Legal Scholarship Blog

The Legal Scholarship Blog helps the academic legal community keep up with conferences, calls for papers, and in-house workshops. Resource pages provide links to articles and other resources about teaching, grants, and empirical legal studies.

Who can the Legal Scholarship Blog help?

LIBRARIANS who want to alert their faculty to upcoming conferences and calls for papers in their specialties.

FACULTY MEMBERS who want to watch for conferences and calls for papers on their own.

FACULTY MEMBERS and CENTER DIRECTORS who want to promote conferences that they are organizing.

JOURNAL EDITORS who want to publicize calls for papers and symposiums.

LL.M. STUDENTS, PH.D. CANDIDATES, and OTHERS who want to become active in the scholarly community by presenting papers, getting published, or simply attending meetings.

JOURNAL EDITORS and OTHER CONFERENCE PLANNERS who want to see whether someone has already announced a symposium on the topic and to check for possible date conflicts.

FACULTY MEMBERS who want to see the papers their colleagues around the country are work shopping.

The Legal Scholarship Blog is a service provided by the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and the University of Washington School of Law Gallagher Law Library.

July 2010 Bar Exam

The Colorado Bar Exam is scheduled for July 27-28, 2010 in the Merchandise Mart. The schedule and instructions and location information is posted on the Board of Law Examiner's section of the Colorado Supreme Court website.

Good luck to all of the DU graduates taking the July 2010 bar exam!

New Titles in June

The Westminster Law Library added some new titles to our collection in June. You can see a list of all items or search by subject. Fill out our online form to have the list of new titles emailed to you on a regular basis.

Comparing Prospector & WorldCat

Prospector is an online public access catalog (OPAC) combining the collections of twenty-three libraries across Colorado and Wyoming. The Colorado Library Courier (CLC) provides the delivery of the materials to participating libraries. Users of this catalog can search for and order materials that are not found in their library system. Delivery of materials is free to the user and usually arrives in a week. This is a great resource for students interested in saving money on textbooks. It is important to know that if you decide to order your textbook through Prospector the maximum checkout time (for books) is six weeks so plan accordingly.

WorldCat is a large database that provides access to materials in libraries all over the world. It is the product of an organization called Online Computer Library Center (OCLC). OCLC is a library cooperative consisting of libraries in 171 countries. Library users are able to find and request materials from libraries all over the Country and in most cases it is free. Sometimes there is a small fee involved if the item is located outside of the United States to cover shipping costs. You will receive a notification of the fee before the request is processed. Some library systems including the Denver Public Library limit the amount of requests a patron can make through WorldCat so use it only as a last resort.

If you are interested in more information here are some helpful links:
• Access from Westminster Law Library website
• Access from Penrose Library website
• CliC
• OCLC

Written by Brooke Jennings, Law Librarian Fellow

Law Librarians Come to Denver!

Don’t forget that the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) annual conference is being held in Denver July 10 – 13, 2010. AALL was founded in 1906 to promote and enhance the value of law libraries to the legal and public communities, to foster the profession of law librarianship, and to provide leadership in the field of legal information. With over 5,000 members, the AALL represents law librarians and related professional who are affiliated with a wide range of institutions including law schools; law firms; courts; corporate legal departments; and local, state, and federal government agencies. There’s still time to register so make it a priority to connect with current and future colleagues today!

Written By Diane Forge Bauersfeld, Law Librarian Fellow

Real Simple Syndication (RSS): The Law Library of Congress

Question 1: What is so great about RSS?

Answer: RSS feeds are a great way to keep up-to-date on important news and information without cluttering your email inbox. RSS feeds also free you from having to check different websites and news sources constantly. Basically, by subscribing to a website’s RSS feed you can get automatic updates for when news and information is posted on that site. To view RSS content you just need to set up an RSS feed reader—these readers conveniently compile the different feeds that you subscribe to into one place. After setting up an RSS feed reader you can subscribe to as many RSS feeds as you have time to keep up with! To identify an RSS feed look for this icon .

For more information about RSS feeds and feed readers click here.

Question 2: What RSS feeds should I subscribe to?
Answer: There are so many to subscribe to, but you are missing out if you do not to subscribe to one or more of the RSS feeds sent out by the United States Law Library of Congress! The Law Library of Congress is the largest law library in the world with over 2.65 million volumes covering ever jurisdiction in the world. Even better, the Law Library of Congress has been digitizing more and more of its resources and making it available to the public through the Internet.

The Law Library of Congress provides four primary RSS feeds:
1) The Global Legal Monitor provides information about legal developments around the world. Users can subscribe to the entire feed or select feeds on a per topic basis.
2) The Legal Research Reports feed notifies users of legal commentary, research and resource recommendations on a variety of legal topics.
3) The News & Events feed broadcasts news and events for the Law Library of Congress.
4) The Webcasts feed provides notices of new webcasts from the Law Library of Congress.

Through the Law Library of Congress’s RSS feed site (the link is below), you can also subscribe to RSS feeds for legislative news and information provided by the Library of Congress THOMAS website.
Now, go forth and subscribe to the Law Library of Congress RSS feeds by clicking here.
Oh, and if you would still rather receive updates by email, just click here and scroll to the bottom of the page.

Written by Jennifer Chang, Law Librarian Fellow

Blogs for Law Students

Blogs have become a pop culture phenomenon with a bloggers devoted to writing about almost any topic imaginable. The legal world has its fair share of bloggers aimed at both general legal topics as well as specific legal interests. Law students across the country have also developed blogs to comment on everything from the best study aids to humorous anecdotes focusing on how law school is actually a lot like high school. While legal blogs shouldn't be relied on as the authoritative source of information, they can be great sources for keeping current on legal news, exploring specialized areas of law as well as getting hints and tips for researching legal issues.

Blogs aimed at law students can also be helpful for mastering first year and upper level courses and most importantly having a laugh and staying sane during an often stressful law school career. The blogs listed below have been broken up into different areas that might be helpful for law students and include a short description to help students find a blog that fits their needs.

Current Legal News:
The Law Librarian Blog provides a lot of very useful and current information on legal issues ranging from issues of legal research to current case law.

Above the Law.com - While somewhat of a legal tabloid, this blog does provide some current analysis and commentary of legal news.

Class and Research Tips:
I Wish I Would Have Known - This blog brings together a variety of posts from multiple blog sites that pertain to things that would be helpful to know while going through law school. The subjects range from classroom participation and surviving the write on Law Review process to dealing with law school drama.

Academic Support - This blog brings together great resources and advice on academic support and dealing with academic stress while in law school.

Bar Exam:
Bar Exam Brief - This blog created by MicroMash Bar Review provides a daily MBE question and answers with explanations, in case you don't have enough MBE questions to think about while studying for the Bar.

Law Student -This website has a collection of blogs written by law students preparing for various bars throughout the country.

Law School Generally:
Nuts and Boalts- written by a number of students at Boalt, this blog provides, advice from life as a 1L to passing the Bar all while trying to put a smile on your face.

Law Street Journal - this blog provides general thoughts on law school and covers a wide variety of topics, including dressing for success and dealing with annoying classmates.

Just For Fun:
Bitter Lawyer - The Bitter Lawyer Blog's top ten favorite law school blogs, most focusing on the humorous side of law school.

There are many helpful and fun blogs out there that are aimed at law students and the wider legal community. One helpful site to search for blogs is Justia Blawg Search which allows you to enter search terms to find blogs in different areas of law or for particular interests.

Written by Brittany Cronin, Law Librarian Fellow