Casetext - Seeking Student Ambassadors

In our last post here on the Prairie Law Blog, we mentioned Casetext, a free online legal research tool, which focuses on crowdsourced features, including annotations and analysis.  Casetext is currently seeking law students for its Fall 2016 Student Ambassadors program.  For more information and to apply, visit https://casetext.com/student-ambassadors.  This is a great opportunity for 2Ls and 3Ls interested in legal research!

Building a Practice

One of the harder things about starting your own practice is acquiring expensive software and hardware. To help fill that gap for small/new practices, I give you three online tools that can help.

Casetext
Search up-to-date State and Federal Law for free
Annotations and insights by attorneys
Publish case summaries, articles, and other legal commentary, linked to the law in Casetext's library

Logikcull
Makes eDiscovery easy
Upload all your documents, and Logikcull will OCR (Optical Character Recognition) them
Navigate by keyword
(I'm making this sound not so impressive and cool. This person explains it better)

LawGeex
Compare your contract with thousands of others and see how it holds up
Reviewed by real live lawyers
For a new practice or solo lawyer, having access to this many precedents can help free up your time, and let you stress about other things

Onward and Upward Law Scholars. Good luck with finals!

iCivics.org

Run your own firm of lawyers who specialize in constitutional law . . . via this computer game for children.

I got sucked into a Google vortex. While researching the Dean of the Law School at Wayne State University (because of an article about how she ran the Boston Marathon while 8 months pregnant) I saw that she and Sandra Day O'Connor were on the board of iCivics, a nonprofit that Justice O'Connor created to improve civics education throughout the country.

It's kinda cute.

Happy Earth Day Law Scholars!

Henry Diamond. Photo via parksandrecreation.org

Today, we're going to take a moment to talk about Henry Diamond. He was a lawyer and environmentalist who championed parks and conservation efforts for 50 years. He served as the first commissioner of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), edited the final report of the Outdoor Resources Review Commission, and later went on to establish the firm Beveridge and Diamond. To no one's surprise, it was the foremost national firm that practiced environmental and natural resources law. And these are only some of his accomplishments. In 2011 he received the Lifetime Conservation Achievement Award from the Department of the Interior.

You can read more about him here and here and here.

De-stress

Your stitched eyebrows, frown lines, and neck-aches need a break! The Law Library is once again offering a mini de-stress station (located in front of the "Reserve Room") to help you veg out. Coloring books, Play-doh, and neck massagers are all available. Please be courteous though, and return all items to the de-stress station so your fellow Law Scholars can ease those brows, and turn frowns upside down.

Also, we have some featured study aids at the same display. But, if what you're looking for is nowhere to be found, come to the circulation desk and we'll be happy to connect you with what you need.

Good luck on finals all!

Poetic Justices

The Poor Poet by Carl Spitzweg

If you haven't already heard, the McKusick Law Library has been collecting entries for our "Poetic Justices" poetry contest.  Winners will receive a $10 Amazon gift card and a signed copy of Professor Pommersheim's latest poetry chapbook. See previous blog entry for contest details.

Hurry and get your entries in! Friday is your last day to enter for a chance to win!

Mark Your Calendars . . .

Thursday, April 14, 2016 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM at Ferber Hall Old Main, Sarah Deer will be presenting on her book "The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America".
 

Sarah Deer is a Lawyer, Law Professor at William Mitchell College, and 2014 MacArthur Fellow. In her discussion, she will go over the cultural and legal reforms of the Violence Against Women Act. She has written numerous books and articles (many of which are on display in the Law Library this month and available through HeinOnline), and has been instrumental in the Violence Against Women Act and Tribal Law and Order Act.

This event is presented by USD Native Studies, Women and Gender Studies and Criminal Justice Studies.

Animal Law

Lola, courtesy the Washington Post

A court case will soon decide what the legal value of a pet (or fur baby) in Moynak v. Barking Hound Village.

The story starts with the death of the Moynak's beloved pooch, Lola, after they checked it into the Barking Hound Village Inn, while they went away on vacation. Shortly after picking up Lola, she died. The Moynak's say she was given their other dogs medication (who was also staying at the Inn) and was therefore made ill.

You can read more here.

Some background on what other states do for the loss of a pet as stated in the Washington Post article:

"But when it comes to damages for the death of a pet, state supreme courts have usually knocked down trial and appellate court decisions that award emotional or “non-economic” damages, Favre said, because they view it as a slippery slope. (Separately, a small number of states have enacted legislation on recoverable damages in such cases; Tennessee dog or cat owners, for example, can recover up to $5,000 “for the loss of the reasonably expected society, companionship, love and affection of the pet.”)."

APRIL!

Image courtesy poets.ca

Dearest Law Scholars and Burgeoning Bards,

To celebrate National Poetry Month and National Library Week, the Law Library is hosting a poetry writing contest - with a legal twist of course!

The Details:

• For your poem, select a major case covered in one of your 1L classes (think International Shoe, etc.) and rewrite it as a poem. The format is up to you; limerick, verse, prose, haiku, whatever. It must however, fit on the one page submission form.
• Professor Pommersheim has agreed to serve as the juror and will select the top 5 submissions. (The Law Library staff will redact student names before sending the poems off to Professor Pommersheim in Oregon, so it will be a blind review.)
• The top 5 will each receive $10 in Amazon gift cards courtesy of Lexis, as well as a signed copy of "Local Memory & Karma," Professor Pommersheim’s most recent poetry chapbook.
• Forms can be picked up at the Circulation Desk and must be placed in the submission box at the desk by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, April 22.  We will then send the poems off for review and the winners will be announced on Friday, April 29.

Need some inspiration? Visit our display on the Main Floor of the Law Library, which includes case citations to some actual legal opinions written in poem form (yes, they exist!), as well as some of Professor Pommersheim’s poetry chapbooks and other literary titles from our collection.   

Brief Downtime for E-Books Platform on Thursday

Law Students and Faculty take note:  The EBL E-books Platform will be unavailable from Thursday April 7, 2016 (4 - 6 pm) for scheduled maintenance.  The downtime is part of preparations by EBL for a new and improved interface.

Remember that the Law Library's e-books can be searched by going to our Research Databases and Resources A-Z list and clicking on the e-books link under "Featured Resources and Databases." 

The e-books are especially helpful for students working on longer research papers for law courses or independent research projects.  Through the e-books program, we are able to offer a wider variety of books that cover more specific subject areas and the titles are often more current than those available in print in the Law Library. 

See us in the Law Library if you have any questions about the e-books program!  You can also visit our E-books "How-to" LibGuide here.