ZiefBrief

First-Year Tips: CALI Exercises

2008-08-19T14:35:46-07:00

Even though I was a pretty dedicated law student, there were certain concepts that I had a hard time grasping during my first year of law school. In Property, the rule against perpetuities gave me fits. In Contracts, it was the parol evidence rule. In Civil Procedure, I was bedeviled by joinder rules. I spent an inordinate amount of time puzzling over these concepts, reviewing hornbooks, commercial exam prep materials, and any other resource that I could get my hands on, hoping that one of these resources would magically make these concepts clearer to me.

These days, first-year law students don't have to struggle quite so much thanks to CALI. CALI is a non-profit organization comprised of U.S. law school members, and it has over 700 interactive, online tutorials covering almost all of the major legal concepts that you will encounter during your first year of law school and lots of upper-division subjects as well. Law professors write the tutorials out of the goodness of their hearts to demystify tough legal concepts and help law students test their grasp of these rules. The CALI Editorial Board reviews each new draft exercise before posting it on the CALI website to help ensure that lessons are accurate and engaging.

All you need to access CALI lessons online is a USF student registration code, which you can pick up from a USF librarian at the law library reference desk at any time. Once you register, you've got access to CALI for the rest of your law school career. We'll also be bringing CALI student access codes to this Friday's first-year orientation fair, along with fabulous free gifts and a chance to win a basket of goodies by playing our trivia game. Stop by and see us!

Googling Your Way to Trial Victory

2008-08-13T10:33:09-07:00

Want to find out how members of your jury really think? Google them and read their blogs and social networking pages. The National Law Journal reports that increasing numbers of litigators are turning to the Internet in order to get a better handle on how to craft arguments that will win over jurors. Attorneys are also using Internet research to help them select jurors.

In one example discussed in the article, a jury consultant was hired to work for the plaintiff in a products liability case involving a worker who was injured when he was forced to climb inside of a machine. The consultant discovered from a potential juror's MySpace page that he was in a claustrophobe's support group. The jury consultant urged the attorney to keep the juror on the panel, the claustrophobic juror ended up as the jury foreperson, and the plaintiff prevailed.

Of course, some jurors may not take kindly to such tactics, and at least one litigator quoted in the article worried about the ethics of prying into jurors' online lives. Until the profession better defines the parameters of permissible research about jury pools, it's safe to assume that litigants are going to take advantage of search engines and social networking sites to help them prevail at trial.

Attorney's Bar License In Jeopardy After Street Racing Death

2008-08-13T10:08:20-07:00

We all know that having a license to practice law doesn't necessarily stop attorneys from engaging in negligent or criminal behavior. However, until today, I never heard of an attorney who jeopardized his or her bar license by engaging in drag racing on public streets (!). According to this Law.com report, attorney Kenneth Morgan of Tulsa, Oklahoma pled no contest to felony manslaughter after his law partner and friend, Andre Carolina, was killed in an accident that occurred during a 1 a.m. street race on Tulsa's public streets. Carolina was a passenger in Morgan's car when an intoxicated Morgan lost control of his car during the race. The Oklahoma bar hasn't yanked Morgan's license yet, but I think it's pretty hard to argue that drunken drag racing on public streets doesn't involve a hefty dose of "moral turpitude." I would be surprised if Morgan emerges from this horrible incident as an attorney.

Aftershocks From the LA Quake Hit State Bar

2008-08-07T14:07:36-07:00

Somehow, we knew that this story wasn't going away anytime soon. The National Law Journal has an article today, "Complaints Surface Over Bar Exam Disrupted by Earthquake," which details concerns that some test-takers had about the proctors' reaction to the quake. Apparently, some proctors refused to grant any extra time in one area of the Ontario Convention Center test location despite falling ceiling tiles, while proctors in another test area at the same locale told test-takers they would receive an additional five minutes on the essay portion of the test, but then called time without granting the extra minutes. One test-taker stated, "If I were a person who did not pass, and it was by five points, and I was in a room that got a five-minute disruption from the earthquake, I would definitely protest it. I would definitely make it an issue." Most of the people who took the bar are now sunning themselves on a beach somewhere, so I don't think we'll hear much more about this issue until November when test scores are released. But come November, I think the Cal State Bar will be contending with more than a few complaints from Los Angeles-area test-takers who failed the exam by just a few points.

Bar Examinees All Shook Up

2008-08-01T15:12:06-07:00

Kevin Underhill's very funny blog, Lowering the Bar, has this wry report on the impact that last Tuesday's 5.4 earthquake had on bar examinees in the Los Angeles area. According to Kevin, some of the test-takers were more rattled than others:

"One of my friends was in tears during the exam because she was so scared," reported the source. "It was a pretty jarring event for people who were already under time constraints and enormous pressure," he said, noting that he had some difficulty continuing to type in a shaking room with shaking hands. Yes, as you might have expected, many continued to type during an earthquake even as others were fleeing the room or taking shelter. "A lot of people," the source reported, "did do the half-and-half method of ducking under the tables WITH their laptops so they could keep on typing." You know, that kind of determination, plus 1900 billables a year, is just the sort of thing that might get you made partner someday.

For those of you wondering if the State Bar is going to grade more leniently because of the quake, the National Law Journal has this quote from Director Hawley:

Any interruption weighs heavily upon the takers," Hawley said. As a result, the State Bar is gathering data on the disruption that, along with reports from experts in psychometrics, will be presented to the committee of bar examiners in order to measure the earthquake's possible impact on test scores.

Read Law Professor Barack Obama’s Final Exams

2008-07-30T16:12:26-07:00

There has been a lot of commentary about an article in the New York Times that discussed Barack Obama’s 12 years as a law professor at University of Chicago (click here to see article). Turns out he was generally considered brilliant by most students but enigmatic by some fellow professors. What the readers of the print version of the article didn't get to see is a collection of Professor Obama's final exams and the syllabus to his class Current Issues in Racism and the Law.

Links to the materials:

Syllabus: Current Issues in Racism and the Law

2003 Final Exam
2002 Final Exam
2001 Final Exam
2000 Final Exam
1999 Final Exam
1998 Exam
1997 Final Exam | Answer Memo
1996 Final Exam | Answer Memo

Monica Goodling -- Poor Lexis Researcher?

2008-07-29T13:01:43-07:00

The release of "An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring by Monica Goodling and Other Staff in the Office of the Attorney General" (click here for the 524 KB .pdf file from the DOJ site) has been all over the news and blogosphere ever since it was released on the 28th of July. For those of you who haven't read the 150 page document we offer the following condensed version: allegations confirmed. What caught Ziefbrief's eye was the discussion of the techniques Ms. Goodling used to determine the political leanings of applicants. According to the report: "We found that Goodling’s Internet research on candidates for Department positions was extensive and designed to obtain their political and ideological affiliations." In a footnote the report noted " It does not violate federal law or Department policy to search for and consider political information concerning candidates for political positions. However, Goodling also conducted such searches, and considered the results of those searches, for candidates for career positions, including IJs and career candidates for temporary details."
The report also includes the actual lexis/nexis search that Jan Williams, her predecessor as the Department’s White House Liaison, passed on to her to use in screening applicants:

"[First name of a candidate]! and pre/2 [last name of a candidate] w/7 bush or gore or republican! or democrat! or charg! or accus! or criticiz! or blam! or defend! or iran contra or clinton or spotted owl or florida recount or sex! or controvers! or racis! or fraud! or investigat! or bankrupt! or layoff! or downsiz! or PNTR or NAFTA or outsourc! or indict! or enron or kerry or iraq or wmd! or arrest! or intox! or fired or sex! or racis! or intox! or slur! or arrest! or fired or controvers! or abortion! or gay! or homosexual! or gun! or firearm!"

We note a number of problems with the search technique in the above search. Ignoring the redundant search term "fired", we note that the search is incredibly broad -- especially if the search is run in one of the general news collections on Nexis. We challenge all ZiefBrief readers to come up with a better search to identify the political inclinations of potential members of the AG's staff. Submit your suggestion as a comment to this posting.

Monday Buzz: Cuil Takes On Google

2008-07-28T14:53:18-07:00

Well! I was all set to blog today about the new search engine that everybody is talking about, Cuil (pronounced "cool"), but Shawn, my colleague at Gleeson, has beat me to it! Check out Shawn's informative post about Cuil on Gleeson Gleanings, including a link to a librarian blogger's detailed review of Cuil.

Google Tackles Wikipedia

2008-07-24T14:07:42-07:00

Google's latest is a new site, Knol, which is basically a rival of Wikipedia. According to Google, a "knol" is a unit of knowledge written about a subject. If you write a knol, you get to take author credit for it, post your credentials, and seek feedback about your knol. Knol readers can comment on a knol, but they can't change its content. Instead of allowing anyone to edit a knol, Google allows multiple knols on the same topic. Google explains that the "Knol project is a forum for encouraging individual voices and perspectives on topics," so readers are free to write their own knol to counter the information presented in another knol.

If you visit the Knol page, you can see that the site is very much in its infancy. There aren't many knols available right now. But it's an interesting concept and, as always, we will be watching to see if Knol's popularity begins to rival Wikipedia anytime soon.

And a small rant: When I was at AALL last week, a vendor who shall remain nameless denounced Wikipedia as useless during his presentation, apparently thinking he would score points with librarians by doing so. Here's what I have to say to that: There is nothing wrong with using Wikipedia as one tool in an arsenal of research tools. In fact, I often find it to be a huge time-saver. When I'm starting research on a topic on which I know nothing, I often find Wikipedia articles to be an extremely useful introduction to a topic, especially the links to related websites that address the topic. For an example of a Wikipedia article on a hot legal topic, check out the article, "Guantanamo Bay detention camp." Here's the key -- I never stop searching after I find a relevant Wikipedia article. I glean information from it, then use that information to help me create searches within reputable sources that I know I can cite to. Treat Wikipedia articles with some caution, sure, and don't cite them in scholarly papers, but don't avoid Wikipedia like the plague, especially when you're trying to conduct cost-effective, efficient legal research.

Louisiana Seeks Reconsideration of SCOTUS Ruling

2008-07-21T15:40:05-07:00

The SCOTUS Blog is reporting that Louisiana has asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its ruling in Kennedy v. Louisiana, basing its request on the Court's omission of any discussion of the federal statute that permits the death penalty for child rape committed by a member of the armed forces. We posted earlier this month about the case, noting that none of the parties involved had encountered this statute while conducting legal research. SCOTUS Blog has links to Louisiana's petition and a discussion of the rules for granting rehearing. We'll report back when the Court responds to Louisiana's petition.