The Goodson Blogson

If you’ve been frustrated to find the Law School’s dedicated LexisNexis and Westlaw printers out of toner recently, you’re not alone. Our student representatives for the popular research services have reported an increase in service calls lately due to a high volume of large print jobs, such as an entire 100+ page session law when the student probably needed only a few pages (judging from the amount of paper in the recycling bin). Printing individual sections of a code can also add up, if you forget to exclude the annotations—those secondary source and case summaries can easily increase your print job by hundreds of pages! In the interest of saving toner and trees, here are some tips on smarter printing from Lexis and Westlaw. DOWNLOAD FIRST, PRINT LATER Do you blithely hit the “FastPrint” button whenever you find a document that looks remotely relevant? If so, you’ve probably been shocked in the past when that enormous print job in the Document Production Room has your name on the ...

If you use the popular micro-blogging site Twitter , you probably already know its potential for broadcasting the minutest details of life to a wide audience. Inevitably, some of those details might be better left unsaid: Just last week, reality-television star Kim Kardashian made headlines by inadvertently "outing" a federal air marshal (whose identities and locations are meant to be classified) with whom she chatted on a flight. This news coincided with the release of Please Rob Me , an aggregator of location-based Twitter updates which advertise when a user is not at home. (Sound excessively paranoid? A 2009 burglary in Arizona was reportedly linked to the homeowner’s Twitter vacation update .) But the legal profession has been grappling with Twitter and similar technologies for much longer, especially when it comes to jury trials . While jurors have long been instructed not to conduct outside research on the details of a case, nor to discuss the case with anyone except o...

You already know about the Law Library’s popular Legal DVD collection , which contains current and classic films with legal themes. You probably also know that the Lilly Library at Duke houses an impressive film collection, with more than 14,000 DVDs ! (All of these can be searched in the libraries’ online catalog .) But sometimes the library is closed, or the movie you want is checked out to another borrower. We’d never advise anyone to seek out illegal video download sites, which can harm your computer with viruses and also put you on the wrong side of copyright infringement laws. We’re happy to say instead that there are plenty of legal sources for a movie fix, and you would be surprised what you can find on them. You may know Hulu as the go-to site for television clips. But Hulu offers a wide selection of free (advertising-supported) movies as well. Note that the selection is constantly changing, dependent upon the whims of the copyright holders (we’re sad to report that perennia...

With less than two months to go before April 15, income taxes are in the back of everybody’s mind. While the Goodson Law Library staff is not able to answer substantive tax-related questions (such as “what forms do I need to file?” or help interpreting the form instructions), the Goodson Blogson is happy to point you to some sources for tax assistance. Before you head to a professional tax preparation service, consider whether you qualify for the IRS’s FreeFile program . This service links qualifying taxpayers to free electronic federal tax preparation service (state tax preparation may also be available in some cases). Your adjusted gross income for 2009 must be $57,000 or less in order to take advantage of the FreeFile program. You may also qualify for assistance from VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) , a program in which trained volunteers assist with tax preparation for low- to moderate-income taxpayers, as well as senior citizens. Duke Law School proudly boasts a VITA chapter...