Chas Koop and Andy Erickson//

Dear Barely Legal,//

I blacked out and woke up on the Moot Court team. I have the scales of justice tattooed on my lower back and can’t stop referring to my right paw as Justice Learned Hand. I’m worried that my friends might think I’ve changed. Have I?
-Gunner?//

Dear Gunner?,//
First of all, congratulations on your black out turn Moot Court success story, a true saga with all the makings of a Lifetime original movie (unfortunately the obvious title of “Dying to Belong” has already been used on Lifetime, so our Moms tell us). However, if you feel your newfound scholastic stardom has inadvertently began the application for a new team, Team “Gunner,” take this short quiz we found on WebJD.//

1. Have you had thoughts beginning with “When I teach Property…..”//
2. After being called on, voluntarily, have you referenced the professor’s law review article on an unrelated point, then tying it in with the dissents opinion and note seven following the case?//
3. Do you refuse to ask questions until break in order to keep your precious knowledge all to yourself? Or, conversely, present your uber thought provoking hypothetical right before break or the end of class. Thus, proving to the professor and the rest of the class your thirst for justice and passion for the law?//
4. Do you actually use your computer to take notes in class?//
5. Do you consider a professor’s disappointed sigh as constructive criticism and an open and encouraged invitation to speak again?//

Sadly Gunner?, if you have answered in the affirmative to any of the previous questions, your suspicion as to the source of that itching-burning feeling within is not just another episode of pre-finals paranoia. You are in fact a Gunner. Yet, do not worry over the loss of old friends, you are obviously on a higher intellectual level and they will only hold you back. Go forth and Gun! Just let us know your schedule next semester so we can avoid you like the Swine Flu.//

Dear Barely Legal,//
I hate goodbyes. There are a few special 3Ls that are probably going to graduate this year, or at least this is what I have gained from walking into the library and seeing the byproduct of Glamour Shots meets law school composite. How do I tell them just how much I appreciated their “guidance” and wish them luck at the bar and great success in their big city lawyering jobs?//

-Sad and Ronrey 1L.//

Dear Ronrey 1L,//

We share your sentiments. We too have our own beloved 3Ls that have also been glistening beacons of satisfactory guidance since the beginning of this awesome adventure we call 1L year. But fret not Ronrey, we are sure our adored 3Ls will pass their Bars with flying colors. As a matter of fact, we have word from the Northside Bar Association that many 3Ls have been putting in long hours on the weekdays, weekends, and often cranking away right through lunch to prepare for the Bar.//
The Barely Legal Office would like to extend our 3L mentors or sincerest gratitude, best wishes and the knowledge that if any of them actually get these lawyering jobs, the staff at the Barely Legal Office will be taking them in two years.//
As for you Ronrey, write your favorite 3L a poem, sing them a song or dance them a dance. Better yet, hopefully you have some other friends with generic names that resemble your 3L crush, maybe a John or something of the like for example, and you can simply forward them a previously received Someecard. Because lets face it Ronrey, they won’t remember you. Ever. And they probably would be really weirded out. We would too.

Andy and Chas are almost 2Ls (maybe) and can be reached at Andrew.Erickson@valpo.edu

By now, hopefully everyone has settled in for another good year at Valparaiso University School of Law. But, before you get too comfortable with Income Tax, Constitutional Law, Contracts or any of your other classes, I thought I would share some real world tales about legal research. Unless you are a new 1L, I’m sure most of you have forgotten, or at least attempted to forget, about legal research. Here now are some reminders that the legal research skills you have been taught will stay important in your professional life.

ans list serv asking how many law firms still actively subscribed to print digests. Out of 53 responses, only 3 firms did NOT still maintain print digests. Over half were still using both state and federal digests. What does this mean for you? It means that firms are still expecting their attorneys to use print sources or they wouldn’t be spending the large sums of money needed to maintain those print sources. Moral of the story, keep your print skills handy, you never know when you might need them.

authority verification was run and the order was issued, the Indiana Supreme Court accepted transfer on the Court of Appeals and vacated the decision. Now the local judge has the possibility that the original order that was issued will have to be reconsidered unless the Supreme Court decides to affirm. Moral of this story, remember to do authority verification early and often, and always, one more time just before the work product goes out the door. Even judges can fall prey to ignoring this warning.

that had not been updated to reflect the changes made to the law in 2007. A disclaimer on the web site informed viewers the guide was not updated. So, more careful research and voters would have had the opportunity to vote on redirecting room tax money to education, transportation and public safety. Moral here, no matter where you find your information, make sure you check the original source.

Finally, a quote from a private firm

attorney about his observations on legal

research.

“Legal research is a part of the larger issue of legal analysis and reasoning…The use of print materials seems to better stress and underscore the need for analysis. In contrast, on-line research is many times more mechanical (i.e., putting together search terms) and many topics are missed… [T]he emphasis needs to be on the analytical approach to a problem and then on where the answers are to be found.”

This quote was part of a conference on the future of legal research presented at Chicago Kent Law School in May of 2007. It sums up rather nicely what we hope you have learned here at Valpo Law.

From the Library by Mary Persyn

You may have seen the July issue of the Law Library newsletter, The Reporter, which described all of the changes that were taking place in the Law Library over the summer. These included converting some space on the second floor into faculty offices and removing the law reviews from the lower level of the Library and converting that space into a Reading Room for quiet study. The plan was to have all of the work done by the time orientation began on August 20. Read the rest of this entry »

By Sarah Holterhoff, Government Information/Reference Librarian

It’s a Small World After All…

Online Legal Research With a Global Perspective

We’ve all heard it—the world is shrinking, globalization is the new buzz word, and interest in foreign and international information of all sorts is growing rapidly. Legal information on the global front is needed by lawyers, legal scholars, and law students and it’s quick and convenient to look for it on the Internet. That brings us to some good news and some bad news… The good news is that today a wide array of websites offer reliable and free source material (primary and secondary) for foreign and international legal research. The bad news is that such abundant access has led to information overload, with resources scattered around the Internet in a disorganized fashion. This makes it difficult to locate the desired information and to determine if what you do find is reliable and authoritative.

But there is more good news…if you need to research foreign and international law online, there is an efficient way to get a head start: find a good, up-to-date online research guide. You will want one written by an expert, which lists and describes available resources and provides links to websites where they can be found. To locate such a guide, you can turn to two well-respected web sites which provide excellent, authoritative research guides: LLRX.com and GlobaLex.

LLRX.com is a website devoted to all areas of law, including foreign and international, as well as legal technology. It has been in existence for over ten years and its original name of Law Library Resource Xchange has now been shortened to the LLRX acronym. The site contains thousands of articles written by respected lawyers, technologists, and librarians, which has led it to be consistently named as one of the top legal websites on the Internet.

Let’s say you need a research guide on Croatian law. If you go to LLRX.com, you would start with the heading “Legal Research” and select “Foreign & Comparative Law.” That link would take you to a page offering various subcategories. Under “Comparative and Foreign Law” you could scroll down to find a guide to “The Croatian Legal System” from 2002. This guide could also be located by typing the word “Croatia” into the search box (located on the top of each page). Guides on the site are listed in reverse chronological order, so the Google search function is helpful for quickly locating a guide on a particular topic, such as Islamic law or the federal civil code of Mexico.

Among the recent additions to the foreign and international resources on LLRX.com are Israeli, Australian, and European Union law research guides. Common features of the guides are numerous links and frequent updating. Some of the guides cover a narrowly-defined research topic, such as intellectual property law in the Russian Federation or the validity of Turkish private law contracts. LLRX is an easily-navigated and well-managed site that contains a wealth of reliable information—on foreign and international law and much more.

GlobaLex is an electronic library of foreign, comparative, and international research guides, created and maintained by the Hauser Global Law School Program at New York University School of Law. It can be found at: http://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/. Begun only three years ago, GlobaLex now links to more than 100 guides on a variety of topics and jurisdictions, written by respected authors who are experts on their topics. The site is organized into four sections and is easy to navigate. The foreign law research section includes links to guides from more than 80 foreign jurisdictions, listed alphabetically by country name. If you are interested in knowing more about Pakistan’s constitution and Supreme Court which have been in the news recently, check out “A Legal Research Guide to Pakistan.”

Turning to the international law research section, you’ll find that it’s organized alphabetically by topic, such as “international environmental.” The author of “A Basic Guide to International Environmental Legal Research” is Valpo Law grad Heidi Frostestad Kuehl (J.D. 2000 and now a law librarian at Northwestern University School of Law). There is also a section on comparative law research and a new section about building collections of foreign and international legal materials.

A search box which is powered by Google is also available on the site. A key feature of GlobaLex is the provision for emailing questions or comments directly to the author of each guide, making the research process more collaborative. At this point, GlobaLex is particularly useful for researchers interested in the legal systems of Eastern and Central European countries, for which research guides have previously been unavailable. Site creator and editor Mirela Roznovschi plans to continue adding new research guides as they become available, particularly ones about law in various African and Latin American countries.

When you need to research foreign and international law online, don’t start from scratch. If you take the time to locate a current and authoritative online research guide to the jurisdiction or topic of interest, you’ll have a much better chance of success.

Need information on your candidate in the Presidential 2008 Election?Have you been watching the Republican and Democratic debates? Do you think Bill Clinton is teaming up with Hillary against Barack Obama? Is your favorite candidate still running or have they dropped out of the race?While ten years ago people got their political information mainly from newspapers and television, people now use the Internet as a major source of information. Each candidate has his or her own website as well as various political organizations. With the growth of weblogs and other social networking, people often use YouTube and MySpace in this decade.There are a number of Internet sites with useful information about the 2008 presidential candidates, election and the political process. Many of these resources include RSS feeds and public forum or blog comments from members of the general public. This article highlights some sites you may find interesting and useful.· Campaign Legal Center “Representing the public interest in enforcement of campaign and media law.” This nonprofit nonpartisan center follows and initiates legal action on issues, including campaign finance, election law, political communication and ethics. The site includes a blog, weekly reports and links to related articles from court cases and legislation. Access: www.camlc.org/.· Federal Election Commission This site provides information about legal and regulatory rules relating to federal campaign finance issues. Its searchable Disclosure Database is the original source of all the campaign finance data provided by other groups. The FEC also delivers a campaign finance page (http://www.fec.gov/DisclosureSearch/mapA.do) with an interactive map showing how much money certain states have contributed to the cause.Access: www.fec.gov/index.shtml/.· Politico and Campus Politico “Meet and Track the Candidates” This extensive political news site from Capital News Company covers the presidential campaign and other political events and issues. The site includes an extensive list of websites for each candidate, video clips and an open forum for commentary. Campus Politico focuses on college-age voters and includes links to social networking sites and downloadable widgets that provide updated blog postings from Politico writers. Access: http://www.politico.com/campuspolitico/· “The 51^st State: The State of Online” This article by Laura Gordon-Murnane appeared in the November/December issue of Searcher and has been made publicly available. The article provides a listing of the technological and social features that are available on presidential campaign websites as of late summer 2007 and analyses how candidates, media and voters are using these tools.Access: http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/nov07/Gordon-Murnane_51stState.pdf/.· Pollster “All about Polls” Political polling permeates the political season, yet rarely is provided with any context beyond the basic horse race results. Pollster tracks, aggregates, and analyzes political polls (including presidential, congressional and gubernatorial races). The site provides links to other polling and survey research groups and resources, and has a very helpful FAQ page that explains how political polling is done. Access: http://www.pollster.com/.· CampaignMoney This site allows visitors to find campaign finance data, including searching for contributions by zip code, individual name or address and political action committees, as well as post opinions about candidates. Special reports include contributions made by celebrities, industries, companies and more.Access: http://www.campaignmoney.com/· Project Vote Smart One of the first political information sites on the Web, Project Vote Smart provides an extensive amount of information about elected officials, including voting records (congressional and legislative), special interest group performance evaluations, campaign finance data and issue positions from the Political Courage Test (formerly known as the National Political Awareness Test). The site also provides general political information, including voter registration information, information on statewide ballot measures and links to other resources.Access: http://www.vote-smart.org/.· Fact Checker The goal of this Washington Post site is to “shed as much light as possible on controversial claims and counter-claims involving important national issues, such as the war in Iraq, immigration, health care, social issues, the economy and the records of the various presidential candidates.” The 2008 Campaign includes videos, political blogs and information on each candidate, including financial data. The Post’s information seems to be very balanced.Access: http://factcheck.org/.· Open Secrets Look up who and the amount they donated to candidates, how much money was raised and spent on campaign finances and the personal finances of candidates. The Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) supplies campaign finance information to other political information services, but its own website, Open Secrets, covers more territory. In addition to data about campaign contribution donors and recipients, lobbying and advocacy group spending, the site includes databases covering financial disclosure, the revolving door between door between industry and government agencies and congressional travel. CRP’s online newsletter “Capital Eye” provides news and analysis articles about the role of money in politics.Access: http://opensecrets.org/.· Politifact A project of the St. Petersburg Times and CQ (Congressional Quarterly), this site uses scorecards, fact sheets and articles to review claims made by candidates (the Truth-O-Meter) and attacks from opponents (the Attack File). The site includes ratings on some claims, using a six-point scale that ranges from “True” to “Pants on Fire.” They also offer a twice-weekly e-mail service that delivers “meter readings” to your e-mail box. Access: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/.(Information found at Lorena O’English, Election 2008 Resources, 69 College & Research Libraries News, 1 (Jan. 2008).Submitted by Gail Hartzell, Acquisitions and Serials Librarian, gail.hartzell@valpo.edu