Vincent G. Rinn Law Library

Public Safety Codes Now At Public.Resource.Org's "Code City"

   

Two previous postings on this blog reported on the efforts of the organization Public_Resource.Org  to make federal court cases publicly available on their web site : Landmark Online Public Release of  Federal Cases, Activist Carl Malamud Challenges Westlaw With Online Project .

Most recently Public-Resource.Org has made critical state and municipal public safety codes from all  over the country, available on their website. These are privately published codes for such areas as fire,  plumbing and elevator codes. (See: article, "Surfin' Safari" by Robert Ambrogi, Nov. 2008, Law Technology News p.46 )

These codes are "incorporated by reference" into state and federal laws and regulations (not reproduced in the official source but made a part of it by making a reference to it). So while not republished by the government, they do become part of the law that the public is subject to and can have enforced against them. Many of these codes are only sold commercially by the issuing bodies for comparatively high prices. The publishers claim copyright on the standards that prevents free publication and use by others

The folks at Public.Resource.org have purchased these codes for close to $20,000, so they could post the content online. Copyright infringement claims are probably just around the corner for these activities  An informative and entertaining  video  with Carl Malamud about the issue involved in making such safety code content publicly available is on YouTube. There is also an amusing illustrated slide show on the same issues that can be accessed on FLICKR.

From the slide show, it appears that Malamud & Co. are relying on a 2002  federal appellate court  decision in Veeck v. Southern Building Code Congress International, Inc., Mr. Veeck had purchased the building codes of two Texas towns which he then posted to his non-commercial website, RegionalWeb"  The court  Reversed the district court's judgment against Peter Veeck, and Remanded with instructions to dismiss SBCCI's claims. The appeal to the US Supreme Court was denied certiorari in 2003. See the article : Not All Laws Are Free: The Importance of the Veeck Case, Searcher Vol. 10 No. 2 — February 2002 , for a good analysis of the issues involved.

Are Grammar Snobs Great Big Meanies ? - Guide to Style Guides

An article by Jill Koch Hayford, an associate professor of legal writing at Marquette University Law School, in the Nov. 2008 Wisconsin Lawyer Magazine, provides a useful overview of writing style guides. She covers general guides and also law-specific ones. Two grammar podcasts (!) are also reviewed. "To help you choose, the author describes the strengths and weaknesses of several reputable style guides."

C.A.L.L. Meeting Hears From Dean VanZandt re. New 2 Year Law Program

This past Thursday at the Chicago Association of Law Libraries business meeting, Dean David E. Van Zandt of the Northwestern University Law School, was the guest speaker on their new 2 years law  degree which is scheduled to start in the fall of 2009. The shorter program became  possible in 2004, when the American Bar Association lifted a requirement that law degrees follow six semesters of  nstruction. While he addressed this particular program, he made it clear that it was only part of a much broader re-examination and reforming of the curriculum that was implemented after an ambitious survey carried out to discover what core competencies employers of law graduates were actually looking for, at law firms, government and non-profits.
( Many of these points were also covered in a National Law Journal article by Dean Van Zandt, Stress core competencies )

This appears to be the case at the two other law school that already have a 2 year program in place, the University of Dayton Law school which stared in 2005 and Southwestern Law School, in Los Angeles. The Northwestern survey revealed that while the traditional skills in legal writing and analysis are fundamental for successful law practice, they are not sufficient to address all the other areas that working lawyers are called upon to be proficient in. Some of the key areas that Dean Van Zandt mentioned were : teamwork; communication both in drafting legal documents and successfully ommunicating with clients; quantitative skills in accounting and statistics; business strategic thinking; project management; and cross-cultural sensitivity.

At the University of Dayton, borrowing best practices from the medical and business school models was the basis of restructuring their law school programs including offering their 2 year program. This includes  using much more experiential and  simulated experiences such as the "virtual law firm", to enhance and accelerate student learning. The grand daddy of the 2 year programs at Southwestern Law School, actually began in 1974 with the impetus of a large federal grant from the Fund for the Improvement of  Post-Secondary Education. The program also takes advantage of simulations like the "teaching law  office" and having students learn by working to solve hypothetical problems. The Southwestern  2 year program has already graduated over 1000 successful alumni since its creation.

Part of the reassessment of law school curriculum as evidenced by the development of  2 year programs seems to be the perception that the third year of most law school programs is "inefficient" since by that stage most law students already have jobs lined up and may be less interested in school and grades. Some school have responded to that perception by "by offering more externships, study- broad programs and legal clinics to give real-world experience during that third year."
(See Fast-Tracking Law School, By Kristina Dell , Time Magazine )

While the development of the 2 year law school program certainly opens up a new market of highly qualified and motivated applicants that  any law school would appreciate, its origins and continued adoption are probably more related  to the continuing re-examination of legal education in the U.S.

Free Trial for DePaul Users: Lawinfochina

DePaul faculty, students, and staff interested in Chinese legal issues now have access to a free trial of Lawinfochina, China's counterpart to Westlaw and Lexis, through December 13, 2008.  This includes access to English translations of major legislation, treaties, and cases (as well, for those literate in Chinese, as their much more extensive resources in that language).  More information here.  Access Lawinfochina  (with a valid Campus Connect username and password) via the following link:

http://library.depaul.edu/checkurl.aspx?address=http://www.lawinfochina.com

Testimony of Dr. Eric Camayd-Frexias speaking at Symposium re. ICE workplace raid in Postville, Iowa

Tommorow the DePaul Center for Public Interest Law (CPIL) will be co-sponsoring the 3rd Annual Vincentian Public Interest Law Symposium:  Immigration Raids, Due Process, and the Separation of Powers:
Implications from Postville and Beyond

One of the important featured speakers will be Dr. Eric Camayd-Freixas, a professor at Florida International University and a certified interpreter for the federal courts. Dr. Camayd will discuss what he witnessed during the adjudication of the more than 300 undocumented workers detained during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) workplace raid in Postville, Iowa this past summer. Dr. Camayd has become a vocal critic of ICE workplace raids and is currently trying to build a coalition to stop raids. He detailed the injustices he witnessed in an essay that circulated the immigration legal community and was later published by the New York Times. In July, Dr. Camayd testified before the House Committee on the Judiciary about the injustices that took place in Postville.

For those attending the event or for those who can not, but would like to follow what Dr. Camayd-Frexias has written and testified about his experience in Postville, here are links to his essay and to his testimony before Congress:

Interpreting after the Largest ICE Raid in US History: A Personal Account
Erik Camayd-Freixas, Ph.D.
Florida International University, June 13, 2008

Statement  of  DR. Erik Camayd-Freixas, Federaly  Certified Interpreter at  The  U.S. District  Court  For  The Northern District  of Iowa Regarding  a Hearing on  “THE ARREST, PROSECUTION, AND CONVICTION OF 297 UNDOCUMENTED WORKERS IN POSTVILLE, IOWA, FROM MAY 12 TO 22, 2008”

Before  The  U.S. House Committeee on the Judiciary,  Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security  and International Law, July 24, 2008

Rinn Law Librarian Mark Giangrande a Contributing Author to New Elsevier Book On Explosives Detection

A new book from Elsevier entitled, "Aspects of Explosives Detection", edited by Maurice Marshall and Jimmie Oxley, is mostly a detailed and sophisticated technical text aimed at law enforcement and homeland security professionals. Most of the chapter contributors are  academic researchers, private company reps, along with input of staff from a couple government labs.

So one may wonder what the last chapter co-authored by Mark Giangrande and Gil Sapir, entitled,"Constitutional Aspects of Search and Seizure", is doing in this very technical collection. It is the longest chapter in the book. So one may assume that its presence is meant to provide the legal and constitutional context that the users of all this technology should be aware of, as they go about applying it in various real-life situations.

As the preface mentions, after several major terrorist attacks that highlighted the dangers of concealed explosives. New detection techniques and surveillance methodologies have been developed to confront these threats. But as one of the  basic principles of DePaul's own International Weapons Control Center , states "...lawyers have a crucial role to clarify and strengthen the legal rules pertaining to preventing catastrophic terrorism and proliferation, and, if prevention fails, responding to an attack. By joining the planning process, lawyers can help harmonize the pursuit of security with the preservation of civil liberties." It is in this spirit that we in the law school can especially appreciate, Mr. Giangrande's and Mr. Sapir's contribution to this collection.

Plum Book Now Available Online From U.S. Government Printing Office

The 2008 edition of the United States Government Policy and Supporting Positions, commonly known as the Plum Book, contains information re.thousands of Federal civil service leadership and support positions in the legislative and executive branches of the Federal Government that may be subject to noncompetitive appointment,nationwide.

The digital version is available on GPO Access. It has been made available in its entirety, as a single PDF file. GPO has refined the 2008 Plum Book by adding bookmarks to it and optimizing it for the web. The report is also available as a collection of smaller PDFs arranged in a browse table based on the Plum Book's table of contents. You can download entire chapters, or just information on individual commissions, councils, corporations, departments, offices, etc.
(Source: "2008 Plum Book Update", E-mail from GPO)

Nonprofit Law Podcast - Guide to the Laws Impacting Nonprofits

"The nonprofit law podcast is a weekly show highlighting legal issues facing nonprofits. Hosted by Tim Mooney, an attorney with over a decade of experience in nonprofit law, this entertaining and informative program helps staff, officers and directors of nonprofits to understand the laws that impact their organizations."

Recent podcasts :

NLP #47: The Obama Administration & Nonprofits
look for federal seed money leverages private sector funding

Nonprofit Law Podcast #46: Charitable Receipts
IRS happy to create problems for charities that fail to provide them

Nonprofit Law Podcast #45: Election Season
Campaign finance laws were thankfully overturned, and here’s why…

From the Baseball Diamond to the Corner Office - Sabermetrics in Recruiting

In a late Summer podcast of Lawyer2Lawyer , entitled "Recruiting at Law Firms: A Recruiter and a Law Student's Perspective,  co-host J.Craig Williams interviewed  two 3L law students and a recruiter from a large law firm. Among the issues discussed beyond grades, writing skills and practical experience, were the intangibles that firms attempt to assess, usually in the interviewing process. As one of the students said, it is looking at your personality to see how you will fit into the firm environment and culture, and how well you will  work with others. The recruiter said that trying to assess these other factors is a difficult process that is really more of an art than a science.

A recent reseach study by by Kerma Partners and the Redwood Think Tank (part of LexisNexis) attempts to provide the tools to make this process more scientific by drawing on a technique employed in major league baseball by the Oakland Athletics to identify and recruit more productive players. In baseball, the method is called Sabermetrics. It was described in the 2003 book Moneyball : The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael M. Lewis . In which the conventional wisdom and previous statistical measurements are jettisoned for "more empirical gauges of player performance to field a team that could compete successfully against richer competitors."

Applying this method to a  25 US law firm sample, researchers tried to identify specific "success factors" among attorneys that would predict greater productivity, retention and contribution to the bottom line. They say that some of the factors and their impact are counterintuitive. But that the presence of more than three of five success factors can  lead to big differences, both in average productivity and average tenure.

What each of these factors are, is not disclosed in the summary of findings. If the predictive power of these factors derived from successful techniques in baseball, holds up, law firms, law schools and career guidance centers will probably need to acquire a copy of the final product to better inform each side of the legal recruiting process.

DePaul Law Grad, Judge M. Carol Pope Appointed to Illinois Appellate Court

Judge M. Carol Pope graduated with honors from DePaul University College of Law in 1979. While there, she was the Law Review lead articles editor. The Illinois Supreme Court has assigned the Eighth Judicial Circuit judge, to the Illinois Appellate Court, Fourth Judicial District. The assignment is effective December 1, 2008 until further order of the Court. ( Source IL Courts press release )

According to a November 2 news story  by Ann Gorman  in the THE STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER, "She was the first woman elected Menard County State’s Attorney, serving from 1984 to 1991. And she was the first woman to serve as circuit judge in the Eighth Judicial Circuit, having been appointed by the Illinois Supreme Court in 1991, elected in 1992 and retained in 1998 and 2004."

With the current appointment she also becomes the first woman from the 8th Judicial Circuit and Menard County to be assigned to the Fourth District Appellate Court.