CMLawLibraryBlog

Differentiate yourself, be yourself and do your homework are among the interviewing tips offered by attorney Christopher Marston in his post 5 Interviewing Tips NEVER to Forget. Also, check out Cleveland-Marshall's Career Planning Office publication, The Interview and You . Books and articles on interviewing are available via the Library, such as:

Getting the Job: Winning Interviewing Techniques, Liz Clearman,
LexisNexis® 69 Tex. Bar J. 1056, Dec. 2006

 (More)

From Supreme Court of Ohio Opinion Summaries:

"The Supreme Court of Ohio ruled 7-0 today that an Ohio municipality does not exceed its authority under the “home rule” provisions of the state constitution by creating an automated system for enforcement of traffic laws that imposes civil liability on violators, provided that the municipality does not alter any statewide traffic regulation."

Mendenhall v. Akron, Slip Op. No. 2008-Ohio-270. This issue was referred to the Ohio Supreme Court by the federal district court. Upon return of the case to federal court, there may be constitutional due process issues left to resolve.

We are a password dependent people: just review our Law Student Usernames, Passwords, Ids, and Pins for a walk through several of the passwords students need to establish just to negotiate fundamental resources here at Cleveland Marshall. Don’t take passwords too lightly – in fact, a password should be a weighty matter, as in “strong,” which describes passwords made of a combination of seven letters, numbers and symbols with a little upper and lower case mixture thrown in. Dennis Kennedy’s Power Passwords in 93 ABA Journal (December 2007) at p. 59 sets out some guidelines to creating passwords that will thwart crackers and yet still make enough internal sense to be memorable. He advises a) getting rid of passwords in the form of words or names, b) using a root password made of a combination of letters and symbols with the addition of resource identifying suffixes and c)combining a base password and portions of a pass phrase.

Recently, Medina County Courts began to post video clips of Sentencing and Contempt hearings from their General and Domestic Relations Divisions. The page provides a short summation of the facts for each case. They have named the page insidethecourt.net.

An article in the Columbus Dispatch reports that the National Football League is holding to its position that copyright law prohibits church congregations from showing the Super Bowl game at church parties on screens larger than 55 inches. The crack-down on such church parties in 2007 inspired some commentary on legal blogs (see Is My Super Bowl Party Legal?: How to Watch the Game Without Breaking the Law” and Info/Law on Super Bowl Sunday ) that could provide some interesting fodder for pregame discussion on February 3, if just to give you an excuse to put the books down and watch the game.

Once you’ve digested the copyright issues, take a look at the trademark implications of saying the phrase “Super Bowl” according to this 2004 NFL Document Broadcasts and Promotions Related to Super Bowl XXXVIII.

So you love tagging your books or bookmarks in LibraryThing or Del.icio.us and then using the tags to stumble across additional stuff that interests you? Well, now you’ll start to see LibraryThing tags in Scholar, the CSU library catalog.

To see an example, check out this record for Grisham’s The Firm, and have a look under Find Similar Items – that’s where the tags are congregating. Click on a tag - say, “thriller” – and you’ll see related tags as well as a list of other books tagged “thriller”.

Today's New York Times article Who's Cuddly Now? Law Firms by Lisa Belkin covers the legal profession's late entry into the fold of work-life balance. Law firms are racing to address the widespread problem of unhappy, overworked lawyers who are leaving the profession by having another look at issues such as billable hours, schedules and partnership tracks. Could taking Fido to the firm be next?

H.B. 30 , if passed, would require cities to post signs at highway exits indicating that the city is using red light cameras and/or speed cameras. The bill would also require the timing of the lights at traffic-camera- monitored intersections to conform to the Ohio Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices.

The Ohio cities currently using red light cameras are: Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, Middletown, Northwood, Springfield, Sylvania Township and Toledo; and the cities using speed cameras are: Akron, East Cleveland, Northwood and Toledo. Source: Jonathan Nawn, "Legislator Seeks to 'Raise Awareness' of Traffic Cameras", The Daily Reporter, Jan. 17, 2008. (Thanks to Marie Rehmar for this article.)

A bill from the previous Ohio General Assembly, HB 56 would place restrictions on traffic cameras, such that it would be impractical for cities to use them. Governor Taft vetoed HB 56. See Legislature Passes Traffic Camera Bill, Veto Uncertain, Cleveland Law Library Blog, Dec. 13, 2006.

The Ohio Supreme Court is reviewing whether cities have the power under the home rule provision of the Ohio Constitution to impose civil penalties for speeding and running red lights. Mendenhall v. The City of Akron, Case No. 2006-2265 Court docket & briefs , Oral argument preview, Argument video. A federal court submitted the question to the Ohio Supreme Court. After the Ohio Supreme Court decides the submitted question, there may be due process issues left for the federal court to decide.

Are you writing a seminar paper or note this semester on an international law topic? If so, check out the Library's new research guide on international law. It's a general guide covering the basics of finding treaties, caselaw from international courts and tribunals, and books and journal articles on international law. It also includes sections on citing to international law sources (great for papers), deciphering confusing abbreviations, and studying for class.

Washington & Lee University’s John Doyle has updated his Law Journal Ranking page for the period 2000-2007, with a couple of changes in methodology, most notably affecting the calculation of the impact factor. Doyle’s rankings attempt to assess the scholarly impact of a journal as measured by citations in current U.S. legal periodicals and federal and state case law. The database allows users to select journals by subject, type (student, peer edited, refereed), country, category as general or specialized, and ranking factors as an aid in the submission process.

The library will be closed on Monday, January 21, 2008, in honor of Martin Luther King Day.

Did you know? The State of Ohio recognized Martin Luther King Day as a legal holiday, effective Aug. 1, 1975. See S.B. No. 18, 136 Laws of Ohio, Part II, 41; ORC 1.14. The federal government did not declare Martin Luther King Day a federal holiday until 1983. See Public Law 98-144; 5 USC 6103.

Cleveland Marshall's Employment Law Clinic told the Ohio Supreme Court that a proposed rule allowing Ohio courts to sell records in bulk would have a negative impact on job-seekers whose records were expunged. The Clinic's comments were written by law student Thomas Fitzpatrick under the supervision of Clinical Professor Gordon J. Beggs. The comments state that a background check company that buys the court records may not update the records for later expungements. Bulk sales of records should be disallowed, said the Clinic, unless adequate safeguards can be made to ensure that background check companies keep up-to-date records.

See our prior post: Groups Weigh In on Proposed Ohio Court Record Privacy Rules

The General Assembly of the United Nations has declared 2008 to be the International Year of Languages (it’s also declared 2008 the International Year of the Potato!!).

Linguist rights have long been included in the many basic human rights; especially protected are the linguistic rights of minorities. EISIL (Electronic Information System for International Law) has collected a handy page of primary documents, web sites and research resources on linguistic rights, which includes links to the 1996 Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights and the 1992 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

The United States has likewise confronted the issue of linguistic rights, as exemplified by the 1923 U.S. Supreme Court case of Meyer v. Nebraska 262 U.S. 390. The plaintiff had been convicted under a Nebraska statute of unlawfully teaching the subject of reading in the German language to a ten year old student. The Court overturned the law, declaring it unconstitutional under the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment [Library of Congress web guide].

The Law Library resumes its Research Certificate Seminars on Tuesdays, 4:50pm-5:50pm, this Spring Semester 2008. Seminar Dates and Topics are:

• January 29th - Research Strategies (register by Jan 25th)
• February 5th - Scholarly Writing (register by Feb 1st)
• February 19th - Legislative History Research (register by Feb 15th)
• February 26th - Criminal Law Research (register by Feb 22nd)
• March 4th - Ohio Legal Research (register by Feb 29th)
• March 18th - Getting Ready to Clerk (register by Mar 14th)

All Seminars will be in Room LB208, except on February 19th, which will be in Room LB11. Attendance will be limited to 20 students, and light refreshments will be provided. Attendees of each Seminar will earn 25 points toward a Law Library Research Certificate. Certificates will be awarded to students with 100 Seminar points.

Certificate Seminars discuss research materials and resources critical to successful legal practice and scholarly writing, as well as focus on research skills law firms and courts are seeking when hiring associates and clerks. Presented by our team of research librarians, the Seminars offer a unique forum for students to learn more about specific research topics.

To register for a Law Library Research Certificate Seminar, please contact Laura Ray, Educational Programming Librarian, at 216-687-6880 or laura.ray@law.csuohio.edu.

SCHOLAR, the CSU Libraries electronic catalog, now allows you to save a search statement for future use - Preferred Searches. Having a Preferred Search can save time and typing when needing to conduct the same search over an extended period of time. To create a Preferred Search, you must first log onto your SCHOLAR account, with your name, CSU ID#, and PIN. Once logged in, click on SCHOLAR HOME in the top black navigation menu. At the SCHOLAR page, conduct your desired search. At the search results page, click on the grey "Save as preferred search" button. That's it! Remember to click on the red "Log Out" button at the end of your search session. To manage your Preferred Searches, log onto your SCHOLAR account, then click on the green "Preferred Searches" button. The system will display your Preferred Searches, as well as the options to search, email, or remove/clear them.

Here is a bit of wisdom from Nancy Soonpa of the Legal Writing Professor Blog:

"I tell them [students] about what I remember most clearly from my first year after grades came out: the change in speaking patterns in the classroom. Suddenly some spoke with a voice of authority, and others stopped speaking entirely. Alas, neither change enriched the classroom experience. Getting good grades doesn't make one's comments inherently more valuable, nor low grades, less."

Nancy Soonpa, first class of the semester, Legal Writing Professor Blog, Jan. 9, 2008.

For more inspiration, and great tips on how to improve grades (everything from getting a new roommate to a post-class review of notes), see: Betsey McKenzie Spring Semester Blues - Treating 1-Ls Right,Out of the Jungle Blog, Jan. 9, 2007.

In a feature called "Laugh-in at the Supreme Court", the Wall Street Journal Law Blog reprints excerpts from recent U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments which generated courtroom laughs. The most recent "Laugh-in" involves an exchange between Scalia and an attorney for the State of Virginia on the topic of federalism. Peter Lattman, The Law Blog's Laugh-in at the Supreme Courts: Wow, Jan. 15, 2007. The case being argued was Virginia v. Moore, docket no. 06-1082, which involves a search and seizure issue.

An earlier "Laugh-in" post cites a study which found that Justice Scalia got the most laughs during oral arguments. Peter Lattman, Scalia is still the Funniest Justice(and Thomas, the Least),Nov. 13, 2007.

From their start less than a year ago, IntLawGrrls has been a voice of women who teach, work and practice international law. The bloggers on IntLawGrrls include professors at schools like UC Davis, American, Université de Paris and others. Along with posting on international law topics like Guantánamo and the WTO, IntLawGrrls post on issues such as the 2008 election, capital punishment, and women leaders. Many posts follow the “on this day in history” pattern like these posts on suffrage.

And, yes, there’s plenty of pink.

We start the new year with a new simpler and cleaner look for SCHOLAR, the online catalog of the CSU University and Law Libraries. We have also improved the functionality you need to find books and other library resources with an easy-to-use Advanced Search template. Check the search tips on the righthand side of the advanced search screen for additional information. You also can specify how your results are sorted. To check which titles you "have out", click on My Account at the top of the screen.

MEMRI (The Middle East Media Research Institute) can help you learn more about the Middle East through its print and TV media by bridging the language gap. MEMRI is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit research institution based in Washington, DC that provides timely translations of Arabic, Persian and Turkish print and TV media. In addition, MEMRI offers original analysis of political, intellectual, social and cultural trends in the Middle East.

The materials are organized by country or region (Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestinian Authority, Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia, Syria & Turkey), and by subjects such as U.S. and the Middle East and inter-Arab relations.

What's on the mind of a NE Ohio state university administrator these days? Probably collaborating and innovating, especially as related to the economic development of our region. The NE Ohio Universities Collaboration and Innovation Study Commission Report is now available with a number of broad and as well as specific recommendations. It also includes in Appendix D suggestions for legislative action.

To hear more about the report, attend the open panel discussion by the Study Commission members and moderated by Brad Whitehead, President of the Fund for Our Economic Future, on Wed. Jan. 23, 2008, 3-5 p.m. at the Illuminating Company (FirstEnergy) Brecksville office, 6896 Miller Rd., Brecksville. Although free, space is limited. Additional information and to register.

Gongwer News Service reports on the comments various groups have made to the proposed Ohio Superintendence Rules on court records. Groups Seek Changes in Proposed Rules for Court Records, Want Ban on Bulk Sale of Criminal Data to Business, Gongwer News Service, Volume #76, Report #252, Article #01, December 26, 2007. The Ohio Justice & Policy Center asked the Supreme Court to eliminate or modify provisions which allow the bulk sale of criminal records to businesses that conduct background checks. The Center feels allowing bulk sales will defeat the purpose of expungement laws, unless the background check businesses are required to keep their records up to date.

The Ohio Banker's League urged a system whereby dockets would be accessible online to everyone, but only certain persons or entities with passwords could look at online copies of the actual documents filed. The article also summarizes comments made by news organizations, the ACLU, the State Medical Board and background check companies.

See our prior post: Proposed Superintendence Rules Regarding Access to Court Records

Now that second semester is starting up, you may want take a moment to analyze your study and exam taking habits to see how you can improve. For advice on how to do so, see How to Change Second Semester: Reviewing Exams and Other Hints for Success from the St. Louis University School of Law Academic Support Services Department. The article's suggestions include:

• Looking at past exams and figuring out what you did wrong. Talk to the professor about the exam.
• Going to the Academic Support Office for help. Cleveland Marshall has many Academic Support Programs available, including one on one assistance and group study programs.
• Using study aids for the general understanding, but not as the "source of all wisdom". The library has many useful study aids available, such as the "Examples and Explanations" series and the Lexis "Questions and Answers" series. The library's research guides list study aids for particular subjects. Don't forget about CALI interactive tutorials, which have quiz questions to confirm your understanding.
• Reading ahead to reduce stress.
• Analyzing the conditions under which you study best, and what you have to do to understand the material.
• Finding a tutor or study group.

The recently issued 2007 Law School Survey of Student Engagement report aims to provide law schools with insight into the actions and feelings of their students. More than 27,000 law students at 79 U.S. and Canadian law schools completed the online survey on which the report was based. The study looks at law student participation in class, involvement in law school organizations, interaction with professors and more. Comparisons are made by age and race of the student, as well as law school characteristics such as public vs. private, size and selectivity.

See the Jan. 3, 2007 Chronicle of Higher Education article by Sara Lipka "Younger Law Students Report More Collaboration and Older Students More Diligence in Survey of Engagement" for highlights of the report.

Many of the C-M Law faculty and administration are away in New York City attending the Association of American Law School's (AALS) annual meeting.

And in some of the sessions, they're learning about connecting with Millennials and the decline in diversity in law schools. In Generation Gaps and Racial Disparities Draw Concern at Meeting of Law-School Officials in today's Chronicle of Higher Eduction, Katherine Mangan reports on the merits and flaws of law school Millennials and on the steady decline in law school diversity. On the diversity front, she notes this website at Columbia that pinpoints the declining enrollment of African Americans and Mexican Americans despite steady application numbers, improving application quality and increasing law school class size and total number of law schools.

Thanks to changes in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure concerning the discovery of electronically stored information ("ESI"), 2007 was supposed to be the year that changed everything in litigation.

But was it? LLRX's recent article by Conrad J. Jacoby, E-Discovery Update: A Contrarian Retrospective On E-Discovery In 2007" takes a second look at e-discovery and hints at what 2008 could bring.

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