County Law Library Services in Oregon

This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services through the Library Services and Technology Act, administered by the State Library of Oregon.

Kristen Matteucci writes the goal is to help “Self-Represented Litigants better prepare for court hearings and more confidently engage with the courts, these illustrated videos address topics like legal advice vs. legal information, what it means to file a motion, and what to do after being served.”

The full blog post has a list of the current videos, and the videos can be found at the NCSC A2J Videos (Access to Justice). Please note these videos are not specific to any one state.

“The Yoshino Cherry (Prunus xyedoensis) is the prominent flowering cherry of Washington, D.C., gifted to the United States by Japan. This is also the genus to which Stumpy belongs. While the “Akebono” (Japanese for “dawn”) is not patented, other variations of the cherry blossoms are. Plant patents were created by the Plant Patent Act of 1930 (46 Stat. 376) and codified with amendments. …”

While it’s unclear which species are in the Tom McCall Waterfront Park, a Yoshino Cherry tree can be found outside the Portland Fire & Rescue Station 1 along the waterfront, and more can be seen at the Portland Japanese Garden.

Steven Leskin from Leskin Law’s One Day Divorce Mediation will join the Washington County Law Library via Zoom to discuss topics in divorce mediation.

For details, the zoom link, or past programs, see the Washington County Law Library’s Now What?! series.

Date: Thursday, April 4, 2024, 10:00 a.m. PDT – 11:00 a.m. PDT

This entry in the series provides an overview of U.S. federal regulations, including information about the notice and comment rulemaking process, the publication and citation of regulations, and the tracing of regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations, to the proposed rule in the Federal Register, to the regulation’s docket.

Mia Getlin from Mia Getlin LLC will join the Washington County Law Library via Zoom to discuss issues in starting a business in the cannabis

industry.

“Between 1930 and 1931, near the town of Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, 3,000 men worked in ten-hour shifts drilling a three-mile tunnel through the side of a mountain. Within five years, more than 750 of those men would die of a deadly and preventable disease. Keep reading as we use HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library and U.S. Congressional Documents collection to learn more about the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel Disaster, the single deadliest industrial incident in American history, and its influence on the struggles for worker’s rights and safety regulations in the United States. …”

HeinOnline may be available through your local law library.

The first discusses how the bar exam came about: The History of the U.S. Bar Exam, Part I – The Law’s Gatekeeper.

The second highlights the first person of color and the first woman to be admitted: The History of the U.S. Bar Exam, Part II – The Gate Openers.

The blog post “Modern Piracy and the United States Code” from the Law Library of Congress, by Aaron Lombard, explores this topic. It is a fun introduction to federal laws and legal resources.

One of the original tools was Shepard’s (now a LexisNexis product). The online LexisNexis version allows a user to find documents that cite the case they are looking at. It also allows a user to see if any of those have overturned the case of interest, or otherwise challenged part of its ruling. In Shepard’s there are visual indicators to suggest a case is still good (green), called into question (yellow), or part of it has been overturned (red). Westlaw has a similar tool called KeyCite, and Fastcase uses Authority Check.

It is important to note that any of these tools can only indicate that there might be something. The user will have to read the newer case that may affect the original case to see what that impact actually is, and how it relates to the user’s situation.