In “Mapping Memory: Web Designer as Information Cartographer” in A List Apart, a site for web developers, Aaron Rester talks about his redesigning the University of Chicago Law School’s website. He analogizes what he is doing when confronting the 6000 pages in the current site to what Quintilian, a Roman rhetorician, recommended you do if you wish to be ready to persuade. Persuasion is dependent on memory and memory is best secured by a spatial imagination, hence the cartography.

The redesign of my law school’s website is not unlike the creation of a rhetorician’s memory dwelling. Built

Not yet, according to widely reported remarks from Bangalore over the weekend, to the graduating class at the National Law School. See the Hindu ((Not the Hindu Times, Simon, as you blogged in August)),Economic Times and Mangalorean reports.

National Law School of India University Vice-Chancellor A. Jayagovind on Sunday expressed concern over decline in the number of students pursuing higher studies in law.

The Vice-Chancellor went on:

“Our law schools are however yet to make a mark in terms of advancement of knowledge. Hopefully, most of us have been able to impart reasonably good legal education which was

While we’ve had discussions from time to time about Second Life, but we missed telling you about a novel virtual workshop on innovative forms of library services through virtual worlds. The workshop explored the benefits and challenges of operating a virtual world law library program, leading to practical advice on how to create and present a program or topical resource within Second Life.

The website noted that a legal community is developing in Second Life: over 65 lawyers and firms have an official Second Life presence, the “Second Life Bar Association” has 200+ members, and the ABA has recently . . . [more]

So, you’ve done your LSAT, completed your applications, and received your acceptance. You’re going to law school and starting in one week.

But that’s not enough. You want a boot camp to prepare you for the rigours of law school, and hopefully come out on top.

These courses have previously been available in the U.S. They often partnerwith LSAT courses to feed them incoming students, and using existing legal faculty from prominent institutions to teach their courses, often the same professors these students will have when school officially starts.

It’s a little less elaborate, but a similar enterprise has started . . . [more]

♫ All I know is I expected so much more
I don’t know what to say…♫

Words and Music by Graham Greer, recorded by the Barstool Prophets.

On Monday, The Right Honourable Joseph Jacques Jean Chretien QC gave the breakfast speech to open the Canadian Bar Association’s Canadian Legal Conference in Quebec City. I was looking forward to a distinguished speech by one of Canada’s foremost politicians and lawyers on something like the Rule of Law, the Charter or the like. Unfortunately, very quickly into his speech he could not resist making a few jibes at his old nemises, Allan . . . [more]

Richard A. Posner, the outspoken justice on the Seventh Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals and University of Chicago law professor, has written a short piece for The New Republic, entitled “In Defence of Looseness,” in which he takes the U.S. Supreme Court to task for its decision in District of Columbia v. Heller [PDF], the case involving the second amendment to the U.S. Constitution dealing with arms and militias. As always, Posner is enjoyable to read because his mind is good and he expresses his arguments well. If you’re interested in constitutional or statutory interpretation, you’ll . . . [more]

First, many thanks to Simon F. and the rest of the Slaw team for asking me to join. I’ve been an enthusiastic reader and occasional commenter on Slaw for the last couple of years, and I am looking forward to the opportunity to contribute more regularly to our exchanges of ideas.

As a topic for discussion, I’d like to propose the following hypothetical scenario. Let’s suppose that tomorrow you are presented with a legal problem requiring a bit of digging. You go to the library, and find, much to your surprise, that every fourth book is filled with empty pages. . . . [more]

CasemakerX announced today the development of a social networking site which will be available to American law students, law school faculty and law librarians who register as users ((CasemakerX is a free service supported by the Casemaker Bar Consortium and its 475,000 attorney membership consisting of State Bar Associations across the USA. The purpose of CasemakerX is to provide a conduit to network law students and legal professionals, creating an information portal for self-promotion, education, mentoring and future opportunities in the legal profession. Our mission is to help law students connect and use the power of group knowledge and professional/social . . . [more]

That great Canadian blogger Rob Hyndman has a good piece on the sad news that William Patry is closing down his copyright blog. Patry has two reasons: first, because he can’t get people to treat what he says as personal, as having no connection to his work as Google’s copyright counsel; and second, more unhappy, because the current state of copyright law is truly depressing. Rob notes that Larry Lessig abandoned the field because of a “corruption” of the political process.

Read both entries. . . . [more]

Law library podcast The Law Librarian is set to continue recording next Friday, August 8th at 3 pm CST. The show is hosted by Richard Leiter and Brian Striman, and we first made note of it back in May.

Today’s guest is Margie Maes (some readers may know her as Margie Axtmann), Executive Director of the Legal Information Preservation Alliance, a committee of AALL. Margie is also an active CALL member; I first met her on a CALL Vendor Liaison Committee panel a number of years ago when she was serving on AALL‘s equivalent . . . [more]

Title says it all. But a good piece on Law Librarians’ Blog that should resonate outside the US.

If students didn’t take the optional advanced legal research course taught by law librarians, they will leave law school ill-equipped for real world research. The problem is systemic and nationwide; the typical 1L legal research and writing program just doesn’t get the job done.

Nothing much will change until private sector employers and their law librarians demand improvements in legal research instruction. It won’t happen internally. The traditional legal research and writing program and its instructors are simply too entrenched.

Here’s a warning, from the circumspect medical establishment south of the border, that Slawyers especially should heed! Via Techdirt. . . . [more]