Vincent G. Rinn Law Library

"Practical Law Company" From U.K. May Lessen Theory/Practice Gap in U.S.

A recent article in our own local CALL Bulletin ( Chicago Association of Law libraries) about new legal research instruction, mentioned a resource that was unfamiliar to me. Its rather prosaic name was "The Practical Law Company" (PLC).  Apparently, this  company has been doing business in the legal community of the United Kingdom for nearly 20 years. But only launched its operations in the U.S. this past December.

The "practical" in its name implies that it would be directed at the actual practice of law rather than theoretical or academic explorations of legal topics. Given the growing critique of much of US law school education as being too disconnected from the knowledge and skills needed to be a practicing attorney. One could assume that introducing access to  this resource in law schools, might be one attempt to remedy this perceived imbalance.

The online resources produced by the PLC's own expert staff are designed specifically for transactional attorneys. One author describes the Practical Law Company this way, "PLC is the UK's pre-eminent provider of legal know-how, transactional analysis and market intelligence for business lawyers." The material is developed and kept current by  by their own attorney editors who have practiced at top law firms and law departments.  A majority of AmJur 200 law firms subscribe to PLC.

With an excellent reputation and large market share in the UK, PLC has decided to expand their particular services to the U.S. market. To meet the level and qualitiy of services expected by clients, PLC  invested over a year and a half preparing content for its U.S. Launch. The main areas that PLC is concentrating on are Corporate & Securities , Finance, Labor and Employment and Intellectual Property.

They believe that there is a market here too, for their brand of  'outsourced knowledge management'  for  completing a variety of transactions and "getting the deal done".  As their web site states, "We go beyond primary law and research. We take the expertise of our team and distill it in a way that actually helps you get your work done. Nobody in the US does what we do. Period. "

That is not to concede that the major US-based online legal services, LexisNexis, Westlaw, Bloomberg Law have not provided resources geared specifically to transactional attorneys' work :

"Lexis Transactional Advisor, designed for lawyers who work on transactional law. Transactional Advisor helps you analyze strategies, prepare for and perform due diligence, stay on top of compliance issues, draft documents and more—all from a single online location for various practice areas."

"With Westlaw, you can review authoritative documents drafted by top law firms, find and complete official forms electronically," via Westlaw Form Builder, Model Documents. Many treatises and practice guides are available. Financial and investment analyst reports and extensive Company Profiles are also provided.

Bloomberg's  "DealMaker contains deal news, editorial commentary, practice notes, legal treatises, deal timelines, checklists and a fully searchable EDGAR database. It also contains browseable and searchable model agreements, forms and publicly available documents."  With its recent acquisition, Bloomberg also provides  "access to BNA's Corporate Practice Series Portfolios, which include in-depth analysis of areas of interest to corporate law practitioners, texts of relevant laws, worksheets that contain forms and checklists, and subject bibliographies."

However, the exclusive focus on transactional work  and high level of expertise they devote to their products may over time, eclipse the  transactional offerings from the traditional U.S. providers.

 Most of what The Practical Law Company does, seems directed at actual practitioners and at new associates who need to quickly get up to speed in a practice area. However, as with the big three use providers, marketing begins in the law schools. Exposure there can "imprint" a particular service on students who then continue using the service in their jobs after school. PLC is  approaching law schools to acquaint law students with their products and possibly also provide missing career information for students considering practicing transactional law.

The terms are very attractive, as in "Free".  "The free account includes: Unlimited access to our online legal know-how services while matriculated and until graduation (law students) or while affiliated with a law school (faculty and staff), plus full training and support.

Potential benefits for law student are described  this way : "The law school home page for PLC has a link to a “Survival Guide” which includes over “50 step-by-step corporate, securities and finance resources to give you the tool to ace summer assignments.” The home page also links to “Interview Survival Guide” designed to quickly bring students up to speed “in the basics of corporate, securities and finance practice” to “[g]et the edge in interviews with your knowledge of deal trends and market practice.”

From a quick Google search, it appears that these law schools are at least exploring access to PLC for their students : University of Chicago, Loyola University Chicago  School Of Law, Brooklyn Law School, Cornell Law School, Roger Williams University School of Law.

While these benefits may seem a bit thin compared to what practitioners get out of PLC's resources, exposure to and knowledge of such resources can probably help correct that  practice imbalance identified in the opening of the post.

 

 

Library Of Congress & Government Printing Office Create Congressional Record App

 At the request of the House Administration Committee,U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) has collaborated with the Library of Congress to created an iPad app. The new app  provides access to the daily edition of the Congressional Record dating from January 4, 1995. The app uses CR files and associated metadata provided by GPO.

Data presented by the app has been provided by the Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, and the Government Printing Office.

    

   

The app allows users to:

*  Browse editions of the Congressional Record by date.
*  Perform keyword searches within individual documents or sections within documents.
*  Identify the latest bills and resolutions considered daily on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
*  Identify the latest bills, resolutions, treaties, and nominations considered daily on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
*  Save documents to your preferred iPad PDF reader.
*  Share documents via email.

 link for the new app   or you can search in the iPad App Store for "The Congressional Record."

Law Library Computer Techie Moving on to Internet Startup

The  Rinn law library is losing the services of the very able computer technical assistant and Depaul student, Neil Dahlke. But our loss will be a gain both for Neil and for the very recently launched internet startup called. MentorMob He will be joining a current staff of a dozen and will be working on the look and  feel and accessibility of the startup's website.

Founded in 2010, MentorMob was launched as a startup two months ago. Using the wikipedia social sourcing model, MentorMob seeks to organize and curate the great wealth of learning and how-to content available on the open internet.Some of the curation will be directed at breaking down instruction into a step-by-step sequence that can be tailored to users with different learning styles. Shane Greenstein, a professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, finds that  MentorMob recognizes “different roles for the same contributor, in some contexts as a mentor and in another as learner."

"MentorMob’s learning modules are called Learning Playlists that users can view at their own pace without registering for an account. Any registered user can create new playlists or add to, comment on, or re-order the steps in existing Playlists. Presently, content in each Playlist comes from the web in the form of articles, videos, slides and other media forms. "These Playlists are created by you !

MentorMob has been Beta tested by faculty at Columbia College in Chicago for a course and student organizations. Beyond users on the internet the MentorMob developers hope that their platform can  provide "collaborative learning (for students) and creating lesson plans (for teachers)". They are also currently partnered with organizations, like Wilton Brands, a billion dollar arts & crafts company,  who use MentorMob’s platform to organize their training content (videos, text, etc). 

MentorMob has been working off of  bootstrap funding and is is seeking additional funding. The plan is to support the site with targeted advertising and in the future to get customers to use MentorMob for corporate training programs and universities. Getting there is going to require a lot of marketing at this stage. Neil our former techie will have his work cut out for him.

However, as, Vince Leung, MentorMob co-founder,  says "But if MentorMob can grab the attention of the curating masses and find loyal users like Wikipedia diehards, we think they have a very promising business model."

Best of luck to Neil and to MentorMob !

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Sources :

"We Want To Be The Pandora Of Learning"

Startup MentorMob Co-Founder Talks About Its Place in Education

Featured Startup Pitch: MentorMob—Crowdsourcing online education and learning through ‘Learning Playlists’

 

"By the Academic Community, For the Academic Community" - Project Muse Assumes Leadership with New Multi-format Platform

Project MUSE founded in 1993 is  an online database of thousands of current and back issues of peer-reviewed humanities and social sciences journals. Hundreds of libraries subscribe to its service. On January 1, 2012, Project Muse went live with a new platform that will incorporate academic publisher eBooks in addition to the traditional journals, with the promise of even other types of content in the future.

The arena for this type of enhanced access had  worthy contenders like Oxford University Press, JSTOR, and Cambridge. And The University Press eBook Consortium (UPeC) was looking for a partner to provide functionality and host a potentially large collection of 20,000 eBooks.

Project Muse had initially explored partnering with commercial eBook vendors like as eBrary, NetLibrary, and Electronic Book Library (EBL). But inspired by some of its membership decided to create their  own multi-format model that would “Do for e-books what MUSE does for journals.”

It was decided that Project Muse would undertake this project with the help of the Johns Hopkins University Libraries and have something that was "By the Academic Community, For the Academic Community". Part of the motivation was to "...help save the scholarly monograph from extinction as the costs of print book publishing continue to increase in the face of diminishing sales."

Project Muse already had arrangement with 28 publishers for eBook content for the new platform.  At this time, an organization known as the The University Press eBook Consortium (UPeC)  was looking for a partner to provide functionality and host a potentially large collection of 20,000 eBooks.

Even though they were developing their own system, Project Muse joined the bidding for this solicitation. The competition was tough. But given Project Muse's expertise and creation of their own platform, along with adjustments to the pricing model and its willingness to hire additional staff, UPeC selected them as their partner. As the winner for the Request for Proposal, Project Muse now would have 66 publishers to contribute eBooks to their developing platform.

The new collection has been named University Press Content Consortia (UPCC)  indicating that in the future, more that journals and EBooks will be hosted on the new platforms. Plans are to also "...to include reference works, datasets, multimedia, annotation, collaboration and commenting features."

So what began as an innovative individual effort by Project Muse, has become  a major platform that can provide what more than 1000 librarians surveyed by UPeC said they wanted : "...the same unlimited downloading privileges that existed for journals. They wanted limited to no DRM.  They wanted ownership."

UPCC Books Frequently Asked Questions

Tutorials for New MUSE Platform Now Available

Searching on the New MUSE

Browsing on the New MUSE

Teddy Gets His Own "Presidential Library" - Online

Unlike modern presidents, Theodore Roosevelt  does not have a physical presidential library that houses his personal and presidential papers. Such materials are in various locations around the country. However, a staff of historians, librarians, educators and administrators at The Theodore Roosevelt Center, based at Dickinson State University in North Dakota, are creating a comprehensive digital archive of these materials.  The Theodore Roosevelt Digital Collection was unveiled on December 8.

The digital library will  include correspondence to and from Roosevelt, diary entries, notes, political cartoons, scrapbooks, newspaper columns and magazine articles by and about Roosevelt, speeches, and photographs. Users can also view film clips and listen to audio recordings.

The largest collections that the Center is drawing from, for scanning, are the Harvard College Library  and the Library of Congress. But there will also be records of materials from multiple historic sites, a national park, and the Theodore Roosevelt Center's materials, from their own Theodore Roosevelt Centeniall Symposium that featured speakers from all over the country.

The Center also hosts an annual Theodore Roosevelt Symposium as well as special Roosevelt-related events, promotes Roosevelt scholarship, and offers student internships. The goal of the new Theodore Roosevelt Digital Collection is to make his legacy more readily accessible to scholars and schoolchildren, enthusiasts and interested citizens.

The Gift of Holiday Traditions: Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and Christmas

This is the title of a National Endowment for the Humanities web site that is directed at teachers to provide information and questions for their students, to explore the Winter holidays many of us observe. But the historical and cultural insights presented, can be of value to any interested person who wants to better understand their own holiday practices and to also discover and appreciate those of other traditions.

As the title indicates, the text and links deal with practices that are centered in the African-American, Jewish and Christian traditions. But as historical investigation indicates, the early Pagans provided the bases for some of our current day rituals and practices, as well.

The link to "Christmas History and Christmas Traditions  -  Legends of Our Christmas Characters", shows the different influences from various countries on such chracters of Christmas as : Father Christmas (England), Kris Kringle (Germany), St. nicholas (Russia), Pere Noet (France), Santa Lucia (Sweden), La Befana (Italy), Jack Frost (Scadanavia) .

In the "Naughty & Nice: A History of The Holiday Season " link there is  a discussion of the history of Christmas in the slave south. Under the section "Naughty & Nice: Online Resources " there are more detailed explorations of each of the three major December Holidays.

While the celebration of these holidays usually highlights goodwill and sharing, there are rough spots where ideology, religion and politics come together. Where else but in court cases !  The "Christmas Wars": Holiday Displays and the Federal Courts", summarizes some of the contention in the U.S. over holiday religious displays.

 It is recommended that this last text, be read in the New Year after the season "Of peace on earth, good will to men!", has been enjoyed :-)

 

New 3-D "Printing" Technology May Re-shape CSI Procedures

While watching a couple television programs on PBS, I became aware of an amazing new technology that reminded me of the Star Trek replicator that Captain Picard would use to order up a cup of tea or a meal.

One was an archeology program where the archeologist had a very old and fragile skull that he and other scientists wanted to examine. Such multiple uses could result in irreprable damage to the fossil. What the scientist did next, was the amazing part. He used a 3-D scanner to create a digital file of the skulls shape and then using special software and a device that most resembles a printer, proceeded to create a detailed 3-D replica of the found skull that could be examined by many other scientist without risking the original find.

On a more prosaic level, this new technology was also demonstrated on the program, "This Old House". On this program the technology was used to construct a model of what a restored and enhanced old colonial house would look like after all the renovation. In this case, not only the original house was depicted but also the future additions to be made to the colonial house.

This new technology is called "3-D Printing" or "additive manufacturing." "Basically, it works using inkjet technology, and fine powder such as plaster, resin and cornstarch are used to build 3D models layer by layer in cross-sections." "...the object is reproduced by stacking up thin sheets of heated plastic or metal (.10 millimeter thick) or via thin layers of metal or plastic dust...." The finished product is  a hard plastic or metal detailed 3-D object  you can hold in your hand.

While there are many potential uses for this new technology, the author of an article from the issue of "Law Technology News", prognosticates how it might find uses for Forensic Pathology,  where "...3D-printed copies of original physical evidence play the same role in trial and post-conviction review as digital copies of paper documents do today."  "As Ken Strutin prognosticates in the New York Law Journal, "The evidence room of the future might be stored on a hard drive and reproduced as needed."  New rules of evidence will probably be needed to deal with this new form of evidence.

Other legal implication would involve intellectual property and patents. The author fears that the CAD ( Computer-aided design ) files used in the process might be presumed to be infringing when made available on the internet, "... in the way that BitTorrent file transfer protocol has taken a hit from copyright holders..." He also does point to a few examples of criminals using 3-D printing for their own purposes.

It will also be interesting to see how the patents for this technology and processes are handled under the recently passed " America Invents Act", signed  into law by President Barack Obama  Sept. 16. The article author suspects that there are "host of intellectual property issues" that this emerging technology will generate as more applications are developed.

Meanwhile, aboard the starship Enterprise, this new "additive manufacturing" may not replicate Scotty's bottle of Scotch. But it can probably make a copy, good enough to fool him for a while.

     Video demonstration of ZPrinter from ZCorporation

 

New PACER Training Web Page Made Available

Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) is an online service of the United States Judiciary that provides case and docket information from Federal appellate, district and bankruptcy courts. While the growth of PACER accounts appears to be very robust based on the findings of the "United States Courts Electronic Public Access Program - PACER Service Assessment (Sept. 2010).

PACER management appears to be doing more marketing and outreach recently. It is unclear whether this might be a response to re-occuring criticism that the Judiciary keeps much of their "public" information behind what is termed a "paywall". Or the occassional inquiries from the likes of Senator Lieberman about how the PACER generated funds are being spent. See:     

 Lieberman: Why Do We Have to Pay for PACER?   

 DOJ Pays $4M a Year to Read Public Court Documents  

Use RECAP To Bypass Court Document PACER Paywall

Perhaps just like any entity that sells a service, PACER may just want to increase the usability of their service and expand its use into new markets ? Another graph from the PACER assessment about user constiuencies can be instructive.

While 75% of the users are lawyers and litigants, there are some other sectors that could be making greater use of the service. Several of the other sectors identified as 5% or less, could probably be grown by a more user -friendly site, expanded marketing, and accessible training for  PACER.

The Office of the US Courts appears to me moving on all these fronts :

• Released the Case Locator, formerly the U.S.
Party/Case Index (March 2010)
• Increased the fee waiver to $10 per quarter
(March 2010)
• Redesigned the PACER website, pacer.gov
(May 2010)

And most recently have introduced a web site that provides basic orientation and training for PACER, using a subset of actual court filings for users to work with.

PACER Training Site (District Court CM/ECF Version 4.2) - Document Filing System

"Welcome to the PACER training site. Use this site to learn how to use PACER. The site is free of charge and has been populated with real case data from New York Western District Court from cases filed between 1/1/2007 and 7/1/2007."

The page provides suggested searches to try using the tabbed functions at the top of the page. Exeprimenting with the results from the training subset can orient a new user to the PACER interface.

It is also suggested that potential users download the "PACER Service Center User Manual" to familiarize themselves with the service.

 

 

 

 

"GPO Access" Goes Archive Only

Since the early 1990s, GPO ( Government Printing Office ) provided "GPO Access" on the internet, a service that has provided free electronic access to a wealth of important information products produced by the Federal Government. But over the years, GPO had failed to update its technological abilities to keep pace with changes in the information dissemination environment. The development of new technologies and new demands necessitated the development of a new information management and distribution system for government information.

The new system,”FDsys”, Federal Digital System, has been in development for several years.  FDsys, should provide GPO with the technical and management capabilities to not only catch up the changes in it's environment  but to aggressively move forward in the 21 Century. The two systems have been running in parallel, as data was migrated to FDsys.  FDsys became the U.S. Government Printing Office's (GPO’s) system of record for online Federal Government information in December 2010. GPO is now in the process of a phased shutdown of GPO Access.

As of November 2011, GPO Access will be available only as an archive, with no new information added to it. While GPO Access will no longer be updated, it will remain accessible to the public. In the final phase, GPO Access will shut down permanently and will no longer be available for public use. A date has not yet been established for the final shutdown of GPO Access; however, it is slated for fiscal year 2012.

Libraries should take this opportunity (if they have not already done so) to review their Web sites, presentations, brochures, and other materials that reference GPO Access and work to update or replace these materials.

View instructions on how to create links to FDsys content   ( For information on the URL structure for each collection, visit the Sample Searches and URLs page for the collections listed on this page)

 

Historians' Law Suit Gets Release of Nixon Grand Jury Files

In the federal court case, of In Re Petition of Stanley Kutler, et al', filed by Stanley Kutler, Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin, the American Historical Association, the American Society for Legal History, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society of American Archivists, the Court was asked to unseal the transcripts of President Richard M. Nixon’s grand jury testimony during June 23 and 24, 1975.

According to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) press release, the Watergate Special Prosecution Force (WSPF) had decided that it  was necessary to question former President Richard M. Nixon in connection with various investigations being conducted by by the Special prosecutor at the time. According to courts documents, the agreement to take President Nixon’s testimony in connection with its open investigations, was conducted in a manner that would avoid litigation over such issues as executive privilege.

"On June 23 and 24, 1975, President Nixon testified for eleven hours before two members of the grand jury and several WSPF attorneys. Afterward, a full transcript of the proceeding was read to the remaining members of the grand jury in Washington, DC."

Traditionaly grand jury testimony is to remain secret. But the rule of grand jury secrecy is not without exceptions. After considering several factors raised by the petitioners and the government, the judge decided that :

"Taken together, the Court finds that the relevant factors weigh in favor of unsealing President Nixon’s grand jury testimony and the WSPF’s associated materials, subject to NARA’s review procedures. The special circumstances presented here—namely, undisputed historical interest in the requested records—far outweigh the need to maintain the secrecy of the records. The Court is confident that disclosure will greatly benefit the public and its understanding of Watergate without compromising the tradition and objectives of grand jury secrecy".

As a result of this ruling, the National Archives opened 26 files from its Records of the Watergate Special Prosecution Force (WSPF) collection including transcripts of President Nixon’s grand jury testimony of June 23-24, 1975. There are some redactions made for the privacy of still-living persons and for national security.

The materials may be obtained at the following websites:

Government Printing Office (GPO)
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