Law Library's Most Wanted

Jennifer Pohlman's Law School Library's Most Wanted, in the October issue of the National Jurist, gives an amusing look at those characters who present a challenge to other students desiring to study in the Law Library.

Hat tip to Karen Kalnins, OCU's Reference Librarian, who located the National Jurist article.

Using Facebook in Insurance Litigation

Another post about facebook. In this post I call your attention to a recent article about the use of social networking sites in insurance litigation. The article is available here. Even if you have managed to avoid creating your own facebook page, you can't ignore social networking as it might relate to your clients.

Be Careful Who You Friend on Facebook

The New York Law Journal ran an interesting story about the savvy use of social networking sites and their impact in litigation. The article includes examples of good uses of social networking sites and not so good ones. Like the lawyers in Texas who friended a judge on facebook. The lawyer asked the judge for a continuance based on the excuse of a death in the family. The judge later discovered that the lawyer was not at a funeral but instead was posting facebook updates detailing a weekend of drinking and partying. The article is here (free with registration).

SCOTUS BLOG

Welcome to the Supreme Court of the United State's Blog, or, SCOTUS Blog.

The blog features commentary on current issues that the Supreme Court faces. Written by the below pictured authors, the blog features an archive and search feature.

Here you can also find links to Orders and Opinion, Commentary and Analysis, New Filings, Petitions to Watch, and a Term Tracker tool.

Quinlan Lecture - Oct. 29, 2009

Yale Law School’s Nicholas deB. Katzenbach Professor of Law, Reva Siegel, will present the 2009 Quinlan Lecture in OCU LAW’s Homsey Family Moot Courtroom at 5 p.m. Thursday, October 29. Professor Siegel’s lecture is titled "Race Talk and Ricci: The Court and the Confirmation Process.“

To view Reva Siegel's publications, please visit the Quinlan Lecture Display outside the Law Library Reference Offices.

Juveniles and the Supreme Court

Cases involving criminal charges against juveniles have been around for a long time. Last weeks edition of Newsweek Magazine contained an article penned by a former juvenile offender. Please take a look at it here.

The author, Raphael Johnson, points to two current cases coming before the supreme court that deal with the contentious issue of convicting children to life terms in prison.

The first,

Can be found on,

The second,

Can be found on the SCOTUS Wiki.

Both cases are also mentioned on the webpage of the Juvenile Law Center.

The Results Are In - 2009 Law Library Student Survey

Thanks to the 196 law students who participated in the library's recent student survey. We are pouring over the results and are learning a lot about how students view the collection and services. We will use the information to improve what we offer students. Some improvements will happen quickly, others will take some planning before we implement them. But we appreciate the strong response from the student body to the survey.

As promised all those who completed the survey will have any fines they owed for overdue materials waived as of the date they took the survey. We are in the process of doing this now. If you owed any fines and took the survey watch for an email soon confirming the waiver of your fines. We also gave away an iPhone to one lucky winner who completed the survey, Keegan Harroz. Her name was chosen at random from the list of all those who completed the survey.