Law in Popular Culture

If you are looking for resources on how lawyers have been reflected in the popular culture (novels, feature films, comics, humor, television, and more), a good place to begin is with the Law in Popular Culture Collection at the Tarlton Law Library at the University of Texas at Austin. The goal of the collection is to "provide as broad a picture as possible of the image of the lawyer in the United States and British Commonwealth," as represented by authors from Dickens to Danielle Steele. All of the collection's literary, film, TV, and graphic works either feature a lawyer as a central character or were authored by a lawyer. The collection includes digital full-text "lawyer stories," the history of the legal thriller, and bibliographies useful for research in law and literature and law in popular culture topics.
Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

NY Bar Exam

It is that time for the takers of the July 20101 N.Y. Bar Exam. Cross your paws for all of your friends out there who graduated and took the exam.

And yes, if you are a 3L or 4L, it is something you will need to start to think about. The New York Board of Law Examiners page is the place to start. For those curious, check out some past essay questions.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Political Free Speech And Telephone Service Outages

It seems that telephone service providers sometimes encounter difficulties in routing all of the automated political solicitations that tend to mushroom, come election time. Read more about Comcast’s service outages, caused by the automated dialers, here.

Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Blekko

Search engines that are not Google do still exist. Some of them are even being started today. Blekko, which launched this week, has been getting a lot of press. (An NY Times article is here; a ComputerWorld article is here.)

This search engine is a bit of a throwback, in that it relies largely on human-edited search results. Blekko's goal is to only list results from reputable sources, mostly by weeding out content farms and those public answer trees where the answers people provide are almost invariably wrong. Time will tell if this works, and some people grow used to searching with a system of slashtags.


Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat

Google Books: More Than a Page Rank

I was prowling the Law Librarian's blog and came across a post about "an article on The Atlantic web site that offers a bit on insight into how Google creates a result set for searches in Google Books."

Reminder: Tomorrow (Tues. Nov. 2nd) is Election Day

Just a reminder to vote tomorrow (Tuesday, November 2nd). Mid-terms are important and if you have heard even a little political news, you are aware that control of Congress may shift. Sites that may be of interest to you:

New York State Board of Elections: Official state site to inform citizens of New York State.

Project Vote Smart - Candidates for New York State office: Find you candidates and their biographies plus positions and finances.

2010 New York State Gubernatorial Debate held at Hofstra: If you missed the debate, you can view it at this site. One of the more original candidates debates in recent years.
Ernster, the Virtual Library Cat