Legal Research News and Information with an Emphasis on Wisconsin
Last week in our Advanced Legal Research course at UW Law, we delved into the topic of legislative research including 50 state surveys. Inevitably, there are a few students every year who have been tasked with compiling and comparing laws across states and spent hours searching the laws of each state. Then we show them …
The wait is over: Lexis+ AI is now available for U.S. customers. This is a big deal. In the last year, we’ve been both dazzled by how powerful tools like ChatGPT are for research and writing and frightened by the cautionary tales of AI making up answers that are too good to be true. Lexis+ …
BadgerLink recently announced that it has renewed contracts for two newspaper collections featuring content from Wisconsin. These are great collections for researching local and state-wide issues and events. Almost 500 Wisconsin newspapers are available in BadgerLink collections. Newspapers published in large Wisconsin & U.S. cities U.S. Newsstream includes current and archival (to 1980s) U.S. news …
The Wisconsin Document Depository Program is a statutorily mandated program that requires Wisconsin state agencies to provide copies of their documents to preserve and make available a record of major state government programs. Documents are made available in two ways: at depository libraries like the University of Wisconsin Law Library and online through the Wisconsin …
I’m very proud to share that the University of Wisconsin Law Library, in partnership with the National Indian Law Library, the Open Law Library, the UW Great Lakes Indigenous Law Center, and the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians, has been awarded the 2023 Public Access to Government Information Award by the American Association of …
Historical federal legislative history research just got a little easier. For the last few years, the Library of Congress has been working to add the Bound Congressional Record to Congress.gov. It is now available all the way back to 1873, when the Bound Congressional Record started, to 1994. With the daily edition, which is available …
Business information can be an important source of intelligence for attorneys. Carol Hassler from the Wisconsin State Law Library has compiled an excellent guide to “Researching Private and Public Businesses, Specialized Industries” in the latest Inside Track from the State Bar of Wisconsin. She offers advice on: Requesting Annual Reports Finding Registered Agents and Officers …
State Bar of Wisconsin recently launched an improved interface for their Books UnBound online digital library. The collection includes State Bar treatises, aka “the brown binders,” the Wisconsin Attorney’s Desk Reference, Wisconsin Judicial Benchbooks, and other books previously released in print only. The new interface is a definite step up over the previous one. It …
Over $52 million was spent on lobbying in Wisconsin in 2021. Nationally, total lobbying spending amounted to a whopping $3.73 billion. You can follow the money with these tools. Lobbying in Wisconsin from the Wisconsin Ethics Commission allows anyone to search and view public lobbying information. See who is lobbying, what they are lobbying about, …
In a surprise announcement yesterday, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) released new guidance that starting in 2026, any publications and supporting data resulting from federally funded research must be openly accessible on the day it’s published. Here’s more from Ars Technica: The US government is likely to be the world’s …