Gallagher Blogs

Downton Abbey Entail Explained

2012-01-24T15:09:00.000-08:00

A bit of explanation from Seattle attorney James Nagle:

Downton Abbey Entailed? Understanding the Complicated Legal Issues in the new Masterpiece Classic Series

Tip of the hat to Seattle University Law Library's blog.

A Tour of Eight Famous Cases

2012-01-13T11:57:00.000-08:00

Canadian law professor Allan C. Hutchinson tells the stories of eight cases in Is Eating People Wrong? Great Legal Cases and How they Shaped the World (K370.H88 2011 at Classified Stacks). His big theme is the development of the common law through particular cases. Along the way, he offers more complete stories about some famous cases than you will ever find in a casebook or appellate opinion.

He opens with a case from Britain that actually begins in a lifeboat on the Atlantic ocean: The Queen v. Dudley and Stephens, 14 Q.B.D 273 (1884) (link). (The book draws its title from this chapter, if you want a hint about what the case is about.)

Hutchinson's selection is eclectic, spanning criminal law, torts, contract law, property law, and constitutional law – most of a typical first-year course line-up. He draws from four common-law jurisdictions: U.S., Canada, Australia, and U.K. The cases are:

Roncarelli v. Duplessis, [1959] S.C.R. 121, link (S.C.C.) (abuse of power by the premier of Quebec)
Pierson v. Post, 3 Cai. 175, link (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1805) (ownership of a hunted fox)
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, link (1954) (Brown I) and 349 U.S. 294, link (1955) (Brown II)(segregated schools)
Donoghue v. Stevenson, [1932] A.C. 562 (H.L.) 562, link (bottler's liability for snail in ginger beer)
Mabo v. Queensland, (1988) 166 C.L.R. 186, link (Mabo I) and (1992) 175 C.L.R. 1, link (Mabo II) (aboriginal title in Australia)
Hadley v. Baxendale, 9 Exch. 341, link (1854) (damages for contract breach)
Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436, link (1966) (accused's rights during interrogation)

You can read the book for Hutchinson's observations about the common law as "a messy, episodic, and experimental effort to respond and adapt to the contingent demands that the society brings forward." (p. 11) Or you can dabble in it to read the colorful stories about the unfortunate cabin boy, the contested fox, the mill's broken shaft, and more.

The publisher's page about the book is here. The WorldCat record (with links to other libraries) is here.

Academic Westlaw and Lexis Subscriptions Really Are Just for School

2012-01-13T10:44:00.000-08:00

Here's a great reminder, reprinted (with permission) from a post by our colleagues at Seattle U's law library :

It is well known that most law students in the U.S. have free [seemingly unlimited] use of major online subscription research databases. But use of these databases is an educational privilege and restricted to educational and nonprofit purposes (research and studies).

The Utah State Bar Ethics Advisory Committee found that an attorney’s misuse of a student’s educational Lexis or Westlaw access is not only an ethical violation but also amounts to theft of services, a criminal act (a potential felony). According to the Committee’s November 15, 2011, ethics opinion, “numerous” students have reported that their “initial or continued employment” has been conditioned upon a willingness to violate their agreements with respect to research services.

You can read the whole opinion here.

The Means of Innovation

2012-01-12T13:17:00.000-08:00

Looking for the latest from Professor Sean O’Connor? Check out The Means of Innovation, a new blog about law, creativity, commerce, and entrepreneurship.

Professor O’Connor’s scholarship is focused on how legal structures and strategies facilitate innovation. With this broad focus, he is writing an entertaining and educational blog that covers a range of topics including intellectual property, innovation and invention, legal instruction, and legal theory and policy.

The blog is a fascinating read in particular because Professor O’Connor stays on top of interesting articles and books, then, after briefly summarizing the topic, he provides direct and immediate commentary on aspects of the article you may have never considered. For example, a recent post concerning a New York Times article about a young woman who invented a prosthetic limb that would reduce phantom limb pain in amputees served as a jumping-off point for a discussion of the role of “innovation producers” (i.e., those individuals who are “able to bring together all the resources needed to take a cool idea or vision all the way to something that can be produced at a cost that makes it reasonably accessible to the market.”)

The blog is written in a congenial style that makes it easy to read and understand. If you’ve had Professor O’Connor for a class, you’ll be happy to know his blog style reflects his teaching style in that he makes the complicated legal issues easy to understand through his examples and illustrations. Two practicing lawyers, Brian Endter and Patrick Franke(both of Graham & Dunn), also contribute to the blog.

The Means of Innovation is also a forum for dialogue among those who want to think deeply and seriously about innovation across all different spaces (not just “technology”) and how those interested in innovation can get serious about the nuts and bolts of know-how/show-how rather than reduce innovation to theory and symbolic language constructs.

Professor O’Connor is working on a book, Methodology: Art, Science, Technology, Law, and the Means of Innovation.

Do You Have a Short Story in You?

2012-01-09T19:31:00.000-08:00

The Journal of Legal Education (a publication of the Association of American Law Schools) and Southwestern Law School have announced the first JLE Legal Fiction Contest. Submissions must be original short works of fiction related to law school or the practice of law, and winning entries will be published in a future issue of the Journal of Legal Education. The submission deadline is March 15, 2012.

The panel of distinguished judges will include Michael Connelly, author of bestselling legal-themed novels such as The Lincoln Lawyer, The Brass Verdict, The Reversal and the newly released The Drop. His recent book, The Fifth Witness, featured a character called "Bullocks" who is a recent Southwestern graduate. In agreeing to participate as a judge, Connelly said, "I'm excited to be involved because it's been fun for me to include Southwestern in my novels. But I am also a reader and always looking for good storytellers. I think this should be interesting. I'm looking forward to what comes in."
Connelly will be joined on the panel by author Denise Hamilton (Damage Control, The Last Embrace), writer Marshall Goldberg ("L.A. Law," "Paper Chase," "Newhart," "It's Gary Shandling's Show") and Charles Rosenberg (legal consultant to "Paper Chase," "L.A. Law," "The Practice" and "Boston Legal," and author of the recently released legal thriller Death on a High Floor).

The contest is open to lawyers and non-lawyers, academics and non-academics - anyone setting a fictitious story in a legal setting (law school, law firm, courtroom, legislature, judge's chambers, etc.) or focusing on a law-related character (lawyer, law professor, judicial clerk, etc.). According to Marshall Goldberg, "The long hours, the ethical conflicts and the differing notions of justice all force hard choices upon law students, practitioners, judges and academics - and these struggles can make powerful fiction."

Submissions must be in prose form (no screenplays or scripts), previously unpublished, under 5,000 words (approximately 20 typewritten pages) and submitted by March 15, 2012 (click here for full requirements). Entries will be reviewed anonymously and judged on originality, quality of writing and depth of character. The ten winners will be announced in June 2012, and their stories will be published in the Journal of Legal Education: The Fiction Issue in early 2013. Additionally, the ten winners and ten runner-up entries will be posted online. Authors will retain copyright ownership.
In applauding the creativity of the Journal of Legal Education editors at Southwestern in designing the competition and recruiting such an impressive panel of judges, Susan Prager, Executive Director of the Association of American Law Schools, said that she is "eager to see the first published pieces in the competition" and predicts that "these will prove of enduring interest and value." She added: "I only wonder if we will need to deliver more copies of the Journal to our member law schools!"

Assistant Dean Molly Selvin, the managing editor of the JLE and coordinator of the contest said, "In some quarters the legal world is considered stiff and colorless. The Journal of Legal Education and Southwestern Law School believe this contest will help dispel that misimpression, and happily welcome all submissions."

Graphic: mw, using Notes Plus app.

#aals12

2012-01-06T07:23:00.001-08:00

If you'd like to see short comments about what's going on at the AALS meeting, you can skim the tweets at www.twitter.com/aals12. You will see a variety of notes, from petty gripes to interesting insights.

Balance in Law School

2012-01-06T06:59:00.001-08:00

Balance in law school: isn't that an oxymoron? Not according to the members of AALS's Section on Balance in Legal Education who think it's rare but definitely worth striving for. This morning a panel of speakers shared information about classes, workshops, and student projects at their law schools: the City University of New York (CUNY), Vanderbilt, Miami, Phoenix, and UW. The speakers included faculty and staff, current students, and a recent grad. Prof. Kim Ambrose and Dean Michele Storms spoke about some of the programs at the UW.To get an idea of student-run programs, see the websites of the Insightful Mind Initiative (Miami) and the Vanderbilt Student Health and Wellness Association.

Law School Conference

2012-01-03T10:19:00.000-08:00

This week thousands of law professors and law school staff converge on Washington, DC, for the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). There will be committee meetings, meetings of representatives from all the law schools, and lots of presentations. Here are what some UW speakers will be talking about:

Elizabeth Coplan, Director of Media Relations & Marketing, is on a panel about partnering with law firms for the Section on Institutional Advancement.
Associate Dean Penny Hazelton is moderating a panel about law libraries responding to changing curricular and scholarly needs of faculty and students in times of limited resources.
Prof. Anita Krug is speaking on implementing Dodd-Frank.
Prof. Joel Ngugi – now Judge Ngugi of Kenya's High Court – is on a panel about the International Criminal Court's focus on Africa.
Prof. Kate O'Neill is moderating a panel about teaching professional values across the curriculum.
Prof. Arzoo Osanloo, from the UW's Law, Societies & Justice Program, will speak on marriage and divorce in Islam.

Most of the schedule is worked out well in advance of the meeting, but the organizers save some slots for "hot topics." Prof. Mary Fan is speaking on one of those hot topics, Alternatives to Mass Incarceration: Taking Advantage of the Budget Crisis. See Prof. Fan's article, Beyond Budget-Cut Criminal Justice: The Future of Penal Law, 90 N. Car. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2012), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1804539

Several of our speakers were chosen for their panels based on calls for papers:

Prof. Kim Ambrose and Assistant Dean Michele Storms are on a panel about faculty-student collaborations and student initiatives.
Prof. Zahr Said will speak on integrating law and the humanities into the core curriculum.
Prof. Sallie Sanford will be on a panel about health law professors' projects outside the traditional classroom; her paper is on teaching health law in rural Ethiopia.

Our faculty are also active as chairs of sections and members of committees:

Prof. Alan Kirtley is chair of the Section of Clinical Legal Education
Prof. Rafael Pardo is chair of the Section of Creditors' and Debtors' Rights and he is on the Committee on Research
Dean Kellye Testy is co-chair of the section for law school deans. She is nominated for (and will probably be elected to) the AALS Executive Board, for a three-year term./li>
Prof. Clark Lombardi is chair-elect of the Section of Islamic Law
Associate Dean Penny Hazelton is on the Committee on Libraries and Technology

One last UW connection: the Section on Disability Law is presenting a day-long program, Disaster, Disability and Law, whose papers will be published in the Washington Law Review.(This post was updated Jan. 5.)

Keeping Track of Stuff

2012-01-03T09:22:00.000-08:00

Did you get a new device over the break? Perhaps you are long past looking for a bicycle under the Christmas tree – maybe you have to buy your own toys and tools. But no matter how you got your bike, iPad, Android phone, or laptop, it's a good idea to keep track of it.
Did you know that you can register bicycles and electronics with the UW Police? They keep track of the serial number and other identifying information and if, heaven forbid, something is lost or stolen, that registration can help get it back to you when it's found. You can get a sticker from the UW Police to show that you've registered your bike or device, and that might deter some thieves.
The best deterrence is keeping an eye on your things. If you need to take a bathroom break or a coffee break, take your things with you or have a friend watch them. It doesn't take long for a thief to pick up a laptop!
You can buy a security cable to lock your laptop. All of the Law Library's tables and carrels have brackets underneath to anchor the cables. The University Book Store Tech Center carries at least one kind. Or to see a lot, visit Amazon.com and search for laptop security cable.
And of course, thieves who take you whole device are not the only threat. You also don't want your computing life messed up by viruses, crashes, or identity thieves. See UW IT Connect's page on Safe and Secure Computing. See also Six Tips to Safeguard Your Mobile Devices, Law Technology News, Jan. 2, 2011.

Graphic: cartoon of iPad under the tree, drawn on my iPad, which I just registered with UWPD.

Inside the Interrogation of a Scared Teen

2012-01-02T18:48:00.001-08:00

After a trial court judge suppressed a teenager's confession in her trial for smothering her infant, David Boeri, a reporter for WBUR, a public radio station in Boston, petitioned to get the DVDs or the interrogation. It took several months, but the judge issued an order in September, and in December, WBUR aired a two-part report, "Anatomy of a Bad Confession." Today, NPR aired a lengthy story (though not as lengthy as what WBUR aired).Why did it take so long for the judge to grant the motion? She was sensitive to the risks to the defendant: since the judge determined that the statements were involuntary, the confession wouldn't be admitted at trial and the defendant would not have the opportunity to challenge the statements publicly, and yet WBUR could post the on the web and anyone searching for the young woman's name for the rest of her life would be able to see and hear the confession. It was only after the prosecutor dropped the case that the judge decided that the balance tipped in favor of releasing the recordings. And now people can find online not only the confession but an interview with Nga Truong, reflecting on the interrogation three years later. She does have the opportunity to tell her story.Here are links:

David Boeri, How a Teen's Coerced Confession Set Her Free, All Things Considered, Jan 2, 2012
David Boeri, Anatomy of a Bad Confession, Part 1, WBUR, Dec. 7, 2011
Anatomy Of A Bad Confession, Part 2, WBUR, Dec. 8, 2011
video – excerpts from the interrogation, plus recent interview with the defendant, Nga Truong, and reflections by the reporter, David Boeri.
Commonwealth v. Truong, Feb. 25, 2011, the opinion suppressing the confession
Boeri's motion seeking the recordings
decision and order granting the motion

Hearing (or viewing) the questioning is much more vivid the reading a discussion of a coercive interrogation in an appellate opinion. This is very valuable reporting.

PACER iPhone App

2011-12-28T12:58:00.000-08:00

The federal courts have released an iPhone app for accessing district court records from PACER.

Users need to have already registered for a PACER account and the app can be used to view documents but not to file documents.

The link provides a list of features as well as Frequently Asked Questions.

See previous posts on PACER on this blog.

Hot Coffee Documentary

2011-12-16T16:30:00.000-08:00

A new documentary explores the rhetoric and politics of "tort reform." Hot Coffee: Is Justice Being Served? begins with the the case that has been fodder for comedians and politicians, Liebeck v. McDonald's.

Seinfeld mocked it. Letterman ranked it in his top ten list. And more than fifteen years later, its infamy continues. Everyone knows the McDonald’s coffee case. It has been routinely cited as an example of how citizens have taken advantage of America’s legal system, but is that a fair rendition of the facts? Hot Coffee reveals what really happened to Stella Liebeck, the Albuquerque woman who spilled coffee on herself and sued McDonald’s, while exploring how and why the case garnered so much media attention, who funded the effort and to what end. After seeing this film, you will decide who really profited from spilling hot coffee.

The next segment of the film looks at how a tort-reform damage cap has affected one family with a seriously disabled son.

And the third segment features Oliver Diaz, a justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court who successfully campaigned against a candidate backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, only to be indicted for accepting a bribe and then for tax fraud. Despite his acquittals, the charges kept him off the bench for years and probably cost him his next election.

The filmmaker, Susan Saladoff, is a lawyer who took on this project – her first film – during a sabbatical from her practice. She definitely has a point of view, and in the film and on the website encourages people to take action opposing tort reform. Whether or not you ultimately share her position, the film offers important information, with clips from advocates on both sides of the debate. Check it out: KF1250.H68 2011 at Classified Stacks.

Federal Social Media Index

2011-12-15T15:05:00.000-08:00

Ever wondered what federal agencies tweet about? No? Well, now the curious can find out. The Federal Social Media Index (FSMI) compiles Twitter activity from over 450 U.S. departments and agencies, ranking the federal Twitter accounts based on how well they engage with users.

The government's atwitter

The index is powered by ThinkUp, an application that tracks social media activity on platforms such as Twitter, Google+, and Facebook. The ThinkUp interface allows users to visualize activity on these social networks, from searching for past tweets to compiling graphs showing how many users follow accounts.

The FSMI allows users to visualize sortable variables such as the number of followers the department has and the number of inquiries and answers the department receives and provides. For instance, although NASA (@NASA) has the most followers by far at 1,658,784--nearly tripling the next-highest, The Smithsonian Institute (@smithsonian)--the State Department (@StateDept) was named Agency of the Week for December 5-11 for having the most replies from followers (427 replies from 199,413 followers.)

The indexing is done automatically on a weekly basis, using the ThinkUp application without any tinkering from humans. The results are intended to provide an unbiased account of how the government interacts with the citizenry--or at least the portion that regularly uses Twitter--and to highlight overlooked but interesting comments from government departments. For more information, Internet entrepreneur/blogger Andy Baio has a write-up at ExpertLabs.

As an interesting sidenote, the FSMI excludes the White House, whose account has become one of the most popular on Twitter, with over 2.5 million followers, enough to earn it a spot as one of the 125 most followed accounts. Sadly, the Supreme Court (@SupremeCourtGov) is one of the least engaging accounts, having a scant 243 followers and no tweets since June 4, 2010. Perhaps the Justices have more important matters to attend to!

Reducing Holiday Liability with 'The Company Party Checklist'

2011-12-14T12:53:00.000-08:00

Ah, the office holiday party. At best, an awkwardly enjoyable fishbowl of free booze and treats on the company dime; at worst, a festival of liability that presents an open invitation to inappropriate canoodling, drunken slurs, and unwanted advances amongst employees, any one of whom might one day quit and sue you for fostering a hostile work environment, citing events that occurred one fine December evening when everyone was "supposed to be" having a good time.

Catherine Dunn, Reducing Holiday Liability with 'The Company Party Checklist', Corporate Counsel (law.com), Dec. 14, 2011.

To reduce the risk of a "festival of liability," Proskauer employment lawyer Enzo Der Boghossian offers a checklist for employers hosting parties:

Remind employees that the party is a work event.
Remind everyone of the company's anti-harassment policy.
Hold the party at an establishment with a liquor license and professional bartenders who will cut off the people who have had too much.
Perhaps forgo alcohol altogether.
Review your insurance policy.

See also Tip of the Month: Holiday Parties – Simple Precautions to Prevent Post-Holiday Problems, Proskauer Client Alert, Dec. 9, 2009.

Even apart from potential liability, some of these tips could be applied to non-work parties.

Would you like some help tracking your own consumption? Check out Avvo's Last Call iPhone app. (See last year's post.)

Graphic credit: mw, using SketchBook Pro iPad app.

Brain Science and the Law

2011-12-13T22:33:00.000-08:00

Royal Society report

A panel of experts from the Royal Society has issued a report on Neuroscience and the Law (Dec. 13, 2011):

Neuroscientists seek to determine how brain function affects behaviour, and the law is concerned with regulating behaviour. It is therefore likely that developments in neuroscience will increasingly be brought to bear on the law. This report sets out some of the areas where neuroscience might be of relevance, along with some of the limits to its application. Specific issues discussed include risk assessment in probation and parole decisions; detecting deception; assessing memory; understanding pain; and Non-Accidental Head Injury NAHI).

The experts conclude that the science is potentially relevant to the law, but that it's too early to apply neuroscience directly in legal proceedings. They encourage further dialogue between neuroscientists and people in law. See Maria Cheng, UK experts: Too soon to use brain science in court, Olympian (via AP), Dec. 12, 2011.

The 46-page report is available for free download in PDF, Kindle, or E-Reader format.

This is part of a series of reports the Royal Society is putting out on neuroscience and society. The others are: Neuroscience, Society and Policy (Jan. 2011), Neuroscience: Implications for Education and Lifelong Learning (Feb. 2011), and Neuroscience, Conflict and Security(forthcoming).

Last March, the Royal Society and the National Academies co-hosted a two-day forum on neuroscience and the law in Irvine, CA. You can watch videos of most of the panels here.

Intrigued by this area of cross-disciplinary study? You can see posts on a variety of issues in The Law and Neuroscience Blog and the Neuroethics & Law Blog.

New Book Offers Supreme Court Insights

2011-12-13T14:06:00.000-08:00

Courtwatchers book jacket

Professor Ronald Collins gives a very warm review on SCOTUSblog to a new book, Clare Cushman, Courtwatchers: Eyewitness Accounts in Supreme Court History, KF8742 .C875 2011 at Classified Stacks.
Collins writes:

Remarkably researched and engagingly written, this book (replete with twenty-seven pictures/photographs) is nothing short of a treasure trove of all sorts of wonderful, informative, rancorous, touching, and sometimes amusing stories about the Court, its history, and its personnel – the Justices, their families, the Court reporters, the clerks, the lawyers, the staff, the journalists who wrote about it, and all others who had business with the Esteemed Institution. It has been a long while since I read a book on the Court and learned so much . . . without nodding off.

The review offers enough quotations to whet your appetite for more.
The publisher's page is here. A catalog record is here.

Interim & Holiday Hours

2011-12-13T10:46:00.000-08:00

When most School of Law exams end this Friday, Dec. 16, the Law Library will operate on an abbreviated interim and holiday schedule.

The Law Library will be closed:

Dec. 17 - 19, Saturday - Monday
Dec. 23 - 26, Friday - Monday
Dec. 30 & 31, Friday & Saturday
Jan. 1 & 2, Sunday & Monday

The Law Library will open the remaining days of the 2011 from 8am - 5pm and the Reference Office will be open from 9am - 12noon and 1 - 5pm.

Regular hours resume when School of Law classes begin again on Jan. 3, 2012.

New Faculty Publication: Watts on Constraining Certiorari

2011-12-13T10:39:00.000-08:00

Kathryn A. Watts, Constraining Certiorari Using Administrative Law Principles, 160 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1 (2011), available on SSRN.

Professor Watts latest article considers similarities between the U.S. Supreme Court's "discretion to set its own agenda" with administrative law.

Although certiorari and administrative law certainly differ, both involve congressional delegations of discretion to a less accountable body and therefore both raise concerns about accountability, transparency and reasoned decision-making.

The article provides a history of certiorari, the relevance of the administrative law analogy to certiorari reform, a comparison of checks on both systems, and some possible solutions to the Court's discretion based on administrative law principles. Some of these suggestions include:

Congressional legislation providing more specific standards to be used by the Court in making certiorari decisions
requiring the Court to give reasons or disclose votes on denials of certiorari petitions
increasing public participation through the filing of amicus briefs

5th Annual ABA Journal Blawg 100

2011-12-09T16:04:00.000-08:00

The ABA Journal has released its annual list of law blogs, Blawg 100.

Browse the A-Z list to look for your favorites and discover new law blogs of interest among 12 categories:

News
Trial Practice
LPM
Niche
For Fun
Opinion
IP Law
Labor & Employment
Criminal Justice
Business Law
Torts
Legal Technology

The ABA Journal explains how it selects the annual Blawg 100 in its F.A.Q.:

The Blawg 100 is compiled by ABA Journal staff and is largely a favorites’ list. We also ask for nominations from our readers through the Blawg Amici process. Most are blawgs that are regularly updated, contain original content, opinion and/or analysis. Many are also on our radar because the Journal staff finds the posts useful in terms of tipping us off to news or generating posts we consider worthy of coverage.

It's interesting to read how the list has changed over time. See the ABA's Journal post, We Honor the Fallen: Past Blawg 100 Entries Which Have Departed.

So what’s your favorite law blog? Cast your vote at ABA Journal online through Dec. 30 at ABAJournal.com/blawg100.

New Faculty Publication: Nicolas's Evidence Casebook, 3d ed.

2011-12-06T10:56:00.001-08:00

Peter Nicolas, Evidence: A Problem-Based and Comparative Approach (3d ed., Carolina Academic Press, 2011).

The third edition of Prof. Peter Nicolas's evidence casebook has just been published.

It incorporates the restyled version of the Federal Rules of Evidence that became effective on December 1st. The Confrontation Clause section has been changed to reflect the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions Melendez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, Michigan v. Bryant, and Bullcoming v. New Mexico.

The section on state evidence rules and cases interpreting them has been expanded as well.

The book's table of contents is available at the publisher's website.

New Faculty Publication: Gomulkiewicz on Educating Leaders in IP Law

2011-12-06T10:31:00.001-08:00

Robert W. Gomulkiewicz, Intellectual Property, Innovation, and the Future: Toward a Better Model for Educating Leaders in Intellectual Property Law, 64 SMU L. Rev. 1161 (2011).

"Intellectual property (IP) sits at the center of the global economy."

Prof. Gomukiewicz addresses the "big bang" in intellectual property law programs that occurred in 2000. He describes the students attracted to such programs: international students, "practice switchers," "resume enhancers," skill builders, and budding academics.

His blueprint for IP law programs includes a core curriculum on legal systems and skills and advanced courses, such as:

IP in depth
IP in relationship
IP in context
IP in practice
advanced writing in IP

Tutorials, course sequencing, mixing J.D. and LL.M students, and the next phases in the development of these specialized programs are also considered.

New CRS Reports: Privacy and Secrecy

2011-12-06T09:39:00.000-08:00

Two new Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports of interest:

Governmental Tracking of Cell Phones and Vehicles: The Confluence of Privacy, Technology, and Law, December 1, 2011 (25 PDF pages):

Technology has advanced considerably since the framers established the constitutional parameters for searches and seizures in the Fourth Amendment. What were ink quills and parchment are now cell phones and the Internet. It is undeniable that these advances in technology threaten to diminish privacy. Law enforcement’s use of cell phones and GPS devices to track an individual’s movements brings into sharp relief the challenge of reconciling technology, privacy, and law.

Congressional Lawmaking: A Perspective On Secrecy and Transparency
November 30, 2011 (19 PDF pages):

Openness is fundamental to representative government. Yet the congressional process is replete with activities and actions that are private and not observable by the public. How to distinguish reasonable legislative secrecy from impractical transparency is a topic that produces disagreement on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Why? Because lawmaking is critical to the governance of the nation.

News Tribune Investigates Drug Task Force in Kitsap County

2011-12-04T10:22:00.001-08:00

Today's News Tribune has an investigative report on WestNET, the West Sound Narcotics Enforcement Team, a federally funded drug task force based in Kitsap County, with tendrils reaching into Pierce County.A Dirty Little War, News Tribune, Dec. 4, 2011.

While the task force's mission is to go after drug-trafficking organizations, much of its effort was spent on low-level cases. Critics say that the officers often had a "cowboy" mentality, breaking down doors and bursting into homes wearing paramilitary gear.

The newspaper's review of court records indicates that the task force often inflated its success rate.

At least two people allege that one officer (Roy Alloway, who has since pleaded guilty to federal firearms and tax offenses) pressured them to give evidence that was false, or said that they made statements they did not.

In A story like WestNET's takes considerable work, News Tribune, Dec. 4, 2011, the journalists describe the public records they used, from courts (federal and state) and law enforcement agencies.The Tahoma Narcotics Enforcement Team (TNET), based in Pierce County, presents a different picture. All of its cases went to federal court, while most of WestNET's cases went to federal court. TNET has a much higher success rate (although the journalists did not have a record of cases the prosecutors declined. How WestNET compares with Pierce County task force, News Tribune, Dec. 4, 2011.

If you'd like to read about a drug task force gone horribly wrong, I recommend Nate Blakeslee, Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town, HV8079.N3 B55 2005 at Good Reads. While focusing on one notoriously bad case – with a renegade officer at the center of the action – Blakeslee also discusses the structural factors that make drug task forces susceptible to abuse of power, sloppy police work, and worse. See chapter 11, The Jump Out Boys.

Supreme Court on TV

2011-11-30T15:20:00.001-08:00

C-SPAN has asked to broadcast the arguments in the case testing the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. Adam Liptak, a leading legal reporter, writes: Supreme Court TV? Nice Idea, but Still Not Likely (N.Y. Times, Nov. 28, 2011).

Liptak suggests that the Justices are leary of being reduced to sound bites, but he notes that "newspaper reporters use the text equivalent of sound bites all the time. We call them quotations."

TVW has broadcast (on cable, on DVD, and online) Washington Supreme Court oral arguments for many years with no apparent ill effects. You can watch arguments 1997-present here.

Graphic: screen capture from oral argument on TVW, dressed up a little in Paint, by mw.

Tips for Thrift

2011-11-29T16:21:00.001-08:00

Most students are on tight budgets, but not everyone is naturally frugal. A law student who blogs as Cowgirl in the City offers a list of Lovely Money Saving Blogs (Nov. 18, 2011). Maybe some of them will have tips you can use.

Hat tip: @LNLawSchool.

Will You Practice Solo Sometime?

2011-11-28T13:43:00.000-08:00

The New York Times has an article about attorneys who leave big firms to go solo (or practice with just one or two others). Skipping the Partner Track for a Shingle of One’s Own, N.Y. Times, Nov. 23, 2011.

Solo practice isn't really the Big New Thing: there have always been a lot more solo practioners than lawyers in big firms. What's newish is the trend for lawyers to leave big firms to go solo.

Here are some numbers pulled from ABA, Lawyer Demographics (2011):

Distribution of all U.S. lawyers

	1980	1991	2000
Private practice	68%	73%	74%
Government	9%	8%	8%
Private industry	10%	9%	8%
Retired/inactive	5%	5%	5%
Judiciary	4%	3%	3%
Education	1%	1%	1%
Legal aid/public defender	2%	1%	1%
Private association	1%	1%	1%

Distribution of all U.S. lawyers in private practice

	1980	1991	2000
Solo	49%	45%	48%
2-5 lawyers	22%	15%	15%
6-10 lawyers	9%	7%	7%
11-20 lawyers	7%	7%	6%
21-50 lawyers	6%	8%	6%
51-100 lawyers	7%	5%	4%
100+ lawyers	*	13%	14%

It's likely that a lot of current students will one day have practices of their own.One way to start thinking about this is to take Law E536 Practical And Professional Responsibility Issues in the Small or Solo Law Practice.

Carolyn Elefant has a terrific blog with links to lots of practical resources: myshingle.com.

You might also take a look at a book on the topic, e.g.,

Carolyn Elefant, Solo by Choice: How to Be the Lawyer You Wanted to Be, KF300.Z9 E44 at Classified Stacks
Jay G. Foonberg, How to Start and Build a Law Practice (5th ed. 2004), KF300.Z9 F66 2004 at Reference Area
Flying Solo: A Survival Guide for the Solo and Small Firm Lawyer (K. William Gibson ed., 2005), KF300.F58 2005 at Classified Stacks

Professional groups include

ABA General Practice, Solo and Small Firm Division. Selected articles from GP/Solo magazine are online. We also have it in print: KF297.A1 C65 at Classified Stacks.
WSBA Solo and Small Practice Section
KCBA Solo/Small Firms Section (brown-bag lunch meetings the second Wednesday of each month)

New Faculty Publication: Peter Nicolas on Geography of Love (Second Edition)

2011-11-21T13:07:00.000-08:00

Professor Peter Nicolas, the School of Law’s Jeffrey and Susan Brotman Professor of Law, has recently published the second edition of his book, The Geography of Love: Same-Sex Marriage & Relationship Recognition in America (The Story in Maps).

Co-authored with Geographic Information Specialist Mike Strong, this book provides the reader with concise summaries, tables, and full-color maps depicting the state of marriage and relationship recognition rights in the United States for same-sex couples. The second edition includes new legislation and recent court decisions, updating the first edition which was published earlier this year.

The book’s companion website, http://www.gayrightsmap.com/ and the book’s back cover offer the following description:This publication begins with a detailed history of efforts to achieve marriage rights and other forms of relationship recognition (such as domestic partnerships and civil unions) for gay and lesbian Americans, from the first lawsuit filed in 1970 in Minnesota to the Delaware and Hawaii civil union laws that go into effect on January 1, 2012 – and just about everything (judicial and legislative) in between.
Peter Nicolas & Mike Strong, The Geography of Love: Same-Sex Marriage & Relationship Recognition in America (The Story in Maps) (2d ed. Peter Nicolas 2011) is currently featured in the School of Law Scholarship display at the Law Library’s entrance.

Library Hours for Thanksgiving

2011-11-18T08:59:00.001-08:00

The Law Library will be closed several days for the Thanksgiving holiday:

Nov. 24-26, Thursday-Saturday

The Library will also close early on Wednesday, Nov. 23, at 5pm.

Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals on HeinOnline

2011-11-15T18:32:00.000-08:00

The Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals is now on HeinOnline!

IFLP indexes hundreds of journals from around the world, as well as chapters in collections of papers by different authors. You can use it to find scholarship about foreign and international law that you'll never find if you stick to just LexisNexis and Westlaw.

HeinOnline's interface for IFLP is straightforward and easy to use. You can search by keywords, author, title, subject, date, and so on:

IFLP search screen

For instance, if you search for winn j in the author field, you'll find articles that Prof. Jane K. Winn wrote in Studies in Transnational Economic Law (a Dutch journal) as well as articles in U.S. journals about international law, such as the Texas International Law Journal and International Lawyer.

Articles by Jane Winn

You can browse subjects to find one that the indexers would have used for your issue. For instance, if you try "Forced labor," you'll find the index uses "Slavery, forced labor, etc." And if you look up "slavery," you'll see the related concepts of related topics of "Crimes against humanity" and "Labor law" if you want to look more broadly.

Subject list

Click on "Slavery, forced labor, etc." and you get a list of all the articles indexed with that term since 1985, for example:

Entries under Slavery

When an article is available on HeinOnline, there's a convenient link. If the journal is not on HeinOnline, check the law library catalog to see whether we have it; if not, you can request the article through interlibrary loan.

Articles may be in English or in another language. Sometimes, they are in one language with a summary in another language. You can use the facets on the left of the screen to refine your search in different ways – e.g., by language or date, or jurisdiction.

Facets for refining search

Only 1985-date is set up as a database with different fields. But Hein has digitized all of IFLP, starting with volume 1 in 1960.

You can choose the print edition —

— and then use it as if you were thumbing through the books. Only you won't be carrying volumes to your table and you don't even have to be in the library to do it. And when you find a page with lots of good citations, you can just save it to your laptop instead of copying the citations one by one. What's not to like about convenience like that?

One or more of the articles you find in IFLP could make all the difference in your research paper or Jessup memorial!

Justice Frankfurter and Judge Wapner

2011-11-15T14:00:00.000-08:00

Did you know that Justice Felix Frankfurter and Judge Joseph Wapner share a birthday? It's today, Nov. 15.

Matthew Mantel, a librarian at the University of Houston, discusses these two jurists' careers here (This Week in Legal History -- Judges, Nota Bene, Nov. 15, 2011).

Felix Frankfurter (l.) and Joseph Wapner (r.)

Photo credits: Felix Frankfurter from Library of Congress. Joseph Wapner from Los Angeles Times Hollywood Star Walk guide.

Library Hours for Veterans Day

2011-11-04T14:20:00.000-07:00

The campus observes Veterans Day, Nov. 11, as a holiday.

The Law Library will be open from 8am until 5pm that day. The Reference Office will be open from 1 - 4 pm.

Regular hours resume on Nov. 12.

An Anthology of Disability Literature

2011-11-03T10:33:00.000-07:00

Christy Thompson Ibrahim, a part-time faculty member who has taught Disability Law since 2000, has just published An Anthology of Disability Literature.
According to the publisher's description:

This striking anthology includes works by Leo Tolstoy, Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, John Hockenberry, Michael J. Fox, Charlotte Bronte, Harriet McBryde Johnson, Franz Kafka, Annie Dillard, Temple Grandin, Cris Matthews, Georgina Kleege, H.G. Wells, Rachel Simon, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Jhumpa Lahiri, Helen Keller, Ursula Le Guin, Alexander McCall Smith, and others. The selections, both fiction and non-fiction, ranging from classics to modern favorites, contemplate a variety of disabilities — physical impairments, mental illness, and intellectual disabilities — and provide viewpoints from self-advocates, family, and friends. Expressing optimism, anger, love, hope, angst, drama, and realism, the readings and accompanying discussion questions provoke reflection about tolerance, community living, family dynamics, and disability rights.

Disability History Awareness Month ended on October 31, but the importance of disability studies did not!

W Day! -- Trademark Searching

2011-11-03T08:30:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, Nov. 4, is "W Day," when the University of Washington celebrates its 150th anniversary.

Recently I was wearing something with a W and the little TM, and a friend asked, incredulously, "Can they really trademark the letter W?"

Yes, indeed they can. And looking into the trademark created a good occasion to explore the trademarks resources on the United States Patent and Trademark Office website, particularly the Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS). (I am NOT expert in trademark searching, but I was able to mess around and find some things.)

There are a lot of codes involved in trademark searching. For instance, Goods and Services (the [GS] field) are assigned codes, such as 015 for Musical Instruments (goods) and 037 for Construction and Repair (services). The UW provides a service coded broadly as 041, Education and Entertainment. There are also fields for data like the trademark owner's name [ON]. You use the Word Mark [WM] field to look for marks that are letters, punctuation, and words—like, say, W.

Searching for "university of washington" as the owner, and W in the Word Mark field, I found the trademark (serial number 77091314, filed Jan. 5, 2007; registration number 3377279, registered Feb. 5, 2008):

The UW's trademarked W.

I also found trademarked Ws with Huskies, one filed in 1992 and one in 1994.


Two trademarked Ws with Husky faces.

You might think: well, the Husky is distinctive, but that W is just a W.

Not so fast. Look at all the Ws that our W isn't:

1st row: Winona State Univ. (MN), Waynesburg Univ. (PA), Wright State Univ. (OH), Washburn, Univ. of Wisconsin (on its badger); 2nd row: Western Kentucky Univ. (twice), Washburn (again), Wayne State Univ. (Michigan); 3rd row: Waynesburg Univ. (again), Wichita State Univ. (Kansas), Univ. of Wisconsin (behind and on the badger), the Mississippi Univ. for Women; 4th row: Univ. of Wisconsin (a different style), Wharton (Univ. of Pennsylvania), Webster Univ. (MO), Weber State Univ. (UT), the Univ. of Wisconsin (one last time).

So it's not the letter per se, but the particular shape of the W that's trademarked.

Note that the 16 Ws in the graphic are all universities' Ws. If you broaden the search, you can find Ws for banks, plumbers, and nearly every other kind of business.

This trademark doesn't have any letters or words on it:

UW Husky trademark, filed in 2000.

To search for similar trademarks, you can't look for letters or words. So TESS also allows you to search by design elements. They can be geometric (triangle, ellipse, etc.) or categories like people, trees, or whatever. In this case the codes are:

03.01.09 - Coyotes; Hyenas; Jackals; Wolves
03.01.16 - Heads of cats, dogs, wolves, foxes, bears, lions, tigers

I learned (by failure) that you need to leave the periods out when you search, but when I got it right 030116[dc] turned up a wide variety of dog and cat logos, including these:

Top Dawg headphones, Bulldog Burgers, Angola LNG Supply Services,Shodogg (Touchstream Technologies), the Centers for Habilitation, New York Dawg Pound, Nutt Butt Bakery, Pupcake Productions, Montana State Univ. (bobcat head), Hooperstown Huskies, NC State (wolf), Jackson Generals (baseball), Charlotte Hounds (lacrosse)

Think of all the different looks our Husky could have had!

For more on trademark searching, see this guide from the UW Engineering Library. For the scoop on how trademarks work at the UW, see University of Washington Trademark and Licensing Policies. And for trademark law, see our guide (note the table of contents in the upper right: you need to click to get to the different sections).

And if you're so inclined, show your purple on Friday. It's even good for discounts at some local businesses!

Hat tip: Meg Butler.

Big News in Federal Sentencing

2011-11-01T22:48:00.000-07:00

There's a big new study of federal sentencing AND the federal government has begun reviewing the sentences of people serving time for crack cocaine offenses.

Study

Yesterday the United States Sentencing Commission submitted to Congress a huge (645 pages!) assessing the impact of statutory minimum mandatory sentences. Here are a few excerpts from the press release:

"While there is a spectrum of views on the Commission regarding mandatory minimum penalties, the Commission unanimously believes that certain mandatory minimum penalties apply too broadly, are excessively severe, and are applied inconsistently across the country. The Commission continues to believe that a strong and effective guideline system best serves the purposes of sentencing established by the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984.”
. . .
The Commission also addresses the overcrowding in the federal Bureau of Prisons, which is over-capacity by 37 percent.
. . .
The report was undertaken pursuant to a directive from Congress to examine mandatory minimum penalties, particularly in light of the Supreme Court’s 2005 decision in Booker v. United States, which rendered the federal sentencing guidelines advisory.
. . .
More than 75 percent of those offenders convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty were convicted of a drug trafficking offense.
Hispanic offenders accounted for the largest group (38.3%) of offenders convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty, followed by Black offenders (31.5%), White offenders (27.4%), and Other Race offenders (2.7%).
Almost half (46.7%) of all offenders convicted of an offense carrying a mandatory minimum penalty were relieved from the application of such penalty at sentencing for assisting the government, qualifying for "safety valve" relief, or both.
Black offenders received relief from a mandatory minimum penalty least often (in 34.9% of their cases), compared to White (46.5%), Hispanic (55.7%) and Other Race (58.9%) offenders. In particular, Black offenders qualified for relief under the safety valve at the lowest rate of any other racial group (11.1%), compared to White (26.7%), Hispanic (42.8%) and Other Race (36.6%), either because of their criminal history or the involvement of a dangerous weapon in connection with the offense.
Receiving relief from a mandatory minimum penalty made a significant difference in the sentence ultimately imposed. . . .

The report is here. The executive summary is here.

Crack Sentences

Crack Cocaine Case Review May Free Inmates, All Things Considered, NPR, Nov. 1, 2011.

Across the country on Tuesday, federal judges began reviewing the prison sentences of thousands of men and women jailed on crack cocaine charges. Many inmates could be released or see their sentences sharply reduced.

Congress voted last year to ease federal sentencing guidelines for crack cocaine. But a decision this summer to revisit old drug cases has sparked new controversy.

New Faculty Publication: Bill Rodgers on Climate Change

2011-11-01T17:00:00.000-07:00

Professor Rodgers, the School of Law’s Stimson Bullitt Professor of Environmental Law, has recently published Climate Change: A Reader (William H. Rodgers Jr., Michael Robinson-Dorn, Jennifer K. Barcelos & Anna T. Moritz eds., Carolina Academic Press 2011).

The back cover provides a description:

Climate Change provides a comprehensive and unique introduction to the emerging issues of global climate change. It presents many of the foundational documents, background scientific explanations, and excerpts from the leading thinkers in the vast literature on global warming. It features original articles and essays from scholars in the fields of environmental science, and environmental, energy, international and human rights law. Designed for use in the burgeoning number of new courses in areas such as global warming, climate change and climate justice, this book is organized around the topics of science, justice, impacts, energy, the U.S. response, international law, state and local law, and innovative litigation. The Reader weaves together the important story of the global warming saga in a thorough and approachable manner.

The book is organized into the following chapters:

Setting the Scientific Stage
The Justice of Transformative Change and the Spread of Global Fever
The Health of the Planet: The Atmosphere, the Earth, the Sea, the Residents
Reconstructed Energy Futures
Framing the Climate Change Debate
United States’ Response to Climate Change
The International Law and Policy of Climate Change
Local, State, Regional, Tribal and Private Climate Change Initiatives
Legal Initiatives Designed to Turn the Tide on Climate Change (on CD-ROM)

Throughout the book are extensive references, figures, and tables. A detailed index is included.

Climate Change: A Reader is located in the Classified Stacks at KF3783 .C578 2011.

Is Legal Education in Crisis?

2011-10-31T11:27:00.001-07:00

Last week the National Law Journal launched Law School Review, "an online forum examining the current state and future of legal education."

We want to address the question, "Are law schools in crisis?" If the answer is yes, what are the most pressing problems and how should educators and regulators address them? If the answer is no, what is it that law schools are doing right? Is this enough to ensure their future viability? We have assembled a panel of experts to share their thoughts on the subject [noted law school deans and law professors], and we hope to create a robust dialogue and exchange of ideas.

If you're interested in what law schools do (and why wouldn't you be?), this is worth a look.

Halloween Treats

2011-10-31T09:47:00.000-07:00

Its Halloween, but don't panic!
We've found litigation Satanic.

U. S. ex rel. Mayo v. Satan and his Staff, 54 F.R.D. 282 (1971).
Plaintiff, alleging jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 241, 28 U.S.C. § 1343, and 42 U.S.C. § 1983 prays for leave to file a complaint for violation of his civil rights in forma pauperis. He alleges that Satan has on numerous occasions caused plaintiff misery and unwarranted threats, against the will of plaintiff, that Satan has placed deliberate obstacles in his path and has caused plaintiff's downfall.

Plaintiff alleges that by reason of these acts Satan has deprived him of his constitutional rights.

We feel that the application to file and proceed in forma pauperis must be denied. Even if plaintiff's complaint reveals a prima facie recital of the infringement of the civil rights of a citizen of the United States, the Court has serious doubts that the complaint reveals a cause of action upon which relief can be granted by the court. We question whether plaintiff may obtain personal jurisdiction over the defendant in this judicial district. The complaint contains no allegation of residence in this district.

While the official reports disclose no case where this defendant has appeared as defendant there is an unofficial account of a trial in New Hampshire where this defendant filed an action of mortgage foreclosure as plaintiff. The defendant in that action was represented by the preeminent advocate of that day, and raised the defense that the plaintiff was a foreign prince with no standing to sue in an American Court. This defense was overcome by overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Whether or not this would raise an estoppel in the present case we are unable to determine at this time.

If such action were to be allowed we would also face the question of whether it may be maintained as a class action. It appears to meet the requirements of Fed.R. of Civ. P. 23 that the class is so numerous that joinder of all members is impracticable, there are questions of law and fact common to the class, and the claims of the representative party is typical of the claims of the class. We cannot now determine if the representative party will fairly protect the interests of the class.

We note that the plaintiff has failed to include with his complaint the required form of instructions for the United States Marshal for directions as to service of process.

For the foregoing reasons we must exercise our discretion to refuse the prayer of plaintiff to proceed in forma pauperis.

From the Gallagher guide on Judicial Humor.

New Faculty Publication: Helen Anderson on Revising Harmless Error

2011-10-28T15:10:00.000-07:00

Helen A. Anderson, Revising Harmless Error: Making Innocence Relevant to Direct Appeals, 17 Tex. Wesleyan L. Rev. 391 (2011), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1698982.

Professor Anderson’s latest article explores the history and development of harmless error. Describing findings from the Innocence Project, she examines how harmless error analysis is applied in cases where the likely causes of wrongful conviction are implicated.

She proposes guidelines and changes that can be made to reinvigorate harmless error analysis so that courts recognize and take seriously the possibility of innocence, writing:

It is time for a better-informed harmless error standard that incorporates the lessons of the last three decades about the realities of criminal justice.

Law Professor's Memoir of Schizophrenia

2011-10-27T16:36:00.000-07:00

Elyn Saks opens her memoir, The Center Cannot Hold, with a scene every law student can identify with: three students working in the law library on a weekend night, trying to get a moot court brief done. But the action moves to something most students don't experience, hallucinations that lead her onto the law school's roof and, eventually, to the state mental hospital, where anti-psychotic medications are forced on her.

The memoir offers a gripping inside look at mental illness and its treatment. Saks was hospitalized in both England (when she was studying at Oxford) and the United States (when she was studying at Yale), and the contrast between the two mental hospitals is striking. Although many psychiatrists think that schizophrenia can only be treated with drugs, Saks has found benefit from a combination of talk therapy and medication.

The book's call number is RC464.S25 A3 2007 at Good Reads. Links: Publisher's page; WorldCat; Amazon.

Saks has not only lived with a diagnosis of schizophrenia, she has also been very successful professionally. Despite that incident on the roof, she finished law school and became an expert in mental health law.

She is the Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, and Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California. When she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant, she used the award to establish the Saks Institute for Mental Health Law, Policy, and Ethics at USC.

(This is another post in our series for Disability History Awareness Month.)

Living Voters Guide

2011-10-27T10:51:00.001-07:00

From UW Today:

"The Living Voters Guide is powered for the Nov. 8 election, updated with the three statewide ballot initiatives, two state constitutional amendments and 120 local and regional measures.

Actually, the guide is powered by citizens. It’s a website that helps ordinary voters form and share their opinions with other people, together producing a citizen-written voters’ guide. The guide was created for the 2010 ballot initiatives, but this year, regional and local measures have been added along with additional means for sharing opinions."

The general election voters guide (and much more) is at the Secretary of State's Elections and Voting page.

United Nations Day

2011-10-24T19:05:00.000-07:00

Today marks the anniversary of the United Nations coming into existence—the day when a majority of the original 51 signatories of the UN charter had ratified it. (Today there are 191 member states.)

For a quick overview of the UN, see The United Nations: An Introduction for Students. More detail about this large and complex organization is here.

The UN system includes a number of specialized agencies, such as:

If you want to observe Disability History Awareness month as you observe United Nations Day, check out the FAQs for the UN Secretariat for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

Graphic: mw

There's an App for . . . HeinOnline

2011-10-21T12:13:00.000-07:00

HeinOnline--the go-to source for PDF images of law reviews--now offers an iPhone/iPad app!

It offers

image-based PDFs, access content by citation, browse by volume, navigate a volume with the electronic table of contents, and use full advanced searching techniques.

Correction: When you download the app, you will be asked to authenticate your access. The authentication will last for 30 days, at which time you will be asked to re-authenticate. So you don't need to use the Library's Off-Campus Access login as was first mentioned. Thanks to Mary Whisner for the correction.

Cameras in the Federal Courts

2011-10-21T12:05:00.000-07:00

Since July, fourteen federal courts have been participating in a trial program [pun intended] for videotaping court proceedings. The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington is one of the participants.

The Cameras in the Courts webpage identifies the courts, provides an overview of the pilot program, links to the program's guidelines, and links to the videos. Currently the site provides videos of seven civil trials. No video from the Western District is available yet.

Three Degrees Project at UW School of Law

2011-10-21T10:27:00.000-07:00

A think tank housed at The University of Washington School of Law is dedicated to promoting climate justice worldwide. Employing human rights discourse as a framework for addressing the problems of environmental degradation, Three Degrees Project “harnesses the power of the academy and the law to promote fair and equitable adaptation strategies in regions most vulnerable to climate impacts.”

Three Degrees was founded by Co-Executive Directors and former UW law students Jeni Barcelos and Jennifer Marlow. This leading climate justice center stemmed from a 2009 Conference at the UW School of Law that included a lecture by Mary Robinson, the first woman President of Ireland and the former United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights. The mission of Three Degrees is to “design future institutions capable of addressing the human impacts of climate change and to assist climate-impacted communities in seeking compensation for climate harms.”

In borrowing from environmental and human rights law, Three Degrees has not only gone on speaking tours around the world, but has also implemented the following projects:

Cambodia Project: Working with photojournalists Michael Harris and Kevin Ely, and the staff of Wildlife Alliance, Three Degrees produced a short video about the Southern Cardamom forest and the long-term threats posed by a titanium mine.

Climate Justice Seminar: Open to twenty-five students from across the UW, the course examines predicted climate futures in locations around the world where climate change is likely to harm marginalized populations, and to understand the limitations and strengths of international and domestic legal and policy systems to alleviate these impacts.

Simulation Summits: Bringing local people together with scientists, legal experts, artists, and public health practitioners, Simulation Summits empower impacted communities to analyze climate threats specific to them. Simulation Summits identify responses to legal and policy barriers, which may include litigation, developing new fiscal mechanisms for supporting adaptation, creating international and domestic institutions for hearing climate claims, and increasing access to local legal and technical resources.

In the near future, Three Degrees will be speaking at the Global Washington Conference: Opportunities and Obstacles in Turbulent Times located at the Microsoft Campus in Redmond, WA on October 31 and at the World Affairs Council Forum in Juneau, Alaska in mid-November.

Finding Historic Newspaper Articles

2011-10-20T19:15:00.000-07:00

From time to time, you may need to find a news article as it appeared in its original format. It may seem like a challenging endeavor when the news article you are trying to locate is from 1911, instead of 2011!

There are many excellent sources for historical news. One resource you may want to try is the ProQuest Historical Newspapers database (UW Restricted).

Current coverage includes major newspaper such as The New York Times (1851 – 2007), The Wall Street Journal (1889 – 1993), the Los Angeles Times (1881 – 1987), and the Chicago Defender (1910 – 1975). Full-text articles are available in PDF format.

To find this database, go to the UW Libraries website (when you are working off-campus, be sure to log in with your UW NetID and password before connecting to a UW Restricted database).

Then, on the left side under "Find It," click on Subject Guides. The subject guides provide access to resources (article databases, catalogs, background information, web sites, and more) organized by topic, and are created by the librarians responsible for the areas of study listed.

Under "N," is a link to a subject guide for News. One of the choices on this page is a link to “News, pre-1990.” Look for the section on "Historical Newspapers," where you will see links to a number of news sources, including those mentioned above.

For historic news originating in Washington, see the Gallagher Law Library research guide Washington State News Sources Online.

Lawyers with Disabilities

2011-10-18T16:31:00.000-07:00

How many lawyers with disabilities are there? What challenges do they face? What accommodations are offered in the workplace? See The Second National Conference on the Employment of Lawyers with Disabilities: A Report from the American Bar Association for the Legal Profession (2009) (99-page PDF).
Check out the Lawyers with Disabilities portal on the American Bar Association's website.
The ABA's Commission on Mental and Physical Disabilities offers a mentor program that "pairs prospective law students, law students, and recent law school graduates with disabilities with a mentor."
Prof. Donald Stone has studied several aspects of lawyers with disabilites, such as accommodations in taking the bar exam and mental health screening in bar admissions. His most recent work looks at the workplace:

Donald H. Stone, The Disabled Lawyers Have Arrived; Have They Been Welcomed with Open Arms into the Profession? An Empirical Study of the Disabled Lawyer, 27 Law & Ineq. 93 (2009).

He summarizes:

This Article proceeds in seven parts. Part I briefly outlines the ADA's position on reasonable accommodations. Part II addresses how law firms are reacting and responding to the fact that they employ lawyers with mood disorders, such as depression or bipolar disorder, attorneys with learning disabilities, and individuals with alcohol or drug addiction. What disabilities are most often represented? Are lawyers with disabilities apt to receive work modifications to accommodate their disability? Are attorneys with mental illness provided with less stressful case assignments? Are lawyers with substance use disorders and alcohol or drug addiction assigned co-counsel to monitor or offer support to the disabled individual?

Part III of this Article outlines the annual ABA report on lawyers with disabilities, which includes recommendations as to how employers should accommodate disabled persons from the hiring process through employment. A fundamental concern underlying the provision of reasonable accommodations within the law firm is the potentially negative impact on client representation. Part IV of this Article analyzes the balancing act of providing reasonable accommodations to the disabled lawyer and the importance of providing competent representation to the client. Part V examines attorney disciplinary proceedings pursuant to the Model Rules of Professional Conduct in order to shed light on the issues related to the disabled lawyer. Part VI discusses and analyzes court decisions in the area of reasonable accommodations in the workplace to note the impact of the ADA and the direction in which courts are heading as they tackle this challenging and significant area of law.
Empirical data contained in this Article serves as a backdrop for purposes of elaboration and comparison of these and other questions. Attorneys from fifty law firms in nine states were surveyed to obtain data and their opinions on questions relating to employment accommodations by law firms. Because of the significant number of disabled lawyers entering the workforce and seeking modifications and accommodations, such an inquiry is well warranted. Law firms are beginning to grapple with the disabled lawyer's claim for fair and equitable treatment, while still serving their clients to the best of their ability. Part VII presents and analyzes this empirical data. In conclusion, this Article offers recommendations regarding fair and equitable reasonable accommodations for disabled lawyers in the workplace.

For more of his work, see Prof. Stone's SSRN page.

Happy Disability History Awareness Month!

Film and Discussion: Civil Rights in 1961 and 2011

2011-10-18T09:00:00.000-07:00

Organizers of the National Immigrant Integration Conference, taking place Oct. 24-26, invite the public to an evening event on Tues., Oct. 25: Connecting Across Movements and Generations 50 Years Later

Acclaimed film maker and Emmy-winning MacArthur "genius" fellow Stanley Nelson will share clips from his documentary "Freedom Riders," an inspiring documentary of the more than 400 black and white Americans risked their lives to end legal segregation in the Deep South.
The Freedom Riders endured savage beatings and imprisonment to assert their humanity and to challenge the federal government to intervene on the side of justice. Today, our country desperately needs fresh energy from diverse people working together to enlarge social and economic justice. DREAM activists - undocumented young people who have been "coming out" by the hundreds - have been called the Freedom Riders of our day. Together with people of all ages and backgrounds, they are taking profound risks in standing up for immigrants and refugees as integral members of American society.
Join us a rare and inspiring dialogue between civil rights activists and participants in the immigrant rights' movement as they exchange stories and lessons.

This event is free and open to the public. Tuesday, Oct. 25, 6:30-8 pm, Westin Hotel Grand Ballroom.

You can watch "Freedom Riders" here:

Watch Freedom Riders on PBS. See more from American Experience.

Ginsburg's Advice to Judges: Dare to Disagree

2011-10-17T15:28:00.000-07:00

At the National Association of Women Judges conference in Newark last week, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg "offered a piece of advice: Dare to disagree."

"It is a subject that I have had the occasion to talk on quite often," Ginsburg said to laughter, referring to her long career on the bench and the many Supreme Court cases in which she has sided with the dissenting opinion.

. . .

The petite, 78-year-old jurist, who was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993, traced the history of dissension in the courts, starting as early as Justice Benjamin Curtis’ 1857 dissent in the Dred Scott Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg offers advice to female Newark judgesCase. In the infamous ruling, the Supreme Court’s majority opinion said that people of African descent in the United States could not become citizens.

"On rare occasions, a dissent turns the court and becomes the opinion of the court," Ginsburg said last night.

She noted that often a well articulated opinion can spark action, as occurred after her dissent in the 2007 Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. case.

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg offers advice to female Newark judgesN.J. Star-Ledger, Oct. 16, 2011.

Justice Ginsburg has been interested in the role of dissents for some time. In 1989, when she was still on the D.C. Circuit, she spoke on the topic at UW Law. See Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Remarks on Writing Separately, 65 Wash. L. Rev. 133 (1990), HeinOnline, WLR archive.

You can see Prof. Schnapper's interview of Lily Ledbetter, the plaintiff in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., on UW Law's Multimedia Gallery.

Juvenile Crime in Seattle

2011-10-14T12:13:00.000-07:00

A new report from the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention focuses on Hot Spots of Juvenile Crime: Findings from Seattle.

This study is "the first to identify where juveniles commit crimes and how these places differ from hot spots of adult crime. Over a 14-year period from 1989 to 2002, researchers mapped all crime incidents in Seattle in which a juvenile between ages 8 and 17 was arrested. They located juvenile crime hot spots, determined juvenile crime trends, and identified risk factors for juvenile crime."

Disability History Awareness Month

2011-10-14T10:24:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, the Washington legislature found that

annually recognizing disability history throughout our entire public educational system, from kindergarten through grade twelve and at our colleges and universities, during the month of October will help to increase awareness and understanding of the contributions that people with disabilities in our state, nation, and the world have made to our society.

Lawmakers also hoped to "increase respect and promote acceptance and inclusion of people with disabilities" and to "inspire students with disabilities to feel a greater sense of pride, reduce harassment and bullying, and help keep students with disabilities in school." Laws of 2008, ch. 167, § 2. See RCW 28A.230.158 (K-12) and 28B.10.918 (higher ed).

Our Disability History Month blog posts began with a global perspective, looking at the World Report on Disability. Watch for more posts over the next couple of weeks.

Middle Eastern & Islamic Resources

2011-10-14T10:11:00.000-07:00

If you need Middle Eastern and Islamic resources for your research the Gallagher Law Library has access to the rich collection of the Center for Research Libraries (CRL). Through the UW Libraries’ membership in CRL we can request materials owned by this specialized library. Send your requests to our Resource Sharing Librarian at lawlibil@u.washington.edu.

To find out more about some of the resources and how researchers have benefited from the resources at CRL read the current issue of Focus on Global Resources which features Middle Eastern and Islamic resources. One of the types of resources that CRL collects are dissertations from countries outside the United States. Doing a quick search for “Islamic law” yielded a number of results ranging from The Journal of Islamic Law to dissertations such as The role of islamic law in commercial litigation in North Yemen [microform] / Isam Muhammad Ghanem (1987, University of London doctoral thesis).

Focus on Global Resources, Fall 2011, v.31, no.1, Middle Eastern & Islamic Resources:
http://www.crl.edu/focus

HeinOnline's History of Bankruptcy & the U.S. Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the Ninth Circuit Come to UW Law

2011-10-14T08:10:00.000-07:00

In nearly every modern State the situation of a trader who has ceased to pay his debts as they mature in the ordinary course of business is regulated by special provisions of law... the public interest is so closely involved, by reason of the plurality of creditors who have claims against the debtor, that in most countries the intervention of a public authority has been thought necessary to adjust the conflicting rights, and to discover and punish any wrong-doing.

S. Whitney Dunscomb, Bankruptcy; A Study in Comparative Legislation 9 (1893).

The tradition of regulating the reorganization of assets and liabilities of insolvents with special provisions of law has continued since before Dunscomb's time to the present. Today, bankruptcies are heard by federal bankruptcy district courts and bankruptcy appeals in the Ninth Circuit are usually referred to the U.S. Bankruptcy Appellate Panel (BAP) of the Ninth Circuit for disposition. The Law School will be hosting the BAP of the Ninth Circuit on Friday, October 21, 2011 while the panel holds hearings for four appeals.

Coincidentally, the Law Library just began a subscription to a new HeinOnline library; HeinOnline's History of Bankruptcy is considered Part III of Taxation and Economic Reform in America. If you happen to be one of the fortunate students or faculty attending the luncheon with the BAP after their hearings, you may want to impress your colleagues and the BAP by browsing and sharing information from one of the resources provided in the History of Bankruptcy Library. It includes legislative histories, treatises, documents and more related to bankruptcy law in America. It also includes classic books dating back to the late 1800s and links to scholarly articles that are related to the study of bankruptcy in America.

Photo Credit: Preservation Virginia

This small brick structure located in Accomac, Virginia was originally built in 1782 as a jailer's residence until 1824 when iron bars, oak doors, and locks were added and it was used as a debtors' prison until 1849.

Video: How to Use FDsys

2011-10-13T10:21:00.000-07:00

The University of Colorado, Boulder, released another informative video, "How to Use FDsys."

FDsys, the Government Printing Office's Federal Digital System, provides free access to official federal government publications. Collections include the Code of Federal Regulations and the Federal Register; Congressional Record; Compilation of Presidential Documents; public and private laws; the United States Code; and congressional bills, reports, and some hearings.

How to Use FDsys is a companion to an earlier, quite entertaining video, "What is FDsys?"

World Report on Disability

2011-10-11T15:14:00.000-07:00

The World Health Organization and World Bank jointly issued the World Report on Disability earlier this year. The purpose of the report, as stated in the preface is:

. . . to provide the evidence for innovative policies and programmes that can improve the lives of people with disabilities, and facilitate implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which came into force in May 2008. This landmark international treaty reinforced our understanding of disability as a human rights and development priority.
The World Report on Disability suggests steps for all stakeholders – including governments, civil society organizations and disabled people’s organizations – to create enabling environments, develop rehabilitation and support services, ensure adequate social protection, create inclusive policies and programmes, and enforce new and existing standards and legislation, to the benefit of people with disabilities and the wider community.

The 350-page PDF report is here. For supplementary information, see: WHO, Disabilities and rehabilitation.

Albert D. Rosellini, Former Gov and UW Law Grad

2011-10-10T13:11:00.000-07:00

Former Gov. Rosellini dies at 101, SeattlePI.com, Oct. 10, 2011.

To learn more, see Payton Smith, Rosellini: Immigrants' Son and Progressive Governor, F895.22.R67 S65 1997 at Classified Stacks. Publisher's page.

More than any other person, Rosellini was responsible for the long overdue restructuring of the state's prison and mental health systems, introducing both fiscal and human accountability. His interest in transportation led to the Evergreen Point, Hood Canal, Astoria-Megler, and Goldendale bridges as well as an expanded highway system. His reforms in state budgeting brought the state's financial decisions into the daylight, making detailed scrutiny and accountability possible for the first time, while his work on commerce and trade helped bring the state into its modern position as a player in the Pacific Rim economies. He was a legislative father of the University of Washington's medical/dental schools, and his support of higher education enriched the state's universities and colleges and created a sound, comprehensive junior college system.

Rosellini was the first Italian-American and the first Catholic governor west of the Mississippi. The only son of immigrant parents, he worked to support his family while finishing high school in three years and then passed the bar exam at age twenty-three. Six years later he was elected to the Washington State Senate as its youngest member. One of the New Deal Democratic majority, he quickly gained an insight into the legislative process that served him throughout his career.

UW Reads the Constitution Nov.1

2011-10-07T13:32:00.000-07:00

The annual UW Reads the Constitution will be Tuesday, November 1, from 12:00-1:15, outside the Suzzallo Library Main Reading Room (3rd floor).

Readers are needed (and a crowd to listen). It's an interesting and inspirational event.

You can find more information here. And the sign up here. If you are not affiliated with the UW, you are still welcome. Use the ProtectNetwork option or e-mail govpub@uw.edu.

Don't want to read? Just come and listen - you may be surprised!

Derrick Bell, Pioneering Harvard Law Professor, Dies at 80 - NYTimes.com

2011-10-06T15:54:00.000-07:00

Confronting Authority book jacket
Derrick Bell, a legal scholar who saw persistent racism in America and sought to expose it through books, articles and provocative career moves — he gave up a Harvard Law School professorship to protest the school’s hiring practices — died on Wednesday in Manhattan.

Derrick Bell, Pioneering Harvard Law Professor, Dies at 80 - NYTimes.com, Oct. 6, 2011.

Check out some of Bell's work:

The Derrick Bell Reader (Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic eds.) KF4755 .B45 2005 at Classified Stacks
And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice, E185.615 .B39 1987 at Classified Stacks
Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform, KF4155 .B38 2004 at Good Reads
Confronting Authority: Reflections of an Ardent Protester, KF292.H325 B35 1994 at Classified Stacks
Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism, E185.615 .B395 1992 at Classified Stacks
And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice, E185.615 .B39 1987 at Classified Stacks
Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth (2002) (available from Summit libraries)

Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2012

2011-10-06T11:57:00.000-07:00

A new edition of the annual factbook has been released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Statistical Abstract of the United States, published since 1878, is the authoritative and comprehensive summary of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States. Use the Abstract as a convenient volume for statistical reference, and as a guide to sources of more information both in print and on the Web. Sources of data include the Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Analysis, and many other Federal agencies and private organizations.

Apple Products in Law Practice

2011-10-05T19:14:00.000-07:00

In honor of Steve Jobs, who died this afternoon (Steve Jobs dies; Apple Computer co-founder was 56, Wash. Post, Oct. 5, 2011), here are some blogs for lawyers who use Apple products:

Criminal Defense Law with an Apple (by Seattle attorney Aaron Pelley)
Apple Briefs
iPhone J.D. (for lawyers using iPhones and iPads)
Mac Law Students
MacLitigator ("from pencils to iPads")
MacSparky.com ("reviews, screencasts, and all things Macintosh) (today's post embeds a video of Steve Jobs giving a commencement address in 2005)

Mobile Apps for Law Students and Lawyers is a great guide by our colleagues at UCLA's law library, listing apps for iPhones, iPads—and also Android, Blackberry, Palm, and other devices.

Civil Rights Leader Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth Dies

2011-10-05T18:08:00.000-07:00

Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, who was a leader in Birmingham's civil rights community through the 1950s and 1960s, has died at age 88. See (or hear) Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, Civil Rights Pioneer, Dies, All Things Considered, NPR, Oct. 5, 2011.

The protests in Birmingham organized by Rev. Shuttlesworth and his colleague Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom he invited to the city, were significant in the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. See David Benjamin Oppenheimer, Kennedy, King, Shuttlesworth and Walker: The Events Leading to the Introduction of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 29 U. S.F. L. Rev. 645 (1995), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=1500045.

For more, see:

Nick Kotz, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Laws That Changed America, E847 .K67 2005 at Good Reads. Publisher's page.

Judgment Days book jacket

Alexander Tsesis, We Shall Overcome: A History of Civil Rights and the Law, JC599.U5 T74 2008 at Classified Stacks (currently checked out, but you could request it). Publisher's page.

We Shall Overcome book jacket

And for a look at the local story, see Joan Singler et al., Seattle in Black and White: The Congress of Racial Equality and the Fight for Equal Opportunity, F899.S49 N464 2011 at Classified Stacks. Publisher's page.

Seattle in Black and White book jacket

Global Mondays

2011-10-03T21:37:00.000-07:00

To raise awareness and dialogue regarding foreign, comparative, and international law, the UW School of Law presents Global Mondays this year, which will take place every Monday from 12:30pm to 1:20pm in Room 117 of William Gates Hall. The weekly event will continue throughout the school year as a forum that examines the “intersection of law, policy and the role of legal professionals in our increasingly complex and interconnected world.” Global Mondays is an invaluable learning experience for those of us seeking to explore an array of subjects ranging from climate change in Indonesia to women lawyers in Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan.

This week, the Asian Law Center hosted the Law Through Global Eyes Lecture. Dr. Myoung Ung Lee, a UW LL.M. candidate in Asian Law and former UW Visiting Scholar, gave a fascinating lecture titled Comparing Judicial Review: U.S. v. South Korea (A European Model).

Dr. Lee demystified the concept of judicial review in different civil and common law systems around the world by detailing its history in the U.S., Europe, and East Asia. He then praised the merits and cautioned against the faults of the various countries’ standards of review, procedure, effects of decisions, and judicial independence in relation to judicial review.

For further reading on the subject, consult Miguel Schor, Mapping Comparative Judicial Review, 7 Wash. U. Global Stud. L. Rev. 257 (2008), available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=988848, and Adam M. Dodek, A Tale of Two Maps: The Limits of Universalism in Comparative Judicial Review, 47 Osgoode Hall L.J. 287 (2009), available at http://www.ohlj.ca/english/documents/03_Dodek_FINAL.pdf.

Next week’s presentation, hosted by the Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal, will feature the research of two globally engaged UW J.D. candidates:

Andrew Van Winkle will present Separation of Religion and State in Japan: A Pragmatic Interpretation of Articles 20 and 89 of the Japanese Constitution
Greg Chiarella will present Sources of law, Sources of Authority: The Failure of the Code of Muslim Personal Laws of the Philippines.

Over the course of the year, students from around the globe will come together to share their unique insights of law in the world.

Session Laws Online

2011-10-03T17:14:00.000-07:00

Session laws are the laws published in the order they were passed during legislative sessions. We have a complete set for Washington, of course, but for other states, we've had to rely on microfiche in combination with print. Microfiche is a whole lot better than no access at all, but it can be cumbersome to deal with session laws in fiche, especially if you're trying to trace multiple amendments to a statute over the years.

HeinOnline has been building its Session Laws Library for a few years. And in its September newsletter the company announced that the files now go all the way back to inception for each state. So on HeinOnline you can find, e.g., all the Illinois session laws 1809-2010.For many states, the library even includes territorial session laws. Washington's coverage includes territorial laws, 1854-1888, as well as state laws, 1889- .

Here in Washington, we are fortunate that the legislature has loaded a lot of material on its website. Until recently, you could get session laws back to about 1997—and now the Laws of Washington are available in PDF all the way back to 1889! (The Illinois General Assembly's site has public acts beginning in 1997.)

Many law students turn first to LexisNexis and Westlaw for most of their research. Those systems do have a lot of great content, but in this case, you'd be better off with HeinOnline or the legislature's site if you're looking for anything older than 1988. For instance, on Westlaw, the backfiles of the legislative services for Illinois (IL-LEGIS-OLD) and Washington (WA-LEGIS-OLD) start in 1988. On LexisNexis, the Washington Advance Legislative Service (WAALS) and the Illinois Advance Legislative Service (ILALS) both cover 1989-present.

Update (Oct. 3, 2011): I didn't want to have all my examples be Washington, so I chose Illinois arbitrarily. Today, through my colleague Peggy, I learned that the Western Illinois University Libraries and the Illinois State Library have a project to digitize Illinois laws. The project is incomplete, but you can already see all the laws from the Northwest Territory days through 1920. You can read the laws from when Abe Lincoln was practicing!

This reinforces my point: don't rest with LexisNexis and Westlaw: check to see what other resources are out there!

Photo credit: Microsoft clip art of Illinois license plate

New Faculty Publication: Craig Allen on Teaching Admiralty Law at the UW

2011-10-02T11:57:00.000-07:00

Perhaps no other legal topic conjures richer historical images than admiralty law. One can imagine the wooden ships on the high seas, sails in the wind, crashing through the waves.

In spite of the images, admiralty law is far from being a historical relic. In Getting the "Story" out: Teaching Admiralty at the University of Washington, St. Louis Univ. L. J. 621-32 (2011), Professor Craig Allen points out that admiralty touches a number of current legal issues.

Through the article, Professor Allen introduces admiralty as a highly relevant and engaging subject. Though not directly tested on the Washington State Bar, Professor Allen points out that many third year students find the course to be invaluable in bar preparation. Many bar-tested issues are reviewed through the admiralty course, including concepts in constitutional law, torts, and civil procedure.

In addition to unique subject matter, the admiralty course at the UW is taught in an innovative fashion. Shunning the traditional law school model, admiralty is taught as a “mastery course.” In contrast to traditional law courses, mastery courses emphasize more practical problem-solving skills. Rather than a single essay exam, students are given a number of written assignments over the quarter that require them to answer strategic questions that lead to an ultimate outcome.

Admiralty Law courses at the UW are currently offered in alternating years. Sadly, two courses, International Law of the Sea and the Marine Law and Policy Seminar will not be offered this year. However, U.S. Coastal and Ocean Law will be offered in the Spring.

International Translation Day

2011-09-30T13:21:00.000-07:00

In honor of International Translation Day (an event promoted by the International Federation of Translators) here are a few items about law in translation:

Be careful. Law has many subtleties, and a word-for-word translation might give a horribly wrong impression.

There are established sources with fairly reliable translations of different laws. For instance, Constitutions of the Countries of the World has English translations of constitutions that are prepared by experts. The set often includes copies in the original languages as well.

A great source for finding laws in translation for most countries is the Foreign Law Guide, a database linked from the library's homepage.

The EU's website includes a great tool: IATE (InterActive Tool for Europe). You can enter a term in one EU language and ask for the equivalent in another. For example, if I enter "jurisdiction" in English and ask for it in Spanish (abbreviated ES, for Español), I get
- competencia,
- competencia judicial, and
- jurisdicción
I can click an entry to read more:

The UW's Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal often articles or primary materials. Recent translations include:

Divorce and the Best Interest of the Child: Disputes Over Visitation and the Japanese Family Courts, written by Takao Tanase, translated by Matthew J. McCauley, 20 Pac. Rim L. & Pol'y J. 563 (2011),
Initial Research on the Malfunctions ofthe Criminal Process, written by Chen Ruihua, translated by Timothy Webster, 20 Pac. Rim L. & Pol'y J. 359 (2011), and
Patent Protection of Medical Methods—Focusing on Ethical Issues, written by Yusuke Sato, translated by Jiameng Kathy Liu, 20 Pac. Rim L. & Pol'y J. 125 (2011)

Curious about why September 30 was chosen to be International Translation Day? It honors St. Jerome, the patron saint of translators (because of his translations of the Bible). For more about Jerome, see these articles in The Interpreter Hall of Fame, the Catholic Encyclopedia, and Catholics Online. He is also listed as the patron saint of students and of librarians, so we all have something in common.

Scientific Evidence for Judges - and Others

2011-09-29T10:06:00.000-07:00

DNA identification, economic estimates of damages, psychiatric evidence of competence to stand trial, engineers' testimony about product defects—there's a lot of scientific testimony in today's courtrooms. How can judges—who are not statisticians, geneticists, economists, epidemiologists, engineers, or psychiatrists—intelligently manage this flood of information?

To address this challenge, the Federal Judicial Center and the National Research Council have published the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. The first edition was in 1994, the second in 2000, and the third edition was released yesterday.

This book would be useful to anyone wanting an introduction to scientific evidence. Chapters include:

The Admissibility of Expert Testimony
How Science Works
Reference Guide on Forensic Identification Expertise
Reference Guide on DNA Identification Evidence
Reference Guide on Statistics
Reference Guide on Multiple Regression
Reference Guide on Survey Research
Reference Guide on Estimation of Economic Damages
Reference Guide on Exposure Science
Reference Guide on Epidemiology
Reference Guide on Toxicology
Reference Guide on Medical Testimony
Reference Guide on Neuroscience
Reference Guide on Mental Health Evidence
Reference Guide on Engineering

The book is available for free reading online; you can also download a PDF of any chapter or of the whole book. And the library will soon order it in paper.

See Science Manual for Judges Updated, Law Technology News, Sept. 29, 2011.

Supreme Court Watching

2011-09-28T10:13:00.000-07:00

Would you like to know what cases are coming up at the Supreme Court?

Supreme Court building

The LII Supreme Court Bulletin (from the Legal Information Institute at Cornell) is an email newsletter that summarizes upcoming cases. This year's first issue, Sept. 16, highlights seven important cases the editors selected. The Sept. 23 issue, for instance, summarizes the six cases that will be argued Oct. 3, 4, and 5.

While the LII Supreme Court Bulletin offers just brief summaries in an unadorned format, SCOTUSblog provides analysis and commentary about pending cases, decided cases, cases that were denied review, advocacy, and more. The blog was founded by a couple of lawyers who frequently have cases before the Court. Now the team includes an experienced journalist and contributing law professors.
For almost 40 years, the American Bar Association has published Preview of United States Supreme Cases as part of its public education mission. Now in addition to the magazine, there's a rich website. You get the articles analyzing selected cases before they are argued. AND you get reporting after they are arguem. But wait, there's more! You also get PDFs of ALL the briefs in ALL the cases before the Court!

And of course you can visit the Supreme Court's own website. The docket will let you track the filings and argument dates for cases. After a case has been argued, you can listen to an audio recording or read a transcript. And after the case is decided, you can read the Court's opinion. You can also find information about the Court, such as biographies of current Justices.

By the way, have you noticed the display about the Supreme Court at the law library's entrance? Take a look next time you come in.

Photo credit: www.supremecourt.gov

Women on the Federal Bench

2011-09-25T17:54:00.000-07:00

Sandra Day O’Connor sworn in, September 25, 1981.

Today is the 30th anniversary of Sandra Day O'Connor being sworn in as a Supreme Court Justice.

The appointment of the first woman to the Supreme Court was very big news back in 1981, when I was a law student. But most of today's law students have always had at least one woman one the Supreme Court. Today's 1Ls are starting law school with three female justices on the Court. (Beloit's Mindset List annually offers reminders of how a younger generation's experience differs from the last's.)

So I thought this might be a good occasion to offer some stats about the representation of women on the federal bench. I'm using a fascinating database from the Federal Judicial Center, The Biographical Directory of Federal Judges.

First, how many women did Justice O'Connor join when she was sworn in?

51 women had been been commissioned before Sept. 25, 1981. Only 23 were still serving. (That is, their commission date was before that date, but their termination date was after it.)

And what were the corresponding numbers for men?

2023 men had been commissioned, and 619 were still serving.

President Reagan made history by appointing the first woman to the Supreme Court. What was his record throughout the federal courts?

court	women	men
U.S. Supreme Court	1	3
courts of appeal	6	77
all federal courts	30	334

An important part of the historical context is that women were a minority in the legal profession. 1972 was the first year when women were over 10% of law school enrollment nationally, so in the 1980s there'd wasn't as large a pool of experienced female lawyer from whom to select judges as there is today.

Speaking of today, what is the makeup of our federal bench now?

All Sitting Federal Judges (including those on senior status)

Race or Ethnicity	women	men
African American	38	81
American Indian	0	1
Asian American	6	10
Hispanic	23	56
White	208	861
Total	278	1015

Photo credit: National Archives Today's Document blog, Sept. 25, 2011.

New Faculty Publication: Professor Penny Hazelton on the Education and Training of Law Librarians

2011-09-19T11:00:00.000-07:00

Penny A. Hazelton, The Education and Training of Law Librarians, in THE IALL INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK OF LEGAL INFORMATION MANAGEMENT 43-64 (Richard A. Danner & Jules Winterton eds., 2011).

As Director of the Law Librarianship Program at the University of Washington Information School since 1985, School of Law Professor and Associate Dean Penny Hazelton shares her extensive knowledge and expertise in an article discussing the history, current state, and future education and training of law librarians worldwide.

The article first considers the competencies for law librarianship, which are the necessary knowledge and skills needed to succeed in the profession. Hazelton then describes the history of law librarianship in the United States, and the continuing evolution of formal and informal education and training programs necessary to meet these competencies.

Also discussed are the issues and opportunities associated with educating and training law librarians to become proficient in foreign, comparative, and international law research. Hazelton explores the global perspective on law librarianship, describing the work of professional organizations such as the International Association of Law Libraries (IALL), and setting forth specific ideas and opportunities to advance the profession of law librarianship worldwide.

This article is a must-read for anyone who is interested in learning more about the education and training of law librarians on a global level.

Hazelton's article appears in Chapter 3 of this book, located in the Classified Stacks at Z675.L2I15.

Hogwarts College of Law??

2011-09-14T19:18:00.000-07:00

Prof. Howard Wasserman asks how the different courses at Hogwarts (Defense Against the Dark Arts, Potions, etc.) would map onto the law school curriculum. Hogwarts College of Law, PrawfsBlawg, Sept. 10, 2011.

One commenter ("KM") writes:

The first year curriculum would have to map up with the required classes, I think. I'd say:

criminal law - defense against the dark arts (fighting the powers of darkness, be that criminals or prosecutors, depending on your perspective).

property - transfiguration (tea kettle-> hamster = squatter -> legitimate owner through adverse possession).

civil procedure - potions (keep your complaint boiling on the burner for ten days before adding shredded service of process!).

con law - history of magic (one arcane, focused version of history is much like another).

torts - charms (a sound grasp of charms is an important client-generation tool for the potential tort lawyer).

Are there other parallels?

One difference: if you're a law student with a Husky Card, the librarian won't get mad if you're discovered doing research after closing. Go for it!

Photo from Harry Potter in Oxford - Pt 3, Liz & Rob Do Europe, Nov. 20, 2010

Washington State Redistricting Proposals

2011-09-14T08:34:00.000-07:00

The Washington State Redistricting Commission released the first set of proposed maps yesterday, showing possible configurations for the state’s congressional boundaries. Due to population growth, Washington is gaining a 10th congressional district. Boundaries for the state’s 49 legislative districts will also be redrawn.

The Commission has four voting members: 2 Democrats and 2 Republicans. You can see each commissioner’s presentation, legislative plan, and congressional plan here.

Or you can read the news:

Seattle Times, Panel Unveils Redistricting Map
The Olympian, Redistricting: New Minority Seat?

The process is governed by the Redistricting Act, RCW 44.05.

Federal Rules Go Mobile!

2011-09-06T17:47:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't it be great to have the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Federal Rules of Evidence, or the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure with you without toting the bound books? Now you can: CALI and the Legal Information Institute have released Federal Rules Ebooks, with the rules and official comments, in a format compatible with iPhone, iPad, and Nook. (Kindle support is coming soon.)

The books are free, but you are encouraged to donate to the Legal Information Institute, a nonprofit based at Cornell that puts a lot of resources into making law accessible.

How Japan's Constitution Got a Women's Rights Clause

2011-09-06T11:40:00.000-07:00

The Fred T. Korematsu Center for Law and Equality at Seattle University School of Law presents Beate Sirota Gordon, author of the women’s rights clause in Japan’s Constitution, Thur., Sept. 22, 2011. Ms. Gordon will give a public lecture at 5:00; a reception will follow at 6:00.

Ms. Gordon was a member of the 25-member Constitutional Assembly created in Japan in 1946 by General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander in post-World War II Occupied Japan. At the age of 22, Gordon attended a secret meeting between American and Japanese officials about the women’s rights clause she wrote for Japan’s new Constitution, which guarantees women equal rights with men and remains unamended today. Japan’s Constitution also guarantees Japan’s peaceful roles in world affairs and democracy.

The Japanese prime minister's website includes the constitution in English.

Which Federal Agencies Regulate What Payment Systems?

2011-08-31T12:09:00.000-07:00

That is a puzzling question to many.

Now the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago has developed a colorful graphic to help you visualize the regulatory lines of authority in this area.

Makes everything perfectly clear, yes?

White House Infographic on Judicial Nominees

2011-08-30T13:53:00.000-07:00

The White House as posted an "infographic" on President Obama's Judicial Nominees: Historic Successes + Historic Delays.
Also called Building a Supreme Court for the 21st Century, the graphic features images of Justices Sonio Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, with quotations from the President. It also displays pie charts showing percentages of women, African American, Hispanic, and Asian American judges nominated by the last three Presidents.
Other parts of the graphic deal with:

the confirmation process
delays in the Senate
consequences of judicial vacancies

Library Hours Changes

2011-08-25T13:43:00.000-07:00

UW School of Law summer exams end this week, signaling a change in the Law Library's hours of operation. Beginning Saturday, Aug. 27, the Library will be on the interim schedule:

Monday - Friday: 8am - 5pm
Reference: 9am - 12noon and 1 - 5pm

The Law Library will be closed:

Friday, Sept. 2
Monday, Sept. 5 (Labor Day)

Regular academic hours resume when School of Law classes begin on Monday, Sept. 26.

FBI Site on Mortgage Fraud

2011-08-17T11:44:00.001-07:00

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has created a website focusing on Mortgage Fraud.

It provides general information on frequent types of scams, news stories, and ways that homeowners can protect themselves.

In Washington State, the Department of Financial Institutions offers a Homeownership Information page with additional, state-specific information on foreclosures and common scams. It includes a link to the Seattle-King County Asset Building Coalition's Washington Foreclosure Prevention Resource Guide.

Cross-Cultural Legal Transactions Can Easily Get Lost in Translation

2011-08-09T23:11:00.000-07:00

Cross-Cultural Legal Transactions Can Easily Get Lost in Translation, says a speaker at the ABA's Litigation Section meeting. Read some anecdotes and tips in this short article.

Budget Control Act of 2011

2011-08-03T10:14:00.000-07:00

After reading all the news stories, if you still want to read the actual 28-page bill as passed by the House and Senate, see S.365, Budget Control Act of 2011.

11:00 am PST update: the Act as been assigned as Pub. L. No. 112-25, 140 Stat. 240.

Interested in Labor and Industries Law in WA state?

2011-07-30T13:03:00.000-07:00

If you are interested in labor law in Washington state and want to keep abreast of latest developments in this area, be sure to check out: Washington Workers' Compensation Law Blog. This blog is maintained by Sharpe Law Firm, a Seattle based firm which has been representing clients in this area of law for 30 years.

Hat tip to Inter Alia - Tom Mighell's legal technology blog.

International Legal Research Tips

2011-07-29T14:44:00.000-07:00

This animated video offers some research tips for international law, coming from a law student who is bummed about her task but manages to remember some of the things the librarian told her. (One bit of advice: talk to a librarian, but not the crabby one.) Caution: some rude language.
IMC research
by: mxr, Sept. 20, 2010

Reading Recs from Lawyers

2011-07-29T14:04:00.000-07:00

The ABA Journal asked thirty lawyers "to pick a book they’d recommend to other lawyers—a book they might not have already read or may have overlooked or might not know."

The resulting article is here.

To make it easier to find these books in libraries, I've created a WorldCat list here.

If you haven't already, take a look at UW Law's Suggested Reading List for Prospective & Current Law Students. It includes a wide variety of books.

Adios, Facebook and Twitter ... Hello, Google+

2011-07-29T11:53:00.000-07:00

Attorney Larry Bodine explains why he's keen on Google's new social networking service, Google+: Adios, Facebook and Twitter ... Hello, Google+, Law Technology News, July 29, 2011. Is Google+ the next big thing?

Japan's Grueling Bar Exam

2011-07-24T20:52:00.000-07:00

If you're biting your nails about the upcoming Washington State bar exam, you can take some consolation that it's not as daunting as Japan's.

In recent years, Japan has reformed legal education, with the goal of enlarging and diversifying the legal profession. But the bar exam turns out to be harder than some planned: the overall pass rate is just 25%. Enrollment in the new US-style law schools has declined as word has spread that becoming a lawyer is a long shot. A Japanese Legal Exam That Sets the Bar High - NYTimes.com, July 10, 2011.

Networking Tips for Shy People

2011-07-18T14:31:00.000-07:00

You've probably heard that networking is important for your professional development, but a lot of people find that it's hard to get out there and do it. If you're one, see Michael Goodwin, Networking tips for the “shy” lawyer, Minn. Lawyer, July 18, 2011, linking to an ABA Journal podcast, Shy Lawyer's Guide to Becoming a Rainmaker, July 11, 2011 (you can listen to it or read the transcript).
One tip: "Think of 'networking' as 'research': Often the same lawyers who hate to network love to research." (Goodwin)

If you love to network, but hate to research, maybe you could try thinking of research as networking . . .

What's Your Student Loan Experience?

2011-07-18T14:17:00.000-07:00

My Debt Story is a project to collect the personal stories of college students and graduates about their debt. It is hosted by EARN (a nonprofit provider of financial services for low-income families), with sponsorship by Default: The Student Loan Documentary, Demos, Equal Justice Works, and Broad Cause.

You can submit a video about your own debt story to the site. If you do it by July 31, your video will be entered in a contest. The prize? $5,000 toward paying off your student loans!

Here's a video about the project:

FindLaw For the Public

2011-07-18T13:40:00.001-07:00

FindLaw, a Thomson Reuters business, has an extensive, free collection of "up to date online legal information about popular legal topics such as will preparation, divorce and child custody" in its "Learn About the Law" section. The site also provides information on dangerous products, employees' rights, immigration law and many other legal topics. The information is also available in Spanish via the FindLaw en Español site.

The Public Bookshelf provides these free, full text titles (in English):

ABA Family Legal Guide
ABA Guide to Marriage, Divorce & Families
ABA Guide to Wills and Estates
Consumer Action Handbook
A Guide to Disability Rights Laws
Don't Get Taken! Protect Yourself Legally Against Common Abuses and Rip-Offs
Social Security Handbook

Career Paths Not Taken

2011-07-11T15:00:00.000-07:00


Photo: Alec Baldwin, from www.alecbaldwin.com

Have you ever wished you were a TV star and frequent host of SNL? Maybe going to law school is better than that (and not just because you weren't discovered as a great actor).

Alec Baldwin recently said he wishes he'd become a lawyer. Addressing law students on the eve of their graduation, he said: “If I had it to do all over again, I would choose differently….I believe that I would trade what I have for what you’ll have tomorrow afternoon." Alec Baldwin: Legal Envy, Harvard Magazine, July-Aug. 2011. He told the graduates, "I want you to leave here and save this country, because this country needs your help." Id.

A few years ago, coming out of a rancorous divorce, his sentiments toward the profession were chillier:

One of his ex-wife’s lawyers, Baldwin wrote, “had a bad case of the intellectual vanity that afflicts most attorneys I had known. Since my own college days, most lawyers had always struck me as men and women who were not smart enough to become doctors or engineers. Therefore, they opted for a career wherein rote recitation of the legal code and a gift for bullshitting people amounted to a profession.”

Id. A few weeks after this speech, he had apparently forgotten the dream of practicing law in favor of singing in a Broadway show. The One Unfulfilled Wish of My Career, AlecBaldwin.com, June 20, 2011.

Self-study Courses in Homeland Security

2011-07-11T13:06:00.000-07:00

The Naval Postgraduate School Center for Homeland Defense and Security offers non-credit, self-study courses online. These courses are developed by the NPS CHDS teaching faculty and are derived from course content (lecture material and course readings) from the Center's homeland security master's degree curriculum.

Who is eligible to access these courses? Only government officials, members of the military, homeland security educators, students in homeland security programs, and other specially qualified individuals. However, anyone may access the lectures on research methods on the CHDS's Educational Resources page.

Six self-study courses are now available:

Terrorist Financing and State Response
Intelligence for Homeland Security: Organizational and Policy
Homeland Security in Israel
The Global Jihadi Threat
Critical Infrastructure: Vulnerability Analysis and Protection
Technology for Homeland Security: Inspection and Detection Technologies

The "Terrorist Financing and State Response" course is the newest, examining "exactly how far we have come in understanding how terrorists raise, store and transfer funds. It also evaluates and challenges the U.S. government and international community in responding to this problem."

See the Center for Homeland Defense and Security site for more information about the courses and to request access.

Uniform Law Commission and Uniform State Laws

2011-07-11T09:03:00.000-07:00

The Uniform Law Commission is currently holding its 2011 annual meeting in Vail, CO. Among the new uniform laws being considered is the Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act, which purports to provide a clear answer to the question of who is the official publisher of a given governmental record, and how official publishers can authenticate the fact that a given electronic record is, in fact, the official record for citation and other purposes. A draft version of the Act is available here.

The Uniform Law Commission (ULC), in existence since 1892, is responsible for the drafting and passage of more than 200 uniform acts designed to solve problems common to all the states. Some examples are the Uniform Commercial Code, the Uniform Probate Code, and the Uniform Partnership Act. Just who are these ULC commissioners? They are 350 practicing lawyers, governmental lawyers, judges, law professors, and lawyer-legislators from every state, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Washington has six commissioners and are listed by state here.

CALI Lessons for iPads and iPhones

2011-07-07T14:48:00.000-07:00

The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) is hosting a webinar on new features compatible with iPads, iPhones, and other mobile devices on July 12.

Register online.

Law students enjoy free access to hundreds of lessons on a wide variety of topics, from administrative law to wills and trusts. UW Law students who have not registered with CALI yest should contact the Reference Office for the student access code.

Lexis Webinar on Starting Your Law Review Article

2011-07-07T14:42:00.000-07:00

On July 16, LexisNexis will host a webcast on "how to find a unique topic," ensuring that your subject has not been preempted by someone else.

Register online for Finding an Original Note Topic and Preemption Checking.

You might also find useful the Gallagher guide on Writing for & Publishing in Law Reviews, which also offers advice on finding interesting topics.

UN Report on Gender Justice

2011-07-07T14:29:00.000-07:00

The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women has released its first report, In Pursuit of Justice: Progress of the World's Women 2011-2012 (PDF, 168 pages).

The report addresses many topics, including women's access to justice and cases and laws that have changed women's lives.

Graphs, charts, and personal stories supplement the text.

An executive summary is also available.

Sanford on Sixth Circuit Health Law Decision

2011-07-06T10:14:00.000-07:00

Sallie Sanford

Professor Sallie Sanford comments on Thomas More Law Center v. Obama, No. 10-2388 (6th Cir. June 29, 2011), the recent case upholding against a Commerce Clause challenge the Affordable Care Act's requirement that individuals have health insurance. Sallie Sanford, The Impact of a "Middle-Management" Health Care Ruling, Jurist—Forum, July 5, 2011.

The three-judge panel issued three opinions. The opinion by Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton was the opinion of the court on one issue (the taxing power) and a concurrence on other issues. Sanford explains that this opinion is significant both because it is so well crafted and because the judge is "a highly respected jurist with solid conservative credentials." Appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, Judge Sutton is the first Repbulican to uphold the individual mandate.

Prof. Sanford both guides us through this decision and places it in the larger context of the other challenges to the new law.

Ten Tips for a Successful Transition from Law School to Law Practice

2011-06-30T11:06:00.000-07:00

The ABA's Business Law Section presents: Miriam R. Albert, Ten Tips for a Successful Transition from Law School to Law Practice, Business Law Today, June 20, 2011. You'll want to read the commentary, of course, but the tips are:

Be a Good Listener
Be an Active Participant in Your Career
Understand the Time Value of Money
Understand the Money Value of Time
Don't Try to be the Smartest Person in Every Room
Comport Yourself in a Professional Manner
Write More and Write Less
Treat Every E-Mail as if It will be in the New York Times
When You're Done, You're Done

Advice for Entering Students

2011-06-27T16:02:00.000-07:00

An upper-class law student writes What I Wish I’d Known As A 1L, June 14, 2011, in The Student Appeal, a new forum for law student writing. The same author, Sara Eli Mattern, also wrote Jobs for Law Students, and the Future of Legal Education, April 10, 2011.

Of course, Ms. Mattern isn't the only person offering advice to new law students. Here is a selection from the past few years:

Paul Caron, Advice for Incoming 1Ls, TaxProf Blog, Sept. 3, 2007 (links to half a dozen posts by Jeffrey Toobin, Scott Turow, and others)
David S. Cohen, Advice for Feminist 1Ls, Feminist Law Professors, Oct. 22, 2007
Michael Dorf, Welcome 1Ls, Dorf on Law, Aug. 24, 2009
Einer Elhauge, Is 1L One Hell? Advice from a Law Professor, Harvard Law Record, Oct. 8, 2009
Brandon Greene, Letter to a 0L ... Stay Focused on What Brought You Here, In Their Own Words: BU Law Student Blogs, April 2, 2011
Paul Horwitz, More Advice to 1Ls, PrawfsBlawg, Aug. 18, 2008
Amy Jarmon, Ten Tips for Preparing for Your 1L Year, Law School Academic Support Blog, May 19, 2011
Orin Kerr, Advice for 1Ls: What If You Don't Know the Answer [when you're called on in class]?, Volokh Conspiracy, Aug. 26, 2008
David Linhart, Letter to Brand New BU Law 1Ls, In Their Own Words: BU Law Student Blogs, April 10, 2011
Dan Markel, Summer Reading Lists for Rising 1Ls PrawfsBlawg (a law professor blog), June 3, 2011 (read the comments, too)
Daniel Solove, Advice for First Year Law Students: Practice Writing!, Concurring Opinions, Aug. 19, 2008
Dean Spade, For Those Considering Law School ("a little summary of some of the things I often tell people who come to me because they are considering law school and want to know if it is a good route to making transformative change," blog post, Oct. 26, 2010)
Ivy Swenson, Starting Law School this Fall? Advice for Pre-1Ls, Lawyerist, Aug. 7, 2010
Lesley Wexler, Once and Future 1Ls, PrawfsBlawg, Aug. 18, 2008
What I Learned in Law School - 1L Year, Woman of the Law, May 17, 2005

Do you like to hear advice rather than read it? Consider these podcast interviews from the CALI Pre-Law Blog:

Advice for 1L's from Prof. Douglas McFarland, Aug. 16, 2006
Preparing to Study Torts, by Prof. Ron Eades, Aug. 10, 2006
Study Advice from Professors for Incoming 1L's, Aug. 10, 2006

If you'd like to read books, not just blog posts, see Suggested Reading List for Prospective & Current Law Students on the Law Library's website.

New Access to Westlaw Japan

2011-06-27T15:40:00.000-07:00

We have begun a subscription to Westlaw Japan (an all Japanese language online service*). Currently, our subscription is for one user at a time for the service. Please respect other campus-wide users who may need access: be sure to log off when you’re finished using the service. Access Westlaw Japan on the East Asian Legal Databases page OR via the Law Library catalog (search for “Westlaw Japan”). Users are required to login with their UW NetID.

Please let me know if you have questions.

Rob Britt
Coordinator of East Asian Library Services
Gallagher Law Library
W.H. Gates Hall Room L138
543-7447
rrbritt@uw.edu

*Click here for more information about Westlaw Japan, in Japanese. In short, the product includes impressive numbers of cases, statutes, and indexes to journal articles and newspapers, in a convenient format. Westlaw Japan is entirely in Japanese. There are over 220,000 cases (including pre-war cases), over 90% of which are either in full text or include summaries. Also, there are some full text case interpretation publications such as Jurisuto electronic edition じゅりスト電子版, Hanrei hyakusen 判例百選, and Hogaku kyoshitsu 法学教室.

Advice for New Associates

2011-06-27T09:44:00.000-07:00

Starting work at a big firm? Here's some advice from a lawyer who recently retired from 30+ years at Skadden, Arps: Ronald Barusch, Dealpolitik: Gift for Law Grads: The Real World Advice You Won’t Learn in School, Deal Journal (a Wall Street Journal Blog), May 31, 2011.

Tips for Summer Success

2011-06-19T14:12:00.000-07:00

Joshua Auriemma, who summered at various firms and non-profits and now has clerks of his own offers 5 Tips to Becoming a Great Summer Associate, Legal Geekery, June 17, 2011. He leads with one of my favorite tips: Don't be afraid to ask questions!

Mr. Auriemma is talking about asking questions of your supervisor, which is very good. Remember that you can also ask questions of reference librarians, who can point you to good sources and make your research more effective. Talk to the librarians at your own place of employment, the local public law library (e.g., Public Law Library of King County), or law school libraries. We at the Gallagher Law Library are happy to answer our students' questions, wherever they are, and we're also open to the public. Check out our AskUs! link.

Periodic Table of New Deal Programs

2011-06-18T21:08:00.000-07:00

The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum has posted a wonderful graphic: the Periodic Table of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal Programs. If you hover your mouse over any of the squares in, a pop-up gives you more information about the program or person listed. You can also download a PDF.

Periodic Table of Franklin D. Rooselvelt's Programs

Hat tip: @hlslib (Harvard Law Library on Twitter)

Ergonomic Tips for Computers and Mobile Devices

2011-06-17T17:49:00.000-07:00

Would you like to avoid neck and back pain and other ergonomic risks? Check out these videos: