BLS Library Blog

Several of the BLS librarians recently attended the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries in Boston, MA July 21-24, 2012 where we listened to a variety of speakers in educational programs, toured the exhibit hall, attended business and committee meetings and mingled with our law library colleagues in receptions, luncheons, library tours, and some even at a Red Sox game.

BLS Reference Librarian Kathy Darvil received an “Outstanding Article” award for the article she wrote with former BLS faculty member Aliza Kaplan:  “Think [and Practice] Like a Lawyer: Legal Research for the New Millennials,” 8 Comm. & Rhetoric: JALWD 153 (2011).

Associate Law Librarian for International Research Jean Davis participated in a panel on  “The New Generation of Legal Research Databases: 2012 Boston Sequel.”  This was a follow-up presentation to one given in 2011 in Philadelphia.  The panelists at this presentation discussed the new legal research platforms:  Bloomberg Law, Lexis Advance and WestlawNext.

I attended a presentation entitled “Searching Legal Opinions: The Google Scholar Approach” presented by Anurag Acharya, the Chief Engineer for Google Scholar.  Mr. Acharya gave a riveting and frequently entertaining presentation in which he stated that U.S. Supreme Court decisions are available in Google Scholar since 1791, federal district and appellate court decisions since 1923 and state appellate decisions since 1950.

He said that he was one of two engineers, there are now six, who started Google Scholar and that their goal as far as legal documents are concerned is that everyone should be able to find and read the law that governs them.  Google Scholar contains law-related journals from all major publishers and they plan to add statutes, although this will be a more complicated undertaking than cases.

I also attended a meeting of the Legal Information Preservation Alliance.  This is a group that is working with NELLCO, the New England Law Library Consortium, to draft a plan and program for a shared storage collection of print legal materials.  Since so many libraries are cancelling print titles of various kinds, there is a real need for “one last copy” of basic legal materials in print.  They are working to develop a pilot project of 150,000 legal items.  The major issues now are funding, the number of  libraries that might participate in this joint effort and the location of the storage facility.

To learn more about the American Association of Law Libraries, check out their website here.

Linda Holmes, Associate Law Librarian

Brooklyn Law School Professor Christopher Serkin and University of Colorado Law School Professor Frederic Bloom (who until last year taught at BLS) have posted Suing Courts on SSRN. For the full text of the article, see 79 U. Chi. L. Rev. 553 (2012). The abstract reads:

This Article argues for a new and unexpected mechanism of judicial accountability: suing courts. Current models of court accountability focus almost entirely on correcting legal errors. A suit against the court would concentrate on something different — on providing transition relief, by way of legal remedy, to those bearing the heaviest burdens of desirable legal change. These suits may at first appear impossible. But suing courts is conceptually rational and mechanically reasonable, a tool that eases legal transitions while navigating the many hurdles modern doctrine puts in the way. This Article sets out the first complete account of how, where, and why suing courts might work — both in the context of judicial takings and perhaps outside it, too. It shows how suing courts can simultaneously discipline judges and liberate them. And it outlines a surprising promise for all involved — a narrow hope for impacted parties and a new kind of accountability for law-changing courts.

The Brooklyn Law School Library has in its collection a number of items to help researchers better understand this landmark legislation. Among them is the 3rd edition of Understanding the Americans with Disabilities Act by William D. Goren (Call #KF480 .G67 2010). The Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAAA) became effective January 1, 2009 changing several significant respects of the original ADA. While the ADA remains an extremely broad and comprehensive law, this book highlights various aspects of the ADA, so that by the end, the reader will have an excellent overview, as well as a framework for dealing with the ADA in a preventive manner.  Topics include:

• ADA as it relates to professional sports
• Genetic Nondiscrimination Act
• Undue hardship and reasonable accommodation
• Pre-employment medical exams
• Alcoholism and drug addiction
• Public accommodations and commercial facilities, and other specific topics

via Census.gov

The U.S. Census Bureau today launched an interactive global resource on the prevalence of HIV infection and AIDS cases and deaths. The database was developed in 1987 and now holds 149,000 statistics, an increase of approximately 10,800 new estimates in the last year, making it the most complete of its kind in the world. The launch comes as thousands of people worldwide meet in Washington, D.C., for the International AIDS Conference this week.

The resource is maintained by the Census Bureau with funding from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The tool is a library of statistics from more than 12,000 articles in international scientific and medical journals, individual countries’ annual HIV/AIDS surveillance reports, and papers and posters presented at international conferences.

The menu-driven access tool permits users to search for statistical information in countries and territories across the world, as well as by subpopulation, geographic subarea (such as urban and rural), age, sex and year (back to 1960).

Statistics for the United States are available separately from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

• Do not run Google-style searches to find legal documents.  If one enters: arbitration severability when searching for court opinions, Bloomberg Law will search for arbitration severability as consecutive words.  If one enters: arbitration severability and enables the “word variations,” Bloomberg Law will retrieve results like:  “…. court appointed arbitrator.  Several…”
• SEARCH TIP #1: Instead, use connectors like AND, OR, P/, S/, N/x
• Bloomberg Law will rank case results in reverse chronological order. 
• SEARCH TIP #2:  If a researcher knows that a high level court has addressed an issue, the researcher should begin searching in the narrow database of high level court decisions.  Example: If the U.S. Supreme Court has addressed an issue, the researcher should begin searching in Bloomberg Law database: Court Opinions > All U.S. Supreme Court Opinions, rather than in database: Court Opinions > All Federal Court Opinions.  This will prevent recent U.S. district court cases from appearing at/near the top of the results list.
• SEARCH TIP #3: Under top-level tab “Search and Browse,” there are links to search templates for: court opinions, legislative sources, regulatory sources, DealMaker documents/clauses,dockets,Domain Name dispute decisions, EDGAR filings with the SEC, news, patents, and people.
• SEARCH TIP #4: Top-level tab: “Practice Centers” links to Practice Center pages for: Antitrust, Banking & Finance, Bankruptcy, Corporate/M&A, Employee Benefits, Health, Intellectual Property, Labor & Employment and Securities.  When possible, use the search boxes in these Practice Center pages.
• Account Manager Pamela Haahr (oribe@bloomberg.net) can arrange for current BLS students, faculty and administrators to obtain Bloomberg Law passwords and training.

• Social Media Law & Policy Report (weekly review, updated continually)
• International Financial Regulation Review (monthly review, updated continually)
• TIP: One can receive email notifications (headlines or editors’ highlights) for Bloomberg BNA legal news sources.

• Getting the Deal Through volumes (international and comparative guides to laws and regulations in 40+ practice areas).  Among the updated volumes are: Arbitration 2012, Banking Regulation 2012, Climate Change 2012, Corporate Governance 2012, Environment 2012, Patents 2012 and Trademarks 2012.
• Many current PLI publications such as: Copyright Law: A Practitioner’s Guide (Jan. 2012), Deskbook on Internal Investigations, Corporate Compliance & White Collar Issues (May 2012), Expert Witness Answer Book (Feb. 2012), Immigration Fundamentals: A Guide to Law & Practice (May 2012), Likelihood of Confusion in Trademark Law (May 2012), New York Elder Law Handbook (Apr. 2012), Soderquist on the Securities Laws (Mar. 2012), Substantial Similarity in Copyright Law (May 2012), Trade Secrets: A Practitioner’s Guide (June 2012) and Transfer Pricing Answer Book (Mar. 2012).  There are also many PLI materials with 2011 publication dates in Bloomberg Law, such as Directors’ & Officers’ Liability (Oct. 2011), Financial Institutions Answer Book 2012: Law, Governance, Compliance (Nov. 2011), and Soderquist on Corporate Law and Practice (Aug. 2011).
• Some recent ABA publications, such as Corporate Counsel Guides: Understanding Asia (2011),  Corporate Director’s Guidebook (6th ed. 2011), and Fundamentals of Corporate Governance: A Guide for Directors and Corporate Counsel (2nd ed. 2011).  Note: At present, a law library could not rely on the ABA materials in Bloomberg Law as a substitute for sources in an ABA Package Plan.

I will be recommending Bloomberg Law as a source for note topic development in the coming weeks!

The Brooklyn Law School Library New Books List for July 5, 2012 has 67 items including works on federal agency adjudication, antitrust law and the judicial power, disability rights versus bioethics, strategies and tactics for pharmaceutical patent litigators, children and the Internet, wrongful convictions, computer-related crime, E-Discovery in smaller cases, environmental law, trade secret litigation, eyewitness identification, nonprofit organizations, and deceptive trademarks. Members of the BLS Faculty can request a book by clicking on the “Faculty Book Request” tab in the SARA Catalog above the search box to submit a request. Students can go to the open shelves to locate books and bring them to the circulation desk for checkout.

One of the titles that may be of interest to graduating law students is Build Your Practice the Logical Way: Maximize Your Client Relationships by Carol Schiro Greenwald and Steven Skyles-Mulligan (Call #KF311 .G7 2012). The authors discuss how clients will fuel a law firm’s growth. Consistent, strategic, and sustainable firm growth depends on strong client relationships rooted in practices that practices that are designed to meet not only clients’ expressed needs but also their expectations. This how-to guide will help lawyers tend what is already most rewarding, both intellectually and financially, in practice: the clients who value the lawyer most and with whom lawyers most value working. The steps outlined are straightforward, strategic, and significantly important for a practice’s long-term health and viability. The authors identify strategies to keep clients and help grow a law firm, including. Chapters are: Focus on clients to build your firm — Use value to create a foundation of loyalty — Master communication techniques to build a client-centric practice — Research to understand your current practice — Research to understand your foundation clients’ worlds — Build a client-centric firm — Replicate your foundation clients — Pick the low-hanging fruit: summary.