Legal Research News and Information with an Emphasis on Wisconsin
It’s time to nominate your favorite legal support staff for the 2010 Wisconsin Law Journal Unsung Heroes awards. Categories include: * Legal Secretary * Paralegal * Law Librarian * Firm Administrator * Human Resources * IT Specialists * Legal Marketing * Court Clerk * Court Reporter * Lifetime Achievement Download and mail the PDF nomination …
From The New York Law Journal via Law.com: Last April, a judicial hearing officer relied on a woman’s “sworn testimony” from an appearance on “The People’s Court” to determine that the woman had not lived with her recently deceased mother and therefore did not have succession rights to her apartment. In an order released this …
Are government employees’ personal e-mails considered public records? No, according to an opinion by the Wisconsin Supreme Court last Friday. From Schill v. Wisconsin Rapids School District: In the present case, the court is asked to decide whether the contents of government employees’ personal e-mails (that is, e-mails not related to government business) should be …
From the State Bar of Wisconsin News: A petition filed on Sept. 25 with the Wisconsin Supreme Court aims to extend the “diploma privilege” to graduates of all ABA-approved law schools or abolish it entirely. Petitioner Steven Levine, a past State Bar of Wisconsin president, and 70 other State Bar members seek to amend SCR …
Amazon is offering a free one year membership to Amazon Prime for college students ($79 value – must have a valid .edu email address). Amazon Prime membership gives you free 2-day shipping on millions of items – including textbooks! I just successfully signed up as a a law student – I know where I’ll be …
On Wednesday, President Obama nominated UW–Madison Law School professor Victoria Nourse to the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. From the White House Press Release: Professor Victoria F. Nourse is the Burrus-Bascom Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin School of Law, where she joined the faculty in 1993. A prolific scholar with wide-ranging …
The Wisconsin Office of the Secretary of State maintains a digital archive of state municipal records – some more than 100 years old. Records from Wisconsin’s towns, villages, cities and counties include incorporation papers, charters, annexations, corporate boundaries, maps and litigation correspondence. For example, see this 1921 map of the Original City of Madison with …
There are a couple of noteworthy legal tech-related articles in this month’s WisBar InsideTrack. The first is part 2 of a series on avoiding ethical pitfalls with electronic documents by Nerino Petro and Bryan Sims. In part 1, the authors discuss hidden information within an electronic document, known as metadata, and how it can expose …
Informational Memorandum 10?3 from the Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau analyzes all of the constitutional amendments submitted to the electorate since the constitution was ratified in 1848 and highlights those that may not comply with the separate amendment rule, based on a literal reading of Section 1.
I received an email yesterday from Frank Bennet who has been leading the development of a Bluebook citation style for Zotero. Zotero is a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources. Currently, Zotero only offers a beta version of the Bluebook citation style which is pretty limited. But, …