Legal research app?

Over at Legal Blog Watch, Robert Ambrogi has the scoop on Fastcase’s legal research app for the iPhone/iPod Touch. He likes it:

   The short version of my review is this: I was impressed. The app is easy to use and produces lightning-fast results. Use it to search cases from all federal courts and the courts of all 50 states. Search using natural language or Boolean queries or by citation.

NY Times on the new reality

The NY Times today has an article in the Sunday Styles (huh?) section on how the current financial crisis has hit the legal profession. What an odd place to put such an article, which is mostly a re-hash of what we’ve known for over a year.

Friday Fun a couple days early

After fantasy baseball and fantasy football comes …. Fantasy Supreme Court. May the best Justice win.

And you thought things were crazy here at UB during exams….

Well, the atmosphere here at UB is nowhere near as crazy as at some other lawschools.  In fact, the other law school in our fair city got lenghty write-up in this regard. Ah, exam time.

Ponderings

I wonder how many more months it will take for them to fix the urinals in the law llibrary? The one on the 3rd floor has been out of order for over 2 months and the one on the 4th floor for a month an a half. 

♫♫ Google Killed the Altlaw Star ♫♫

But the death is…amicable.  Altlaw.com announces that they will be shutting down in early 2010.

Google Scholar Now Includes Law Journals and Cases

From Google’s Official Blog:

Starting today, we’re enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in. For example, go to Google Scholar, click on the “Legal opinions and journals” radio button, and try the query separate but equal. Your search results will include links to cases familiar to many of us in the U.S. such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, which explore the acceptablity of “separate but equal” facilities for citizens at two different points in the history of the U.S. But your results will also include opinions from cases that you might be less familiar with, but which have played an important role.

Holy iPhone App, Batman!

Once again, proving the usefulness of Twitter, I find out (via @elizabethf) that Lexis has released a free iPhone/iPodTouch app that allows users to get cases from Lexis and to Shepardize them. You do need to have a current Lexis account. Still, how cool is that?

Final Exam Information

Fall 2009
FINAL BLIND GRADING ID NUMBERS AND EXAM DEFERRAL REQUESTS

BLIND GRADING ID NUMBERS:
All students have been assigned new Blind Grading ID numbers for Fall 2009.  Please note that this number is to be used for Fall 2009 final exams ONLY (Not To Be Used For Mid-Terms).  You cannot access your Blind Grading ID number without your assigned Network ID and Password.  If you have questions about your Network ID and Password, please call the Help Desk at 410-837-6262.

 Students who were issued “0″ as a Blind Grading ID number, please see Cheryl Cudzilo in LC 103.

 You may retrieve your Blind Grading ID number via the Student Portal:
1. Go to http://myub.ubalt.edu
2. Click on “Get Blind Grading ID” on the lower left side of the page, under “Links for Law Students”

Please do not mistake the term 1094 as your blind grading ID number.  This number has not been assigned.  All blind grading ID numbers have one to four digits.

EXAM DEFERRAL REQUESTS:

Please review the deferral procedures at http://law.ubalt.edu/template.cfm?page=280. 

 Exam Deferral Requests will be accepted from October 30, 2009 through November 13, 2009.  Late deferral requests will not be accepted. Deferral Request Forms are available on the Law School website at http://law.ubalt.edu/template.cfm?page=490 (under Fall 2009), and in the Dean’s Suite (LC 103). The  Dean’s Suite is open the following days and times:

Monday – Thursday        8:30am – 7:00pm
Friday                               8:30am – 4:30pm

Please read all instructions. NO REQUEST WILL BE GRANTED WITHOUT A BLIND GRADING ID NUMBER AND EMAIL ADDRESS ON THE REQUEST FORM. Deferral forms may be turned in to the Dean’s Suite (LC 103) or emailed to exams@ubalt.edu.

NOTE: You will be notified via email the status of your deferral request.

Best wishes,
Office of Academic Affairs

About those GAO legislative histories…

Despite all the controversy about Westlaw getting exclusive rights to the digitized legislative histories compiled by the GAO (see e.g. http://dukelawref.blogspot.com/2008/07/who-owns-legislative-history.html), I really didn’t take a close look until I needed some examples for class.  There really is a lot of information in that database, and good quality PDF images.  On the other hand, there are some questions about coverage, and some really annoying features in the database organization and search facility.

Coverage starts nominally in 1915, but more fully in 1921 (when the GAO was created).  Since the GAO was mostly a green-eyeshade operation up until 1970, the legislative histories must have been to help decide if expenditures were proper.  In any case, not all statutes have GAO histories.  (Class example: ch. 359 of 1948 – nothing in GAO; use USCCAN instead).  When a GAO history is available, especially in more recent years, it is extremely detailed, including texts of amendments.  The table of contents for the PDFs, however, is broken up into several pages, sometimes with only one or two entries per page.  Presumably, this preserves some information about the contents of bound volumes provided by the GAO, but it makes the set unnecessarily hard to use, and may cause some users to go away disappointed, unaware that more is available for the clicking.  The default search template can also be frustrating since it doesn’t have a blank to fill in for chapter number.  This is a handicap for earlier session laws that are cited only by chapter number.

Take-away:  a big step forward in online access to federal legislative history material, but not one-stop shopping, and with room for improvement.    -WT