Litilaw--Legal Articles by Lawyers

While many of you enjoy some down time during Spring Break, a new online resource is making its presence known on the internet. Litilaw, sponsored by the litigation document management company, Lexbe, is a free online collection of legal articles written by expert lawyers. Litilaw provides hundreds of articles prepared for seminars and publications by practising lawyer experts in many fields, along with helpful legal research guides from law libraries. All articles and guides on Litilaw are free, full-text, searchable, and in PDF format. With summer employment just ahead, a free database of up-to-date practitioner articles in over 30 subjects of special interest to litigators may be a good place to find just the information you need.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Ms. JD: Changing the Face of the Legal Profession

Hofstra Law women, you may want to check it out. Ms. JD is an organization formed by women students at various law schools to serve as an online community and forum for exploring issues of gender and careers in the legal profession.

Concerned by the rates at which women opt out of the legal profession, the lack of representation of women in the highest courts and echelons of the legal community, and the role of gender in the progression of many women’s legal careers, a group of female law students from Boalt Hall (UC Berkeley), Cornell, Georgetown, Harvard, NYU, Stanford, UCLA, UT Austin, the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan, the University of Virginia, and Yale came together and created Ms. JD. Serving women in law school and the legal profession, Ms. JD will be an online community that provides a forum for dialogue and networking among women lawyers and aspiring lawyers.

Ms. JD launched at a national conference at Yale Law School on March 31, 2007.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

It's SPRING!!!!!

Enjoy your break. If you want to come in during Spring break, the Library's hours are:

SPRING BREAK SCHEDULE - Saturday, March 31 - Sunday, April 8
Saturday, March 31: 10:00 A.M. - 6:00 P.M.
Sunday, April 1: Noon - 8:00 P.M.
Monday, April 2 - Thursday, April 5: 8:00 A.M. - 8:00 P.M.
Friday, April 6 (Good Friday): CLOSED
Saturday, April 7: 10:00 A.M. - 6:00 P.M.
Sunday, April 8 (Easter): CLOSED

We will return to regular hours, rested and refreshed, on Monday, April 9.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Health Law Professor Blog

It should go without saying that I am a firm believer in blogs as a means of keeping current with whatever one’s interests happen to be. For law students who are interested in particular legal fields, law professors’ blogs in their areas of expertise are an excellent way to do just that.

Those who are interested in Health Law, in particular, may wish to visit S. Elizabeth Malloy’s HealthLawProf Blog. It contains posts that offer information ranging from updates about states considering medical marijuana laws, to genetic experiments that push the envelope of the law, to even the more mundane, but ubiquitous, concerns posed by the U.S. News & World Report law school rankings.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

SocioSite

While prowling the web recently, I discovered SocioSite. SocioSite is a legal researcher's window into a world of resources on law and society. This outstanding information project is designed "from a global point of view," but entirely in English, by the faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. Intended to be "an accurate and comprehensive collection of resources in the social sciences," SocioSite offers links to internet resources on nearly 170 subjects--from ethics to crime, and from corporations to migration. It includes a worldwide statistical data archives, electronic journals, research institutes, and much more. Take some time to check it out.


Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Google Notebook

From Google Blog:

"Search is all about finding the answers you need. Unfortunately, some kinds of questions--like where you should stay and what you should do on your Hawaiian vacation, or what kind of digital camera you should buy, or what the latest treatments for arthritis are--can't always be answered in one sitting, or by visiting one site.

That's why we built Google Notebook--to give you an online "notebook" where you can organize all your research, add personal notes to it, and share it with others. Google Notebook surfs along quietly with you as you browse, letting you clip and annotate whatever text, images, and links that help answer your question, all without ever leaving the webpage you're on.

Also good for keeping track of your web research. Here is google notebook.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

U.S. Senate - Virtual Reference Desk

Almost anything you could want to learn about the Senate can be found by going to the Virtual Reference Desk page of the United States Senate website. You can find organization charts, Congressional sessions, statistics and more. Or you can click into a specific item such as filibuster. You will then go to a page that will have links to the history of filibusters, essays on filibusters, a report on filibusters and related items. For anybody that is not an expert on the Senate and would look more information, this would be a wonderful site to find it.



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

What Did You Think??

We want your input on the Top 10 Research Skills workshops. What did you think overall? Is there a better time of year or days that we could schedule them? Did you find the content useful? Is there anything we missed you wish we included?

We plan to do these again next year in the Spring. The best way for us to meet your needs is for you to tell us what they are. Please comment to this posting and let us know what you think.

FYI - the handouts from the workshops will remain on the TWEN site for Top 10 Research Skills Library Workshops until the end of the semester.

Thanks!



Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Acronym Finder

As both students and practitioners well know, the fields of law and government bristle with acronyms. When you need to discover the meaning of one of these enigmatic arrays of letters, try Acronym Finder, one of the largest and most comprehensive online dictionaries of acronyms, abbreviations, and initialisms. Simply type whatever it is that you seek to decipher into the search box, and click “find”.

By the way, contrary to popular misunderstanding, not every set of initial letters is an acronym. Acronyms are arrays of letters standing for other words that can themselves be pronounced as a word. For example, “MADD” (“Mothers Against Drunk Driving”) is an acronym, because it can be pronounced as a word (“mad). “FBI”, on the other hand, is an initialism, because it is pronounced by its component letters,“Eff-Bee-Eye”, and not as a word (“Fibbee”).

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

"Studies in Scarlet" Trial Collection

Scandal winding up in court is nothing new. This month the Harvard University Libraries launched a fascinating new digital collection of over 450 searchable full-text trial narratives, all involving divorce, domestic violence, abduction, adultery and related issues during the 19th and early 20th century. "Studies in Scarlet: Marriage and Sexuality in the U.S. and U.K., 1815-1914" features mostly privately reported and published trial narratives and transcripts. While these cases from the Harvard Law School Library's collections lack the precedential value of officially reported appellate opinions, they offer real-life insights and examples of how the law was applied in the context of public attitudes, gender roles and societal standards of an earlier era. Among the diverse subjects are Caroline, Queen Consort of George IV, Oscar Wilde, and wealthy but lesser known New Yorkers suing for divorce.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat