I am in charge of the legal research instruction as part of the Lawyering Skills course. Over the past three years, I have heard (and read) several things students have said about legal research. Before we have a new batch of students start up this fall, I would like to go ahead and address these issues. Everything is available online.Surprisingly, …
From summer associate to softball player
My first day at my internship with Fleeson, Gooing, Coulson & Kitch this summer started out perfectly. We met all the attorneys over bagels, we were set up with keys and parking passes, and we were taken to lunch by one of the attorneys who initially interviewed us. After lunch, things took a sharp turn for the worse. I found …
Hunting for a job? Maybe a ‘strategy group’ is in order
I’m currently reading “The Happiness Project” by U.S. Supreme Court clerk-turned-author Gretchen Rubin. In a chapter about seeking happiness in her work life, she reveals one of her “Secrets of Adulthood”: “It’s okay to ask for help.” She describes how she came up with the idea of meeting with two other authors once every six weeks for two hours in …
Bureau of Justice Statistics website makes crime stats freely available
In need of crime statistics and don’t know where to look? Try the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics! The Bureau of Justice Statistics (B.J.S.) was first established on Dec. 27, 1979, under the Justice Systems Improvement Act of 1979. Their goal is to: “collect, analyze, publish, and disseminate information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and …
Law.gov would be bold experiment in one-stop shopping for legal research
Have you heard about Law.gov? No? Well then, let me tell you! Law.gov is a proposed repository for legal materials, open-sourced and open to the public. Included would be all primary materials of the United States and international governmental bodies. Law.gov would be a portal for authoritative local, state, national, foreign and international legal and legislative information. Basically, we are …
Small firms, big opportunities: Prepare now for hiring increase on the horizon
In the legal profession, more than 80 percent of all private practitioners work in law firms of 50 or fewer attorneys, and only 10 percent work in firms of more than 100 lawyers. Hiring at small (two-10 attorneys) and mid-sized (11-25 attorneys) firms accounted for 41.1 percent of the law firm jobs accepted nationally by the Class of 2009. More …