New on LLRX

LLRX (via beSpacific) has announced an extensive
list of resources for May 2007. A selection of
titles of potential interest to law faculty are:

Guide to International Refugee Law Resources
on the Web (Elisa Mason)

Criminal Justice Resources - Clemency Law
(Ken Strutin)

The Government Domain: State Government
Fundamentals (Peggy Garvin)

European Union Law: An Integrated Guide to
Electronic and Print Research (Marylin J. Raisch)

Commentary on Gun Laws in the Wake of the
Virginia Tech Shootings (Beth Wellington)

Immigration Reform Bill Research Guide

The Law Librarian Blog (5/30/2007) points us
to Georgetown University Law Library's new
legal research guide on the Immigration Reform
Bill. This new web resources provides information
on News & Commentary, Bills, Hearings, and Debates.

Lawer2Lawyer Podcast: Defending Celebrities

This week on Lawyer2Lawyer, Robert Ambrogi
and J. Craig Williams are speaking with attorneys
who defend high-profile clients in criminal cases.

Joining the co-hosts are Tom Mesereau, who has
defended Michael Jackson and Robert Blake, and
Jennifer Keller, a Southern California criminal defense
attorney who also represented Robert Blake and other
celebs.

You can find additional information, listen and download
on the LegalTalkNetwork site.

Mental Disability Law Blog

InterAlia (5/24/2007) points us to the
Mental Disability Law Blog. Edited by
New York City attorney Danielle Sucher, the blog
provides updates about the law regarding people
with mental disabilities and links to related
blogs and resources.

NEW! Search Web Sites in Another Language on Google Translate

Google has launched a new feature on Google Translate
that allows you to run a search in English to locate
(and translate) websites in another language.

For example, if I wanted to identify Portuguese
language sources on human rights in Brazil:

My search: "human rights" Brazil
My language: English
Find results in: Portuguese

I would retrieve Portuguese search results and a
(machine) translation of these search results into
English. The translations are not always pristine,
but provide enough information to determine the
site's relevance or potential research value.

BarclayBlog in the Summertime

Lemonade, the beach...and the BarclayBlog?

While I plan to slow down the pace over the summer,

you can continue to rely on the BarclayBlog for

information that just can't wait until the fall. If fewer

posts make you feel "blog deprived," let me know and I'll

scour the blawgosphere for more items of interest to you.

"NY BigLaw Leader Scores $1 Million Fee in Pro Bono Case"

An article in the New York Law Journal on 5/15/2007
(republished on New York Lawyer.com) reports that
a federal judge awarded more than $950,000 in attorneys
fees to Skadden Arps for its pro bono representation of
a group of restaurant staff who sued the employer for
withholding tips in violation of the Fair Labor Standards
Act and New York Labor Law.

According to the article, Judge Gerard Lynch stated
that the fees were reasonable in light of the complexity
and difficulty of the case. Skadden partner Mark Cheffo
is quoted saying that the firm's share of the award
will be used for "legal and social organizations to support
efforts on behalf of Chinese Americans and low-wage
workers."

Google Launches Universal Search

On 5/14/2007, Google launched its revamped Internet
search engine. The new search function now integrates
a variety of media, including video, books, maps and news
into a "universal" list of search results. The redesigned
search engine eliminates the need for users to select
among Google's (often confusing) array of individual search
pages. For example, a search for "I have a dream" will
retrieve the text of Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights speech
as well as links to audio/video files and images of
King delivering the speech.

You can read more about Google's new universal
search function here:

ZDNET (5/16/2007): Google creates uber search site

PC World (5/16/2007): Google Universal Search -
Intriguing and Confusing

Official Google Blog (5/16/2007): Universal Search

Will Lawyers Be Rendered Obsolete by Offshoring?

An article in today's Daily Telegraph posits that
some kinds of attorneys may be threatened by
increasing globalization and improved communications
technology. According to the article, between 30 and
40 million U.S. jobs, many traditionally performed by
well-educated professionals such as lawyers and accountants,
could be offsourced to workers in India and China.

The article, which draws heavily from the work of
economist Alan Blinder, suggests that the young
professionals and students must consider career choices
in the context of the new global economy. For example,
family and criminal lawyers will probably fare better
than those in positions emphasizing contract work.

Georgetown Opens Center for the Study of the Legal Profession

Georgetown Law School has announced the opening
of its Center for the Study of the Legal Profession.

From the Center web site:

The Center is devoted to: promoting interdisciplinary
scholarship on the profession informed by awareness
of the dynamics of modern practice; providing students
with a sophisticated understanding of the opportunities
and challenges of a modern legal career;and furnishing
members of the bar, particularly those in organizational
decision-making positions, broad perspectives on trends
and developments in practice.

The Center sponsors symposia, research, publications,
workshops and speakers designed to foster exchanges
among scholars, practitioners and students about the
ongoing evolution of law practice and the aims and
commitments of the profession."

The Co-Directors of the Center are Professor Mitt Regan,
regan@law.georgetown.edu, and Professor Jeffrey Bauman,
bauman@law.georgetown.edu.

Hat tip to the Law Librarian Blog.

CeRI: Cornell e-Rulemaking Initiative

From the CeRi home page:

The Cornell e-Rulemaking Initiative brings together
faculty and students from several disciplines and the
legal informatics professionals at LII. We consult with
government agencies on, and engage in theoretical and
applied research about, the technology and practice of
e-rulemaking and related areas of e-government.

Current projects, described in detail on the CeRi web site,
include:

Natural Language Processing Support for e-Rulemaking:
"Developing natural language processing tools to help agency
rulewriters at various stages of the rulemaking process"

The Public Interface Project: "Working with agencies to
improve the usability and functionality of regulations.gov
for novice and expert users"

Learn About Rulemaking: "Developing an integrated series
of web pages to make the complex rulemaking process
understandable to the general public"

Exploring Consultations.gov: "Scoping the technical, legal
and cultural issues raised by a website hosting online agency-
citizen policy consultations"

Brian Leiter Asks: "Why is it so easy to get tenure in law schools?"

With tenure back on the hot topics list for law blogs
(see Prawfsblawg for links), Brian Leiter reminds us
of his provocatively entitled post from 2003:
Why is it so easy to get tenure in law schools?

AVVO: New Business-to-Consumer Online Legal Service

Prism Legal (5/10/2007) alerts us to Avvo, a
start-up business for online legal services to consumers.
Founded by former executives of Expedia and Microsoft,
Avvo states on its web site that "we are dedicated to
helping consumers better navigate the highly confusing
legal industry and we are building something that no one
else has built before." Avvo has not yet gone 'live,'so the
extent of their services is unknown.

It is interesting to note that Avvo has already lured other
heavy-hitters to its ranks. Former LexisNexis CEO Lou
Andreozzi has joined the board of directors and Stanford
Law Professor Deborah Rhode and former president of the
American Bar Association Robert Hirshon have joined
Avvo's legal advisory board.

As Ron on Prism Legal notes, Avvo should prove interesting
to legal ethics watchers.

CIA Launches New Web Site

Thanks to beSpacific for letting us know that
the CIA has unveiled its new web site.

From the Press Release:

In addition to a new look and feel, the redesigned
CIA.gov introduces a variety of interactive features –
including videos and virtual tours – and revamped,
updated and improved content.

Worth Noting: Lawhaha.com

According to it's founder, Andrew J. McClurg,
Lawhaha is "an interactive humor network for legal
types of all stripes: law students, lawyers, law profs,
judges, legal secretaries, prison inmates, recidivist
parking meter violators, anyone with a computer,
basically."

My favorite categories include: Funniest Law School Moments.
Weird Legal News, Strange Judicial Opinions, and
The World's Greatest Law Review Article (hilarious).

"Close to Slavery: Guest Worker Programs in the U.S."

The Southern Poverty Law Center has issued
Close to Slavery: Guest Worker Programs in the
United States, a "report based on interviews with
thousands of guestworkers, a review of the research
on guestworker programs, scores of legal cases and
the experiences of legal experts from around the
country."

The report may be viewed by section in HTML
on the SPLC web site or downloaded as a PDF file.

Hat tip to the Librarians' Internet Index (5/10/2007).

View Paris Hilton's Appeal on MSNBC

As we know, Paris Hilton's lawyers have appealed
the 45 day jail sentence given the heiress for
violating her DUI probation by driving on a
suspended license.

You can view the appeal and read comments
on the sentence by such legal luminaries as
Larry King, Jenny McCarthy and Jason
Priestly on MSNBC.com (5/7/2007).

Summer Associate Legal Research Program at SU Law

The H. Douglas Barclay Law Library at the Syracuse
University College of Law is pleased to announce its
2007 Legal Research Program for Summer Associates.

This annual free research program is offered to summer
associates working in the Syracuse area and to law students
enrolled in summer externships, clinics and law courses.

The program consists of two components. The New York
Legal Research Program helps to strengthen students'
research skills in three key areas of New York practice –
case law, statutory law and secondary sources. The
Federal Legal Research Program addresses print and
online federal legal research sources and strategies.

Students may register for the New York program
and/or the federal legal research program.
Participants must be currently enrolled in a law school
program, not necessarily at Syracuse University
College of Law.

Program details and registration information may be
found here.

Worth Noting: Harvard Law School Library's "International Law News"

Harvard Law School Library's International Law News
is a great web resource for locating headlines and sources
in the following categories:

International Law News
European News
United Nations News
Press Releases
Human Rights News
World Trade Organization News

Legal Ethics Forum on "AutoAdmit -- the Denouement"

Brad Wendel raises interesting questions about
Anthony Ciolli's future in the legal profession
on the Legal Ethics Forum 5/7/2007. Ciolli,
the co-director of the infamous AutoAdmit
discussion board, was informed by the firm
of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge that they
are rescinding their offer of employment.

New Blogs on the Law Profs Blog Network

The Law Profs Blog Network welcomes the
following new blogs to the family:

Administrative Law Prof Blog

Civil Procedure Prof Blog

International Environmental Law Prof Blog

Mergers &Acquisitions Law Prof Blog

Poverty Law Prof Blog

Recording Industry vs. The People: A Blog About RIAA Lawsuits

Recording Industry vs. the People is a blog by Ty Rogers
and Ray Beckerman, NYC lawyers who, through the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, represent people who
have been sued by the RIAA (Recording Industry
Association of America) for having computers whose
Internet accounts were believed to have been used to
access peer-to-peer file sharing.

Rogers and Beckerman don't mince words on their
opinion of the RIAA lawsuits, saying:

A cartel of multinational corporations collude to
abuse our judicial system, distort copyright law,
and frighten ordinary working people and their
children. We established this site to collect and
share information about this campaign.

American Presidency Project Boasts 73,746 Documents

The Law Librarian Blog (5/7/2007) brings
our attention to the American Presidency Project,
a collection of 73,746 documents related to the study
of the Presidency.

Developed in 1999 at the University of California,
Santa Barbara, the project is the only online resource
that has consolidated, coded, and organized into a
single searchable database:

The Messages and Papers of the Presidents:
Washington - Taft
(1789-1913)

The Public Papers of the Presidents:
Hoover to Bush
(1929-1993)

The Weekly Compilation of Presidential
Documents:
Clinton - G.W. Bush (1993-2007)

Lawyer2Lawyer Podcast: Colleges and Legal Liability

In their latest Lawyer2Lawyer podcast, Robert Ambrogi
and J. Craig Williams examine the "legal liability of higher-
education institutions for students who are homicidal or
suicidal."

Joining the regular co-hosts for the discussion are
Anthony J. Sebok, professor at Brooklyn Law School and
author of a recent article on Virginia Tech's liability,
and Robert B. Smith, partner with the Boston firm
Nelson, Kinder, Mosseau & Saturley and author of a recent
piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education about
student suicide and colleges' liability.

As always, you can listen or download this program
from the Legal Talk Network web site.

Actual Innocence Awareness Database Tracks Wrongful Convictions

The Tarleton Law Library (University of Texas)
has developed the Actual Innocence Awareness Database
to track information about wrongful convictions in the
United States.

The site encompasses the following categories:
popular media (such as newspaper articles and segments
which aired on television news magazines), journal articles,
books, reports, legislation and websites. Within each
category, information is organized by the primary causes
of wrongful conviction: forensics/DNA; eyewitness
identification; false confessions; jailhouse informants;
police and/or prosecutorial misconduct; and ineffective
representation. In addition, there is a “general” category
for items that do not fall under one of the main headings.

The entire site can be searched. Links to items
available on the open Internet are included.

Hat tip to LawSites.

Mozilla Firefox Cheat Sheet

If you use Mozilla Firefox as your browser,
you'll love Tom Mighell's Mozilla Firefox
Cheat Sheet (3/2/2007) on the Future
Lawyer blog.

This handy guide offers general, navigation,
text and keyboard shortcuts, mouse short-
cuts, locations (cache, profile, plug-ins, etc.),
and tips/tricks for using Firefox.

Country Reports on Terrorism 2006

Each year (by 4/30), the United States Department
of State provides Congress with a "full and complete
report on terrorism with regard to those countries
and groups meeting criteria set forth in the
legislation."

The 2006 Country Reports on Terrorism may be
viewed by chapter in HTML on the Department of
State web site.

New State Law Blogs

Law Blogs Metrics (4/30/2007) has posted
a list of new state law blogs (by state).

Hat tip to the Law Librarian Blog.