Heafey Law Library will offer small group, hands-on training sessions for Advocacy students who would like additional help with their research skills.  Separate classes will be offered for the two topics being used this summer.

The training sessions will go over OSCAR searching tips, legal indexes for finding articles, using digests, KeyCite and Shepards refresher, and ALR searching.  Each session will be about 30 minutes.  All sessions will be held in the Toso Lab.  Contact the reference desk if these times will not work for you.  We can arrange individual training.

Please sign up at the reference desk; class slots are available on a "first-come, first- served" basis.  You can also request a spot by calling us at (408) 554-4452 or e-mailing us at lawref@scu.edu

Discrimination in admission problem:

Thursday 6/1 at 5 pm
Friday 6/2 at 2 pm
Monday 6/5 at 5 pm
Tuesday 6/6 at 2:15 pm
Wenesday 6/7 at 5 pm

Freedom of speech problem:

Friday 6/2 at 5 pm
Monday 6/5 at 4:15
Tuesday 6/6 at 5 pm
Thursday 6/8 at 5 pm

Georgetown Law professor Susan Scafidi confesses that she keeps "a file on the clothing/textile industry in my office and the latest Vogue hidden in my briefcase," and now she’s blogging about her interest in fashion and law at Counterfeit Chic.  Thanks to Inter Alia for the tip.

LLRX has just published some excellent new legal research resources.  To read the entire list of new articles, visit LLRX’s home page.  I’ve linked to a few of the new items that should be of interest to academic legal researchers and the SCU Law community:

• Let the People Know the Facts: Can Government Information Removed from the Internet Be Reclaimed?
  Susan Nevelow Mart’s article "examines the legal bases of the public’s right to access government information, reviews the types of information that have recently been removed from the Internet, and analyzes the rationales given for the removals."
• Beyond Google and Yahoo: Advanced Search (PowerPoint PDF)
  Sabrina Pacifici and Tom Mighell share their tips for advanced Internet searching in this comprehensive presentation from ABA TechShow 2006.
• Gumshoe Librarian 2006
  Barbara Fullerton and Sabrina Pacifici’s article lists 70 useful websites, covering blogs, intelligence data, state and federal government resources, open source scholarly literature, and more.
• Eight Reasons Solo Lawyers Should Use Law Libraries
  Mary Whisner explains how law libraries and law librarians can make life easier for small-firm and solo practitioners.  Although Heafey Law Library isn’t open to the public, we do allow members of any state bar to purchase a Courtesy Card to access our library.  If you’re interested, you can read more about it in our Courtesy Card policy handout. 

My esteemed colleagues at the University of San Francisco’s Zief Law Library have an excellent blog, ZiefBrief, and a recent post just alerted me to an important change in LexisNexis content.  Finally, academic law libraries now have access to full-text content of the Wall Street Journal via Lexis Nexis.  For those of you who follow such things, Wall Street Journal content moved from Westlaw to LexisNexis over a year ago, and academic law school subscribers weren’t granted full-text access to WSJ following the move.  However, law librarians across the country begged and pleaded with LexisNexis, and it appears that all of our lobbying has finally paid off.  ZiefBrief has instructions on accessing the Wall Street Journal via LexisNexis here.

According to this story in the Boston Globe, major changes may be brewing in the Harvard Law School curriculum.  The law school’s curriculum review committee has proposed that Harvard law professors begin introducing "real-world," practical legal problems in their classes as early as the first year of law school.  The committee chair, Martha Minow, stated that "we’re trying very much to help students think how to practically solve problems rather than only solve problems the way academics would . . . In talking with many lawyers, it has been clear to us that we have the opportunity to help very, very smart and motivated students make better use of the time they’re in school."  If Harvard adopts the curriculum committee’s proposals and deemphasizes the case method of teaching, will others follow?  It should be interesting to watch the development of Harvard’s curriculum over the next few years.  Thanks to Out of the Jungle for the tip.

The Law Library of Congress has created a new electronic publication, the Global Legal Monitor.  As the name implies, the newsletter will monitor legal developments from around the world.  According to the announcement, the newsletter will have frequent updates, and will occasionally feature "lectures, conferences, symposia and exhibits on timely legal topics." 

With the proliferation of free blogging software, it seems like everyone has a blog devoted to their personal trials, tribulations, and triumphs.  The singular experience of preparing for and taking the bar exam is a particularly popular blog topic, and for those of you steeling yourselves for the next two months of bar prep, we’ve prepared a mini-guide to blogs about the bar exam experience.  If you’re looking for blogs about the California bar experience, check out California Bar Girl.  The author is embarking on a self-study program for the July 2006 exam.  Phubar and go west, young (wo)man both took the Febuary 2006 CA bar exam, but you can read all about their journeys through bar prep and the exam itself.  Sua Sponte originally began as a blog about being a transfer law student, but the author also blogged the July 2005 California bar exam in great detail.  Livefromblogdahd just started his California bar exam odyssey, and he’s also going the self-study route.  If we find more that are particularly worthy of mention, we’ll post them here throughout the next few weeks. 

There has been a flurry of commentary about the US Supreme Court’s decision in eBay, Inc. v. MercExchange, LLC.  For those of you who didn’t read the Wall Street Journal this morning, the Supreme Court held that "the decision whether to grant or deny injunctive relief rests within the equitable discretion of the district courts, and . . . such discretion must be exercised consistent with traditional principles of equity, in patent disputes no less than in other cases governed by such standards."  Howard Bashman’s How Appealing has links to news stories from the major dailies about the case, and you can find more commentary and debate about the case from legal scholars on SCOTUSblog.

Folger Levin & Kahn, a firm with offices in SF and LA, has a year-old IP law blog called IP Law Observer, which covers breaking developments in patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret and privacy law.  The blog also strays into general business and commercial law from time to time, which also makes it an excellent read for corporate attorneys who don’t necessarily specialize in IP.  Thanks to Inter Alia for the tip.

Metroactive, one of the Silicon Valley’s weeklies, recently featured a story about the closure of Santa Clara County’s jail law libraries.  Instead of using print resources, individuals who are incarcerated in the County jails must now request resources from a remote legal research outfit called Legal Research Associates.  The Public Interest Law Firm sued on behalf of the inmates, claiming that the closure of the libraries violated the constitutional rights of pro per inmates.  Judge Whyte didn’t agree with PILF’s constitutional arguments, but he did conclude that the county prematurely closed the law libraries in violation of a previously-issued consent decree. It remains to be seen whether PILF and the County can iron out a mutually acceptable settlement.