In Episode 27 of KCLL’s SideBar Rick Stroup of our staff interviews retiring Superior Court Judge Charles Mertel. We learn about the judge’s diverse background and his plans for the future. In “At the Reference Desk”, the Seattle University Law School librarians discuss researching local ordinances. How many chickens CAN you have in your Seattle city yard?
In this episode of KCLL’s SideBar the Seattle University Law School librarians join KCLL in their first “At the Reference Desk” segment, which discusses a question on legislative history research. Marcus Hochstetler, KCLL’s Director, speaks briefly about how to follow the current Washington State legislature’s session. In Craig’s “The Reel Verdict” segment, he reviews the movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”
The January 2009 edition of KCLL E-News went out this morning. In this issue, we highlight the new video for Pro Ses and a free download for making PDFs as well as new books in the library as of December, 2008.
In this episode of KCLL’s SideBar Santa finds out about the potential liabilities and risks he might encounter during his annual trip.
In this episode of KCLL’s SideBar we talk about social networking information and how to find this information. We also speak briefly about keeping this information private. In Craig’s “The Reel Verdict” segment, he reviews the movie “You’ve Got Mail.”
In this episode of KCLL’s SideBar I talk about a presentation that a local attorney made to our staff. He spoke about the process that landlords must follow when attempting to evict tenants. In addition, we include a sample rental lease he gave us and are posting it to our web site for our patron’s use. Craig, in his Reel Verdict segment, reviews the movie “The Pursuit of Happyness.”
In this episode of KCLL’s SideBar we talk about the change in Washington law which requires the top two primary. In October of 2006, in our second podcast, we described the change that required a pick a party primary, after the blanket primary system had been declared unconstitutional. Kim Ositis, of our staff describes what has happened to require the new primary law. Craig, in his “Reel Verdict” commentary reviews the top 25 greatest legal movies as declared by the ABA plus his own picks.
Three recently developed websites are worth taking a look at if you’re looking for free case law, especially outside of Washington State. (As previously mentioned, www.legalwa.org is a great site for searching Washington-specific case law.)
All three sites mentioned below search U.S. Supreme Court cases, but have unique search engines that often return different results from the same search.
The first site is Precydent. This site allows you to refine your search by jurisdiction and to search using Boolean operators. You can also limit the search by date, and retrieve cases ranked by authority, date, or jurisdiction.
The next site is AltLaw, a joint project between the University of Colorado and Columbia University Law Schools. This site also allows advanced searching and Boolean searching, but does not search as many jurisdictions, particularly lower courts, as Precydent searches.
The third site is Public Library of Law. You can only search one jurisdiction at a time on this site, and there are no Boolean operators available to limit the search. Be aware that this site is sponsored by FastCase, and they may not allow full functionality without paying a fee.
In a recent podcast, Rita K. talks about these sites and others, incluidng FindLaw, the Legal Information Institute from Cornell, and LexisOne.
In this episode of KCLL’s SideBar I talk about steps you should take if you think you may be a victim of identity theft and how to protect yourself from becoming a victim. Craig, in his “Reel Verdict” commentary reviews the movie “The Net.”
In this episode of KCLL’s SideBar I chat about finding good free case law web sites. I review a few of the new web sites that are offering free searching. Rick and Mari create a screen cast tutorial on how to search the LegalWa web site. Craig, in “The Reel Verdict,” discusses “The Paper Chase.”