Dec

16

New Database Creates Time-Series Plots of Phrases in U.S. Supreme Court Opinions

Posted by: | December 16, 2011 | Leave a Comment

Emory and Michigan State Law Schools have teamed up to create a free database that allows you to search for a term or phrase in U.S. Supreme Court opinions (1791-2005) and automatically generate a time-series frequency chart of the phrase’s appearance.

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Sep

16

The Kindle as Research Tool

Posted by: | September 16, 2011 | Leave a Comment

Westlaw released its new Westlaw Next research platform about a year ago. One of the new features of Westlaw Next is that a person can export research and then read it on the Kindle. A person can also take notes about the research on the Kindle and then print it all out. The Westlaw representative [...]

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Aug

25

Professor Willis Lang and the Teaching of Legal Research

Posted by: | August 25, 2010 | 1 Comment

In recent years, Marquette has won numerous kudos for its program in legal research and writing.  Although the current version of the program is still relatively new, the teaching of legal research and writing at Marquette has its roots in the 1920’s. In summing up the accomplishments of the Law School during the 1923-1924 academic [...]

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Feb

14

Imagine this…

Posted by: | February 14, 2010 | 3 Comments

You wake up in the morning and look out your window at the snow. You go to your inventory and pick out a nice outfit and shoes. Then go into appearance and, after wearing your clothes and shoes, you quickly take off all your hair; you need to look sophisticated today. You attach a new ‘do. On second thought…

…a bit frustrated [you] remind yourself that you just won a lot of money and some fun stuff. You send a message to the coordinator, but he isn’t online. Slightly frustrated you log early that day.
A week passes. You find a new home on Sunny Paradise the sim that your neighbor moved to; she was a good neighbor before and is a good neighbor now. You find out that the sim on which you were living was reposessed because the owner was not paying the tier (taxes) on the land. Wondering where the 5,000 bucks that you paid the owner to rent your space went, you are glad that you will be getting some money coming in once you receive the contest prize.

[But you never get the money...]

[i]n real life, they would seek legal assistance, attempt to negotiate, and failing that file suit against both the real estate company and the contest coordinators, but in SL there is no law.

The tension between the realities of life and the law and the entire absence of law in the life of an avatar is what changed my mind about the law.

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Nov

20

Google Law

Posted by: | November 20, 2009 | 4 Comments

Earlier this week Google announced a slew of new products (check out the official Google Blog for a full list). Of particular interest to lawyers was the addition to Google Scholar that allows searches for federal and state court decisions. This in itself is nothing new, as many websites currently offer access to federal court [...]

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Oct

11

Law School Hosts Regional Writing Conference

Posted by: | October 11, 2009 | Leave a Comment

This weekend, from Friday evening through Saturday, the Law School hosted the Central Region Legal Writing Conference, welcoming more than 100 attendees, not only from the central United States but from all over the country.  The theme was “Climate Change:  Alternative Sources of Energy in Legal Writing,” and those who attended seemed energized by the [...]

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Sep

24

Article Compares Research Results Using Westlaw and Lexis

Posted by: | September 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment

This morning the Law Librarian Blog reports on a study that makes concrete the different research results achieved through the Westlaw and Lexis research systems.  The author of the paper, Susan Nevelow Mart, a reference librarian at UC-Hastings, provides this abstract on SSRN:

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Feb

17

Dollars and Sense

Posted by: | February 17, 2009 | 4 Comments

I was scanning the Legal Writing Prof Blog this afternoon, and I noticed a post stating that, in an effort to save money, one large law firm is now requiring its attorneys to use Loislaw, rather than Lexis or Westlaw, for some of their research.  Evidently, the firm has imposed a three-part policy: All non-billable [...]

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Jan

26

Marquette to Host 2009 Central States Legal Writing Conference

Posted by: | January 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment

As just reported on the Legal Writing Prof Blog, the law school will host this fall’s Central States Legal Writing Conference.  The conference planning committee (led by our wonderful Alison Julien) met last Friday, and I am already excited for the event.  The regional legal writing conferences tend to focus on ideas for improving our [...]

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Dec

16

What’s New in the Classroom: Fastcase

Posted by: | December 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment

What’s new in the legal research classroom?   As was mentioned in previous posts, there is a new database, Fastcase, available to all Wisconsin bar members.   In the Advanced Legal Research classrooms this past semester students were introduced to Fastcase.  Now that it is available to all members of the Wisconsin bar, we plan to expand [...]

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Dec

12

What’s New in the Classroom: Legal Research in the Real World

Posted by: | December 12, 2008 | 2 Comments

The Advanced Legal Research courses at Marquette have a “real world” focus.  For my part, I have tried to select research problems for final projects and assignments that place students in real world practice situations.  To the extent that I can, I avoid the “hunt and find” type research problems for which there is one [...]

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Dec

10

Cobb and Kaltsounis, “Real Collaborative Context”

Posted by: | December 10, 2008 | 2 Comments

As I just mentioned, the latest issue of JALWD, which was themed “Legal Writing Beyond Memos and Briefs,” has a number of really interesting articles.  Another one I would recommend reading is Tom Cobb and Sarah Kaltsounis’s “Real Collaborative Context:  Opinion Writing and the Appellate Process.” I have experimented with collaboration in the classroom in [...]

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