Friday - we will close at 8pm
Saturday - we will close at 6pm

Printing and study facilities are available at the University Interim Library (by the parking structure) and in the new study space on the first floor of Nobili Hall (the tall building behind the Mission Church) until 10pm both days. (Their machines no longer accept disks, you must have a USB key/flash drive to print files.)

We will be open regular hours on Sunday, Oct. 21 (9am to Midnight) and anticipate being open regular hours next week.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

HeinOnline, one of the easiest ways to get law journals online, has made some enhancements to their database interface.  You can watch a short demo video to find out about these changes.

If you have used HeinOnline in the past you will appreciate the changes.  If you are new to HeinOnline, now is a good time to discover it.

 The library is pleased to announce that one of our employees, Michael Gillespie, is the successful candidate for the position of Head of Circulation.  He will be filling the vacancy made open by Lucio Ortiz, who left SCU to take a position in the Gilroy Public Library system. 

Michael has worked in the law library for the past year, overseeing the Circulation Department’s student workers.  He came to SCU after several years working in the library at UC-Santa Barbara.  His wife, Carrie, has recently been hired by the law school as Administrative Assistant to Dean Terman.  So when you see next see Michael at the Circulation desk, please congratulate him on his promotion.

This week on TortsProf Blog, academics, practitioners, and at least one judge have been submitting guest posts on the topic “What should be taught in torts?” Information about these and other recent postings on a variety of law blogs is noted in Juris Novis, Legal Headlines and News, an online aggregator created by Greg Smith.

An article by Linda Greenhouse in today’s New York Times notes a precipitous drop in the number of female clerks working for U.S. Supreme Court justices this term: “Women Suddenly Scarce Among Justices’ Clerks” (August 30, 2006). Although almost half of U.S. law school graduates in 2005 were women, there are only seven women among this year’s 37 Supreme Court clerks, half as many female clerks as there were last year at this time. A chart accompanying the Greenhouse article ranks Justices according to each one’s percentage of female clerks since the year 2000. A majority of Justice Breyer’s clerks since 2000 have been women, 15 out of 28. Forty-six percent of Justices Ginsburg and O’Connor’s clerks were women during the same period. Justice Scalia has had two female clerks since the 2000-2001 term.

My husband brought my attention to Richard Cauley’s blog, The Art of IP War.  Cauley is a partner in the Newport Beach law firm of Wang, Hartmann & Gibbs, and he specializes in (surprise!) patent litigation.  Read his blog for keen insights about the latest patent battles.

CALI’s Pre-Law Blog has been getting lots of mentions from other law school bloggers lately, so I wanted to put in my own plug for it.  Don’t be fooled by the blog’s name!  The name "Pre-Law Blog" might make you think that the blog only has information for those who are contemplating law school.  But there’s a lot of good material here for current law students as well (particularly first-years).  I particularly like the regular features on the latest podcasts from law school professors.

No, we haven’t hired new library staff.  SAM is a stand alone computer in the library’s CD-ROM area (near the first floor conference rooms).   SAM stands for: Software Accompanying Material.  This includes all computer diskettes that come with books available in the library.  Most of the computer files on SAM are forms, but some files also contain tables of contents, and a few are executable files.

SAM is very single-minded in its purpose.  Because it is the only computer that contains all these computer files, its access is limited to copying files from Windows 3.11 File Manager.  To use SAM you will have to bring a 3 ½” diskette with you.  You will also need the title or call number of the book that complements the software.  (For some titles, you may also want to have the form number, because hundreds of forms may be included on one diskette.)

Easy to use instructions are available in a binder near the computer.  Once you have copied your files you will need to go to another computer to view the forms, etc.  Most of the software to date was created for WordPerfect.  You can use the computers in the Toso and Ruffo labs, or bring the files home to use on your own computer.

As always, if you need help ask someone at Reference or Circulation.

Need some help researching for your Advocacy problem?

The following sessions have been set up to help you brush up your research process skills, answer questions regarding research strategy, and help you feel confident about your legal research abilities.

All sessions are 50 minutes in the Toso Lab in the Law Library.

Sign-up sheets are at the Reference desk, or call x4452, or email lawref@scu.edu to sign up.

Friday 8/25  12 noon and 5 pm

Monday 8/28  5pm

Tuesday 8/29 12 noon and 5 pm

Wednesday 8/30 12 noon and 5 pm

Thursday 8/31 12 noon and 5 pm

Students in the sections taught by Abriel, Ekern, El Kouri, Hardack, King, Rauch and Smith will have in-class libarry research sessions.  Students in these sessions are also welcome to attend the general sessions for further training.

Professor Vikram Amar has some interesting tips for first-years in his FindLaw column this week.  He makes his most insightful point here:

After law school, almost every lawyer serves clients and customers. A lawyer’s clients or customers may include individuals, businesses, government agencies and judges, in-house counsel, or (quite often) other lawyers, such as partners, within a practice group. Successful attorneys develop an effective customer-service mindset; the best lawyers are the ones whose clients or customers walk away the most satisfied.

Although perhaps it is not apparent, law students have clients and customers too - most particularly, we law professors, who are offered the students’ work products in the form of exams, papers and so on. Just as each customer or client in the real world may be looking for slightly different things, so too we law professors might not all react to or consume the same work product in the same way. Being able to quickly figure out what your client or customer is looking for, and to vary your style and approach accordingly, is the kind of skill the real world values, and the kind that should be developed from the beginning of law school.

As a former practicing attorney, I think it’s never too early for students to start thinking about practice management issues like customer service and marketing.  And Professor Amar makes a great point when he notes that, in a way, law professors are like the clients and partners that you will have to learn to please later on when you’re practicing law.  Like clients and partners, law professors all have distinctive pet peeves and preferences (I remember one supervising partner who freaked out each time an associate used "i.e." when he or she really should have used "e.g.").  It’s a good idea to find out about these predilections before you take the exam or turn in your final paper.  I know a lot of law students find it a bit maddening that law professors can take such different approaches to evaluating student work.  But a good portion of your professional life will be spent trying to tailor your work product to your clients, so it’s best to develop a strategy for coping with these idiosyncrasies now.

3L Epiphany continues to explore the impact of blogging on legal scholarship with this post, which lists law review articles that cite to blogs as well as the blogs cited most frequently by law review articles. 

The staff of American Law Reports has created two updates summarizing the decisions of the Supreme Court during its 2005-2006 term, including denials of petitions for cert.  The summaries include handy citations to the ALR annotations that cover the legal topics addressed in the Supreme Court decisions.  Part I of the summary is available at this link, and Part II can be found here. 

Heafey Headnotes was thrilled to find two blogs by our new SCU Law professor, Eric Goldman, during a recent Talk Digger search.  You can find Professor Goldman’s observations about Internet law and marketing at his Tech & Marketing Blog.  Goldman’s Observations Blog is a more eclectic compilation of thoughts on teaching law, moving to California, and the latest legal headlines. 

It happens all of the time when you’re cite-checking or researching a paper.  You need to track down a book or a periodical, and it isn’t in the Santa Clara collections.  You’ve tried LINK+, and you haven’t come up with anything.  You want to figure out if the item is available at another area library, but how do you do that quickly and easily without searching each library’s online catalog separately?  If you find yourself in this position, try the new WorldCat search page.  It allows you to search for books, journals, videos and magazines using the title, subject