The Ginger (Law) Librarian

NPR reported that the judge in a case related to the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was not amused when the BP lawyers manipulated the spacing in a brief to comply with the page limit. "Back in school, did you ever fudge the spacing on a report to meet the teacher's page-length requirement? Lawyers representing oil company BP tried something similar in a recent court filing connected to the company's 2010 drilling rig accident and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico." Judge Barbier reprimanded the lawyers for the tactic. "BP's counsel filed a brief that, at first blush, appeared just within the 35-page limit. A closer study reveals that BP's counsel abused the page limit by reducing the line spacing to slightly less than double-spaced. As a result, BP exceeded the (already enlarged) page limit by roughly six pages. The Court should not have to waste its time policing such simple rules — particularly in a case as massive and complex as this. ... C...

When most people think library, they think of a quiet warehouse full of books. Of course, that's all changing as libraries continue to transition to a digital collection . Some libraries are continuing to step outside of the traditional role of the library by offering cutting edge technology like Google Glass or 3D printers  to their patrons. The other programming happening in Colorado libraries include : Anythink created The Studio at Wright Farms, which has HD cameras, a green screen, tripods, lighting kits and editing software. And that's just for video. There's an audio recording studio, graphic design software and gaming computers A programmable Finch to learn computer code Seed libraries to offer up cheaper ways to cultivate plants, herbs, fruits and vegetables In Denver, you can stream and download music from local bands In JeffCo, a library card also gets you a Culture Pass, where cardholders can reserve passes to access local museums and attractions ...

Please see my recent Research Instruction & Patron Services (RIPS) Blog post on teaching with visual legal research platforms. The RIPS Law Librarian Blog has a lot of other great content for law librarians, as well.

Lexis released the new interface, Lexis Advance, on Monday, September 8. From the promotional literature: It's cleaner, simpler and easier to use than ever before. Some of the new Lexis Advance features include: A new streamlined interface Tab-less, uncluttered results More intuitive filters get you to the answer faster Improved Alerts, Tables of Contents, Mobile Apps and more The same great search functions that you already know For more information on the Lexis Advance interface, see the following YouTube videos: New Look of Lexis Advance video Lexis Advance Before and After Guide The research tasks you must do: Here's how at Lexis Advance On first impression, it looks like Lexis Advance really listened to user comments and recommendations for improvement.

Earlier this year, I posted about SCOTUS  continuing to edit opinions after release. From the NYTimes , "[t]he Supreme Court has been quietly revising its decisions years after they were issued, altering the law of the land without public notice. The revisions include 'truly substantive changes in factual statements and legal reasoning,' said Richard J. Lazarus, a law professor at Harvard and the author of a new study examining the phenomenon." In June, the ABAJournal noted that there is a Twitter account that is tracking the changes made to opinions after release. "Lawyer David Zvenyach, general counsel to the Council of the District of Columbia, looked for a solution [to notifying the public of changes to the opinions]. He used an application called Node to crawl slip opinions from the Supreme Court’s website every five minutes. The changes are automatically noted on Twitter at the account @Scotus_servo ." A a caveat, " TechDirt points out  t...

As law school heads into the first few weeks of class, it is probable that 1Ls will run across the most famous cases in the first-year subjects. The Findlaw Blog has a series of helpful posts for the classic law school cases. Torts: Palsgraf v. Long Island Railroad Co. (1928) Summers v. Tice (1948) MacPherson v. Buick Motor Co. (1916) Garratt v. Dailey (1955) United States v. Carroll Towing Co. (1947) Criminal Law: R. v. Dudley and Stephens (Queen's Bench, 1884) M'Naghten's Case (House of Lords 1843) R. v. Cunningham (Queen's Bench, 1957) People v. Ceballos (Calif. Supreme Court, 1973) Lawrence v. Texas (U.S. Supreme Court, 2003) Property: Pierson v. Post (New York, 1805) Ghen v. Rich (Massachusetts, 1881) Duke of Norfolk's Case (House of Lords, 1682) United States v. Causby (U.S. Supreme Court, 1946) Johnson & Graham's Lessee v. M'Intosh (U.S. Supreme Court, 1823) Civil Procedure: Pennoyer v. Neff (SCOTUS 1878) Inte...

The NYTimes reported on a fairly new phenomenon at the Supreme Court level. As the justices look to amicus briefs for help with data, "[t]heir opinions are increasingly studded with citations of facts they learned from amicus briefs." While this may not seem problematic on its face, "'[t]his is a perilous trend,' said Allison Orr Larsen, a law professor at the College of William and Mary. 'The court is inundated with 11th-hour, untested, advocacy-motivated claims of factual expertise,' she wrote in an article to be published in The Virginia Law Review." "Some of the factual assertions in recent amicus briefs would not pass muster in a high school research paper. But that has not stopped the Supreme Court from relying on them. Recent opinions have cited 'facts' from amicus briefs that were backed up by blog posts, emails or nothing at all." The justices must be cognizant of the resources that amicus briefs cite for authority. ...