10 Weirdest Legal Cases of 2008

At this point in the exam period, a little humor and perspective about the law might help. Take a quick break with this London Times article in which Professor Gary Slapper, Director of the Centre for Law at the Open University (UK), has distilled the "ten weirdest legal cases" of the past year from his regular Friday column on amusing and strange legal disputes from around the world. Links to the original articles about these cases and others are provided.



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More on Study Guides

For a quick reference to study guides we have available in the library, check out our Study Guide handout . This handout is also available in print in the handout rack near the Reference desk.

Good luck on your remaining exams!!



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Stanford Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse

The Law, Science & Technology Program at Stanford Law School recently launched the Stanford Intellectual Property Litigation Clearinghouse, an online database that offers comprehensive information about intellectual property disputes within the United States.

This publicly available online research tool will enable users to review real-time data about intellectual legal disputes that have been filed nationally. According to the press release, “the first release, the Patent Litigation Module, includes over 23,000 cases filed in U.S. district courts since 2000. The database includes real-time data summaries, industry indices, and trend analysis together with a full-text search engine”.

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United Nations Audio/Visual Library

The United Nations Audio/Visual Library is not only an excellent collection of links and resources but the multimedia aspect provides additional depth to the collection.

From the Introduction: The Audiovisual Library is a unique, multimedia resource which provides the United Nations with the unprecedented capacity to provide high quality international law training and research materials to an unlimited number of recipients on a global level. The Audiovisual Library consists of three pillars: (1) the Historic Archives containing documents and audiovisual materials relating to the negotiation and adoption of significant legal instruments under the auspices of the United Nations and related agencies since 1945; (2) the Lecture series featuring a permanent collection of lectures on virtually every subject of international law given by leading international law scholars and practitioners from different countries and legal systems; and (3) the Research Library providing an on-line international law library with links to treaties, jurisprudence, publications and documents, scholarly writings and research guides. The Audiovisual Library is available to all individuals and institutions around the world for free via the Internet.



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Stretching

Exam time is certainly stressful! Do take a few moments to stretch out your shoulders and back--your body will love you for it. To help you out, the Mayo Clinic web site offers a video demonstrating a few shoulder and upper back stretches.

Once you have a little more time, perhaps you can treat yourself to a yoga class and learn my favorite pose-- Marjariasana (cat pose).

Good luck on your exams!


Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Blawg Tips

Law.com has a good article this week with tips for people with legal blogs. The tips are largely for attorneys with "blawgs" that are attached to their firm's websites, but most of them apply universally.



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