Due Process: Georgetown Law Library Blog

Santa took a break from his busy schedule of toy-making and naughty/nice list-checking to visit the Georgetown Law Library's Oakley Reading Room today!

He was as quiet as a mouse and brought Christmas candy and smiles to a room full of hard-studying law students who are frankly busier than he is this time of year.

This entry was posted on December 14, 2011 at 3:40 PM and has received 8052 views. Print this entry.

The Georgetown Law Librarians regularly evaluate mobile applications related to legal research activities. To date, only a few native mobile applications exist specifically to perform legal research. However, enough good apps exist to give us an insight into the types of applications and services we might expect in the coming years. Here, we present a few insights into mobile applications for legal research.

Narrowly-Focused Tasks Make an App Easy to Use

The hallmark of most native mobile apps is quick information access. Apps can best answer simple research questions or verify laws quickly. Also, if these needs are recurring, an app can be very helpful.

FastCase

FastCase provides a legal research application that lets you search federal and state case law from their servers without charge. They provide an iPhone and iPad version of the application, and both are free after creating an account. FastCase makes their money by selling access to their databases through individual subscriptions as well as bulk deals with bar associations. The mobile app describes the FastCase website and its additional features, but there is no upgrade path from one to the other.

LexisNexis Get Cases and Shepardize

The name no longer does justice to this app that allows researchers to find and update all U.S. statutes and cases available through Lexis.

Statutes include all of the annotations found through the Lexis website. For example the USC code sections includes case annotations and citations to related administrative law.

A further advantage of this app is that it contains Lexis annotations to all federal and state cases. Covering all cases available in the Lexis database, the app provides relevant value-added Lexis features such as case briefs, headnotes, and summaries of the case written by legal experts.

With a found case or statute this app provides an overview of the item's subsequent legal treatment through Shepard's. A researcher may also use Shepard's to discover newer cases which distinguish the known case based upon the facts of the case.


A Great App Might Not be An App at All

Westlaw

So far, the ThomsonReuters strategy seems to be to develop Westlaw products so content is web-friendly instead of creating apps for specific devices. The main focus is on optimizing the WestlawNext platform, and the mobile applications page about WestlawNext touts flexible display for multiple mobile device types, including the iPhone. The result is app-like in features and usability, but it is accessed through a browser, such as Safari. The WestlawNext mobile site is fully-featured and simplifies finding Westlaw content. Because you must use your Westlaw password to access the site, it lets you access folders saved on WestlawNext, your favorites and any recent research activity.

There is one device-specific app for WestlawNext, created for the iPad, described on this page from ThomsonReuters.

Downloading Westlaw Document to a Kindle

As we noted back in December, WestlawNext allows users to download individual documents or groups of documents to a Kindle device. Before doing so, however, you need to add WestlawNext to your Kindle's Approved E-mail List. Simply access the "Your Account" section of Amazon.com and select "Manage Your Kindle"; from the Digital Content options. From that page, add "westlawnext@westlawnext" (no quotes) to your "Approved E-Mail List." Also, be sure to note your "Kindle E-mail Address" located near the top of the page, as you will need to enter it on WestlawNext in order to download to your Kindle.

Note that there is no fee for documents received wirelessly on a Kindle. If received via 3G, however, a nominal fee will apply (15 cents per megabyte for users living in the U.S.).

Iinformation on transferring, downloading & sending files to a Kindle is available on the Amazon website.

Government Apps May Provide More than Legal Research

IRS2Go from the Internal Revenue Service

As we noted in a January blog post, the Internal Revenue Service announced that a new mobile app has been released and is now available for your iPhone, iTouch or Android. Known as IRS2Go, this official IRS app will provide daily tax tips and updates for tax planning and preparation purposes.

Additionally, you'll be able to check your refund status for the 2010 Tax Year. As usual, the app is available by visiting the iTunes app store or the Android Marketplace.

For additional tax research needs, make use of the Library's Federal Tax Research Guide which explains how and where to find tax documentation.

More than thirty device-specific apps are available from the federal government, found in the USA.Gov Apps Directory. For instance, on this site, you'll find a White House iPhone app, an Android app for Product Recalls,

This entry was posted on February 28, 2011 at 11:39 AM and has received 25007 views. Print this entry.

Want to find readings for your Spring 2011 courses? Need to learn how to find your course management software, be it TWEN or Georgetown Law's own Courseware? Looking for past exams? Need help researching a topic or finding a good hornbook?

The Library has created a list of links for all of the course materials available online and in the law library, as well as the library's specialized research tools. The list is available below and on the Library's Student page.

Here are a few selected links for the start of the semester.

• First Week Reading Assignments (posted by Faculty Support)
• Course Materials Distribution -- also known as Article Works provided by Faculty Support.  Faculty often post syllabi and course readings through this service.

Course Management Systems

Georgetown Law faculty may use one of two types of course management web-based software. Below are links for both:

• Georgetown Law Courseware
• TWEN Courseware
  • A Westlaw password is needed to access TWEN. The Library issued Westlaw passwords during Library Orientation.
  • Tutorial on How to Add a Class on TWEN

Course Materials from the Library

• Past Exams (via Library Catalog)
• Course Reserves(via Library Catalog)

Research Support
Below are a few of the specialized research tools the law library has created to help you succeed in your courses and other scholarly pursuits.

• Research Guides
  
  • Substantive guides by topic, including U.S., Foreign, & International
  •  State & Local Jurisdictions
• Treatise Finder
• Tutorials (Shockwave Flash Videos)
• If you would like more personalized support, please schedule a Research Consultation with a reference librarian

This entry was posted on January 5, 2011 at 9:54 AM and has received 24148 views. Print this entry.

As the trial food policy is underway, the library will take the next few days to blog about your experiences.

Please feel free to send us your comments or questions through our suggestion form below, and we will group them into general categories and respond through the library's Feedback Blog.
 
Your input is greatly appreciated and will provide us with necessary information we can use during our evaluation after the trial's end.

Best of luck with your finals.

This entry was posted on December 9, 2010 at 2:16 PM and has received 23776 views. Print this entry.

Restricted Access to the Georgetown Law Library for students not from the Georgetown Community will begin today and end on December 19th.

For Georgetown Law students, the Williams Library Reading Room will be open 24 hours each day starting today, November 29th and will remain open throughout the exam period, ending on December 19th.

This entry was posted on November 29, 2010 at 3:21 PM and has received 23678 views. Print this entry.

On October 12, 2009 the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued the sixth edition of the Trademark Manual of Examining Procedure (TMEP). The TMEP, provides USPTO trademark examining attorneys, trademark applicants, and trademark attorneys with detailed information about the practices and procedures for prosecution of applications to register marks in the USPTO.

The sixth edition incorporates USPTO trademark practice and relevant case law reported prior to September 1, 2009. The policies states that this revision supersede any previous policies stated in prior editions, examination guides, or any other statement of USPTO policy, to the extent that there is any conflict.

The TMEP may be viewed or downloaded free of charge from the USPTO Web site at: http://tess2.uspto.gov/tmdb/tmep/.

This entry was posted on October 26, 2009 at 12:10 PM and has received 24621 views. Print this entry.

In order to help scholarly journals provide open, free, immediate, and online access to scholarly research, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, know as SPARC, has issued a new guide, “Income models for Open Access: An overview of current practice, by Raym Crow. The guide provides information about both supply-side and demand-side income models and identifies publishers that use each.

This entry was posted on October 9, 2009 at 10:43 AM and has received 24520 views. Print this entry.

The Slaw.ca blog out of Canada reports on a new online interactive archive with hundreds of thousands of records on the Holocaust Era and Nazi art looting.

The archive is available online from Footnote.com and includes records related to legal issues such as:

• The Ardelia Hall Collection of records relating to the Nazi looting of Jewish possessions, including looted art
• Nuremberg War Crimes Trial proceedings

The Slaw.ca entry also mentions two other collections related to the Nuremberg trials:

• Yale's Avalon Project
• Harvard's Nuremberg Trials Project

Another collection of Nuremberg trial materials is the University of Texas' collection of the trial notebooks of Judge Mallory Blair, one of three judges who presided over Nuremberg Case No. 3: U.S. v. Joseph Alstötter et al.

This entry was posted on October 1, 2009 at 8:56 AM and has received 24725 views. Print this entry.

Law at the Movies
Hart Auditorium
Thursday, October 1 @ 6:00 pm

The Friends of the Georgetown University Law Library invites you to join Georgetown Law Professors Naomi Mezey and Randy Barnett as they introduce and discuss The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

In this film classic Jimmy Stewart is the big-city lawyer determined to bring the rule of law to the untamed West. John Wayne, Lee Marvin, and Vera Miles also star.

This is the inaugural event in the Law Library’s series of popular feature films that illustrate legal themes. Each screening will start with a discussion led by members of the Georgetown Law Faculty. Future events will include movies like Anatomy of a Murder, A Few Good Men, and many more.

This entry was posted on September 29, 2009 at 11:11 AM and has received 24626 views. Print this entry.

In a proposed settlement for a class action suit, Facebook has agreed to shut down its Beacon marketing system. The agreement is before the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California: Lane v. Facebook Inc., N.D. Cal., No. 5:08-cv-3845, 9/18/09).

Beacon is a controversial Facebook system that monitors a users purchases on certain online venders and then publishes that information on the user's news feeds, read by the user's Facebook friends.

Facebook aslo proposes creating a $9.5 million settlement fund, partially to pay damages. Part of the of the fund would launch a privacy foundation to fund and sponsor programs designed to educate users, regulators, and enterprises regarding critical issues relating to protection of identity and personal information online through user control, and to protect users from online threats.

Read more about the case through the library's subscription to BNA Privacy Law Watch.

Full text of the Motion for Preliminary Approval of Class Action Settlement Agreement is available at http://0-op.bna.com.gull.georgetown.edu/pl.nsf/r?Open=dapn-7w6jg2.

Full text of the proposed Stipulation and Agreement is available at http://0-op.bna.com.gull.georgetown.edu/pl.nsf/r?Open=dapn-7w6jjb.

This entry was posted on September 24, 2009 at 9:05 AM and has received 24927 views. Print this entry.