KU Law Blog

CiteGenie: Automagically copies text with correct citations from Westlaw, Lexis and other Web sites.

One of the best parts about doing research electronically is you have the ability to cut and paste from your browser straight into your document. However, figuring out how to cite what you just pasted can be a bit of a hastle. By adding CiteGenie as a plugin in Firefox, the option of “copy with CiteGenie” is added to your right-click menu. This will allow you to paste the text into any other program along with the pinpoint citation for the selected text from the court opinon. Here is an example from the CiteGenie website.

Not only does CiteGenie work with cases, but it also works with statutes, regulations and many secondary sources such as ALR, CSJ and law review journals.

So hop on over to CiteGenie’s Web site and download it for free!

As always, let me know what you think!

Blake Wilson
Instructional and Research Services Librarian

KU Law Students for Reproductive Justice is one of the newest law student groups on campus — and also one of the busiest!

KU Law Students for Reproductive Justice is part of the only student-led, student-centered nationwide network of law students, professors and lawyers committed to fostering the next wave of legal experts for the reproductive justice movement.

A lot of people ask: What does reproductive justice mean? We believe reproductive justice will be achieved when all people and communities have access to the information, resources and support they need to attain sexual and reproductive self-determination.

In pursuit of that ultimate goal, KU Law Students for Reproductive Justice offers educational, activism and community service opportunities.

Our first educational event was a screening of “The Education of Shelby Knox,” a 2005 documentary that tells the coming-of-age story of a teenage girl who joins a campaign for comprehensive sex education in the high schools of Lubbock, Texas. It was a great opportunity for students to learn about the issues surrounding comprehensive sex education, both in support and opposition.

Our first activism project is supporting Prevention First legislation. There are various Prevention First bills being advocated in Kansas, Missouri and the federal government. The general tenets of Prevention First legislation are to protect: 1) access to birth control, including emergency contraception; 2) access to medically accurate, comprehensive sex education; and 3) access to affordable family planning and reproductive health care. We are working with Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri to deliver the petitions to legislators.

It’s only been about two months since we had our first meeting, but KU Law Students for Reproductive Justice is definitely on a roll with plenty more to come! Already we are planning an event in January to honor the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Professor Stephen McAllister, a constitutional law professor at KU, will give a lecture called “What Roe v. Wade Really Means.” Professor McAllister will lay out the actual law and ask some of the difficult questions that confront both sides of the Roe debate to get to the heart of what this landmark decision really means.

Look for more exciting new opportunities from KU Law Students for Reproductive Justice by e-mailing lsrj@ku.edu to join our e-mail list!

Kristin Maun, President, Law Students for Reproductive Justice

Sam Korte, an attorney from Garmin, and Elizabeth Tassi, from Stinson Morrison Hecker, took time out of their busy schedules recently to meet with the Intellectual Property Law Students Association to discuss how to land a job in the IP field.

Both attorneys agreed on one major point: Get involved in order to build a network and strengthen your resume. Take advantage of your first year by participating in groups, clinics and competitions. With limited experience, this is the best thing you can do to create opportunities for yourself in the future.

Korte also recommended conducting background research before any interview. This can be as simple as checking out the Web site of the business or firm prior to a meeting. When researching, Korte said, look for professional bios and take note of anything you believe will help you to connect with the interviewer or communicate your genuine interest in the company. Also, keep up-to-date on current cases, especially those that will impact the firms or businesses with which you are interviewing.

One student asked about the best way to approach IP law if you don’t have a science background. Tassi recommended finding a specialty, or niche, tailored to your experience and educational background. For example, a student with an undergraduate degree in journalism and similar field experience can offer valuable insight into copyright law. In other words, consider using your unique experience to your advantage.

We would like to thank all of those who joined us, and we hope to see you again at our next panel.

Natalie Schumann, 1L

I recently received an invitation to join Google Wave. I was very excited about it. After a short time of playing around, I was given a limited number of invitations to hand out so that my friends and peers could join in. It was then that I realized how few people actually know about Google Wave.

So what is it?

Google Wave is a “personal communication and collaboration tool.” It is a Web-based service, designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wikis and social networking.

Basically, Google Wave works like e-mail, but instead of sending a message along with its entire thread of previous messages, or requiring all responses to be stored in each user’s inbox, message documents that contain complete threads of messages are perpetually stored on a central server. Like a Web page!

The entire document is called a “wave,” and each wave is shared with collaborators who can be added to or removed from the wave at any point during a wave’s existence. Any participant of a wave can reply anywhere within the message, edit any part of the wave and add participants at any point in the process. Each edit/reply is a “blip,” and users can reply to individual blips within waves or add blips at the end. Recipients are notified of changes/replies in all waves in which they are active.

The history of each wave is stored within it. Collaborators may use a playback feature in Google Wave to observe the order in which a wave was edited, blips that were added, and who was responsible for what in the wave. The history may also be searched by a user to view and/or modify specific changes, such as specific kinds of changes or messages from a single user.

In addition, waves are live. All blips are visible in real-time, letter by letter, as they are typed by the other collaborators. Multiple participants may edit a single wave simultaneously in Google Wave. Thus, waves can function not only as e-mails and threaded conversations but also as an instant messaging service when many participants are online at the same time. A wave may repeatedly shift roles between e-mail and instant messaging, depending on the number of users editing it concurrently. The ability to show messages as they are typed can be disabled, similar to conventional instant messaging.

And, of course, Google Wave is supported by extensions that can provide, for example, spelling/grammar checking, automated traslation among 40 languages, a game of chess, and many others.

To learn more, visit http://wave.google.com. Or watch this video!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6pgxLaDdQw]

Interested in a Wave invite? I have some, and I’d be willing to share! Shoot me an e-mail!

Blake Wilson
Instructional and Research Services Librarian

First-year students spend most of their time in doctrinal classes like Contracts and Torts. Lawyering, in contrast, provides students with the practical skills that are necessary in law school. In this class, students receive an overview of the legal system, learn things like how to brief cases and cite using Bluebook format, and get a short review on grammar.

The main focus of the class is writing memos. The first assignment, the closed memo, is largely practice for the open memo. For the memo, students are presented with a legal question and asked to use relevant legal sources to analyze the issue and present an answer. Students learn skills used in legal reasoning and how to structure an office memo. The closed memo is “closed” because the sources for comparison are provided with the assignment. It is a multi-step assignment, and most steps are completion-only grades. This gives students several opportunities to improve their memo-writing skills before the open memo, which is the major assignment in the first semester of Lawyering.

In writing the open memo, students employ nearly everything they have learned in Lawyering up to that point through research, analysis and writing. The step-by-step guidance and practical training found in Lawyering separates it from other first-year classes and works with those classes to provide first-year students with a broad legal education.

Alyssa Boone, 1L and Student Ambassador

On Nov. 17, Google added a feature to Google Scholar that will enable people everywhere find and read full-text legal opinions. Included are U.S. federal courts, including district, appellate and Supreme Court, as well as state appellate and supreme courts. You can find cases by party name, citation or topic. Simply go to http://scholar.google.com/ and select the “legal opinions and journals” radio button. For example, typing in “seperate but equal” brings up the cases Brown v. Board of Education and Plessy v. Ferguson as well as many others.

When you select the case name, it is pulled up for your viewing pleasure. As you scroll through the document, you will notice that Google highlights the terms for which you searched. Along the left-hand side, Google provides the pagination.

Along the top you will find two tabs: “view this case” and “how cited.” Google Scholar defaults to “view this case.” The “how cited” tab provides you with examples of how the case you are looking at is cited.

For example, with Brown v. Board of Education, the first listing under “how cited” is:

As we noted in Brown I:” To separate [Negro school children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.”
– in Wright v. Council of Emporia, 1972 and 374 similar citations

So check out Google Scholar and let me know what you think. Will it give Westlaw and Lexis a run for their money?

Blake Wilson
Instructional and Research Services Librarian