The Goodson Blogson

April 1 is Census Day , the Census Bureau’s target date for returning your 2010 Census forms. In case you missed the government’s aggressive marketing campaign (including a giant inflatable form outside D.C.’s Union Station and a star-studded Super Bowl ad directed by Christopher Guest ), the U.S. Census is conducted every ten years to count residents; its results help reallocate federal funding based on population (and can even affect the number of your state’s representatives in Congress). After April 1, Census takers will begin to canvas neighborhoods in order to follow up with citizens who did not return their paper forms. Based on the current Mail Participation Rate , they will be busy: the current national participation rate is 50% (as of this writing, Durham County checks in just under the national average, at 47%). The Census website offers advice about census-taker visits , including tips to ensure that the visitor is a legitimate federal employee (e.g., the census taker wi...

Last week’s Research Madness workshop provided an overview of several free & low-cost alternatives to using LexisNexis and Westlaw for legal research. Law students have access to a number of the most popular low-cost research alternatives, including LoisLaw (see Reference Desk for registration code which lasts up to 6 months after graduation) and Casemaker (available to current law students as CasemakerX ). It’s worth test-driving these resources in law school, as they continue to gain prominence in the “real world” of law practice. Don’t be surprised if your firm even requires new associates to begin research at one of these lower-cost services before racking up larger research bills on the premium research sites! But which low-cost service deserves the bulk of your attention? The answer may depend on where you plan to practice. Many of these low-cost services are provided free of charge through state bar associations; currently 48 state bar associations offer free access to ...

Last week, the Judicial Conference of the United States approved several steps to improve PACER , the federal courts’ system for P ublic A ccess to C ourt E lectronic R ecords. Among the highlights: While congressionally-mandated user fees will remain stable at $0.08 per page (capped at $2.40 per document), PACER users will not receive a bill until they accrue $10 in charges during a quarterly billing cycle (an upgrade from the previous fee waiver of $10 per year). With approval from the presiding judge, digital audio files of hearings may be downloadable through PACER for $2.40 each. Previously, these recordings had to be obtained through the individual court clerk’s office for $26.00. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts also recently announced an upgrade to PACER, with the debut of the new PACER Case Locator . This search service allows users to identify which court’s PACER database contains materials from a specified case, as well as create customized displays of federal...

The Goodson Blogson can't stop thinking about an absorbing New York Times Magazine article from earlier this month, China’s Cyberposse . The article describes popular online communities which mobilize to expose and publicly shame individuals who have committed various transgressions (such as adultery, animal cruelty, or government corruption). In some cases, the targets of a human-flesh search have lost their jobs; others now live in hiding, fearful of vigilante justice for their wrongdoings. Comparable online forums exist in the United States, although they are far less mainstream than their Chinese counterparts. Similar tactics can also be found on a milder scale in the U.S. on social networking websites (such as a Twitter feed in Alaska which posts the license plates of bad drivers or Don’t Date Him Girl , an online community which posts personal information about alleged cheaters or otherwise-lousy boyfriends). Those who have never attempted to track someone down online might ...

This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court unveiled a new website, http://www.supremecourt.gov . The new site features a more modern design and several user-friendly features, including an interactive argument calendar, a feed of recent opinions, and a snazzy new search box which includes the option to limit search results to docket files. (Can’t remember what the site used to look like? Here’s a snapshot from May 2008 , immortalized on the Wayback Machine .) The change came after SCOTUS received an appropriation in the latest budget to move website management in-house, after a decade of hosting and design services from the Government Printing Office ( official press release at SCOTUSblog ). Update your bookmarks! The old http://www.supremecourtus.gov address will continue to work only until July 1. Our extensive U.S. Supreme Court Research Guide will likewise be updated to reflect this change.

A highlight of our first Research Madness workshop yesterday was the discussion of free sources for legal articles. While law review and journal articles can be a time-saving crash course on an unfamiliar legal topic, racking up search charges for background-gathering on Lexis and Westlaw can be counterproductive. Fortunately, a number of law reviews and journals have embraced open-access publishing, making it easier to find helpful secondary sources on a search of the free web. The American Bar Association’s Legal Technology Resource Center has assembled a custom search engine which scours more than 300 open-access law reviews and legal journals . The engine includes all Duke Law journals (which have been provided free on the web since 1997), as well as many other major U.S. law reviews, several bar journals, and a variety of international and foreign law publications. It also searches SSRN and BePress , major sources for pre-publication articles and working papers. The LTRC engine...

On Wednesday, a Georgia judge ordered the state Bureau of Investigation to prevent public dissemination of gruesome crime scene photographs from a high-profile murder case . A journalist from Hustler magazine had sought the release of police photographs of 24-year-old victim Meredith Emerson, whose body was found nude and decapitated along a Georgia hiking trail in 2008 who disappeared from a Georgia hiking trail in 2008 and was later found nude and decapitated [corrected after comments below]. Emerson’s family requested and received a temporary restraining order which would block the photographs from public release. (Similar restrictions were already in place for autopsy photographs under the state’s open records law, but the status of crime scene photographs in Georgia is murkier.) The court order came as members of the Georgia state legislature simultaneously worked to pass the Meredith Emerson Memorial Privacy Act , which would require permission of the victim’s next of kin for t...

March is usually a turning point in the spring semester, when law students' focus begins to officially shift from schoolwork to summer employment. Whether you’re still on the job market or have an offer in place, the main concern is the same: to stand out from the crowd with your superior skills. The quickest way to make a good impression on your employers? Set yourself apart as a savvy researcher . Surveys of law firms consistently reveal a wide gap between expectation and reality for new associates’ research skills. (See a 2007 Thomson West white paper for one sobering example, finding that new associates overwhelmingly need help conducting cost-effective legal research.) The library has always offered a week or two of “ Research Refresher ” workshops in the spring, in order to help ease the transition from academia to real-world research. This year, though, we’ve teamed up with the Career Center , as well as our LexisNexis and Westlaw campus representatives, to bring you an e...