The legal research blogosphere was full of discussion today about Google Scholar's addition of free legal content.  Here's the announcement from the Google Blog.  When you head to Google Scholar you'll notice you can restrict your search to "Legal opinions and journals."  The Advanced Scholar Search will allow you to restrict your search by jurisdiction.  Internet For Lawyers reports that the coverage of court opinions is as follows:

- 1 US 1 (pre 1776-)

- 1 F 2d 1 (1924-)

- F Supp Cases

- US State Cases (1950-)

This is certainly not as sophisticated a tool as Lexis or Westlaw, but it is free and is a welcome addition to the legal research world.

Check out some other blog posts at Wisblawg, Goodson Blogson, and Resource Shelf.

The Law Library has a number of print study aids that can be quite useful to you as you study for finals.  Many of these books provide outlines, explanations, and sample essay and multiple choice questions that can help you get ready.  Recently we have moved a number of these upstairs into the 3d floor collection to give you better access to them.  The most current study aids remain in the Reserve Library.  Here is a list of some of some of the popular study aid series titles we own.  Clicking on the title will show you what we have.

Examples and Explanations 

Black Letter Outlines 

Understanding Series 

Exam Pro 

Gilbert Law Summaries 

Concise Hornbook 

Emanuel Law Outlines 

PMBR 

Bar/Bri 

Questions and Answers 

Legalines 

Once you've clicked any of the above links, you can limit by topic by typing in your subject in the keyword search box at the bottom of the screen.  Simply type it in after the name of the series which will already appear in the box, like this:

Study aids that the catalog says are in the "Hunter Law Library Study Guides" location are found in the Reserve Library.

In our legal research classes we do our best to get you ready to conduct legal research when you go out to practice.  Because of that we don't always get into all the research sources and techniques that may help you if you're writing a case note or other research paper.  I recently wrote a column for Student Lawyer magazine that may be of interest to you if you have to do this type of research (which I like to call "academic legal research"). 

 The return of November means one thing in law school - finals are near.  As scary as that may sound, there is still plenty of time to get ready.  During the next few weeks I will blog about a number of services the law library has to offer to help you prepare.

Today I want to remind you about CALI.  The law library subscribes to CALI because it offers over 600 web-based tutorials on a number of different legal topics.  These tutorials are great at helping you nail down some of those concepts you haven't quite grasped yet.  Also, because of their interactive nature, CALI tutorials are a great way to mix up your study time (especially when you're staring at your outline for minutes at a time without really learning anything - I've been there).  So, if you haven't been using CALI, now's the time to take a look.  Email me at neverss@law.byu.edu if you need our school's authorization code.

When using KeyCite on Westlaw you'll often find cases that have been cited many times.  Roe v. Wade, for example, has nearly 20,000 citing documents.  The only feasible way to deal with so many cases is to limit your KeyCite display.  When doing so, one way you can limit is by document type (i.e. cases, secondary sources, court docs, etc.).  Until now, you've always had to uncheck all the sources you did not want - an annoying process.  But, not anymore.  From Westlaw's Tom Duggan:

"KeyCite “Clear All” Now Available

 Using KeyCite Limits just got even easier! Previously, when limiting KeyCite Citing References by Document Type, you would have to individually de-select each item you wished to exclude. This became very cumbersome if there were many document types but you only wished to include a few. Now just look for the “Clear All” button at the top of the Document Type page under KeyCite Limits and quickly clear all the document type check boxes."

 HeinOnline is one of our favorite resources here in the Law Library.  It offers PDF versions of many great legal resources.  While many students and faculty are familiar with HeinOnline and its content, they are less familiar with how to search HeinOnline.  The truth is it takes some practice to learn how to search HeinOnline because its search syntax is a bit different from Lexis and Westlaw.  However, once you get familiar with how to search on HeinOnline you'll find it's a very powerful tool. 

Here are a couple of things to keep in mind when searching HeinOnline:

1 - Boolean operators must be in all capital letters.  That means AND, OR, NOT.

2- The root expander in HeinOnline is * not !

3- Proximity searching (something I've written about before) is probably the most different of all the search commands.  In HeinOnline, you put the terms you want close to one another in quotation marks followed by a ~ and some number.  For example, "disaster legislation"~10 means you are looking for the word "disaster" within 10 words of the word "legislation."

4- Boosting a term allows you to influence the relevancy ranking of your results list.  (By the way, you can't have your results ranked by relevance when using a terms and connectors search in Westlaw or Lexis.)  So, if I have two terms, but I think one term is more important I can include a ^ followed by a number after the more important term.  For example, disaster^5 AND legislation will find results with both the terms "disaster" and "legislation" in them, but will bring documents with "disaster" found more frequently to the top of my results list.

Here is a handout David Armond and I prepared for a faculty training I presented at last week.  It only covers the search tips I think students and faculty will use the most.  More detailed search syntax instructions are available here.

Legal citation is full of legal abbreviations.  A number of these are easily recognized by legal researchers (P.2d, F.Supp, U.S., etc); however, many others are completely foreign (A.N., EWiR, W.L.R.,).  You'll probably encounter some unfamiliar abbreviations when performing a source pull or reading a law review article.  When I'm looking for the meaning of a legal abbreviation there are two places I turn - Prince's Bieber Dictionary of Legal Abbreviations and Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations. 

Prince's Bieber Dictionary, or Bieber's as many librarians call it, focuses on abbreviations and acronyms found in American legal literature.  It is a book found behind the law library reference desk (KF 246 .B46 2009) in which you can look things up by abbreviation or by title.  I have cracked the code of many unfamiliar abbreviations with Bieber's as my tool. 

Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations is a web-based tool that focuses more on foreign and international legal abbreviations than does Bieber's.  Freely available on the web, this index's search functions allow you to search by both abbreviation and title.  Its foreign and international abbreviations make it an excellent companion to Bieber's.

With these two tools you're unlikely to get stumped by a perplexing legal abbreviation.

  LexisNexis has recently released a new Shepard's Signal for statutes.  The red encircled exclamation point you may encounter when shepardizing a statute indicates "that citing references in the Shepard's Citations Service contain strong negative treatment of the Shepardized section (for example, the section may have been found to be unconstitutional or void)."

   The Law Library has recently acquired access to the Religion Case Reporter - "the only publication in the United States devoted exclusively to reporting and indexing judicial opinions addressing the interaction between law and religion."  The Religion Case Reporter provides summaries and sometimes the full text of these court opinions dealing with religion.  The best part about this resource is its cumulative index that allows researchers to quickly find cases that combine religion and other legal topics.  For example, the entry "adoption" in the index will provide you with several adoption cases that involve religion in some way. 

Headnotes, found at the beginning of cases in both Westlaw and LexisNexis, are a valuable research tool.  Because of their long life and their impact on legal research and the legal profession, West's headnotes with their Topics and Key Numbers have been analyzed and explained many times.  (Here's one example.) 

On the other hand, LexisNexis headnotes have been a bit more of a mystery to me. LexisNexis has always made it clear that the text of their headnotes is taken straight from the text of the case.  (This is different than West's headnotes, which are written by an editor.)  But, it has taken me a bit longer to get an accurate understanding of how the topics and subtopics in a Lexis Headnote were created and assigned.  When I have asked Lexis employees about this, some have not known how the process works and at least once I was given some misinformation - that the process was done mostly by computers.  Now, finally, I have an explanation that Lexis seems ready to stand by.  Here's an excerpt from an email from Michael Morton, my regional account manager. 

"[T]he editor reads the case and manually chooses the classifications.  He or she has a tool much like an index that has all of the classifications listed there (topics and subtopics).  For each point of law in the case that the editor chooses to include as a headnote, he or she then selects the most relevant subtopic/topic.  Often they are given more than one as obviously they can not be hammered into only one subtopic.  If the language does not fit any current topics, then the editor can request a new one created and a committee of editors makes that decision, but that is very rare.  Once the editor has chosen the language and matched the topics, the secondary editors then check that to make sure it is correct. 

One of the things I talked about in the Academic Legal Research training today was choosing a topic for a case note or seminar paper.    There are lots of different ways to go about selecting a topic.  Often case note authors are looking for circuit splits so they can write on a topic that may someday reach the U.S. Supreme Court.  While searching in Lexis and Westlaw is certainly one way to find circuit splits, there are a few other resources that can be more helpful.

United States Law Week: Circuit Splits - U.S. Law Week examines important cases across the country on a weekly basis.  The Circuit Splits feature highlights the cases that have caused splits among the circuits, providing you with a list of topics and summaries of the issues involved.  A quick glance can give you several possible topics.  This resource is available through the Law Library.

Split Circuits Blog - On this blog, Professor A. Benjamin Spencer of Washington & Lee University School of Law, tracks cases that have generated a circuit split among the federal circuit courts.

If you're writing a seminar paper or some other type of research paper, here are some other resources that might help you find a topic.

BNA Resources - Available through the law library, legal publisher BNA provides daily, weekly and monthly reports on specific legal topics that might be of interest to you.  Finding a relevant BNA publication may help you find a hot topic to write about.

Law Professors Blog Network - This network of blogs is designed to "assist law professors in their scholarship and teaching."  While you may not be a law professor, here you can find a blog that provides scholarly discussion on a topic you may be writing about.

ABA Journal Blawg Directory - The ABA Journal brings together many legal blogs and arranges them by subject, making it easy for you to find a blog on your topic.  Finding such a blog may help you find current topics that would be good to write about.

This is just a start, but you're likely to find a good topic with one of these resources.

Writing a case note or comment?  Need to get started on a seminar paper?  Can't find the right topic?  Research for an academic paper can be a bit different than typical legal research.  But, don't worry.  The library's here to help.

Join us on Thursday, Sept. 10 at 1pm in room 275/76 as we discuss resources that can help you with your research paper.  You know about Westlaw and Lexis, come find out about other resources you should know about. 

Each year I offer legal research training to the various journals here at the law school.  We generally focus on where to find PDF versions of the various sources commonly needed for source pulls.  I also distribute an electronic handout with urls to the various resources that contain PDFs.  Here it is in case you'd like to take a look.

The CM Law Library blog points out that LexisNexis has just released its "Related Content" feature, which appears to be the competitor to Westlaw's "Results Plus."  When you access a case in LexisNexis, you will see the "Related Content" pane on the left side of the screen.  (Related Content only appears when you are actually within a case, not at the Results screen like with Results Plus.)  Related Content will provide you with links to materials such as ALR, legal encyclopedias, law reviews and other secondary sources that relate to the issues discussed in the case you have selected. 

The CM Law Library blog notes that Related Content is reviewed by human editors, whereas Westlaw's Results Plus is done by computers.  I find that quite interesting since Westlaw's Topics, Key Numbers and headnotes are done by human editors, while Lexis' headnotes are primarily generated by computers.

Update: Michael Morton, our LexisNexis Regional account manager recently contacted me about this blog post, saying Lexis had taken issue with my last statement about Lexis headnotes being primarily generated by computers.  My comment was mainly focused on the generation of the topics and subtopics, not the generation of the headnote text which I know is taken straight from the case.  Michael told me that the generation of the topics and subtopics is not done by computers, but by human editors.  This is not what I had been told previously by LexisNexis.  I was told that the creation and assignment of the topics and subtopics was done by computers and then checked briefly by editors.  Michael apologized that I had been misinformed, but said that the topics and subtopics are and have always been created and assigned by real people, not computers.

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!