What follows in this post are some initial thoughts on what I think is a fairly important topic for law librarians and legal researchers: (a topic I might consider researching in detail if I ever were to pursue a doctorate in information studies): what, if anything, can be done to lessen the anxiety that legal researchers suffer during the research process?

That legal researchers suffer anxiety goes without saying. The researcher may be uncertain where to begin, they may be suffering from too much information, or they may lack confidence in concluding they have reached the “correct” answer (I myself . . . [more]

One (of many) benefits of being a member of the Toronto Association of Law Libraries (TALL) is getting access to their salary survey (published every 2 years or so, most recently in 2010, 2008, 2006, 2005 and 2003) (with a “shout out” here of thanks to colleague and blogger Brenda Wong who, with her committee, was in charge of helping to compile the most recent survey).

This year’s 2010 survey had two items I wanted to comment on:

1) Dual-degree law librarians: Of the 135 responses on the question of educational level, 15 people (11.1%) responded as having both . . . [more]

A former Field summer student wrote this on my Facebook Wall:

I read your post on Slaw, but I can’t tell: what do you think of the new McGill changes? Are they retroactive– should we cite old cases with the new style? Won’t that make it difficult or impossible to do effective Westlaw citation searches? Do we *have* to follow the dumb ‘no periods!’ suggestion despite it being totally ridiculous? I’ve noticed the new AB courts judgments haven’t changed their style. If the SCC doesn’t start using the new guide suggestions (esp. the periods thing) in the upcoming term,

Though we frequently mention New Jersey, we haven’t mentioned the Channel Islands – and their unique local laws and language. The local BBC news on Jersey mentions today that the Jersey Legal Information site was according to the BBC designed by Richard Susskind and that Richard is leading a conference on the use of social media within law, and how social media might enhance a legal information institute portal.

The event will look at using social media such as Twitter and Facebook to provide legal information for lawyers and citizens alike.

Richard notes that smaller jurisdictions may be . . . [more]

Montreal-based legal informatics group LexUM, in collaboration with the Southern African Legal Information Institute and the Centre for Internet and Society, recently released a preliminary project report called Free Access to Law—Is it here to Stay? An Environmental Scan Report. The project is funded by the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa:

The overall goal of this research is to respond to a need to study what free access to law initiatives do and how they do it. This will lead to an understanding of the effects FAL [free access to law] initiatives have on society and to an

I was following links from tweets yesterday and came across an old, if May 2010 meets that criteria, Rex Gradeless post about citing podcasts in legal documents and the new Bluebook (the US equivalent to the McGill Guide). Rex Gradeless is one of the social media savvy (former) law students that we talk about.

There has been a lot of traffic on Slaw regarding podcasts lately, and as you can read, plenty of great offers via that medium.

I just HAD to check out my new McGill guide to see if we had an equivalent! I am happy to . . . [more]

In Friday’s episode of Law Librarian Conversations podcast, we talked with two social media-savvy third year law school students to get a dose of reality on what they think about social networking, online communication, legal research and practice skills. Our guests were Laura Bergus from Iowa who runs a legal podcast called Legal Geekery and writes for Lawyerist.com and Huma Rashid from Chicago’s John Marshall Law School, who runs a personal blog called The Reasonably Prudent Law Student where she offers budget fashion tips and thoughts on being a law student. Both Laura and Huma participate in the Social . . . [more]

The wonderful folks at AustLII, that powerhouse in the legal information institute movement, have just launched their International Law Library on WorldLII. From the press release [PDF]:

The International Law Library contains over 80,000 searchable documents for free access. This includes over 25,000 decisions of International Courts and Tribunals, over 30,000 treaties and international agreements (including the League of Nations and UN Treaty Series), international law journals and law reform materials. These materials cannot be jointly searched elsewhere on the Internet. AustLII’s LawCite citator tracks where international cases, treaties and law journal articles have been cited.

(A cavil: . . . [more]

On many occasions we’ve posted on the need to communicate effectively about the law to a general public in non-technical prose. (e.g. Èducaloi, Public Legal Ed in New Brunswick via Twitter, Legal Problems in Ontario? You’re Not Alone, Your Rights – Your Language)

Lawyers — and those who work routinely with lawyers — often don’t recognise how much the concepts and vocabulary of the law constitute an effective barrier to communication. Bentham made the point long before us.

So we’re particularly pleased to support an excellent 2 day conference next month in Montréal organised by Educaloi . . . [more]

Monterey College of Law in California is partnering with BARBRI, a law exam review/prep provider, to bring iPads to students in their first year law program this season. Students in their law school program tend to be older (average age 38), and the iPad is meant to help them better keep up with readings and study for bar exams.

From the August 25/10 article in Campus Technology:

“Many of our law students work the equivalent of three jobs. Between law school, work, and family, it is a constant challenge for them to set aside enough time during the

In honour of the McGill Guide 7th ed I’ve decided to write this entire post without any periods For the sake of simplification I have; however, retained commas, hyphens, semi-colons and capitalization at the beginning of sentences for the sake of clarity, at least until the 8th ed is published (I will admit, though, that I had to retain the periods in my links or they would not work; I’m unsure if that can be used as metaphor) As many are aware Nova Scotia and the Maritime Provinces have a sudden and acute interest in canceled TV sitcoms this weekend . . . [more]

The World Treaty Index began life in 1974 and has been in more or less continuous development since that time, as the output of the database moved from print to various electronic formats. Now it’s managed by researchers from the University of Michigan who have given it a new web interface. (See also the explanatory article on Computational Legal Studies.)

The WTI contains only metadata, as it were, about the treaties, and not the texts themselves, which likely can be found in other online databases, such as the United Nations Treaty Collection. Even so, the database is large . . . [more]