Harvard Law School’s faculty has voted unanimously to join the Faculty of Arts & Sciences in implementing an open access publication policy and institutional repository for works published by faculty members. Incoming Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources John Palfrey’s blog provides details, including the text of the policy. The Chronicle of Higher Education blogged the decision as well.
What does it mean for you? Well, in essence, Harvard law faculty members’ new publications will be available for non-profit, research use to anyone who can access the internet. (Unless the faculty member chooses to opt out of the system, which the policy gives the faculty member the right to do.)
As HLS Dean Elena Kagan says “Our decision to embrace ‘open access’ means that people everywhere can benefit from the ideas generated here at the Law School.” Harvard University Professor and Director of the Library Robert Darnton hailed the vote: “That such a renowned law school should support Open Access so resoundingly is a victory for the democratization of knowledge. Far from turning its back to the outside world, the HLS is sharing its intellectual wealth.”
"Librarians have been very involved with these issues, and with the work on this policy. There was important library representation on the Provost’s Committee on Scholarly Publishing, which developed this proposal, and involvement of librarians at many points, including an open forum with librarians on the motion.”
As librarians, we look forward to helping provide easy access to what will soon become a free source of some of the best scholarship in the world.
Mildred Loving, whose 1967 Supreme Court victory brought an end to laws prohibiting interracial marriage in the United States, passed away on Friday at the age of 68.
Yes, according to Goodwin, Proctor’s Litigation Knowledge Manager David Hobbie. PreCydent is a free (for now, anyway) law search engine that aims to offer “google-like” access to case law (more details here).
Hobbie did several case law searches, as described on his blog, Caselines, and in his view, PreCydent consistently provided the best results. Despite this, Hobbie doesn’t recommend giving up Westlaw or Lexis, at least not for now. PreCydent “only covers a limited amount of federal appellate caselaw—in most cases, that after 1950 and up to July 2007,” and has a few other disadvantages, as Hobbie explains in his article Nevertheless, you may want to get a free preview of what might turn out to be the next major law search engine.
The commercially-published U.S. Code Annotated and U.S. Code Service are more up-to-date, but the government-published U.S. Code is still considered the official version and usually the preferred version if you’re citing federal statutes.
They have also begun posting PDFs of the official 2006 edition of the code. At present, Titles 1-9 of this new edition are available, and I’m hopeful that the remaining Titles will be posted in the near future.
On a somewhat-related note, a very useful, long-standing feature of the Law Revision Counsel’s web site is a set of tables that shows where recently enacted statutes are expected to be codified.
For those of you with an interest in historical aspects of legal citation, the fine folks at The Bluebook have put up PDFs of the first 15 editions (1926-1991) of their seminal “Uniform System of Citation.”
The 16th (1996), 17th (2000), and 18th (2005) editions are not available in PDF, although the 18th edition has recently been made available electronically for a fee.
Feeling like you’re getting a little too much information, lately? Lots of lawyers feel the same way. A recent study by LexisNexis reveals that 80% of legal professionals suffer from information overload. (Even more than the 70% of white collar workers who feel overloaded with information.)
Other findings include:
* 98% of legal professionals agree that the consequences of mismanaging information are extremely serious in the legal profession;
* 90% agree that not being able to access the right information at the right time is a big time-waster;
* 70% say they spend a lot of time sifting through irrelevant information;
* 45% say that research takes up so much of their time that they occasionally omit billing clients for this work.
What’s the solution? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to “google” all of law with one little box? (Try googling . Nope, we’re not quite there yet. Though I did find out that someone thinks Nevada is “tort-plagued.") Can legal research ever be that easy? Maybe someday… but until then, try asking your librarian… we’ll help you get the information you need, as quickly and as google-like as possible in our imperfect information world.
Each year, the reference librarians try to impress upon students the “Ten Minute Rule.” If you’ve been searching for something for more than ten minutes, please come to the reference desk for assistance. This is why we are here.
Now we have proof in the way of a recently published study by Lexis, which reveals that 70% of American white collar workers suffer from information overload. That number rises to 80% among legal professionals.
Other findings for legal professionals include:
* 90% of legal professionals agree that not being able to access the right information at the right time is a huge time-waster
* 70% say they spend a lot of time sifting through irrelevant information.
* Nearly 50% say that research takes up so much of their time that they occasionally omit billing clients for this work.
Law librarians are ideally suited to help individuals and organizations deal with information overload. Training attorneys in personal information management, participating in knowledge management programs, and participating on intranet teams are natural roles for librarians. These areas can greatly alleviate information overload and influence the bottom line of their firms.
Technology is both a blessing and a curse for information overload. In recent years, the growth of new Web content has been practically exponential. A 2007 estimate put the size of the Web at 15 to 30 billion pages. The blogosphere alone is estimated at 70 million blogs. Taken as a whole, that’s enough to overwhelm anyone. Text and Hat Tip from WisBlawg.
At PrawfsBlawg, James Grimmlemann has a list of student note titles he dislikes. I’m sure that some titles from law professors would also make the list.
Meanwhile, Grimmelmann’s three articles as indexed in LegalTrac are:
“Regulation by software.” Yale Law Journal 114.7 (May 2005): 1719(40).
“The structure of search engine law.” Iowa Law Review 93.1 (Nov 2007): 1(63).
“Virtual worlds as comparative law.” New York Law School Law Review 49.1 (Wntr 2005): 147-184.
The coverage for state legal encyclopedias on Westlaw and LexisNexis has recently changed, in terms of which encyclopedias are available on which systems.
Click here (and scroll down to State Legal Encyclopedias) to see which encyclopedias are on the shelf, which ones are on Westlaw, and which ones are on LexisNexis. Direct links are included.
Check out the American Constitution Society’s Research Link.
ACS Research link collects legal research topics submitted by practicing lawyers for law students to explore in faculty-supervised writing projects for academic credit. Practitioners receive a copy of student papers responding to their suggested topics, which ACS will also publish in a searchable online library.
Public.Resource.Org and Fastcase, Inc. recently announced that they will “release a large and free archive of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754.
The archive will be public domain and usable by anyone for any purpose.” The project includes plans to integrate the archive into existing sites such as Cornell’s Legal Information Institute, “providing continuity of coverage into the future. Further announcements will be forthcoming on the availability of other case law, including Federal District and pre-1949 Appellate decisions.”
Yes, according to Goodwin, Proctor’s Litigation Knowledge Manager David Hobbie. 
Public.Resource.Org and Fastcase, Inc. recently 
