ZiefBrief

Standing Out on Your Summer Law Job - Secret Weapons

Law students lucky enough to have landed summer jobs or internships in these tough times are working harder than ever to make a good impression on their employers.

One sure bet is to get known as a great researcher. Students who've taken an advanced legal research class have the edge here, but anyone can give their research skills a big boost by following this precept (coined by Dean Cowan and Schelle Simcox, librarians at U.C. Berkeley’s law school and Paul Hastings, respectively) —

Practice Materials: The Practical Way to Practice Law

The deliberate redundancy drives home the point that researchers who start with practice guides, treatises, continuing legal ed. publications, and other similar so-called "secondary" sources will get a firmer grasp on the context of the client's problem and the issues it raises, and will wind up doing better work in less time.

So where to find practice materials? There are lots of ways. Perhaps the best is to ask the librarian, if your office has one, or to ask the attorneys you're working with for their favorites. Or you can call the reference librarians back at your law school to get their suggestions.

These web sites are handy guides to practice materials dealing with the various areas of law:

• Kent Olson's Treatises & Services by Subject — or UVa's customized version of Treatises & Services by Subject
• For California law, the Zief Library's California Practice Guides list
• Harvard Law Library's Legal Treatises by Subject
• The Georgetown Law Library Treatise Finder
• Santa Clara Heafey Law Library's Major Legal Treatises
• Pace Law Library's Subject Guide to Legal Treatises

For more advice on acing your summer job, try Suffolk Law School's podcasts on Transition from One-L to Summer Legal Work. [Hat tip on this one to the Moritz Legal Information Blog.]

They're Baaaack! Witkin and ALR Return to Lexis

Masterful negotiators at LexisNexis have evidently coaxed out of Thomson/West a long-term license to two of ZiefBrief's favorite secondary legal research tools: American Law Reports (ALR), and the four superlative Witkin publications.

These had disappeared from Lexis when the previous license expired and, frankly, ZiefBrief had thought that West would grant a new license only at the same time that ice hockey became popular in Hades. But here they are, and ZiefBrief's pleasure at being able to use them on Lexis outweighs our chagrin at having been so wrong in our prediction.

If you're browsing the "Look for a Source" menu on Lexis, these paths will lead to the returning research heroes:

• Legal > Secondary Legal > Jurisprudences & Encyclopedias > American Law Reports
• Legal > States Legal - U.S. > California > Search Analysis & CLE Materials > CA Treatises & Analytical Materials

If you're using "Find a Source" to pick a specific source, here are the long and short [in square brackets] source names. (The "Witkin Treatises" source combines all four Witkin publications into one.)

• American Law Reports [2NDARY;LEDALR]
• Witkin California Evidence [2NDARY;WITEVD]
• Witkin California Procedure [2NDARY;WITPRO]
• Witkin & Epstein California Criminal Law [2NDARY;WITCRM]
• Witkin Summary of California Law [2NDARY;WITSUM]
• Witkin Treatises [2NDARY;WITKIN]

Cal. Supreme Court Shares Background on Same-Sex Marriage Cases

As noted in recent ZiefBrief posts (link to post 1, link to post 2) the California Supreme Court recently released a ground-breaking expansion of all Californians' right to marry. In a welcome move, the Court has posted a handy web page designed to provide ready access to many of the case documents and other court information related to the decision. Included is the a link to the actual decision in .pdf format, a link to over 3 hours of audio and video of the oral arguments before the court, the Court's news releases, and briefs submitted by petitioners, respondents, and amici. They even provide docket, disposition, parties and attorneys, and lower court information. For researchers who want to continue to track the case there is a link to a page where you can set up an automatic e-mail notification of any future actions.

Now if we could only see their private notes and the minutes of their in-chamber deliberations...

Putting Today's Same-Sex Marriage Decision in Context

Those looking to build a law review topic out of today's California Supreme Court decision in In re Marriage Cases  (No. S147999, Cal. May 15, 2008) [PDF; 172 pages] (News release [PDF; 7 pages]) might want to explore these research leads:

• Same-Sex Marriage: A Selective Bibliography of the Legal Literature, by Paul Axel-Lute

• Sexual Orientation and the Law: A Research Bibliography, from the Standing Committee on Lesbian and Gay Issues, a special division of the American Association of Law Libraries' Social Responsibilities Special Interest Section. (See especially the section on couples) This bibliography is also available in print. The Zief Library's copy is at: KF 4754.5 .A1 S494 2006 Law Reference.

• Searches for books —

• A quick keyword search to find some useful books in your library would look something like this:

  "same-sex marriage" and law (This link will run a search for scholarly books on same-sex marriage in the Zief Library stacks.)

• You can also search for books worldwide via WorldCat. Try this search:

  "same sex marriage" law

• Or, you can use Google Book Search to search inside the book. Try this search:

  "same sex marriage" law

One in 100 Americans Behind Bars -- Pew Report Released

The Chronicle of Higher Education points out in this article that a new report on the US prison population and spending has just been released. The report is the work of the Pew Center of the States and is titled One in 100: Behind Bars in America 2008 (click here to link directly to a 37 page .pdf file.)  Why the interest by the Chronicle of Higher Education, you may ask? Well, it turns out that there are now 5 states (Vermont, Michigan, Oregon, Connecticut, and Delaware) that spend more on corrections than they do on higher education. California, with an $8.8 Billion budget for corrections is very close to this mark spending 83 cents on correction for every dollar spent on higher education. This report is a treasure trove of statistics and bibliographical information for anyone interested in prisons, policy, or the general population.  

Law Library of Congress Gets a New Look, Maintains Useful Research Tools.

In honor of the 175th anniversary of their creation, the Law Library of Congress unveiled a newly redesigned web page. ZiefBrief would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the LLOC on their anniversary and to remind our readers about what a useful research destination they can be. Two useful resources of special note are:

Guide to Law Online:
This is a very useful list of links maintained by the Law Library of Congress Public Services Division designed to provide a portal of Internet sources of interest to legal researchers. In addition to providing links to the full text of cases, codes, regulations the pages of the Guide provide useful links for lay people interested in the law.

The Global Legal Information Network (GLIN)
GLIN is a searchable online database containing laws, judicial decision, legislative records and legal literature for jurisdictions spanning the globe. Contributors are governmental agencies and international organizations that add original-language, officially published, full text documents in electronic format. Unofficial summaries (generally in English) accompany each document. Full texts of materials in the GLIN are available as PDF files.

Tracking the Reorganized California Rules of Court

As of January 2007, the revised (and completely renumbered and reorganized) California Rules of Court will go into effect.

For a heads-up on what's coming, you can get the text of the rules along with tables to lead you from the old rules to the new, and vice versa, at the California Rules of Court reorganization page. (Print publications from West and LexisNexis should catch up with the changes by the end of 2006.)

For more information, see the news release describing the revisions and reorganization (PDF; 2 pages) or the complete report on the reorganization of the California Rules of Court (PDF; 148 pages).

(Thanks to Peg LaFrance for the tip!) 

You Can't Vote Smart Unless You Know What You Are Voting For -- Cal LAO Posts 9/06 Ballot Proposition Analysis

Thomas Jefferson said: "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government..." (for much more on TJ check out the Jefferson Digital Archive maintained by the library at the University of Virginia) California voters rely on the Legislative Analyst's Office for unbiased information on pending ballot propositions. Policy wonks, lobbyists, and the politically impatient can now read the LAO's take on the November 7th, 2006 ballot propositions right now. For the historically minded the LAO also has collected their election-by-election analysis's back to March of 1996. This information is included in the full voter information guide distributed to each and every voter (the pending full guide is available from the California Secretary of States web site.)

Be Careful Where You Step - Dogs on the Beach

What is one of the most contentious, litigious, down-right nasty issues facing politicians today? Ask around and you might find out it is dogs. Well, actually the dogs are OK, it's the dog owners who can raise an unholy stink if public policy gets in the way of their self-proclaimed, god-given right to do whatever they want with their canine companions. Recently a state Assemblymember charged the California Research Bureau  to produce a report on the current status of dogs on the beach (ZiefBrief has tried mightily to find a link between "Dogs on the Beach" and the current hot media meme "Snakes on a Plane", without success.)

The CRB has produced an excellent report that not only supplies a guide to which beaches allow access by dogs (both on- and off-leash) but also a discussion of state and federal law and regulations that restrict such access. For a complete copy of the report in .pdf format check Dogs on the Beach: A Review of Regulations and Issues Affecting Dog Beaches in California.

"There's a sucker born every minute..." - Gambling in California

When California Attorney General Bill Lockyer wanted an overview of gambling in California he turned to the California Research Bureau for an unbiased report on the gambling industry. The report discusses such issues as: Indian casinos, the state lottery, horse racing, card rooms and Internet gambling. The full text of the report is available in .pdf form in a report titled Gambling in the Golden State.

Oh, and the august visage attached to this posting is none other that great showman and expert on the human condition, P.T. Barnum, courtesy of the Wikipedia.