Vincent G. Rinn Law Library

“Bad Law Bot” Released by Fastcase

It’s not a mechanical robot nor an online app that behaves badly. It’s a new software feature that will  help identify negative history when using the Fastcase, legal research service. It is an enhancement of their existing citator, “Authority Check”. The Fastcase website describes “the bot” as an algorithm applied to the “Big Data” of thousands of cases. That’s why it’s “a bot”.

Fastcase is the first to offer such a service for free to its users.  Casemaker has been providing negative history through its Casecheck citator, but  at an additional cost.

While “Bad Law Bot” is a welcome addition to Fastcase functionality. According to the posting from “Internet for lawyers”,  Fastcase cautions that “"The new Bad Law Bot feature helps users identify negative treatment of the cases [sic] judicial opinions. However, because it only reports what cases say in citations, researchers should rely on Bad Law Bot as an aid to identifying negative history, not as a comprehensive guide."

The folks at “Internet For Lawyers",  are providers of continuing legal education programs for legal professionals on  how to use the Internet and technology. They  have prepared a white paper that  compares the  three of the most popular free and low - cost case law databases (Google Scholar, Fastcase, Casemaker) and their citator services, with the more expensive databases (LexisNexis, WestlawNext, and Bloomberg) and their citator services.

This valuable comparison by Carole A. Levitt JD, MLS and Mark Rosch, can be found at this link from Stanford Law School.

"Congress.gov" to Eventually replace "Thomas" Legislative Info Website

"THOMAS was launched in January of 1995, at the inception of the 104th Congress. The leadership of the 104th Congress directed the Library of Congress to make federal legislative information freely available to the public. Since that time THOMAS has expanded the scope of its offerings..."

 

While Thomas has served the research needs of many users over the years. The time has come to develop a next-generation legislative information system. Congress.gov , is that system that will over time, incorporate the best of Thomas plus adding new functionality.

The Library of Congress, in collaboration with the U.S. Senate, House of Representatives and the Government Printing Office (GPO) are working together to build this new resource. The beta site was unveiled in September 2012.

Plans are to make finding and using legislative information more intuitive, comprehensive and accessible than the existing system. Some of the new enhancements include :

•    Simultaneously search all content across all available years
•    Ability to narrow and refine search results
•    Easier identification of bill progress/status
•    Effective display for mobile devices
•    A landing page for each piece of legislation with links to key information
•    For bills from 2001- present, links to Congressional Budget Office "Cost Estimates"
•    A popular introduction to each step in the Legislative Process from introduction to presidential signing or veto                                  

"The Library is releasing  Congress.gov  as a beta site to enable a period of time for collecting user feedback and refining functionality while other content is incorporated. Other data, such as the Congressional Record, committee reports, nominations, treaties and communications, will be incorporated over time in a planned, prioritized order. The Library anticipates Congress.gov will operate as a beta site for approximately one year as this work is completed. During that time, both THOMAS and LIS will continue to operate as usual. "

Trusting Online Law - UELMA Has A Way To GO

In a recent posting on the blog of the Canadian legal news web site, Slaw, Judith Gaskell, former Director of the Law Library of Congress and former Director of the DePaul Rinn Law library, wrote about the present status of UELMA ( Unifrom Elecronic Materials Act ) .

UELMA was drafted in response to a request from the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), following the AALL’s 2007 National Summit on Authentication of Digital Legal Information. She reports on it's introduction into the legislatures of several states and it's adpotion by two of these. She also briefly descibes the basic requirements under the act.

Working through the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State laws ( Uniform Law Commission ), advocates develop uniform state laws that can eventually be introduced to states for their adoption. Much work and discussion goes into the creation of such an act. And much publicizing and lobbying is required to gain adoption. UELMA is only five  pages long. But the fact that the Commission has dedignated UELMA as  a "uniform law", attests to the importance it attaches to the issue.

“The Uniform Electronic Legal Material Act establishes an outcomes-based, technology-neutral framework for providing online legal material with the same level of trustworthiness traditionally provided by publication in a law book.” The Act itself covers three critical areas: authentication, preservation and public access."

Sections 5 and 6 of the Act cover authentication. Section 5 requires the state to insure that  the record received by the user is unaltered from the official published record . Section 6 ceates a presumption that the authenticated record is accurate and can only be challenged by a preponderance of the evidence. Section 8 deals with public access.

The need for legislation like UELMA became clear as more and more states began publishing legal information electronically and also beginning to discontinue their print publications containing this information. For the purposes of public information and for use in litigation, questions arose regarding the staus of such electronically-published materials. Could they be relied upon as accurate and official versions of the former hard copy sources ?

The application of UELMA in several states, that have introduced it, covers several main sources of legal information : the state constitution, statutes & codes, session laws, agency rules. But intermediate documents in the law-making process, such as bills, amendments and proposed rules are not included. Judicial opinions may also not be included , usually in defrence to the judicial branch, on separation of powers considerations.

Section 8 of the uniform act provides for permanent public access. However, given some of the language of this section there is room for  discretion in implementation by the states. The standards state that legal materials should be " reasonably available" and  would allow for the removal of such material under "reasonable conditions".

Under these standards the format and interface used to distribute the information online, could actually impede public access. Materials that are suppose to be retained permanently, could still be removed. Even fees for public access could be implimented under this wording.

There is another aspect of "public access" that was not meant to be part of UELMA but that is worth mentioning since it may become of increasing importance in the future. The federal government has been providing freely accessible data sets from many of its agencies for use by non-profit and for-profit entities, to use to create new applications and information products for the public and the marketplace.

UELMA was not written to address this secondary form of "public access" in the context of the states. Advocates of greater public access would hope that the  state agency or official named as the “official publisher”, according to the law, would be aware of and amenable to providing access to this type of data for reuse, as well as the traditional versions of the text of laws and regulations.

“FOIA Online” Improves Requests & Responses Via Technology & Cooperation

Back in Nov. 2008 , the organization OMB Watch called for an online FOIA (Freedom of Information Act ) web site that would allow submission of requests, track  the progress of the response by agencies and be able to search a collection of stored released responses.

Traditionally, submission and responses to FOIA requests from citizens and companies, had been conducted by submitting a written request to each agency and waiting to hear back whether the request would be fulfilled. If more than one agency had to review the proposed release, it could take a long time before even that happened. Also, there was no single place to search for previously released FOIA responses.

Last month, the OMB Watch recommendation came to fruition in the form of the FOIA Online, which was originally developed  by the Environmental Protection Agency ( EPA),  in partnership with the Department of Commerce and the National Archives and Records Administration, as the “FOIA Module”,  which was designed to deal with these shortcomings and provide significant new functionality for the producing agencies and the requesting end users.

Here are two slides from a Commerce Dept. Training document that concisely conveys what functions the new module provides for both :

At present FOIA Online provides processing tool for these agencies :

• Department of Commerce (except the US Patent and Trademark Office),
• Environmental Protection Agency,
• Federal Labor Relations Authority,
• Merit Systems Protection Board,
• National Archives and Records Administration - Office of General Counsel.

Users who wish to submit a request are encouraged to create an account that will allow them to :

• Track progress on all of your requests submitted through FOIAonline via a personal dashboard;
• Communicate directly with the agency at all points in the process;
• Have your contact information pre-populated in future requests;
• Receive notification when the status of your request has changed.

Hopefully, additional agencies will become participants in FOIA Online which is based on the “Shared Service” concept that helps eliminate waste and duplication and improve the effectiveness of technology solutions for government agencies and the public they are to serve.

 

Changing Environment Ends "Finding the Law" Textbook's Long Run

As Professor Robert Berring relates it, the "Finding the Law" textbook which he co-authored for  many  years, had a respected origin. But has been overtaken and  pushed to the sidelines by changes in technology, libraries,legal education, and the student population.

In 1897, Dean C.C. Langdell told the members of’ the Harvard Law School Association:  "We have. . . constantly inculcated the idea that the library is the proper workshop of professors and students alike; that it is to us all that the laboratories of the university are to the chemists and physicists, the museum of natural history to the zoologists, the botanical garden to the botanists."

It was in this academic environment that Professor Berring , along with Morris Cohen,  the renowned figure among late 20th-century law librarians and among the foremost legal bibliographers in the United States, co-authored "How to Find the Law" , 8th edition which came out in 1983.

 The book was almost eight hundred pages long and attempted to cover every aspect of legal bibliography. The Ninth edition which came out in 1989, added Kent Olson as co-author but was100 pages shorter. This book and "Fundamentals of Legal Research" by Professor Jacobstein and Mersky, were regarded as the preemminent reference works on American legal bibliography.

Professor Berring saw that there was a market for a paperbound abridged edition of the big book. He developed an abridged copy of How to Find the Law called, Finding the Law. Interestingly, Morris Cohen told Berring "...that he believed that there was value in what I suggested but that I was writing for law students that he did not understand, in a style that he could never embrace."

With Beth Edinger of the Boalt Hall Law School reference staff, Professor Berring  produced both the 10th and 11th editions. They tried to make the text readable and relevant.  However, the changed attitudes and expectations among law students that Morris Cohen was perceiving, seem to have caught up with even the new and improved versions of "Finding the Law".

As Professor Berring observes, "But students stopped reading books on research. All law schools had programs in Research and Writing, but the writing aspect waxed while the research component waned. If there are only going to be a few lectures on research, and the LEXIS and WESTLAW representatives are introducing the freely available Audis of research to each student, who is going to read a four hundred page book on building an engine? Would I have done so as a law student? "

"...The world of textbooks in general is in flux, but I do not see a role for a standard textbook on legal research in it. I continue to believe in the value of research instruction, but it will not come via the standard printed textbook. That day is gone...."

( Source : Finding the Law, R.I. P. , Bob Berring )

 

RSS Feeds Provide Current Chicago Municipal Code Changes

Chicago Municipal Code RSS Feeds From

Index Publishing Corporation

RSS is an easy way for you to keep up with news and information that’s important to you, and helps you avoid the conventional methods of browsing or searching for information on websites. Now the content you want can be delivered directly to you fast and reliably. This content is called a “feed.”

A variety of RSS Readers are available for different platforms. Some popular feed readers include Amphetadesk, Bloglines, FeedReader, Google Reader and NewsGator.

	Chicago Codes News Feed
	Recent Changes Feed
	Sustainable Chicago Feed

Examples of the three RSS Feeds :

 

Chicago Codes » news__________________________________________________________________

Judge Rejects Challenge to City’s Landmarks Ordinance 

 Chicago’s landmarks ordinance got a lift Wednesday when a Cook County judge dismissed claims that the law is unconstitutionally vague. Judge Sophia Hall sided with the city, frustrating a six-year campaign by landmarking opponents to nullify two landmark districts on the city’s north side.

 

  New Condo Vacation Rental Ordinance to be Introduced

Chicago’s vacation rental license, which was largely ignored and difficult to enforce, has been eliminated. In April, Mayor Rahm Emanuel proposed a consolidation that would reduce the number of business licenses by 60 percent to save retailers money and frustration. The vacation rental license was one of dozens targeted for elimination.

 

Sustainable Chicago Feed______________________________________________________________

 Retrofit Chicago

Any questions of Emanuel's environmental mettle were quelled recently with his announcement of the new Retrofit Chicago Commercial Building Initiative. The goal of the program is to launch retrofit projects in the private sector that reduce energy use by 20% over the next five years within 14 million SF of commercial building space in Chicago.

 

    A Decade of Model Green Building

This June, the Chicago Center for Green Technology turned ten years old. Hundreds of people came out to celebrate the successes of one of the country's premier green building educational facilities and to launch it toward the next ten years.

 

Chicago Codes » recent changes_______________________________________________________________________________

Through April 24, 2012Tuesday, May 15, 2012 1:56 PMThe Chicago City Council has made changes to the following sections of the Chicago Municipal Code. Added 4-280-160 Remedies Cumulative (Cable Communication) 13-20-555 Public Way Use Permits – Required (Building Inspections (Partial)) 13-20-630 Permit Rescission (Building Inspections (Partial)) 13-20-645 Procedure for Revoking or Rescinding a Permit (Building Inspections (Partial)) Repealed 4-280-130 Arbitration Provisions (Cable Communication) [...]

Through April 18, 2012Monday, May 14, 2012 10:10 AMThe Chicago City Council has made changes to the following sections of the Chicago Municipal Code. Added 1-4-170 Reference to Statutes (Code Adoption-Organization) 9-102-015 Definitions (Automated Red Light Camera Program) 2-112-235 Agreements for Health Screening and Diagnostic Services (Board of Health) 9-100-045 Notice of Violation – Automated Speed Enforcement System and Automated Traffic Law Enforcement [...]

______________________________________________________________________________________

HEINONLINE TRAINING GUIDES

Tim's Tricks:                       HeinOnline App                HeinOnline

10 Quick Tips for Using             User's Guide                 Searching  Guide 

Law Journal Library        MyHein User's Guide     Getting Started in                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

                                                                                                                       

 

"Regulation.gov" Improves Reviewing & Commenting On Proposed Federal Regs

Rulemaking is the policy-making process for Executive and Independent agencies of the Federal government. Agencies use this process to develop and issue new regulations.

The recently redesigned " regulations.gov " website has made changes that facilitate the ability of any member of the public to comment on  federal government regulations proposed by executive agencies. These changes are in furtherance of  the mandates contained in  presidential executive orders .

Executive Order 12866, "Regulatory Planning and Review," issued by President Clinton on September 30, 1993,  instructs   "...each agency should afford the public a meaningful opportunity to comment on any proposed regulation, which in most cases should include a comment period of not less than 60 days.  "

Executive Order 13563,"Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review" , issued on January 18, 2011 by  President Obama,  directs agencies   "To promote that open exchange, each agency, consistent with Executive Order 12866 and other applicable legal requirements, shall endeavor to provide the public with an opportunity to participate in the regulatory process. To the extent feasible and permitted by law, each agency shall afford the public a meaningful opportunity to comment through the Internet on any proposed regulation, with a comment period that should generally be at least 60 days. "

To further these requirements the new site attempts to :

• Enhance the ability of the public to submit and review comments on all supporting scientific and technical documents of the rulemaking docket

 • Increase public participation in the regulatory process with easier navigation, improved search and social media links to share regulatory information with others

It  includes features to help users understand the regulatory process, under the "Learn Tab". Easy access to searching by keyword and finding regulations with comments due soon and newly posted regulations are provided under the "Search Tab" . This tab also has  Improved layout of search results, filters and  a document spotlight.  The New "Browse Tab", features regulations grouped in 10 industry-related Categories and also provides for Browsing by hundreds of topics.

Integrated social media tools like "Regulations.gov Facebook" and a  revitalized Twitter page will help educate users and  allow the public to offer input on Regulations.gov features.

The site provides the text of the proposed regulations as they appear in the Federal Register :

Clicking on  "Submit a Comment ", provides the online form for entering your comment and some identification information  :

 

As the site mentions, comments can be a few sentences long, submitted by an individual, or can consist of detailed and lengthy submissions by interested organizations.  You can actually have the satisfaction of seeing your comment on the Regulations.gov site !

 

However, given that certain regulations may receive thousands of comments, a Federal agency may need several weeks to process and review them before they are posted to Regulations.gov.

The process is really very straight forward. You may want to give it a try, on an issue you care about.

"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."