27 Tuesday Oct 2015
Posted in ALWD, Citations, Legal Writing, Public Domain Citations, The Bluebook
≈ Comments Off on Legal Citation Honey Pot.
Tags
ALWD Citation Manual, Andrew Zimmerman, Bluebook, Legal Citations, State Citation Manuals, Universal Citations, Zimmerman's Research Guide
Citations, Zimmerman’s Research Guide©2015, by Andrew Zimmerman
https://law.lexisnexis.com/infopro/zimmermans/disp.aspx?z=1288
Zimmerman’s Research Guide has been around a long time, and is definitely worthy of a bookmark. Here is a very nice collection of legal citation guides that drills down a bit deeper than most. -CCE
27 Tuesday Oct 2015
Posted in Ethics Opinions, Judges, Legal Ethics, Legal Technology, Research, Rules of Professional Responsibility
≈ Comments Off on Is It Wrong To Research Your Judge And Jury? Is It Wrong If You Don’t?
The Do’s and Don’ts of Researching Judges and Juries Online, by Anna Massoglia, The Lawyerist Blog
It makes sense to research potential jurors, and social media makes it easier than ever. But courts have only recently begun to issue guidance now that researching jurors and other courtroom players online is becoming an increasingly common practice.
Researching judges, too, has its advantages. Some jurisdictions, like California, allow you to strike a judge once per case without establishing bias. Although there are limitations and technicalities on these rules, they can give you a say in who decides cases — making it important to know your judge. . . .
26 Monday Oct 2015
Posted in Document Retention, File Naming Conventions, Law Office Management, Legal Technology, Office Procedures, Technology
≈ Comments Off on Going Paperless?
Tags
Bryan Sims, File Naming Conventions, Jim Calloway, Jim Calloway's Law Practice Tips Blog, Office Manuals, Paperless Office
‘Paperless’ Office Doesn’t Really Mean Paperless, But It Does Mean New Processes and Procedures, by Jim Calloway, Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips Blog
http://www.lawpracticetipsblog.com/2015/10/paperless-processes-and-procedures.html
‘Let’s just go paperless. We can free up all that space in the file room and quit paying so much for outside file storage.’
“What a great idea!
* * *
Thus begins the perfect storm of a paperless law firm makeover absolutely destined to fail. . . .
25 Sunday Oct 2015
Posted in Legal Technology, PowerPoint, Presentations
≈ Comments Off on The Most Effective Use of PowerPoint.
Tags
Comedy Central, PowerPoint, Stephen Colbert, Teaching Community, The Colbert Report, The Word, Tom DeRosa
What Stephen Colbert Teaches Us About Effective Presentations, by Tom DeRosa, Teaching Community
Although Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report has run its course and is no longer on the air, I have always thought that “The Word” was the best use of PowerPoint I have ever seen. The PowerPoint slides did not provide the content of the presentation, which is common. Instead, as the punchline, each PowerPoint slide hit the mark. -CCE
Great lessons for educators can be found in the most unlikely of places. One such example can be found on Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, in a reoccurring segment called ‘The Word’. In ‘The Word,’ host Stephen Colbert uses one word or phrase as a jumping off point for his unique editorial commentary.
Now, some might dismiss ‘The Word’ on it’s face as partisan punditry. The truthiness, of course, is that ‘The Word’ is the best, most effective PowerPoint presentation ever broadcast. . . .
21 Wednesday Oct 2015
Posted in Implied Bias, Jury Persuasion, Jury Selection, Trial Tips and Techniques, Voir Dire
≈ Comments Off on Understand Group Psychology Patterns for Winning Trial Strategy.
Tags
Group Psychology, Jury Persuasion, Jury Selection, Ken Lopez, The Litigation Consulting Report, Voir Dire, Wilfred Bion
Group Psychology, Voir Dire, Jury Selection and Jury Deliberations, by Ken Lopez, The Litigation Consulting Report
Since first being exposed to the group psychology work of Wilfred Bion 15 years ago, I’ve been completely fascinated by it. I think his theories perfectly explain the behavior of every group that I’ve ever encountered. From boards that I sit on to groups on reality TV shows, they all behave in the same predictable ways, especially when placed under pressure. . . . [Emphasis added.]
19 Monday Oct 2015
Posted in Bad Legal Writing, Legal Writing, Legalese
≈ Comments Off on The Worst Legal Writing Ever?
We Created the Worst Piece of Legal Writing Possible, by Sam Glover, Lisa Needham, and Sam Harden, Lawyerist Blog (with hat tip to Raymond Ward!)
https://lawyerist.com/91373/we-created-the-worst-piece-of-legal-writing-possible/#disqus_thread
I have to admit that it’s a good effort at legalese, but is it the worst legal writing you have ever read? Does it deserve a place in the Legal Writing Hall of Shame? You be the judge! -CCE
Legalese is awful. To prove it, we forced three lawyers (Sam Glover, Lisa Needham, and Sam Harden) to combine their skills to write the worst piece of legal writing imaginable. Here’s what they came up with:
Clarity in Legal Writing: Unattainable Goal or Necessary Component of Effective Advocacy?
The issue of clearness and conciseness in writing and preparing legal documents, e.g. court filings, pleadings, and motions and all other possible legal and ancillary documents is often a topic of discussion among judges and legal scholars. . . .
17 Saturday Oct 2015
Posted in Corporate Law
≈ Comments Off on On August 1, 2015, Delaware Amended Its Business Entity Laws.
Delaware Amends its Business Entity Laws, by Sandra B. Feldman, Publications Attorney for CT Corporation
https://ct.wolterskluwer.com/resource-center/news/delaware-amends-its-business-entity-laws
If you are the owner, manager, compliance officer, or counsel for one of the more than one million Delaware domestic corporations, limited liability companies, or partnerships, it should interest you to know that important amendments to the state’s corporation and alternative entity laws are going into effect on August 1. Here are some highlights. . . .
16 Friday Oct 2015
Posted in Bad Legal Writing, Editing, Grammar, Legal Writing, Legalese, Plain Language, Proofreading, Punctuation, Readability
≈ Comments Off on Plain Language Examples – Before and After.
Before-and-After Comparisons, PlainLanguge.gov
http://www.plainlanguage.gov/examples/before_after/index.cfm
There are a number of superior – and free – websites available to anyone who wants to improve his legal writing skills. PlainLaguage.gov is one of them.
I doubt that anyone wants to write poorly. Often, just showing before-and-after examples improve writing skills. One of the most efficient ways I have found when teaching legal writing is to take a bad writing example, identify why it is ineffective or just plain silly, and suggest different ways to fix it.
Here are examples of government regulations, manuals, handbooks, reports, and other publications that show “before and after” examples that use plain language to improve a sentence, paragraph, or document. -CCE
15 Thursday Oct 2015
Posted in United States Supreme Court
≈ Comments Off on C-Span’s 12-Part Series on Landmark Supreme Court Cases.
C-Span Launches New Series On Landmark Supreme Court Cases, by James B. Levy, Legal Skills Prof Blog
I apologize for not finding this sooner. Sounds fantastic! -CCE
C-Span has launched a new, 12 part series that airs on Monday evenings at 9:00 p.m. (the series began on October 5 but I only found about it now) that profiles landmark Supreme Court decisions through 1973.
* * *
Using C-SPAN’s signature live format of studio guests interacting with viewers and interspersed with visits to historic sites for context, the series will explore the stories of historic rulings which changed American society, the plaintiffs who sparked these cases and the justices and lawyers who were key to the Supreme Court’s review. A video-rich website will offer the series on demand along with classroom materials. Here is a two-minute video trailer previewing the series https://youtu.be/6kuc5tyborM. . . .
11 Sunday Oct 2015
Posted in Note Taking, Office Procedures
≈ Comments Off on Take Notes By Hand, Not On A Laptop, To Improve Your Memory Retention.
New Study Finds Taking Notes By Hand “Significantly Improves” Word Recall Compared To Typing, by James B. Levy, Legal Skills Prof Blog
In the old days before laptops and other digital devices were the norm, we took notes by hand. When I took notes rather than observing and listening in a hearing, meeting, or at trial, I thought it helped me to notice more details that stuck in my memory. I have not had the opportunity to use a laptop or other digital device to take notes. I cannot say whether handwriting or typing improve memory retention. But it is an interesting idea. -CCE
The study was conducted by a team that includes Professor Anne Mangen (U. Stavanger, Norway) who is one of the foremost researchers studying the effect of hardcopy versus screens on comprehension and retention of information. This new study is called Handwriting versus Keyboard Writing: Effect on Word Recall and is available at 7(2) Journal of Writing Research 227 (2015) and can also be accessed online here. . . .
05 Monday Oct 2015
Posted in Apple, Apps, iPad, iPhones, Legal Technology
≈ Comments Off on How To Add Section and Paragraph Symbols on An iPhone or iPad.
Tags
Codification App, iPad, iPhone, iPhone J.D. Blog, Jeff Richardson, Keyboard Character Shortcuts, Section Sign
Sections And Pilcrows — Making The § And ¶ On The iPhone, by Jeff Richardson, iPhone J.D.
Yesterday, I reviewed an app called Codification, which uses for its icon the section symbol — §. That is certainly a symbol that lawyers need to type a lot, but it isn’t immediately apparent how to do so on an iPhone or iPad. . .
You can type many additional characters using the iPhone and iPad keyboard by holding down on a letter. I see that I haven’t posted a full list of those shortcuts since 2010, back when iPhone J.D. had far fewer readers, so I thought it might be useful to post the list again, which is largely still the same in iOS 8 . . . .
04 Sunday Oct 2015
Posted in Admissibility, Discovery, E-Discovery, Emails, Emails, Evidence, Federal Rules of Discovery, Forensic Evidence, Gap-Period Emails, Legal Technology, Motion to Compel, Relevance, Requests for Production
≈ Comments Off on Defendant Ordered by Court to Produce Gap-Period Emails on Backup Tapes.
Defendant Compelled to Restore and Produce Emails from Backup Tapes: eDiscovery Case Law, by Doug Austin, eDiscoveryDaily Blog
In United States ex rel Guardiola v. Renown Health, No. 3:12-cv-00295-LRH-VPC, (D. Nev. Aug. 25, 2015), Nevada Magistrate Judge Valerie P. Cooke concluded that emails contained on backup tapes held by the defendants was not reasonably inaccessible due to undue cost and, even if the emails were reasonably inaccessible due to undue burden or undue cost, ‘good cause supports their discoverability.’ . . .
04 Sunday Oct 2015
Posted in References, Research, SSRN
≈ Comments Off on New And Easy-To-Use Search Tools for SSRN.
Did You Know? Searching SSRN Just Got Easier, by Gregory Gordon, President and CEO of the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) (with hat tip to Sabrina I. Pacifici, BeSpacific Blog)
http://ssrnblog.com/2015/10/02/did-you-know-searching-ssrn-just-got-easier/
Scholars of all types share their research here. You will often see it at SSRN before you see it in books and other publications. If you have not taken the time to truly investigate what you can find here, please give yourself a treat. -CCE
In What We Don’t Know We Don’t Know, I wrote about the overwhelming amount of data that is available today. This is especially true of the SSRN eLibrary. With over 600,000 papers, finding the right research may seem daunting. So, we significantly improved our search functionality.
SSRN’s new page centralizes all the tools you need to find stuff in the eLibrary. We combined Quick Search and Advanced Search onto one tab, and made it simple to switch to Browse SSRN Networks or Browse JEL Codes. Did you even know all of those functions existed? . . . .
01 Thursday Oct 2015
Posted in Drug Promotion, Government, Health Law, Health Reform, Intellectual Property, Patent Law, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
≈ Comments Off on Could Lawyers Fix The Rising Cost of Medicine?
Tags
Cancer, FDA, Litigation & Trial, Max Kennerly, Medicaid, Medicare, Pfizer, Prescription Drugs, RICO, Schering–Plough
Send In The Lawyers: A Partial Fix For America’s Dystopian Prescription Drug Market, by Max Kennerly, Esq., Litigation & Trial Blog
It’s hard to read any news about prescription drugs these days without wondering if you’ve somehow fallen into a Philip K. Dick novel. Just look at some of these titles over the past week:
- ‘2 new studies show the FDA is rushing more drugs to market based on shoddy evidence’
- ‘The True Cost of an Expensive Medication’
- ‘U.S. drug company sues Canada for trying to lower cost of $700K-a-year drug’
- ‘Outrage could lead to lowering price of high-cost drugs’
All of these stories are about different drugs, but the common theme among all of the stories is, of course, money. The Mayo Clinical Proceedings recently found ‘In the United States, the average price of cancer drugs for about a year of therapy increased from $5000 to $10,000 before 2000 to more than $100,000 by 2012, while the average household income has decreased by about 8% in the past decade. Further, although 85% of cancer basic research is funded through taxpayers’ money, Americans with cancer pay 50% to 100% more for the same patented drug than patients in other countries.’ . . .
The Researching Paralegal 
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