ZiefBrief

USF Students May Make Research Appointments Online

USF law, graduate, and undergraduate students may now make individual research appointments with a Zief Law Library research librarian. (Appointments with Zief Law Library research librarians are only available to current USF students. Other authorized Zief Library users with research questions may visit the research desk in person, or call 415-422-6773.)

The major advantage to making a research appointment is that you will have the librarians un-divided attention and it is far less likely that you will be interrupted during your consultation.

Please use the link next to the names of the librarians - note that the URLs are case sensitive:

     Suzanne Mawhinney: www.goo.gl/wF0v5

     Lee Ryan: www.goo.gl/lZyCV

 

     John Shafer: www.goo.gl/KEu3k

     Amy Wright: www.goo.gl/Ms4v1

Waiting for bar results? No overtime pay for you!

According to the Cal. court of appeals, poeple waiting for their bar results have already joined a "learned profession" which means that the law firms they work for don't have to pay them overtime. Traditionally, professionals have been exempt from the California wage and hour rules that require overtime pay, meal breaks, and other benefits. This marks an expansion of an earlier ruling that stated that employees of accounting firms who assist accountants conducting aduits are also learned professionals.

No word on whether bar-takers are also exempt from CAL-OSHA rules concerning hazardous working conditions.

You can read the complete decision at www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/A130540.DOC

Breaking News: Cal. Prop. 8 Overturned

In the first case of its kind to go before a federal court, US District Court Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that controversial Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage is unconstitutional on both due process and equal protection grounds. The decision is all but certain to be appealed to the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals with an eventual trip to the US Supreme Court.

The servers for the District Court are currently unavailable due to the volume of internet traffic. Click here for a copy of the opinion from the San Francisco Chronicle web page:  Download Prop-8-Ruling-FINAL

New CALI Lesson: CA Primary Sources

UC Davis reference librarian Erin Murphy has created a new CALI lesson to help law students learn more about California legal research.  "California Primary Sources" covers the California constitution (often overlooked by new lawyers!), statutes, administrative law, the California court system, and case law.  If you'd like to register for CALI, contact a Zief reference librarian to obtain the CALI authorization code for USF law students.

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.