ZiefBrief

Law Librarian Amy Wright Caught in the Spotlight

ZiefBrief is pleased as can be to note that Online Research Services Librarian Amy Wright, the newest member of Team Zief, has been singled out for special attention in a Spotlight on Law Librarians by the Law Librarian Blog. The Law Librarian Blog is a member of the Law Professor Blog which bills itself as "...a network of web logs ("blogs") designed from the ground-up to assist law professors in their scholarship and teaching."

Amy's Spotlight gives an interesting glimpse into how she came to the profession of law librarianship and what it means to her to be a law librarian. Every year a few curious law students, daunted by the enormity of practicing law, will ask about the route that leads from law school to the law library -- it will be useful to be able to refer them to Amy's story. Check out the full Spotlight here.

Picturing Justice Goes on Permanent Hiatus.

We are sorry to note that the on-line journal Picturing Justice is no longer accepting new articles. A special message on their home page reads: "From 1997 to 2006 Picturing Justice published over 300 short articles on the intersection between law and lawyers on one side and popular culture on the other. While we are no longer accepting new articles, we hope readers will continue to enjoy the articles in our archives."

We at Zief Brief have always enjoyed reading and promoting this pioneering web publication. While Picturing Justice was originally the effort of the USF law community (and especially Professor John Denvir) it has gone on to have a web-wide list of contributors. They will be missed.

Partial Birth Abortion Ban: The Supreme Court Hears Arguments

The Supreme Court today again took up the incendiary issue of abortion, hearing arguments in two cases (Gonzales v. Carhart (05-380) and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood (05-1382)) involving bans on "partial birth" abortion.

SCOTUSblog reports that C-SPAN has audio files of the arguments, and for a quick summary, take a look at Lyle Denniston's post Commentary: Kennedy Vote in Play on Abortion, also on SCOTUSblog.

As promised, the Court has been supplying same-day argument transcripts, so both the Carhart transcript (PDF; 66 pages) and the Planned Parenthood transcript (PDF; 66 pages) are now available.

Better WestClip Naming Options

WestClip is a great service from Westlaw, which allows you to monitor news or legal developments. Law students, faculty, and staff can use WestClip to receive e-mail announcements about important developments in case law, statutes, legislation, regulations, or news.  For some odd reason, Westlaw only allowed you to use 10 characters to name your WestClip.  Naturally, you often ended up with an unrecognizable name for your search, which created difficulties when you needed to distinguish between multiple WestClip searches.

Now, West has kindly increased the number of characters that you can use when naming WestClip searches from 10 to 40, so you should be able to create WestClip labels that will still make sense to you a couple of months after you create them.

To create a WestClip search, sign on to Westlaw, then click on the "Alert Center" link, which is located on the top right-hand side of the Westlaw law school home page.  Next, click on the "Create Entry" link for "WestClip."  And of course, if you're more comfortable with Lexis, you can use the Lexis Alert feature to keep you up-to-date.  If you need help with using either Lexis or Westlaw's alert services, please contact Amy Wright, Zief's Online Research Services Librarian, at x5112 or e-mail her at ajwright@usfca.edu.

In-House Counsel Blogs

Law.com has a great article today about the rising number of in-house attorneys who are blogging about their jobs.  If you're interested in reading more about what it's like to work in-house, these blogs would be excellent additions to your blogroll:

• Standards Law (David Rubin, Microsoft attorney)
• the legal thing...notes from a General Counsel (Mike Dillon, Sun Microsystems GC)
• Cisco High Tech Policy Blog (Two of the blog's contributors, Adam Golodner & Jeffrey Campbell, are Cisco in-house lawyers.)
• The Wired GC (anonymous blog)