The Harnish Law Library now subscribes to LawMemo, an online resource providing access to labor and employment law cases dating back to 1999 from all appellate state and federal courts, including the DC Circuit and the US Supreme Court. Also included are three reporters: the Employment Law Memo (ELM), the NLRB Law Memo, and the Arbitration Law Memo (ALM).

Pepperdine Law students, faculty, and staff can create individual LawMemo accounts to conduct research and set up custom alerts based on jurisdiction or topic. To sign up for a LawMemo account, please visit the Law Library’s Online Databases webpage and follow the instructions under the LawMemo entry.

The Harnish Law Library subscribes to a variety of online databases to assist faculty, students, and staff with their legal research needs. On this blog we will highlight some of the helpful electronic resources available to you as a Pepperdine Law student.

Our first spotlight e-resource is Bloomberg BNA. Bloomberg BNA includes over 100 online newsletters that provide news and analysis in a wide range of practice areas, including:

• Antitrust
• Bankruptcy
• Corporate Law
• Criminal Law
• Employment and Labor
• Ethics
• International Law
• Health Care
• Litigation
• Tax

Continue reading →

Sept. 23, 2014 update: The missing court documents for the four appellate courts described below will be restored to PACER by the end of October 2014. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts will continue to work on a similar solution for the missing records of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California.

Original post from Sept. 10, 2014:

PACER – or Public Access to Court Electronic Records – is an online fee-based service allowing users to access court documents from the federal appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts. In August, system upgrades in PACER led to the removal of documents from several courts. Continue reading →

The following blog post originally appeared in LawTech, the blog of Pepperdine University School of Law’s Information Services. The author is Danielle Minke.

7 Legal Apps for a Law School Student

1. FastCase: This free app available for the iPhone, iPad, and Android allows you to search for cases that have occurred in all 50 states. See the FastCase Web site for more information.

2. Want to know more about your Supreme Court Justices? The app called PocketJustice gives you all the information you need in the palm of your hand. This app is $0.99 and available for the iPhone, iPad, and Android.

3. iJuror is a fast and easy way to keep track of your jury. This app costs $4.99 and is available for the iPhone and iPad.

5. TrialPad allows lawyers to update court files during the actual hearing. Lawyers can hook up any monitor or projector to their iPad to play videos or display images on the screen. This app is $89.99 and available for the iPhone and iPad.

6. Constitution allows anyone to review the Constitution for free.

7. Black Law’s Dictionary is a well-known law dictionary. Costing $54.99, it is available for the iPhone, iPad, and Android.

The Harnish Law Library is pleased to announce that Pepperdine law students now have unlimited online access to Westlaw Study Aids!  Users can search across over 430 titles belonging to 13 series, including Nutshell and Gilbert Law Summaries. Other handy content includes career guides, eFlash Cards, exam preparation materials, and more. What’s more, you can add highlights, notes, and comments to the text of study aids.

To begin using Westlaw Study Aids, sign into your Westlaw account at lawschool.westlaw.com. From there you can either select Study Aids Subscription (under Legal Research & Tools) or click on the My eProducts link at the top of the page.

Last August, we blogged about Clipboard, an online “snipping” tool that allows users to collect and store items of interest on the Web. Clipboard has been acquired by another company and will be discontinued as of June 30, 2013. If you are a Clipboard user, read their FAQs to learn how to handle your stored data and for more information on the transition.

Apps just aren’t for finding a new place to eat or improving your Words with Friends score. The past several years have seen the development of a staggering array of apps designed specifically for lawyers and legal researchers. Using apps, you can do everything from supplementing your bar exam study to annotating PDF documents and monitoring jurors during trial – all from your tablet or smartphone.

With all of the legal apps out there these days, how to get started with finding one that works for you? A recent article, “Good Apps Aren’t Hard to Find: Resources for Finding Legal Apps”, lists several resources for locating legal apps. App stores, legal technology blogs, and legal content providers such as Lexis, Westlaw, and Bloomberg Law are all great starting points. Check out the article for more information and to start APP-lying your legal technology skills!

Currently Lexis users have separate user names and passwords for Lexis.com (the traditional Lexis interface) and the newer Lexis Advance.  Lexis acknowledges that this is inconvenient for users and has plans to implement a single ID registration system.

First introduced in 2010, 80% of Am Law 100 firms and 60% of Am Law 200 firms now have Lexis Advance, according to the company, with small firms and government customers “rapidly migrating” to the newer product as well.  The company predicts that, by the time current first year law students graduate, their prospective employers will be using Lexis Advance.  As customers shift to using Lexis Advance, the company is working to improve the content and functionality of Lexis Advance, with 99% of the content on Lexis.com now available on Lexis Advance and the remaining 1% expected to be added in 2013.

Lexis.com will still be available.  However, instead of needing an ID for each research product, users will have a single ID and will be able to access both Lexis Advance and Lexis.com through a single portal.  As part of the transition to a single ID system, Lexis.com IDs will be deactivated this summer.  It is important that users have a Lexis Advance ID before this happens so that they do not experience a gap in service.  If you do not yet have a Lexis Advance Id, please contact Gilbert Marquez at gmarquez@pepperdine.edu or stop by the reference desk for assistance.

The Harnish Law Library understands that as you write your briefs you may have questions about formatting.  To assist you, we have published a LawGuide called Formatting Your Brief: Help With Frequently Asked Microsoft Word Questions, which includes PC- and Mac-based instructions on tasks such as creating a table of authorities or removing personal data from your document.  We have also prepared Quick Guides on preparing tables of authorities, which are available for download from the LawGuide.
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