The Goodson Blogson

Among the many reasons why legal research can be frustrating, especially for non-lawyers, is the relative inaccessibility of research materials. Secondary sources , such as scholarly treatises, are often invaluable tools to help researchers untangle the complex interrelationships of legislation, regulations and case law. But usually these expensive and highly specialized sources can be found only on the shelves of law libraries, or locked behind subscription-only databases like Bloomberg Law, LexisNexis and Westlaw. In addition, resources which are written primarily for an audience of practicing attorneys can be difficult to understand without a legal background. The new Copyright Codex: A Free Treatise for Lawyers and Artists attempts to remedy both of these problems, at least for the topic of copyright law. Maintained by Eric Adler, a partner in the New York office of intellectual property firm Adler Vermillion & Skocilich, this free online treatise presents copyright law in p...

Yesterday, the New York Times highlighted the growing trend of court citations to the popular crowd-sourced definition website Urban Dictionary . Urban Dictionary is edited by its readers, who have submitted millions of definitions for contemporary slang words and phrases. The site fills the void left by traditional slang dictionaries which often take years to compile, leaving their contents already out of date by the time they arrive on bookshelves. Courts have taken notice of this online option for defining more current slang. The Times mentions a 2010 St. John's Law Review article about citations to "consensus websites" like Urban Dictionary and Wikipedia, which noted 27 citations to Urban Dictionary in state and federal case law databases as of April 2010. A similar search by the Goodson Blogson in Westlaw today yields nearly three times as many – 68 total appearances in state and federal court opinions, as well as another 33 in administrative law decisions and ...

Since 1933, the Practising Law Institute (PLI) has been a leading provider of continuing legal education (CLE) materials. The Goodson Law Library has more than 1,000 PLI titles on its shelves , with particularly strong collections of corporate/securities law, intellectual property, and civil practice materials. Electronic access to the PLI library is now available campus-wide until the end of the year via the PLI Discover PLUS database. PLI Discover PLUS is accessible through the library's Legal Databases & Links page, under Legal Links. Discover Plus includes the full text of PLI treatises and course handbooks from 2005 to the present, as well as a growing collection of legal forms and seminar transcripts. Selected PLI titles (including The Pocket MBA , Electronic Discovery Deskbook , W orking with Contracts: What Law School Doesn't Teach You , and Duke Law Professor Steven L. Schwarcz's Structured Finance: A Guide to the Principles of Asset Securitization ) are ...

The May 2013 issue of the Internet Law Researcher newsletter (which is available to members of the Duke Law community through Westlaw 's GLILR database) rounds up a bibliography of legislation and articles related to digital asset estate planning. To locate the article in Westlaw Classic or WestlawNext, use the citation 18 No. 5 Internet L. Researcher 1. Planning for death has always been an uncomfortable and difficult topic for most people, and the growth of social media and other online accounts has added a new layer of complexity to sorting out the affairs of the recently deceased. Author Ken Kozlowski describes the current situation as "a big mess" in which "the federal Stored Communications Act (SCA) [is] being cited as a reason for services such as Facebook to withhold access to deceased individuals' accounts, passwords, stored photos, etc." Five states have passed legislation related to control of deceased individuals' online accounts, and und...

Last year, Westlaw announced that it would cease support for dedicated printers in summer 2013. As a result, the two Duke Law dedicated Westlaw printers will be removed from the library during the week of May 13 , and users will no longer see these machines as a printing option within Westlaw Classic or WestlawNext. But wait! You can still print out Westlaw-generated documents at the Goodson Law Library – you'll just need to send them to the Law School's ePrint system instead. Our recommended method is to first download the documents within WestlawNext or Westlaw Classic for a quick review, in order to ensure that you send only those pages you actually need to the printer; for example, the research references and case notes within annotated code sections can increase a print job exponentially! However, users may also wish to consider the more environmentally-friendly option of online storage, in folders . Within Westlaw, this feature is exclusive to the newer WestlawNext ...