The Goodson Blogson

The Duke University community now has access to PLI Plus , a full-text database of publications from the Practising Law Institute. PLI is a leading provider of legal education programs, and their online library includes full-text access to more than 1,500 PLI course handbooks, answer books, form publications, and treatises. (The Duke Law community may recall that PLI titles were previously available electronically via Bloomberg Law , but PLI Plus is now the exclusive online source for these publications.) Some notable PLI titles include the treatises Sack on Defamation: Libel, Slander & Related Problems and Soderquist on the Securities Laws , The Pocket MBA: Everything an Attorney Needs to Know About Finance , and the textbook Working with Contracts: What Law School Doesn't Teach You . Titles can be searched or browsed at the PLI Plus site, and chapters are available for online viewing or for download as PDFs. In the coming weeks, records will be added to the Duke Librari...

Over the weekend, singer Ciara accepted an unusual gift from a front-row concert attendee – legal papers. Hollywood gossip site TMZ shared a video of the Grammy nominee's performance at a Los Angeles Pride week event, during which she reaches to greet an audience member who hands her several pages of paper. Ciara scans the material briefly before tossing it back to the crowd, never interrupting her performance. The apparent process server picks up the discarded papers and places them back on the stage, reassuring the camera operator, "She got served," with a wide smile. The lawsuit stems from a dispute over an appearance at an earlier Los Angeles Pride event , at West Hollywood bar called The Factory. Club owners maintain that the singer backed out of an agreement to visit the club on the day before her concert performance, but Ciara's management denies that she was ever officially scheduled to appear at the earlier event. The full complaint is available to Duke ...

The Goodson Law Library recently updated its guide to Legal Research for Non-Lawyers . The new additions include an extensive list of local and national services for legal referrals , maintained by the Duke Law School Pro Bono Project. New links to free legal research resources like Google Scholar (for case law) and the American Bar Association's Law Reviews & Journals Search (for articles) have also been added. By far, though, the biggest change to the guide was the addition of e-book versions (where available) of popular Nolo Press self-help guides via the Legal Information Reference Center . These electronic versions may be used on-site by library visitors or off-campus by those with a current Duke University NetID. In many cases, the version available online is more recent than the library’s Reference Collection copies, which are updated less frequently. Some highlights: Paul Bergman & Sara J. Berman-Barrett. Represent Yourself in Court: How to Prepare and Try a W...

Duke Law students, faculty and staff have access to Practical Law Company (PLC) , a transactional law resource which is used in practice by many firms. Register for an account with PLC for Law Schools by clicking the button labeled "FREE PLC Access." The website is organized into three sections, all of which include model documents with drafting tips, "Practice Notes," and step-by-step checklists in such areas as bankruptcy, securities, corporate finance, international arbitration, and intellectual property. Each section is organized slightly differently, and offers additional unique features. The Law School section provides Summer Associate Survival Guides and Interview Survival Guides designed to demystify corporate and securities law basics. The Law Firm section includes a glossary of law and business terminology, current news and analysis of the latest corporate deals, and guides to international business. The Law Department section is intended for use ...

With the explosive growth of reality TV over the last decade, it’s increasingly likely that you already know someone who has participated in one of the many competitions or candid programming out there (in fact, a Duke Law 2L and Simpsons superfan put in a winning appearance on a 2009 Food Network Challenge ). But for the rest of us, we can only speculate about life behind the scenes...that is, until Monday night. That’s when the Village Voice Runnin' Scared blog published a copy of MTV's standard participant contract for its long-running Real World series , and highlighted the blogger's favorite clauses in the 30-page document. Among the explicitly-assumed risks: you might die, and it's not the producers' responsibility. Your new roommates could assault you (sorry, engage in "non-consensual physical contact"), and you have only yourself to blame. And if the show completely misrepresents your life story, unjustly casting you as its major antagonist? Tota...

Summer is the peak season for music festivals and concert tours, which means that promoters across the country are currently combing through visiting artists’ backstage concert riders . "Riders," defined by Black’s Law Dictionary as an “attachment to some document […] that amends or supplements the document,” are frequently used by musicians to clarify technical needs and specifications for the concert, and just as often are used to specify minutiae like dressing room décor, dietary preferences, and personal needs (towels, private bathrooms, and even condoms are frequent requests). The Smoking Gun's "Backstage Pass" archive reprints or excerpts more than 250 riders from a wide variety of touring acts, both classic and contemporary. From Van Halen’s infamous 1982 demand that all brown M&Ms be picked out of their candy bowl , to Jennifer Lopez’s request for expensive French candles in her dressing room at a recent charity event , to megawatt pop star Lady Ga...

Over the holiday weekend, a CNN affiliate investigated growing consumer complaints about At The Beach, Inc., an area tanning salon chain with some pretty stringent member agreements. Customers claim that they were duped into signing virtually-unbreakable two-year contracts, and then burned by the fine print when attempting to cancel their accounts. Although most—including the news station’s undercover reporter—were assured by friendly employees that the contracts could be canceled “at any time,” consumers say they were not informed of the requirement to either “buy out” 50% of the remaining time on their contracts, or to prove that they had moved at least 25 miles away from the closest location in order to stop the automatic monthly billing. Is your inner lawyer feeling a distinct lack of sympathy for those who signed without reading? As the news video (5:49) shows, even seasoned attorneys can get caught in a contract trap: interview subject Kevin Lanoha is corporate counsel at Qwest...