2Ls: Consider Advanced Legal Research

As the the time draws near to begin selecting courses for the Spring 2012 semester.

2Ls may want to consider two things:
1. Legal Research is in the top 10 skills needed to succeed in the legal field

2. Advanced Legal Research will be taught in the Spring

Do you know the difference between a statute and a regulation?

Do you know how to find administrative law materials?

Can you find out the lawmakers’ intent with respect to a particular statute?

Do you know the difference between court rules and local rules?

Do you know how to find a brief that has been filed in a federal or state case?

How will you conduct research if your firm does not have access to Westlaw or Lexis?

What is a Case Digest?

How do you make sure the law you have found is the most recent version of the law?

Do you know how to Shepardize all the citations in a document at once?

You can learn all this and more in Advanced Legal Research. Sign-up and find out what all the fuss is about.

The video below was made by law students to showcase the kinds of legal research tips that can make your research experience more successful.

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Brush up on Legal Research Skills! Get in the Game.

How can law students acquire competitive legal research skills while in law school?

The statistics are clear, there are more law students graduating from law schools than there are jobs for new lawyers. One way for law students to stand out from the crowd is to have demonstrably superior legal research skills.

Some skills that many law students graduate from law school without acquiring are:

1. Ability to use Digests in print and online to find cases on a particular topic

2. Ability to interpret Shepards and KeyCite signals

3. Ability to use Shepardization and KeyCiting to expand and update their legal research online

To provide opportunities for TJSL students to learn these legal research skills without enrollment in a formal Advanced Legal Research (ALR) class, ALR Professor Patrick Myers (Interim Director of TJSL Library) has created a video Tutorial on Using Case Law Digests.

ALR Professor Catherine Deane (Reference Librarian at TJSL) has put together a Research Guide on KeyCiting and Shepardizing® online.

Knowing how to use these resources efficiently can make your research tasks easier. If you prefer to learn from a live instructor, consider signing up for Advanced Legal Research in the Spring, or taking a Mini-Class on Digests or Shepardizing. Professor June MacLeod (Reference Librarian at TJSL) will be teaching a Mini-Class on Digests on Saturday October 15^th at 10am.

 

Law Professor and Critical Race Scholar Derrick Bell has Died

Derrick Bell was an activist who lived his life in accordance with his beliefs in racial equality, and contributed significantly to the body of scholarly work on critical race theory. News of his death on October 6th has been reported by various news sources:

• New York Times
• Washington Post

At TJSL, a page highlighting his scholarship has been added to the Critical Race Theory LibGuide.

Tips for Using CalJur in Print

Recently many 1Ls have been coming to the library and using the legal encyclopedia. Some users have reminded me greatly of the classic Sesame Street clip where a boy gives an alien directions to his mothership. In their haste to get to the answer, some law students have been rushing to search for their keywords in the text itself, or rushing to look in the text for the reference given in the index without following the steps to do so. The result is that students have been becoming frustrated unnecessarily because they are not using a step by step procedure.

Step By Step Flow Chart for using CalJur in Print (pdf)

Scenario

Let us say that you have been hired at a small law firm that does not have a subscription to Westlaw or Lexis, or that does not allow new associates to use the online databases for fear that they will unwittingly run up huge bills. You are tasked with looking up in the print legal encyclopedia, a particular issue related to your case.

Key Words

You brainstorm and come up with the terms:

1. Controlled Substances
2. Children
3. Forfeiture of property

Index

You look them up in the Index in that order (If you look up Children first, when you get to where Controlled substances would be located as a subheading under children it will send you to the Controlled Substances and Drug Abuse heading in the index).

You find that the section on forfeiture of property belonging to children and minors is referred to as: CLCADM § 149

Table of Abbreviations 

Since you do not know what CLCADM stands for, you flip to the beginning of the index where there is a table of abbreviations. You look up the abbreviation CLCADM and you find that it stands for “Criminal Law: Crimes Against Administration of Justice”

Encyclopedia: Alphabetic Order

You then look for this entry in the set of encyclopedia. You browse the volumes looking for where this entry falls alphabetically.

You find that the term “Criminal Law: Crimes Against Administration of Justice” is written on the spine, and you look for your entry in the volume labeled:

“Criminal Law: Core Aspects

to

Criminal Law: Crimes Against Administration of Justice and Public Order”

Now, what if the term were not visible on the spine.

For instance, let’s say you were looking up the reference INVESTSEC § 39

INVESTSEC refers to Investment Securities and if you browse the volumes of Cal Jur, you will see that the volume you need is

“Interference with Economic Advantage

To

Judges”

The term “Investment Securities” falls alphabetically between these two terms, so you know that you can find the term “Investment Securities” in this volume.

 Topic first; Section second

Going back to our Example of CLCADM § 149 which we know refers to Criminal Law: Crimes Against Administration of Justice § 149, you open the book that contains this reference, and then you first need to find the right topic. There is more than one topic in this book and therefore possibly more than one § 149. First look at the top of the page and make sure you are looking at the Criminal Law: Crimes Against Administration of Justice topic. Then look within this topic for section 149.

 Footnotes for citations to Primary law

When you find the part of this section that discusses your issue, you may need to find the primary source that supports that particular answer. To find the primary source, you need to see if there is a footnote related to the sentence discussing your issue. Footnotes will be at the bottom of the page, Look first in the footnotes for the Section number, eg [Section 149] then for the specific footnote. Numbering for the footnotes for each individual section begins with 1. This means you must be careful to find the right section before you look for the numbered footnote.

Update in Pocket Part

Once you have found your entry, your task may not be over, you still need to update your research. Recent changes in the law will be reflected in the pocket parts. These are softbound publications placed in the back pocket of the relevant encyclopedia volume that indicate changes in the law between the time when the hardbound edition was published and the time when the softbound pocket part was published.

For the CLCADM § 149 entry, there is no pocket part and no update available at this time. However for INVESTSEC § 6, we find that there is an entry in the pocket part. To determine when the pocket part was published, look at the first page of the pocket part. It will say “ISSUED” followed by the date of publication. Stamped on the pocket part is the date it was received by the library. If you need information that is more up to date than the Issued date, you will need to examine the online database version of CalJur from Westlaw or Lexis.

 Video Tutorials 

Here is a video tutorial from USD on Using CalJur and Witkin’s.

TJSL Video on Using Secondary Sources