| Do these things to avoid post-vacation stress at work | Seven great tips for bringing your sense of “inner peace” back with you post-vacation. Very smart of WPLLA Member Joel Fishman to send this link out the day after Labor Day!
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| How to Create a Professional Online Presence Authentically | Marketing expert and entrepreneur Vana Koutsomitis gave a thoughtful Q&A with goop.com. She outlined some interesting suggestions for maintaining an authentic online image and how to promote yourself, your skills, and your brand using social media.
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| New on LLRX – Three TextExpander Snippets You Should Be Using to Save Time Immediately
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Try http://www.textexpander.com to create Snippets that plug in your email address, phone number, and office mailing address. Save some time where-ever and when-ever you can! |
| Historical California legislative publications | Check out the “California Legislative Publications 1850-2009” on HathiTrust for historical bills, statutes, bill histories, constitutional amendments, final calendars, and other materials.
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| LexisNexis sued for breach of contract by Ohio county law library | The Medina County Law Library in Ohio has contracted with LexisNexis since 2002 to provide search services for approximately 100 attorneys not otherwise affiliated with the County or the Law Library. The library paid for access privileges; however, LexisNexis recently cancelled this license because “. . . the listed subscribers were not government professional users employed by the subscriber.” The library, in turn, filed suit.
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| May I finish? The case against interrupting | The author suggests that this is a real problem – especially for women. Learn why people interrupt and how to handle the interruptions.
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| Save the Date: “The Past, Present, and Future of Libraries,” September 27-29, 2018, American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia, PA | If you’re reading this on the WPLLA website, the event has already passed – but thanks to WPLLA member Joel Fishman for sending this to our attention! This free event focused on the history of libraries, the present opportunities for libraries, and the potential future for libraries as they continue to evolve in the 21st century. It also featured two keynote events. First, a panel discussion moderated by Sarah E. Thomas (Vice President for the Harvard Library and University Librarian and Roy E. Larsen Librarian for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences) with comments from Mary Lee Kennedy (Executive Director, Association of Research Libraries), Khalil Gibran Muhammad (Professor of History, Race, and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and Suzanne Young Murray Professor, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies), and Michael Witmore (Director, Folger Shakespeare Library). Second, a presentation from Deanna Marcum (Senior Advisor, Ithaka S+R) and Donald J. Waters (Senior Program Officer for Scholarly Communications, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation).
If you attended, shoot someone on the WPLLA Board a quick message; we’d love to hear from you.
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| Supreme Court Appointment Process: Senate Debate and Confirmation Vote | beSpacific linked to a timely (and recently updated) CRS Report called, “Supreme Court Appointment Process: Senate Debate and Confirmation Vote.” Though the U.S. Constitution provides instruction for appointment in only a few brief words (“the President ‘shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint … Judges of the supreme Court'”), the process has undergone many changes over the past two hundred-or-so years. Click through for more info and the link!
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| 12 Things You Absolutely Won’t Regret Doing at Work Today | As the article so deftly notes, “Have you ever had one of those days when absolutely everything went wrong? When it felt like the universe was not only against you—but actually laughing in the face of your misfortune?” It then goes on to suggest 12 different quick-and-easy projects to tackle at work when you really need a “win” (like cleaning off your desk or tidying up your email inbox).
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| Wolters Kluwer Partners with U.S. Legal Forms | On September 12, 2018, Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S. announced its partnership with U.S. Legal Forms, Inc., “. . . the leading online publisher of state-specific legal documents.” Additional features of Wolters Kluwer’s Legal Forms will now include the following: “[a]ccess to a wide range of forms (mostly state-specific) across many practice areas; [r]emote access to forms, allowing professionals to work on the go and edit the forms according to specific needs,” and customizable options tailored to specific practice areas or specific states.
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| LII Announces U.S. Constitution Annotated | The Legal Information Institute’s (“LII”) U.S. Constitution Annotated “. . . links to Supreme Court opinions, the U.S. Code, and the Code of Federal Regulations” and provides “. . . enhanc[ed] navigation through search, breadcrumbs, linked footnotes and tables of contents.” Though the Congressional Research Service initially prepared the content, LII’s version provides “. . . a hypertext interpretation of the CRS text, updated to the currently published version.”
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| New bill would finally tear down federal judiciary’s ridiculous paywall | ArsTechnica notes that “. . . Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) has introduced legislation that would require that the courts make PACER documents available for download free of charge. . . . [as] federal courts have used PACER revenues as a slush fund to finance other court activities.” The author of the post doesn’t anticipate the proposed legislation to become law during this specific session, but it does indicate Congressional willingness to at least take up the issue.
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| New Corpus Linguistics Platform Lets Legal Researchers Explore the Meanings of Words and Phrases | The Law and Corpus Linguistics Technology Platform, developed by BYU Law in Provo, Utah, is a “. . . first-of-its-kind technology platform” that “. . . allows legal researchers to examine large collections of historical texts to help determine the meanings of words and phrases in the contexts in which they historically were used.” It launched with three primary text collections:
· Corpus of Founding Era American English (a collection from years 1760 to 1799); · Corpus of Supreme Court of the United States (all SCOTUS opinions through the 2017 term); and · Corpus of Early Modern English (a collection from years 1475-1800). This project is already receiving accolades from distinguished sources, like Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; it definitely seems worth a few minutes of curious exploration!
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| Trending: Congressional Research Service Reports Now Available Online | Per the Library of Congress’ blog, “[t]he Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 directs the Library to . . . make CRS reports publicly available online.” The reports are now available at crsreports.congress.gov. Developed by experts, “. . . the reports present a legislative perspective on topics such as agriculture policy, counterterrorism operations, banking regulation, veteran’s issues and much more.” Please note that, “[m]oving forward, all new or updated reports will be added to the website as they are made available to Congress.” The CRS back catalog will be added as quickly as possible.
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| Cracking Student Silos: Linking Legal Writing And Clinical Learning Through Transference | An article linked by TaxProf Blog questions why “. . . highly competent and hard-working law students struggle to apply what they learn in legal writing to later clinical courses and law practice.” Check out the article to find strategies that help students “. . . become reflective practitioners engaged in the life-long learning necessary for excellent legal practice.”
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| How to Prepare for an Interview: The Ultimate Guide | An article published in the “Ask a Boss” column of The Cut (a style blog maintained by New York Magazine, and one of my guiltiest pleasures) promises to be the “. . . ultimate guide on how to prepare for an interview.” If you’re thinking about switching jobs anytime soon, give this a once-over!
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| Introducing Vincent: the first intelligent legal research assistant of its kind | vLex recently introduced Vincent, the first AI-powered intelligent legal research assistant to analyze documents in two languages (English and Spanish) from 9 countries. Vincent can also incorporate content from vLex’s global collection, “. . . but also from internal knowledge management resources, public sources and licensed databases simultaneously.” Software engineers parsed vLex’s global collection of 100 million+ legal documents, and built the program “. . . on top of the Iceberg AI platform.”
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| Top 9 Writing Tools to Create Your Perfect Legal Resume | The quality of a legal resume must be superlative because, “. . . as a lawyer, you are expected to present facts, as well as yourself, in the best way possible, as well as to pay attention to detail.” Review this Legal Research for web-based services and apps to help you get your resume in tip-top shape!
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| Important update about LC Public Access Portal for CRS Reports | An update with important information about the Public Access Portal to Official CRS Reports:
First, “[t]he public versions of the reports are lightly redacted to remove the author’s contact information, and to add some boilerplate language about CRS.” Second, currently, “. . . CRS is only posting its primary ‘R series’ reports” including reports like American War and Military Operations Casualties: Lists and Statistics and Congressional Primer on Responding to Major Disasters and Emergencies.
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| Pennsylvania’s Potential Gift to American Democracy | As quoted by The Legal Intelligencer:
“On Tuesday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will hear oral argument in a case of immense political consequence, regarding fairness in elections, that almost no one has heard of. Both the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the basic citizen rights enumerated in Article I of the Constitution of Pennsylvania suggest that the plaintiffs have a very strong case.”
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| 8 ideas for empowering jurors in complex trials | Attorneys attempting to persuade jurors during a long and complex product liability trial usually focus on the clarity of their argument and the witness’ testimony. But what about “. . . informing and honing the thinking of the jury?” Some attorneys are now working to “. . . develop jurors who are better prepared and better equipped to carry out the difficult tasks we place before them.” Click through the article for suggestions on how to better train jurors.
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Western Pennsylvania Law Library Association 