An online supplement to Harvard's Civil Rights Civil Liberties Law Review
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State and federal cases on Google Scholar
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The Miller Center will conduct an oral history of the George W. Bush administration...
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Public Policy research from the Hoover Institution
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Revised guide by Catherine Best
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There is some confusion about the Lexis and Westlaw training sessions for the evening 1L students in the part-time program. These sessions are specifically (and only) for the evening 1L students. These training sessions will occur immediately after the evening Contracts class. Evening students do NOT need to sign-up for these sessions (and, in fact, there is no place to do so). Just show up.
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The Government Relations Committee of the American Association of Law Libraries has recently complied a list of bill tracking services. The list contains all 50 states. Many of the services enable users to register their email address so that they will be informed about major actions on a bill. This might be a great website to bookmark in your web browser.
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Access for law school students, faculty and staff
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Information about the EC fine
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Online Digital Collection
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Lexis and Westlaw will restrict student access to their systems during the summer (June 1 through July 31). Students may extend their normal Lexis and Westlaw privileges over the summer for certain activities. These activities include an academic purpose (e.g. summer classes, moot court, law journal, faculty research assistant), an unpaid internship/externship that is done for credit, or bar review.
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New software, search engine for IFLP
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The blog for the legal research and writing program at Stanford has an article on a new book dealing with anti-trust law called "Free the Market!: Why Only Government Can Keep the Marketplace Competitive". The book details how the legal information market has been adversely monopolized by Lexis and WestLaw and how government intervention could have prevented it.
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The latest issue of Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing has a new article on how to update federal regulatory code using the government website, GPO Access. The article gives a step by step tutorial, including screen captures. There are advantages to updating federal regulatory code using the GPO, compared to using Lexis or West. First, the GPO website is free, and secondly, the CFR is updated there daily, rather than weekly.
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The professional journal, Law Library Journal, has a recent article on the increasing value of RSS feeds in legal research. The article discusses the major sources of legal RSS feeds, including Justia, Cornell's LII, the Law Library of Congress, and USA.gov. It also reviews the major RSS readers and gives a nice comparison between Google Reader and Bloglines.
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Given the current economic crisis, legal professionals are increasingly looking for ways to cut expenses out of their legal research budget. Some firms have told their employees to look for materials using a low-cost, or free, service before they search WestLaw or Lexis. The librarians at Georgetown Law have created a great guide to these low-cost, or free, legal research resources.
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"Introduction to the California Style Manual"
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Nancy Johnson, a law professor with Georgia State University, has an article on SSRN about what first year law students should focus on during their legal research class. It highlights how students often do not have sufficient time for learning research during their first year and how they can maximize the time they are given. It is a great read for current students dealing with LARAW this semester.
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West's American Digest is a subject index of published U.S. case law. This weekend West will roll-out two new digest topics and revise others.
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Text and Committee Reports
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Our colleagues at USF noticed a recent decision issued by the 9th Circuit in which the court chastises the defense counsel for failing to properly research the relevant case law. The case, United States v. Beltran-Moreno, was appealed even though the sentences given were below the mandatory minimum.
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Heinonline, a legal publisher, posted on its blog today its list of the most frequently cited authors within its law journal collection. The information was extracted using Heinonline's new citation analysis tool, ScholarCheck.
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PDF copies of federal documents
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The United Nations Office of Legal Affairs launches the Audiovisual Library of International Law
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The American Society of International Law's new website
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The UN's redesigned treaty database
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Links to research papers from UK Parliament
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Blog lists databases of Chinese laws
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A new article entitled, "How to Read a Legal Opinion : A Guide for New Law Students" has been posted to SSRN. Written by noted legal scholar, Orin S. Kerr, from George Washington University, the articles introduces basic legal concepts needed to read a legal opinion and also offers advice on how to deal with your first few weeks of law school. It is highly recommended for incoming 1Ls.
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The WestLaw-affiliated blog, WestBlog.net, has recently released a podcast on the changing information needs of the "Google Generation" and how it is changing the ways in which legal research services are offered, and used. The podcast is in mp3 format.
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A new survey among law-firm and law-school librarians has recently been published by Stanford Law. The survey asked about preferences of Lexis v. WestLaw, and what services are being used in law firms. They also list the resources, and services, they would like law students to learn before they begin to practice.
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Are you needing to brush up on your legal research skills over the summer? Needing to prepare for the law review or an externship? You may find the CALI lessons on legal research to be helpful. They cover a wide variety of topics from finding statutes to using loose-leaf services. They are all Flash-based and usually take about 20-30 minutes to complete.
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An interesting development in the recently decided Kennedy v. Louisiana case has emerged. The case dealt with the application of the death penalty for child rape. One of the reasons stated by the court for its decision banning the death penalty for child rape pivoted upon the fact that only 6 states, and not the federal government, permit it. This has turned out to be incorrect because in 2006 Congress made child rape punishable by death for members of the armed forces.
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Three political science professors from George Washington University have recently published a study on blogs and their users' reading habits. The article, entitled "Self-Segregation or Deliberation? Blog Readership, Participation and Polarization in American Politics", contains some surprising results about the political affiliations of blog readers.
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There are some great software tools made by both Lexis and WestLaw for creating table of authorities and writing class outlines. These tools may be particularly useful for first-year law students in their legal research and writing courses. The Lexis application, CaseMap, is also an excellent way to organize facts, people, authorities, and other documents for a case.
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From Suffolk University Law School Legal Practice Skills Program
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Information about immigration related bills introduced in state legislatures during the first quarter of 2008
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Exciting news from West (a Thomson Reuters company)! Changes to the Key Number System On May 12, West plans to release significant changes to the Key Number System. Attorney editors have completed the reclassification of over 500,000 headnotes. The improvements include the following . . . For more fun and information about headnotes, you might want to look at these resources . . .
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An interesting article appearing on the blog, Law School Innovation, discusses the role Internet legal research had to play in the recent Baze case before the SCOTUS
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A new article appearing in the Connecticut Law Review discusses the changing role of law review articles in contemporary judicial decision-making
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From today's Scout Report, a link to UC Berkeley Library's Congressional Tutorials
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free case law
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two new legal research websites
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Companion site to the SCOTUS Blog
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Cornell Law Library has improved InSITE and the Legal Research Engine
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Searchable databases on violence prevention from the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence (CSPV) at the University of Colorado
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Available online from the Indiana University School of Law
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Information available from the National Archives and Records Administration
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Searchable database of information concerning child support.
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Online Proceedings of the Old Bailey
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OpenCRS.com provides Congressional Research Service reports in the public domain
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Research guide on immigration reform.
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Selected websites with information about Chinese law.
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Database with information about wrongful convictions.
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State-by-State Report on the Authentication of Online Legal Resources from the American Association of Law Libraries
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University Library's search tool for journals now includes information about Heafey print journals.
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Cornell Law Library has specialized search engine for legal research guides
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Digital Collection of Civil Rights Documents at the Thurgood Marshall Law Library
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How to access subscription databases from home.
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Fifty-state legislative tracking web resources compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures
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Bob Berring's podcasts provide an easy and entertaining way to freshen up your legal rersearch skills.
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Documents available from the website of the African Union.
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FindLaw's Supreme Court Center is available at both the FindLaw website and the New York Times website.
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The Pew Initiative on Food and Biotechnology website tracks federal and state legislation related to agricultural biotechnology.
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Bibliography, articles, and web resources on animal law.
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LLRX database with state and federal court rules, forms, and docket information
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Much media attention regarding the end of the 2005-2006 California legislative session has focused on the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 - AB32 - limiting carbon dioxide emissions. However, an article in Saturday's Los Angeles Times by Evan Halper concentrates instead on bills that legislators attempted to push through the legislature toward the very end of the session: "Last Minute Bills Receive Little Scrutiny" (September 2, 2006).
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You're in casual conversation with a fellow faculty member, or being interviewed for a position as a subject specialist and someone asks, "Well, of course, you have read the work of Prof. X in this area, right?" This is the scenario that the "Research Canons" Project, underway on Prawfsblawg this week, is trying to correct.
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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. 

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, or author from a free, simple search engine page.  For example, if you want to find books about former Supreme Court justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, just enter her name in the search box.  Your search will automatically pull up books written by Justice O’Connor as well.  When you see the item that you want, click on it, then enter your zip code in the "Enter Location Information" box.  You’ll receive a list of area libraries that have your item, and it will even tell you how far away each library is from your zip code.  You can find more detailed information about the WorldCat search page on the WorldCat "Learn More" page.

RegulationsPlus made a big splash when Thomson West released it last spring, and with the fall semester about to begin, I thought it would be a good time to remind students and faculty about some of the useful features of this new product.  With the introduction of RegulationsPlus, West has taken several important steps to make federal regulatory research easier.  When you go to the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) search page, West has added a link to the new RegulationsPlus Index (in the upper right-hand corner of the search screen).  The RegulationsPlus Index is a detailed subject index that includes links to the regulatory text.  If your "terms and connectors" or "natural language" searches aren’t giving you relevant search results, try browsing the subject index to find federal regulations about your topic. 

The other major improvement for regulatory researchers appears when you access a CFR section in Westlaw.  The left-hand side of the screen now has a number of useful research tools, including links to prior versions of the regulatory section, links to cases and administrative agency materials that discuss your regulations, and links to related statutes.  You can also read summaries of previous Federal Register publications that refer to your section and access the content of these Federal Register sections. 

You can read more about RegulationsPlus on the Thomson West website and view a quick demo video.  The SCU law school community can receive training on RegulationsPlus by contacting a reference librarian at 408-554-4452.  We’re happy to help you learn more about this new feature!

We’ve recently updated two of our research guides.  Heafey’s "California Legal Research Guide" furnishes tips on researching California law using treatises or legal encyclopedias, annotated codes, and case digests.  Our "Guide to American Law Reports" provides information on how to use ALR, a multi-volume secondary source that provides detailed articles about selected topics in state and federal law.   Both of these guides are excellent resources for students who are just beginning to familiarize themselves with legal research.  As always, you can find electronic copies of every Heafey research guide on this page.

The Securities and Exchange Commission recently unveiled a new search page that allows researchers to search the full text of all EDGAR filings from the past two years, including attachments.  After experimenting with this search page, I recommend skipping the basic search and moving directly to the advanced search page, which gives you the option to limit your search by date, by company, by central index key, and by form type (10-K, 10-Q, etc.).  For those of you who are new to legal research and aren’t sure what EDGAR filings are, EDGAR stands for the SEC’s "Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval" system.  The SEC decided to require electronic filings over a decade ago so that investors would have easy access to the most current financial information about public companies.  You can find additional EDGAR search options as well as descriptions of SEC form types on the SEC website.  Thanks to beSpacific for the tip.

I see that the "Google Cheat Sheet" has been making the rounds in the blogosphere and at legal conferences again, so I thought I’d feature it for a second time on Heafey Headnotes.  For those of you who aren’t aware of it, the Google Cheat Sheet provides you with lots of ways to refine your Google searches, and it also gives you information about little-known functions, such as using Google as a calculator.  Why should law students take the time to learn advanced search techniques?  Because these features will save you lots and lots of time by giving you much more relevant, on-point search results.   Law school gives you the opportunity to conduct legal research in a fairly leisurely fashion, but the luxury of having lots of time for research projects will disappear in practice, so it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with these features now.  These advanced features aren’t exclusive to Google.  Advanced search tips and features are also available on Yahoo!, FirstGov, Ask.com, IceRocket, and A9.com, just to name a few.  Search Engine Showdown’s search engines features chart is also a valuable resource for determining which search engine is best for your search.

Law firm librarian Bobbi Cross has a Law.com article about basic research skills that is useful reading for summer associates and newly-minted attorneys.  If you find yourself reading this list and feeling a little queasy about your upcoming summer research assignments, please feel free to call a Heafey reference librarian at 408-554-4452 or e-mail us at lawref@scu.edu.  We give individual refresher courses on legal research for any interested student. 

Thanks to Law Librarian Blog for the tip.

Heafey Law Library will offer small group, hands-on training sessions for Advocacy students who would like additional help with their research skills.  Separate classes will be offered for the two topics being used this summer.

The training sessions will go over OSCAR searching tips, legal indexes for finding articles, using digests, KeyCite and Shepards refresher, and ALR searching.  Each session will be about 30 minutes.  All sessions will be held in the Toso Lab.  Contact the reference desk if these times will not work for you.  We can arrange individual training.

Please sign up at the reference desk; class slots are available on a "first-come, first- served" basis.  You can also request a spot by calling us at (408) 554-4452 or e-mailing us at lawref@scu.edu

Discrimination in admission problem:

Thursday 6/1 at 5 pm
Friday 6/2 at 2 pm
Monday 6/5 at 5 pm
Tuesday 6/6 at 2:15 pm
Wenesday 6/7 at 5 pm

Freedom of speech problem:

Friday 6/2 at 5 pm
Monday 6/5 at 4:15
Tuesday 6/6 at 5 pm
Thursday 6/8 at 5 pm

 

LLRX has just published some excellent new legal research resources.  To read the entire list of new articles, visit LLRX’s home page.  I’ve linked to a few of the new items that should be of interest to academic legal researchers and the SCU Law community:

• Let the People Know the Facts: Can Government Information Removed from the Internet Be Reclaimed?
  Susan Nevelow Mart’s article "examines the legal bases of the public’s right to access government information, reviews the types of information that have recently been removed from the Internet, and analyzes the rationales given for the removals."
• Beyond Google and Yahoo: Advanced Search (PowerPoint PDF)
  Sabrina Pacifici and Tom Mighell share their tips for advanced Internet searching in this comprehensive presentation from ABA TechShow 2006.
• Gumshoe Librarian 2006
  Barbara Fullerton and Sabrina Pacifici’s article lists 70 useful websites, covering blogs, intelligence data, state and federal government resources, open source scholarly literature, and more.
• Eight Reasons Solo Lawyers Should Use Law Libraries
  Mary Whisner explains how law libraries and law librarians can make life easier for small-firm and solo practitioners.  Although Heafey Law Library isn’t open to the public, we do allow members of any state bar to purchase a Courtesy Card to access our library.  If you’re interested, you can read more about it in our Courtesy Card policy handout. 

The Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002 was passed in order to improve the flow of accurate information from corporate offices to investors and other interested parties.  But SOX, as the Act is called by most corporate attorneys, has created significant headaches for corporate legal departments, particularly for smaller public companies.  The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has just released this report about SOX’s impact on companies, and the report concludes that:

costs associated with implementing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act—particularly those costs associated with the internal control provisions in section 404—were disproportionately higher (as a percentage of revenues) for smaller public companies. In complying with the act, smaller companies noted that they incurred higher audit fees and other costs, such as hiring more staff or paying for outside consultants, to comply with the act’s provisions. Further, resource and expertise limitations that characterize many smaller companies as well as their general lack of familiarity or experience with formal internal control frameworks contributed to the challenges and increased costs they faced during section 404 implementation. Along with other market factors, the act may have encouraged a relatively small number of smaller public companies to go private, foregoing sources of funding that were potentially more diversified and may be less expensive for many of these companies.

Want to find more GAO reports?  Visit the GPO Access pages, which allow you to search GAO reports from 1995-present.

LLRX has just released some new research guides -- here are links to some of the new guides as well as short descriptions of each guide excerpted directly from the LLRX site:

Beyond Google and Yahoo: New, Nifty Search Engines to Optimize Your Research

"Barbara Fullerton and Sabrina I. Pacifici’s recommendations focus on subject area and issue-centric sites to facilitate obtaining search results that are better targeted to the scope of your requests. Whether you are looking for government data, blogs, RSS feeds, videos, podcasts, news or scientific papers, this guide will serve you well. "

The Limited Liability Company: The Importance of Choosing The Correct Business Vehicles

"Sarah Spear’s guide distinguishes the LLC from other common forms of business entity, discusses the various LLC management structures, highlights businesses thriving as LLCs and some of the tax advantages realized by the LLC."

Indecisive Decision: An Examination of the Greenberg & Faulkner Cases and their Impact on Libraries 

"Sharon Whitfield examines the conflicting decisions made by the Eleventh Circuit Court in the case of Greenberg v. National Geographic and the Second Circuit Court in the case of Faulkner v. National Geographic and the impact that these court decisions may have on libraries that are looking to reformat their copyrighted material into digital media."

Got Competitive Intelligence? Tips, Tools, Techniques for the Savvy Marketer

"Donna Cavallini and Sabrina I. Pacifici’s guide has again been completely revised and updated to include new recommendations ranging from free websites, news alerts, RSS and blogs to fee-based subscriptions and licensed enterprise applications."

A Commentary on the National Forest Land Conveyance for Rural Communities Act 

"The administration’s unprecedented plan to have the Forest Service sell large tracts of [the] National Forest is the topic of Beth Wellington’s commentary this month."

Applying Project Management Techniques to Litigation Discovery
 
"Conrad J. Jacoby discusses the important role of the project manager, and how critical oversight allows this individual to anticipate and identify potential problems quickly so that they can be resolved without derailing the case."

CongressLine by GalleryWatch.com: Congressional Hearings

"This month Paul Jenks provides an inside view of the most visible and widely recognized function of Congress: the hearing, for which he identifies three distinctive types: informational hearings, oversight or investigative hearings, and confirmation hearing." 

 

Heafey has completed three new research guides, which are designed to help patrons with research in international and foreign and comparative law:

• Foreign and Comparative Law
• U.S. Treaties and International Agreements
• World Treaties

You can find print copies of these research guides on the first floor of the library, and all of Heafey’s research guides are always available in electronic form on Heafey’s ClaraNet page.

One of the most frustrating things about Internet resources -- at least for librarians -- is that they are not neatly cataloged like the items in a library.  Sure, Google has the "similar pages" function on its search results page, but it’s never yielded anything that’s relevant to my research topic when I’ve used it.  Most of the time, I focus on trying to find frequently-updated meta-pages about different legal research topics (for those of you wondering, a meta-page is a Web page that compiles links to lots of different Internet resources on a particular topic.  See the library’s Internet Resources pages for examples of meta-pages).  I’ve just found an excellent legal blog meta-page, compiled by Ian Best, the author of 3L Epiphany.  Ian has created an extremely useful taxonomy of legal blogs, which categorizes blogs according to jurisdictional focus, author/publisher, legal specialty, and a bunch of other categories.  There’s even a collection of other blawg meta-pages! 

Ellen Platt and I recently did a presentation for first-year students on research strategies for summer jobs.  We prepared a del.icio.us page of essential California and federal legal research websites.  The selected resources focus on California and federal primary law Internet sources, including cases, statutes, and regulations.  We’ve also included links to California and federal court forms, rules, and jury instructions.  We’ll post the entire presentation outline here in a few days, but we thought we’d share the del.icio.us page today so that students have time to explore the links.

Heafey Law Library has just released two new research guides.  The first guide, European Union Research, provides information about EU legal research.  You’ll find links to EU documents, EU Internet resources, and other research guides on EU law.  The second guide, Tax Research, describes Heafey’s federal tax research resources and also provides information about accessing tax information on CCH, Lexis, and Westlaw.  We hope you find these guides useful!  If you have ideas for future research guides, please let us know by commenting on Heafey Headnotes or send me an e-mail at ajwright@scu.edu. 

Thomson West and the staff of ALR have published an online summary of the Supreme Court’s activities during the first half of the 2005-2006 term.  This summary is particularly handy because it includes citations to related ALR annotations.

Occasionally, attorneys submit a motion or a brief that is so badly written or poorly researched that the judge decides to scold them for their horrible research or writing skills in a written opinion.  I like to collect examples of these public reprimands for my legal research class, so that students can see that one of the negative consequences of inadequate legal research is the possibility that your incompetence will be forever memorialized in a court opinion for the whole world to see.  Of course, the goal of avoiding potential harm to your clients is a far more worthy reason to hone your legal research skills than the threat of ridicule from a judge.  But the threat of public humiliation seems to work as a motivator, too, so I like to highlight a few of these opinions for students whenever I can.  That’s why I was pleased to discover this great quotation from a February 21 order penned by Judge Leif Clark of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of Texas (thanks to Out of the Jungle for featuring the quote).  Judge Clark wrote, "[t]he court cannot determine the substance, if any, of the Defendant’s legal argument, nor can the court even ascertain the relief that the Defendant is requesting."  As if this comment wasn’t enough, Judge Clark went on to quote a character from an Adam Sandler film, "Billy Madison," in a footnote:  "At no point in your rambling, incoherent response was there anything that could even be considered a rational thought."  Ouch.  If you’d like to find out more about these judicial tongue-lashings, read Mary Whisner’s excellent article on this topic, "When Judges Scold Lawyers."

FirstGov, the federal government's official web portal, has undergone a face lift. It now features a revamped search engine that uses Vivisimo's clustering technology to group search results by subject
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Yale has devised an interesting approach to encouraging online discussion of the articles that appear in The Yale Law Journal.  The journal has introduced The Pocket Part, an "online companion to The Yale Law Journal."  The Pocket Part features shorter versions of articles from the journal, along with responses and commentary from policymakers and legal scholars.  The most recent issue features lively commentary about law and politics in judicial confirmation hearings from Randy Barnett, Erwin Chemerinksy, Robert Post, Reva Siegel, and Laurence Tribe.  You can also read Samuel Alito’s law review note from 1974 and post a comment about it, if you’re so inclined.

As legal scholarship becomes increasingly interdisciplinary, researchers often need to find reports or other materials published by public policy research institutes or "think tanks."  Of course, legal researchers must keep in mind that most think tanks have a distinct political philosophy and agenda.  Not surprisingly, materials published by partisan think tanks tend to support the think tanks’ agenda.  Nevertheless, they can be useful resources for legal scholars who are exploring the intersection of law and public policy.  Here are several websites that furnish links to think tanks in the United States and abroad:

• Harvard University’s Kennedy School Library also furnishes an impressive alphabetical list of links to think tanks located in the United States and abroad.
• The University of Michigan’s "Political Science Resources: Think Tanks" maintains links to a large number of individual think tank websites.
• Project Vote Smart’s page also features links to individual think tanks.
• Foreign Affairs Online has compiled an alphabetical listing of domestic and foreign policy think tanks.

The Congressional Research Service furnishes nonpartisan research to members of Congress on a variety of domestic and foreign policy matters.
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Most first-year law students get all kinds of Lexis and Westlaw handouts during their first semester of law school, then promptly lose most of them.  Fortunately, both Lexis and Westlaw have placed most of their user guides on their websites, so there's no need to keep track of paper copies.  Click here for Westlaw's user guides and here for Lexis user guides.

Like most librarians, I have a few "top 10" research guides that I recommend to patrons.  Today, I’m featuring one of my favorite guides on researching California legislative history by UC Hastings’ Susan Nevelow Mart.  The guide gives researchers an intuitive, step-by-step introduction to the mysteries of California legislative history research and identifies all of the key materials that you’ll need.   --Posted by Amy Wright

Cite-checks for law review can be terribly tedious, but Heafey’s reference librarians have a few tips for making the process easier:

• First, if you’re pulling your hair out trying to find your sources, ask one of the reference librarians for help.  We are happy to help you track down hard-to-find materials.
• If you’re a new cite-checker and it’s been awhile since you’ve encountered an online library catalog, review our online OSCAR tutorial before you begin looking for sources.  The tutorial has both basic and advanced OSCAR search tips that will save you lots of searching frustration! 

 

• HeinOnline is a great resource for cite-checkers.  This database contains exact page images of law reviews and journals, U.S. Reports, the Federal Register, and other primary and secondary legal sources.  When we demonstrate HeinOnline at the reference desk, students often exclaim, "We can’t use electronic resources for cite-checking!"  But because there’s absolutely no difference between looking at a PDF version of a law review volume and the actual print volume, law review editors should not object to using HeinOnline to check article citations.  For this reason, Heafey’s staff will not pull a print volume from remote storage if the volume is available electronically in PDF on HeinOnline.

 

• LINK+ is another useful resource for cite-checking.  LINK+ is essentially a pooled catalog of books available from participating academic and public libraries in California and Nevada. If you encounter a nonperiodical source that is not available at SCU, you may request the material through LINK+.  There is no charge to patrons for this service, and you usually receive your material within 3-5 business days.  Two key things to remember about LINK+:  1) you must first confirm that the book that you need is not available at SCU in order to obtain the material from LINK+; and 2) Heafey Law Library patrons will need to pick up LINK+ materials at the Orradre Circulation Desk.

For those of you working on papers or other research projects, we thought we’d dispense a few legal research tips:

• If you don’t know about LLRX.com yet, you definitely need to bookmark this page.  In the words of LLRX’s founders, the site is "a unique, free Web journal" that is devoted entirely to providing tips on legal research and legal technology.  This site can solve a lot of tough legal research problems with its reliable research guides on a wide variety of topics.  LLRX.com is especially valuable for foreign and international legal research topics.  It also has a handy search engine that you can use to find state and federal court rules, forms, and dockets. 
  
• Law librarians develop a wide range of detailed and useful legal research guides and post them on law library websites for the whole world to see.  Heafey’s research guides can be found here, but there’s no reason why you shouldn’t seek out research guides from other law school libraries.  If you take the time to find these guides, you’ll find a wealth of legal research knowledge at your fingertips.  If you’re new to an area of law, you can usually find law library research guides using a simple Google search.  Just type in the area of law that you’re researching, then type the phrase "research guide" in quotations, and restrict your search by typing "site:.edu" without quotations (this portion of the search query restricts your search to URLs that end in ".edu").  For example, if you’re looking for guides on art law, your search query will look like this: 
  
  art law "research guide" site:.edu  
  
  Try this search the next time that you’re researching a brand new area -- you’ll be pleasantly surprised at the resources that you turn up. 

Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute just announced the debut of a legal research wiki called Wex, "a collaboratively built, freely available legal dictionary and encyclopedia."
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