What’s New in the Classroom: Fastcase

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 training on this cost-effective legal research tool.  The Fastcase database has already been reviewed by Leslie Behroozi and Elana Olson in a joint post.   I’d like to focus my comments on the Interactive Timeline feature of Fastcase.  This new feature will prove useful for spotting trends in the law, not only to practicing lawyers, but also to academics, including those interested in writing papers for publication.   

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Careful Whom You Email!

Want to email professors asking them to take a stance on a particular college-related issue?  Not a safe idea if you attend Michigan State University.  The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (“FIRE”) reported last week that a member of the student government at M.S.U. was found guilty of violating the university’s “spam” policy, which prohibits the sending of an unsolicited email to more than 20-30 recipients over two days. 

The student emailed a hand-picked group of 391 faculty members (roughly eight percent of the total at M.S.U.), asking them to speak up about a proposal by the school administration to change the calendar.  What is truly mind-boggling about the decision to discipline that student is that the administration had itself solicited comments on the change from the faculty; the email was designed to encourage the faculty to take advantage of that offer.

At least this violation of a network’s terms of use policy wasn’t found criminal.

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