Recently in Legal research Category

This post was written anonymously: "The U.S. federal courts system has launched a brand new website called CourtWEB that provides free access to district court opinions from judges who elect to participate and make their decisions available. According to a press release from the N.D. Ohio, all opinions written by N.D. Ohio judges since January 2006 are now freely avaialable on the web site. PACER is still available for other filings in cases, as well as full dockets and documents in older matters.

To reach the blog post and the active links, click on the author's name.

Source: Cleveland Law Library Weblog, 26 February 2010. Reproduced with permission by Kathleen Sasala.

This post was written by Tara Calisham: "I think I was about five years off. Several years ago I was thinking about the potential for location-based searching, and I thought it would be a big deal Real Soon Now. But it's only really taken off in the last couple of years, and it's only now that Google's overtly introducing it into the main Web search. Remind me not to try to time any stock purchases.

Anyway, Google announced Friday morning that there's now an option to refine your searches by location. But you'll have to make sure your "Show Options" nav is open, or you're gonna miss it..."

Continue reading this interesting post and reach the active link by clicking on the author's name.

Source: Research Buzz, 1 March 2010. © 2006-2010 ResearchBuzz, reproduced with permission of the author.  

This post was written by Laura Bergus: "Regardless of where you are on your path to a legal career, you should try to master the variety of legal research tools at your fingertips.

During my 1L legal writing course, our law librarians empowered me with fundamental legal research skills. We learned to apply these skills to the archaic online databases of Westlaw and LexisNexis, and I presumed they were the only games in town.

There are, of course, alternatives to so-called "Wexis." Here are some recommendations based on the type of research query..."

Continue reading this interesting post by clicking on the author's name.

Source: Lawyerist.com, 18 February 2010. © 2007-2010 Lawyerist Media, LLC. Reproduced with permission of the site editor, Sam Glover.

This post was written by Greg Lambert: "I feel like I've been picking on the folks at Thomson Reuters regarding the launch of WestlawNext, especially with this post last week.  I expected a quick response from Thomson Reuters on my questioning their approach to pushing this out to law firms and more specifically to law students.  The response came this morning from Anne Ellis, Senior Director of the Westlaw Library Relations team.  I thought I'd push this out on the blog as a more reasoned response than the one we got from the anonymous 'A Westlaw Rep.'  In fact, I hope that Anne cc'd all 'Westlaw Reps.' on this so that they can give a better response to the specific questions we had on the roll-out. The first three paragraphs are mostly 'corporate speak', but Anne goes on to answer some of the questions we had on the effect that law students will have on the new search algorithm (which was my primary concern.)..."

Continue reading this interesting post and reach the active links by clicking on the author's name.

Source: 3 Geeks & a Blog, 15 February 2010. Reproduced with permission of the authors.

This post was written by Bonnie Shucha: "Fastcase recently released an app for the iPhone. And not only is the app free, but so access to the case law and statutes that it contains -- even if you don't practice in a state like Wisconsin where the desktop computer version of Fastcase is free through the State Bar.

So far the reviews have been very good, including this one from iPhone JD:..."

Continue reading this interesting post and reach the active links by clicking on the author's name.

Source: WisBlawg, 10 February 2010, reproduced with permission of the author.

This post was written by Omar Ha-Redeye: "Nada Khirdaji has an interesting piece on her transition from legal research skills in law school to research skills in practice in CCH's law student monthly,..."

Get active links to the article and Omar's excerpts and commentary by clicking on the author's name above.

Source: Slaw.ca, 8 February 2010. Reproduced with permission of Simon Fodden, founder of Slaw

This post was written by Bonnie Shucha: "U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim has written a thoughtful piece about PACER for The National Law Journal. Tunheim has been closely involved with PACER as longtime member and chair of the Judicial Conference's Court Admini­stration and Case Management Committee.

In the article, the judge responds to recent questions and criticisms about PACER's fee structure, functionality and privacy protections. Although I encourage you to read the full article, his conclusion offers a summary of his views:..."

Continue reading this interesting post and reach the active links by clicking on the author's name.

Source: Wisblawg, 29 January 2010, reproduced with permission of the author.

This post was written by Evan Schaeffer: "Fastcase is free for the iPhone. There are two good reviews here--

• "Review of the Fastcase iPhone App," at Legal Geekery;
• "Review: Fastcase -- free caselaw and statute research for the iPhone," at iPhone J.D.

To reach the blog post and the active links, click on the author's name.

Source: The Trial Practice Tips Weblog, 2 February 2010. Reproduced with permission of the author.

This post was written by Bonnie Shucha: "FDsys.gov, the Government Printing Office's replacement for the aging GPO Access website, continues to grow. It now covers the following:

Congressional Bills, 103rd Congress (1993-1994) to present; BILLS

104th Congress (1995-1996) to present; CCAL

Congressional Committee Prints, 100th Congress (1987-1988) to present; CRPT

Congressional Directory, 104th Congress (1995-1996) to present; CDIR

Congressional Documents, 104th Congress (1993-1994) to present; CDOC

Congressional Hearings, if available from committee, 105th Congress (1997-1998) to present; CHRG

Congressional Record (Bound), 1999 to 2001; CRECB

Congressional Record (Daily), 103rd Congress, 2nd session (1994) to present; CREC

Congressional Record Index (Daily), 1983 to present; CRI

Congressional Committee Reports, Senate Executive Reports (includes conference committee reports), 104th Congress (1995-1996) to present; CRPT

History of Bills, 1983 to present; HOB

Precedents of the U.S. House of Representatives (Hinds, Cannon, Deschler); GPO

Public and Private Laws, 104th (1995-1996) to present; PLAW

Statutes At Large, 2003-2006; STAT

According to a recent article in LLRX, migration is now expected to be complete in April 2010 with a full switchover to FDsys in Summer 2010. See the article for more info, as well as some advanced search tips."

This item was written by I. Haight: "Cognition, a privately held corporation, developed and patented the Semantic Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology that aims to improve search by improving computers' ability to "understand" language. English words often have multiple meanings, and humans identify the correct meaning of a word from its context.

...When a user inputs search terms into an engine running Semantic NLP, the Cognition Parser analyzes the grammar of the sentence and matches search terms against Cognition's Semantic Map in an effort to obtain the user's intended meaning of the words from their context. Alongside the search results, Cognition displays the meaning of each word in the query based upon its contextual analysis; users can select a different meaning from a dropdown menu if the meaning is incorrect...

Caselaw.Cognition accurately analyzed all the search terms I entered and retrieved relevant results. No search engine is perfect for legal research of course--results may discuss the user's topic only parenthetically and don't help the user determine the significant cases for the development of the law. Nevertheless, Caselaw.Cognition is a strong tool for searching federal case law, with the added bonus that it is freely available. In addition to natural language searching, Cognition also supports the use of many Boolean terms, which are detailed in the "Help" section. Semantic NLP is currently available with LexisNexis Concordance and Merrill Lextranet, two commercial e-discovery and litigation management tools."

Source: "InSite." Vol.15, No.11. 25 January 2010. Cornell University Law Library. To subscribe send the following request to: listproc@cornell.edu: Subscribe InSITE-L [YourFirstName] [YourLastName]