Black's Law Dictionary Digital Available in Reference Wing

If you need a quick legal definition and would prefer not to use a print version or sign on to Westlaw or Lexis to access a legal dictionary, the digital version of Black's Law Dictionary (8th ed.) is now available on the public access terminal in the Reference Wing

Immigration Law Continues to be Hot Topic

The Associated Press reported last week that the Department of Labor is "probing" the work of the largest immigration firm in the nation. The Department of Labor inquiry is intended to determine if the firm, Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, has been advising its clients how to circumvent federal requirements that the companies seek qualified American workers before applying for a green card for a foreign worker. As a posting on Legal Blog Watch points out, last year the firm of Cohen and Grigsby "came under fire"when a video of its seminar on how to circumvent the requirements became available on YouTube.

D.C. v. Heller has Legal Blogs Buzzing

Legal blogs are buzzing about the recent Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. With amusing and creative titles like Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition and New Ruling on an Old Technology it seems like every blog has some discussion of the ruling. With a video posting of Professor O'Shea's appearance on KWTV to discuss the decision, OCU Law School's blog is no exception.

New Database: BNA Corporate Practice Library

The Law Library recently added the BNA Corporate Practice Library to our BNA Core package of databases. The Corporate Practice Library includes Corporate Counsel Weekly and a number of portfolios providing coverage in these subject areas:

ANTITRUST AND TRADE REGULATION
CORPORATE POLITICAL ACTIVITY
FORM OF BUSINESS
LABOR AND EMPLOYMENT
CORPORATE AND SECURITIES
ENVIRONMENT
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
SELECTED STATE CORPORATE LAWS


OCU Law Students, Faculty, and Staff can access the Corporate Practice Library (and all the other titles in the BNA Core collection) from on and off campus from the Law Library's page of databases

After accessing the database from the link above you can sign up to receive weekly e-mail alerts. Just click “sign up for e-mail highlights” link in the bottom left hand corner of the page.

In the next month or so you will also have access to all the BNA titles we subscribe to through LexisNexis and Westlaw.

Legal Blog Information Overload? New Tools to help.

With approximately 2,000 law related blogs, it is not difficult for lawyers to quickly become overloaded with information. News aggregators such as Google Reader may offer assistance; however, now there are two new tools.
Alltop - Law, pulls headlines from a diverse collection of popular law blogs and list the headlines on one page. LexMonitor, described as a "daily review of law blogs and journals," provides "channels" that enable readers to follow postings from blogs on certain subject matters in one Web-based feed.

Source: Introducing LexMonitor on Legal Blog Watch, June 23, 2008 at 12:32 PM

Tax Ruling on Law School Loan Forgiveness

Rev Rul 2008-34, 2008-28 IRB IRS website: http://www.irs.gov/

In a revenue ruling, the IRS has ruled that the forgiveness of a law student's loan in exchange for the borrower working for a certain period of time in a qualifying law-related public service position wasn't includible in his/her gross income. The revenue ruling clarified that a law school loan made under a Loan Repayment Assistance Program.

Source: University of Minnesota Law Library LexLibris Blog, citing Federal Taxes Weekly Alert 06/26/2008, Volume 54, No. 26 via RIA Newsstand 6/23/08 (RIA Checkpoint Academic Advantage Library is available via the OCU Law Library Database page)

Are you Linkedin? Social Networking is Here to Stay.

LinkedIn Valued At $1 Billion: What It Means for Lawyers was the title of a recent post on Legal Blog Watch. The conclusion reached was that "social networking sites are here to stay and lawyers need to get on board." Read the entire posting. OCU Law is providing social networking opportunities as well. OCU Law has established an online community on Facebook.