Hunter's Query

Due to July 4 falling on a Saturday this year, the Law Library will be closed both tomorrow (7/3) and Saturday (7/4). 

This Independence Day is a special one for the Law School as Professor Michael Goldsmith's call for Major League Baseball to celebrate Lou Gehrig's farewell speech and raise funds and awareness to fight ALS will be realized.  Professor Goldsmith will be recognized by the New York Yankees before their Saturday game and has been asked to throw out the ceremonial first pitch.  Prof. Goldsmith will also be featured in stories on the NBC Today Show and the NBC Weekend Nightly News.

I've blogged before about alternatives to Lexis and Westlaw for legal research.  Two alternatives, Casemaker and Fastcase, are provided as member benefits through many state and local bar associations.  The Utah Bar Association currently provides access to Casemaker.  Other nearby state bar associations, Arizona's for example, provide Fastcase.  Robert Ambrogi's recent article Casemaker v. Fastcase does a good job comparing the two services.  He concludes that "Fastcase holds the edge in ease of use and intuitiveness of its features." 

It's a good idea to find out which service your future state bar provides and become familiar with it.  It can be a great cost-saving tool.

 The Law Library has recently acquired access to the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation Digital Library.  This database contains over 2,000 scholarly articles dealing with natural resources law that the Foundation has published since 1955.  Articles are full-text searchable and available in PDF format.  If you're intersted in researching natural resources law, you'll want to check out this resource.

The Law Library is relatively quiet with most of you away at your summer externships and clerkships.  As you well know, due to the economy Summer 2009 is quite different than summers past.  I thought you might be interested in Some Words of Advice for Summer Associates of 2009.  It has some good counsel to help put you in the best position to get an offer from your firm.  The link to this article came in a letter from the Georgetown career services office (reproduced with commentary by Above the Law) that provides some additional advice.

If you're looking for research help this summer so you can make a good impression, don't forget to use our Ask a Law Librarian service (available to current BYU law students) or call the reference desk at 801-422-6658.

Today a colleague and I had a lunch meeting with a group of attorneys in Salt Lake to discuss legal research.  One of them kept pointing out that law students need to realize they don't have to recreate the wheel.  Secondary sources provide a lot of pre-packaged research that can save a lot of time and money. 

One of the best secondary sources are legal treatises.  Legal treatises are all different, but most provide a fairly in-depth look at a particular subject.  You should become familiar with some of the major treatises in your practice area.  Recently ZiefBrief, the blog of the University of San Francisco's Law Library, provided some links to web pages listing treatises by subject.  Here are some you may find useful:

Treatises and Services by Subject - Kent Olson

Legal Treatises by Subject - Harvard Law Library

Georgetown Law Library Treatise Finder

Many firms still have relevant treatises in print and some have access to treatises through Westlaw or LexisNexis (although you should always check if they are under the firm's subscription).  Local law libraries will also have access to many treatises as well.  Wherever you find them, in most cases it's a good idea to head to a treatise to get your research started.

With bar exam prep in full swing I thought I'd mention that the Law Library has several resources to help with your bar study.  Last year we acquired Rigos Bar Review Series, which contains volumes on the MBE, MEE, MPRE, and the MPT.  When you find Rigos in the Reserve Library you will also find a number of other Bar review materials in the vicinity.  We wish you luck as you approach this final hurdle to becoming an attorney.

For those of you interested in pursuing a judicial clerkship (and with the economy the way it is that may be a lot of you) Above the Law is reporting that the Clerkship Notification Blog for the 2010-2011 clerkship season is up and running.  The blog notes that

"The goal of the CNB is to provide a forum for law clerk applicants, current law clerks, and judicial staff to share information regarding their clerkship applications and vacancies. By using the "comments" function, applicants can easily find and share information as to which judges have started calling applicants, which judges have started making offers, and which judges have completed their hiring."

Looks like a useful resource for clerkship seekers!

Westlaw's main law school interface looks a little different than it used to.  The heart of the change is that users can now conduct searches of multiple databases from the main research screen.  This mirrors the functionality users have had on the state research tabs for some time now. 

Users can also access indexes and tables of contents for statutes, etc. with one click.  This is a welcome addition as finding some of these tools in the past was quite a chore. 

Westlaw has also provided a relatively easy to use editing function that includes drag and drop content blocks.  Users can easily manipulate the content they find on their main research page, allowing for easy access to often-used sources.  On the flip side, this can cause a certain amount of frustration in training situations as the main research page may look different for each user. 

Westlaw has also added a "Sticky Notes" feature where users can jot down notes to themselves.  This would be even nicer if you could write yourself a note on any Westlaw screen and they would be compiled in one place.  "Sticky Notes" currently appears to be available only on the main research screen.

Last month over at the Volokh Conspiracy, guest blogger Ira Matetsky had an interesting series of posts about Wikipedia.  Matetsky is a New York litigation attorney and a Wikipedia administrator and member of the in-house Arbitration Committee.  In the posts he gives some inside insight into the workings of Wikipedia and discusses flaws and virtues of the site.

I would also recommend Diane Murley's article In Defense of Wikipedia.  It is written from the perspective of a law librarian and talks about the use of Wikipedia in legal research.  While written to an audience of law librarians and legal research instructors, I think it provides some good information for all legal researchers.

Yale Law Library has recently created a new database that tracks federal judicial nominations.  The site includes information on federal judicial nominees from the 103rd Congress to the present.  The Yale Law Library Reference Blog reports that the site offers

1. The ability to quickly and easily track down nominees based on a number of faceted criteria including congress, nominating president, and nomination result.
2. The ability to track nominees and nominations via RSS feeds.
3. Up to date contact information for sitting judges nominated and confirmed since the 103rd congress, and nominees from the 111th congress forward.

While it would be next to impossible not to hear about a U.S. Supreme Court nominee, this looks like a good way to stay up to date on other federal judicial nominees.

Professor RonNell Andersen Jones has recently posted her newest article on media subpoenas to SSRN.  Media Subpoenas: Impact, Perception, and Legal Protection in the Changing World of American Journalism is forthcoming in the Washington Law Review.  Here's the abstract:

Forty years ago, at a time when the media was experiencing enormous professional change and a surge of subpoena activity, First Amendment scholar Vincent Blasi investigated the perceptions of members of the press and the impact of subpoenas within American newsrooms in a study that quickly came to be regarded as a watershed in media law. That empirical data is now a full generation old, and American journalism faces a new critical moment. The traditional press once again finds itself facing a surge of subpoenas and once again finds itself at a time of intense change — albeit on a different trajectory — as readership and public reputation plummet. As the dialogue on this complicated topic once again reaches full volume, intensified by a series of hotly contested federal reporter’s privilege bills, the question of the appropriate legal rule again is inextricably intertwined with the question of the real-world impact of subpoenas on the operations of the media. This 'law-in-action' article aims to offer the legislators and policymakers of today what Blasi offered them four decades ago. It reports the results of a large-scale empirical study, presenting both quantitative and qualitative assessments of the effects that subpoenas have on daily newspapers and local television news operations, and re-explores the questions of changing legal climate and media awareness of legal protection. The article concludes that media subpoenas have a substantial impact on newsgathering, warranting federal legislative attention. But it also concludes that the traditional press is ill-informed of the contours of its own legal protection, which may compound the difficulties the media experiences in this area. 

To download Professor Andersen Jones's other article on media subpoenas, Avalanche or Undue Alarm? An Empirical Study of Subpoenas Received by the News Media, click here.

An article about the Rex E. Lee Advocacy Program has been posted on the Law School's website.

  LexisNexis has recently announced its new Associates Serving Public Interests Research Program that supports 2009 graduates pursuing public interest work.  2009 graduates can sign up for free access to LexisNexis if they fall into one of the following categories:

• Deferred fall associates pursuing public interest work during their deferral periods,
• 2009 graduates who elect to pursue public interest work while searching for law firm employment, and
• Those 2009 graduates who pursue public interest work as a continuing profession.

More information and registration information can be found here.

   Last Thursday the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs held a hearing on the nomination of Professor Larry EchoHawk to be the Assistant Secretarty of Indian Affairs.  A webcast of the hearing can be found here.  You can also read the prepared statements of Professor EchoHawk and the Honorable Alonzo A. Coby, Chairman of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes.  The Daily Universe also published an article on the hearing.

*Photo from the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs website. 

The Blog of LegalTimes is reporting that Judge Michael McConnell is stepping down from his position on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit to become the director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School. (Court announcement here.)  Judge McConnell visited the law school last year giving a very interesting lecture on Patrick Henry and the Constitution. Judge McConnell is an expert scholar on the religion clauses of the First Amendment, something many of us are quite interested in here at BYU.

I've blogged before about free and low-cost legal research alternatives and their growing popularity in the current economic climate (see here).  Robert J. Ambrogi has recently written Get Your Free Case Law for Law Technology News in which he provides information on 10 websites that provide free case law.  Law students working this summer should be familiar with at least a few of these sources.

The Daily Universe recently ran a story on BYU Law School's jail outreach program. It's good to see our students serving during their time here.

LexLibris, the University of Minnesota Law Library blog, has directed my attention to an interesting news article on the West publishing company and Westlaw titled Westlaw Rises to Legal Publishing Fame by Selling Free Information.

Above The Law has recently provided a new resource that gathers information on the top law firms in the United States.  ATL's Career Center provides information such as compensation, billable hours, partnership prospects, etc. for these firms.  Each Firm Snapshot also links to Above the Law blog posts about each firm, which can provide valuable information on the latest goings-on in each firm.  Free registration allows you to compare firms across any of the available categories.

Hat tip to WisBlawg.

The Rex E. Lee Advocacy program was ranked 17th this year in the U.S. News and World Report rankings (see the top 25 programs here), up 5 places from a year ago.  Interim Dean Gordon made special mention of the program's top 20 ranking in a BYU Law news release on the rankings. Congratulations to Kristin Gerdy, the director of the program, for this accomplishment!