Above the Law posted today about a recent article in CommonWealth magazine that discusses online term paper trafficking services.  The article alleges that a Massachusetts attorney, employed as a staff attorney for the Massachusetts Appeals Court, responded to the journalist's Craigslist ad and offered to write a paper for $300.  The article's author, Colman Herman, reports that the attorney assured him that such a transaction was not illegal under state or federal law.  Unfortunately for the attorney, a Massachusetts statute specifically bars the sale of "the written results of research, knowing or having reason to know that such theme, term paper, thesis or other paper or research results or substantial material therefrom will be submitted or used by some other person for academic credit and represented as the original work of such person." Mass. Gen. Laws chap. 271, s. 50 (2009).

Does California have a similar statute?  A very quick and easy natural language search revealed that we indeed have a statute containing an almost-identical prohibition. California Education Code Section 66400 states:

It will be interesting to see how the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers responds to this report.  Will they launch a disciplinary investigation?  I would assume so.  At the very least, the Board should investigate whether he has the necessary skills to practice law since his legal research skills don't seem quite up to snuff.

This week, HeinOnline announced a beta "faceted search" option for its Law Journal Library.  "Faceted search" is just a fancy way of saying that, if you choose this search option, HeinOnline will cluster your law review search results into different categories on the screen, displaying the number of articles that are within a certain date range, from a particular law review, about a particular subject, or articles that fall within a particular document type (book review, student note, etc.).

Why run a faceted search?  To browse search results faster, of course!  Let's say that you're working as a research assistant for a professor, and they want articles on a particular topic, but they don't want to see any student notes or comments.  Faceted searching lets you weed out these kinds of documents really quickly.  Or if you want to see the most recent articles on a topic, faceted searching gives you a nice snapshot of which articles were published between specific date ranges, like 2006 to present.

To see faceted search in action, run either a "Field" search or an "Advanced" search in the HeinOnline Law Journal Library (faceted searching isn't available in other HeinOnline libraries yet).  When you get your search results, click on the link, "Run as Faceted Search - BETA," at the top of the screen, and HeinOnline will reformat the search results into the categories shown below:

I ran a search in the Law Journal Library for law review materials that contain the phrase "battered woman syndrome" in the title.  Here's what the faceted search results look like:

If you have questions about how to use HeinOnline, contact one of the reference librarians or visit the HeinOnline blog, which has tons of great searching tips.

Concurring Opinion's Jon Siegel has a great post about all of the legal frailties that occur in the TV series "House."  The post helps to explain why attorneys may find themselves watching TV alone at home --it can be difficult to resist the urge to tell your couchmates exactly how the show's writers are ignoring important and fundamental legal principles.  While I was a practicing health care lawyer, I had a hard time watching TV shows with either a medical or legal theme for this very reason.  I found myself jumping off the couch every time a show depicted all of the physicians on the medical staff of a non-Kaiser California hospital as hospital employees, berating the TV show's writers for their ignorance of California's corporate practice of medicine laws.  I was a new associate when Ally McBeal aired, and I used to try to count the actual number of billable hours that Ally racked up during each episode (it was usually no more than a .2 or .3).  Surprisingly, my husband is rarely grateful for these legal insights, so I've learned to suppress my inner JD while we watch TV.