WisBlawg, UW Law LIbrary

Checklist for Filing Appellate Briefs in Wisconsin

Tue, 29 May 2012 14:38:51 -0600

According to the latest InsideTrack, the Appellate Practice Section of the State Bar of Wisconsin has created an Appellate Brief Filing Checklist outlining requirements to help lawyers during the brief-writing process.

The first part is a checklist with boxes permitting practitioners literally to check off the items as they are included in a brief, and the second part is an accompanying outline to explain the checklist.

Hat tip to my colleague, Bill Ebbott.

UW Madison Unveils New Library Catalog

Mon, 21 May 2012 09:55:11 -0600

Today, the UW Madison libraries are releasing a new Library Catalog. It has been available for beta testing for some time, but today marks it's official debut.

Here are some highlights:

intuitive interface for fast discovery
powerful limits and narrowing for all searches
seamless portal to all UW System libraries
easy access to your account information
mobile friendly

The new catalog really is a great improvement over its predecessor, MadCat. It is more visually sleek and much more intuitive. I especially like the faceting that allows you easily narrow down your search. The new catalog was designed in house.

For more information about the new catalog, see the development blog called Moving Forward.

MadCat, the prior catalog, will continue to be available for those who prefer to use it. There is a link to it on the top right of the new catalog.

Study Reports that Westlaw Classic is Significantly Less Expensive than WestlawNext

Wed, 16 May 2012 09:14:37 -0600

Emily Marcum of Lightfoot of Franklin & White, LLC recently conducted a study comparing the pricing models of WestlawNext v Westlaw Classic.

Although the full study is not available, the abstract from SSRN appears below:

WestlawNext and Classic were each used exclusively in transactional mode for eight days. Cost to the client was assessed using a discount off retail model. Classic was found to be 51.6% cheaper. This difference was so stark that the experiment was terminated early and only two days of each platform in hourly mode was completed.

It's very unfortunate that the full study isn't available. Eye raising findings such as these deserve some closer investigation.

WI Sup Ct Recommends No Change to Rule Allowing Citation of Unpublished Appeals Court Opinions

Wed, 16 May 2012 08:07:08 -0600

From WisBar's InsideTrack:

A state rule of appellate procedure that allows attorneys to cite unpublished Wisconsin Court of Appeals opinions as persuasive authority will continue unchanged, the Wisconsin Supreme Court recently concluded....

Under Wis. Stat. section 809.23(3)(b), only unpublished opinions issued on or after July 1, 2009, which are authored by a member of a three-judge panel or by a single judge under section 752.31(2), may be cited....

Because an unpublished opinion cited for its persuasive value is not precedent, it is not considered binding, and a court need not distinguish or otherwise discuss an unpublished opinion. No party has a duty to research or cite unpublished opinions under the rule....

But according to the Hon. Richard Brown, chief judge for the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, more unpublished opinions are being cited, at least in District II. He estimates that one in every 20 appellate briefs contains citation and discussion of unpublished decisions, which is a lot considering the number of cases handled by appeals court judges annually.

"Not only that, when reading the circuit court record in our cases, we see that unpublished opinions are being cited to the trial courts," Chief Judge Brown said. "Whether an unpublished opinion is 'persuasive' is literally a case-by-case determination."

Database of Law School Employment Statistics

Thu, 03 May 2012 12:36:56 -0600

Law School Transparency is a legal education policy organization. Their mission is to improve consumer information concerning the value of legal education and to usher in consumer-oriented reforms to the current law school model.

They have recently released a graphical database of employment statistics for all ABA-accredited schools, including Wisconsin.

WisconsinEye Marks 5th Anniversary

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 14:11:33 -0600

Congrats to WisconsinEye on its fifth anniversary. WisconsinEye brings gavel-to-gavel, C-SPAN-style nonpartisan coverage of state government and politics to Wisconsin.

A Day in the Life of UW Madison and the Law School

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 08:44:53 -0600

Take a look at what life is like at UW Madison and particularly the Law School.

The Law School contributed a number of posts to the #UWRightNow campaign, a collaborative multimedia project coordinated by University Communications to chronicle 24 hours at UW-Madison -- midnight to midnight on Wednesday, April 18, 2012.

You can see them at https://twitter.com/#!/WisconsinLaw You can see posts from the whole campus at http://uwrightnow.wisc.edu/.

The Impact of Law Librarian Retirements

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 13:27:22 -0600

My UW Law Library colleague, Jenny Zook, has recently published a very well written article in this month's AALL Spectrum. The article entitled, Retirements in the Age of Economic Uncertainty, offers an insightful look at how librarian retirements have and have not affected retirees and law libraries.

Get Ready for April 3rd Election with the Interactive Online Voter Guide

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 09:36:28 -0600

The Wisconsin State Journal has compiled an interactive online voter guide for the spring general elections in Dane County.

It allows Dane County residents to type in their address and call up a ballot with only those races that apply to their address. Then the ballot shows the candidates, their races, and their own statements about their candidacies. Readers can use this for research only, or can create a customized ballot with notes and indications of which candidates they wish to choose.

Read this article for more. Thanks to my law school colleagues for sharing the information about this site.

Today in Wisconsin History - 1877, Passage of WI Law Prohibiting Denial of Admission to the Bar on the Basis of Gender

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 12:41:22 -0600

Today's On This Day in Wisconsin History features the passage of a bill in the Wisconsin Legislature prohibiting denial of admission to the bar on the basis of gender.

R. Lavinia Goodell was the first woman admitted to the Wisconsin State Bar in 1897. Goodell had first applied in 1875, but was denied because it was believed that women were not suited to practice law. According to Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Edward G. Ryan, "Nature has tempered woman as little for the juridicial conflicts of the court room, as for the physical conflicts of the battle field."

Goodell then worked with the legislature to pass and defend enabling legislation. After the legislature passed it, she reapplied for admission to practice before the Wisconsin Supreme Court and her petition was granted on June 18, 1879, with Judge Ryan dissenting.

If you're interested in learning more about Goodell, see her biography entitled, Strong-minded woman : the story of Lavinia Goodell, Wisconsin's first female lawyer. Note that it is written for young readers.

Book Review

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 10:50:09 -0600

My colleague Sunil Rao has published a well written book review of The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law, by Albie Sachs. It appears on the AALL Spectrum blog.

From the review:

In the process of conceiving this book, Justice Albie Sachs--who served on South Africa's first Constitutional Court from 1994 until his retirement in 2009--asked himself: "How do I actually make my decisions and write my judgments?". The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law is a lively and elegantly written exploration of this question; it is a series of interlinking chapters held together by the thread of Sachs' broad and varied experiences as a lawyer, anti-apartheid activist, participant in the formation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, co-drafter of South Africa's constitution, and Justice on the Constitutional Court.

Google Changes Format of Legal Citator

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:08:03 -0600

I suspect that most of you know that Google Scholar offers full text federal and state court opinions. But did you know that it also offers a citator similar to (although not as extensive as) Shepards or KeyCite? This feature allows you to find significant citing decisions for a case.

Google has recently announced that it has changed the way that it presents these citing decisions. Previously, it had sorted by prominence, but it will now sort them by the extent of discussion of the cited case.

To access the citator, view a case in Google Scholar by entering the citation in the search box - try, for example, 603 F. 3d 181.

At the top you should see two tabs: the default tab is "Read this Case" and the other one is "How cited." If you click on the latter, you'll get the following screen.

Note that in the middle it shows you how other cases have quoted your case. On the right you'll see a list of cases that have cited your case, sorted by depth of treatment as described above.

Improve Your Google Search Results

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 08:58:26 -0600

Hack College has created a useful infographic on how to use Google more effectively. It's targeted toward students, but is helpful to anyone who uses Google - which is just about everyone, right?

I found the section on the operators to be the most useful. I've long used quotes to search for exact phases and the minus sign to exclude words, but I didn't know about the ~ to search related works or the .. to do a number range search. I will certainly be making use of those from now on.

You can also limit your search to a specific file type, search just the title of a webpage, search within a specific site, get a definition, do calculations or unit conversions, and lots more.

Don't worry if you can't remember all these operators. Google will walk you through many of them on the Google advanced search page. I just wish that Google didn't make the advanced search page so hard to find. There used to be a link to it from the main Google page, but they removed it for some odd reason. Now you have to either know the direct URL (http://www.google.ca/advanced_search) or search for it.

GPO Access to Shut Down in March

Thu, 08 Mar 2012 08:48:32 -0600

GPO Access will officially be shut down on March 16, 2012. Users will be redirected to content on FDsys for at least one year thereafter.

For more info, see FDLP Desktop

Latest UW Law School Faculty Scholarship

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 08:43:10 -0600

Here is the latest faculty scholarship from the UW Law School Legal Studies Research Paper Series via SSRN.

Judicial Capacity and the Substance of Constitutional Law by Andrew B. Coan, University of Wisconsin Law School
Informing and Reforming the Marketplace of Ideas: The Public-Private Partnership for Data Production and the First Amendment by Shubha Ghosh, University of Wisconsin Law School
Re: Defining Securitization by Jonathan C. Lipson, University of Wisconsin Law School
Comparative Anthropology of Law by Elizabeth Ellen Mertz, University of Wisconsin - Madison, American Bar Foundation and Mark Goodale, George Mason University