real world legal research

The self-updating, portable law library

realworldlegalresearch — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 05:00:44 +0000

This post, at law21, asks (among other things) why legal publishers couldn’t use RSS to update online legal texts. I love the concept– I guess that my concern is that its best use would be for treatises, like the 72-volume Wright & Miller or the 24-volume Collier on Bankruptcy. (sidebar– I was shocked to see that Lexis charges more for the 24 volumes of Collier than West does for the 72-volume Wright & Miller) Now, if only most practitioners could afford the initial price of those resources, never mind the cost of the updates. In my day job (bankruptcy lawyer for a state agency), I find myself using our dead-tree edition of Collier at least once a week– even though it was last updated in 2001.

In my work, I don’t suffer from a lack of information– I need reliable filters to strain out the extraneous. As interesting as it might be to have access to a wealth of commentary and analysis, I’d far rather have last week’s opinion on my issue, written by the judge who’s going to hear my case. I think Jordan Furlong at law21 is on to something with the RSS self-updater. I just don’t know where it can be applied effectively.

Richard Maseles

online, official federal legal resources

realworldlegalresearch — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 06:11:03 +0000

They’re not sexy but you might find them useful–

Office of the Law Revision Counsel, which contains a pretty good search engine for the U.S. Code, both current and some prior versions, PDF versions of the official publication of the Code, and classification tables that show which Code sections were amended since the 109th Congress in 2006.

Version one of the Code of Federal Regulations, containing links to present and past versions, again PDF images of the official publication.

Version two of the CFR, the “electronic code” which, if you believe them, is updated as of today or yesterday, but it is not an “official legal version” of the CFR.

From the Office of U.S. Courts, PDF images of the official Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Evidence, Appellate Procedure, and Criminal Procedure, all bookmarked and hyperlinked. This site also has fillable PDF versions of the official Appellate, Bankruptcy, and Civil forms, and if you thrash around the site a little, you’ll discover new proposed and pending rules. If you want a more or less official version of the Bankruptcy Rules, use the Office of Law Revision Counsel’s site and look under “Title 18a,” an appendix to the Bankruptcy Code.

Richard Maseles

what this blog is about

realworldlegalresearch — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 02:33:34 +0000

I’ve created this blog with the intention of exploring issues and resources for professionals (mostly lawyers, but also paralegals and certainly others) who need to do legal research. This is far from the first blog on the topic of legal research generally– law librarians and law school instructors of legal research and writing have been blogging for some time, and there’s some other ones as well. I’ll do a blog roll shortly and list the ones I’ve found.

But so far as I know, no one has addressed the day-to-day issues that legal professionals face in trying to find the law. The existing blogs are great resources to find the new and the esoteric– but in this blog, I hope to get down to some basic issues, like: where can we find cost-effective research tools? what advanced tips or tricks can we incorporate into our practice? what happens when we stray outside our Lexis or Westlaw plan, and how much does it really cost?

I welcome your suggestions for topics. I’m not an expert, but I am relentlessly curious, and I’ll do my best to find what you want to know.

Richard Maseles