewed or downloaded. There are over 40,000 title in English listed at the site. The site also features a page for Archives and Indexes that list other sources for e-books, search engines for e-books, significant specialty archives, foreign language archives, and subject collections. One of the smaller, significant archives listed, for example is Project Bartleby which lists "great books online," featuring such items as the Harvard Classics and Shelf of Fiction. The Pennsylvania list is a substantial list for sources of free e-books and electronic texts. [MG]
August 25, 2010 in Books, Electronic Resource | Permalink | Comments (0)
This book isn't for you: Teacher's Manual to Legal Research Methods
I received an email from Foundation Press today informing me that the teacher's manual for Murray and DeSanctis's book Legal Research Methods is now available. However, this book was never intended for me as I am a librarian. Michael D. Murray, the co-author, of the book once said that librarians shouldn't teach legal research because librarians research differently than lawyers. At that my colleague responded, "That's because most lawyers don't know how to research." And to which, I thought, "If I am a lawyer and a librarian, does that mean that I research differently than I research?" Anyway, this book obviously wasn't intended for law librarians since one of the authors believes that we shouldn't be teaching legal research in the first place. So this book is not for you (if you're a librarian). (DCW)August 25, 2010 in Academic Law Libraries, Books, Legal Research Instruction | Permalink | Comments (1)
Fasting for Accurate Employment and Salary Data: Open Letter to Law School Deans and Directors on 20th Day of Hunger Strike
Dear Law School Deans and Directors:
My name is Ethan Haines. On August 5, I began a hunger strike in support of law school transparency and career counseling (career planning and training) reform. Ten of the nation’s top law schools were effectively put on notice of my hunger strike and provided with options for resolving the concerns contained therein. The complete list of selected schools is available on my blog (http://unemployedjd.com).
As of today, August 24, I have gone twenty days without food, and with a very limited intake of liquids, in support of positive change for legal education. To date, I have lost fifteen pounds. The purpose of my hunger strike is to bring positive change to legal education – not harm to myself. I sincerely believe that the individuals that I represent have valid concerns that can adequately be addressed by law school administrators to help prevent more J.D. statistics – law graduates who are unemployed/underemployed with large amounts of student debt.
My hunger strike has been covered by major media organizations such as USA Today, MSNBC.com, Above the Law, ABA Journal, The Huffington Post, and a series of blogs. Despite this publicity, I have not received any communication from representatives of any of the law schools on notice.
I write to you for your assistance and support. The current state of legal education is in disrepair and law students and recent law graduates are victims of the standoff between academic regulators, institutions, and other for-profit entities. To restore the faith of my peers in legal education and the future of the legal industry, I implore you to begin a conversation about law school transparency and career counseling reform within your academic institution. These problems are simply too big for the American Bar Association (ABA) to handle on its own.
As for me, I will continue my hunger strike until I receive a response from the law schools on notice or my body gives in, whichever comes first. Change, positive change, is all that I am after. If not for me or my classmates, then for the future of legal education.
Very respectfully yours,
Ethan Haines
It turns out that "Ethan Haines" is really Zenovia Evans, a 28-year-old woman living in Denver, who graduated from Thomas M. Cooley Law School in 2009, reports Karen Sloan in Law school hunger striker revealed: He is a she. Evans started her hunger strike hoping to prompt law schools to participate in Law School Transparency — a Tennessee-based non-profit organization that is attempting to compile better employment and salary data about law graduates. Sloan also reports that there's room for fruit smoothies in her hunger strike. [JH]
August 25, 2010 in Law School News & Views | Permalink | Comments (0)
