Update on Westlaw and Dialog

I just heard that Westlaw has removed all Dialog content with the exception of the copyright databases. I'm still not sure about the scope of the removal, but I continue to feel outrage that Westlaw would remove so much valuable content without any prior notification whatsoever. I wonder if people in the firms could tell us if they still have access to the Dialog databases? Perhaps the change affects only academic subscribers. I'll update OOTJ readers as more information becomes available.

Follow the Leader

Today's New York Times is reporting the results of a study that shows that the "California Supreme Court is the most influential state court in the nation." The study, to which the Times story links, is based on citation analysis, and was published in a recent issue of the UC Davis Law Review. It is interesting to note that Kentucky ranks at the bottom of the fifty states in terms of the influence of its high court. According to the study, reasons for the California Supreme Court's influence are that "California's size and diversity gave its Supreme Court an enormous inventory of interesting cases to choose from; that lower-court decisions there tended to present the pertinent issues well; and that the Supreme Court had a professional legal staff whose main job was to analyze petitions for review."

Practical Skills Training

From today's New York Lawyer comes the following article about skills training at a number of law schools around the country, including Washington and Lee Law School, which has initiated a third-year practicum. Click here to read Washington and Lee's press release.

Top Law Schools Making It Real for Students Through On-the-Job Training

New York Lawyer
March 11, 2008
Reprints & Permissions

By Justin Pope
The Associated Press

Medical students learn the ropes on real patients during hospital rounds. Student journalists practice by writing stories. But if learning-by-doing seems an obvious way to master a profession, one corner of higher education has largely avoided it: law schools.

Critics say the country's 200 accredited law schools are guilty of building some of academia's tallest ivory towers, where students learn to "think like lawyers" but get little preparation for what attorneys actually do.

The result: a rising chorus of complaints from employers that even after three years of school (and $150,000 or more in tuition), the nation's 50,000 annual law school graduates still need to be trained on the job.

A number of prominent law schools, including Harvard and Stanford, have responded lately by beginning to shake up how they teach. Now, a small but respected law school in Virginia, Washington & Lee University, is planning even more fundamental changes likely to attract widespread notice in the legal community.

The school is announcing plans to have students spend their final year — a time for breezy classes and little hard work at many schools — in "practicum" courses, where they will imitate real-world lawyering every step of the way.

It works like this: Typically, in a business law class, for example, students work through a hefty book where they study a range of cases. Students might follow the full range of legal problems that would typically come before a single company — antitrust, real estate, consumer protection and international law. The classes would still largely be taught on campus, perhaps by a professor along with a visiting practicing attorney.

"I think that prestige within the world of law schools became tied exclusively to the intellectual, theoretical side of legal study," Washington & Lee law dean Rodney Smolla said. "That became the currency by which law professors judged one another."

Law schools have fallen short in helping the young "learning to absorb the complicated facts that a client presents them with," Smolla said.

Some law schools whose professors don't necessarily publish the most articles or have the most prestige, including the City University of New York and the Massachusetts School of Law, have been focused on practical lawyering for years.

Last year, a report by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching fueled the debate by arguing the traditional approach has left the "impression that lawyers are more like competitive scholars than attorneys engaged with the problems of clients."

Students are well taught in boiling down facts and applying the law. But most cases are messy, and students don't learn to navigate complex ethical and social issues, or work together to solve problems.

The Carnegie report has prompted several conferences to talk about reform. At Harvard, where the first modern law school curriculum was laid out in 1872, a committee surveyed alumni about their professional experiences, leading to changes including more emphasis on regulatory and international law.

Stanford has emphasized interdisciplinary study, and both are giving students more opportunities for clinical practice. Detroit Mercy School of Law has begun requiring courses that simulate work in a large law firm.

At Washington & Lee, Robin Fretwell Wilson has already begun teaching a pilot class in family law along the lines of the new model and said the differences are substantial. It's an entirely different approach that focuses on navigating the intricacies of an actual prenuptial agreement, for example, and the questions students will need to understand — like what it really means when an agreement calls for "best" efforts instead of "reasonable" ones.

Jim Alfini, dean of the South Texas College of Law in Houston and former chair of the American Bar Association's legal education curriculum committee, called Washington & Lee's changes the most substantial he's seen. But he noted that more students are picking non-traditional careers like business and public interest work and said it's important for the new approach to provide the "flexibility" they need.

For students at Washington & Lee, which will phase in the changes over the next few years, the downside could be the end of the famously halcyon third year. Typically, students take small, contemplative classes and — since at many top schools they already have jobs lined up — focus mostly on playing softball and bar-hopping.

But first-year student Eric Hoffman said he is willing to put in the extra work if the program — as he expects — makes Washington & Lee graduates more appealing in the job market.

"I think we're at a point in our lives when we grow up a little and say, 'All my peers are already working 60-hour-per-week jobs,'" he said. "I can be working just hard for something that will better prepare me for the legal profession."

NYU Offers On-line LLM Program

According to today’s National Law Journal:

New York University School of Law is making its LL.M. tax degree available online starting in the fall….

The law school expects to enroll about 25 students from around the world in the online program for its LL.M. degree, considered a premier tax credential for lawyers and scholars….

Both the online program and the school’s regular LL.M. program require students to complete 24 credits. For online students, they, generally, must complete two of those credits at the NYU campus in New York and can take all others electronically.

The article somewhat confusingly confuses the issue of accreditation for this new online program:

The ABA does not accredit schools that offer only online courses, and it permits accredited schools to offer only second- and third-year courses online.

In NYU’s case, it did not need to obtain ABA approval for the new LL.M. program, Cunningham said, because it is part of the graduate tax law program and because its requirements are, basically, the same as the part-time program. Tuition for the online program is $1,731 per credit, the same charge for the part-time program.

In fact, the ABA does not accredit LL.M. and other post-JD degree programs; however, ABA-accredited schools must receive ABA “acquiescence”: “Standard 308 of the ABA Standards for Approval of Law Schools states that an ABA-approved law school may not establish a degree program in addition to its J.D. degree program unless the school is fully approved, and the additional degree program will not detract from a law school’s ability to maintain a sound J.D. degree program.”

(Cross posted at Buffalo Wings and Toasted Ravioli.)

Blogged with Flock

A Revolting Development

I was working with a student today and recommended that he run a search on Westlaw in PAIS-C (Public Affairs Information Service), one of the Dialog databases. PAIS is one of the databases I use most when working with students and faculty on law-related topics; it's a good way to access literature that often isn't picked up by other databases. Much to my surprise, the student came back and reported that the database identifier didn't work. I tried it myself, and had the same experience. So I asked one of the reference librarians to call Westlaw and find it if there was a technical problem or if the database had been taken down. The representative said that a number of Dialog databases had been taken down on February 29. When asked what other databases were no longer available to us, the representative replied that the list constituted "internal information." As such, she could not share it with us. I guess we'll have to figure out what else we've lost as we try to use other databases.

It's hard to imagine why Westlaw could not share the list with us. We cancelled our print subscription to PAIS ten years ago, relying on the fact that we had access through Westlaw. Thankfully, we have access to other public affairs and social science databases, and they will compensate for the loss. However, losing PAIS and whatever else is gone with no notice from Westlaw is unfortunate. It's a shabby way for Westlaw to treat its customers, and underscores how risky it is to base acquisitions decisions on what is currently available from LexisNexis and Westlaw.

Welcome to the New OOTJers

I'm very pleased to welcome two new contributors to Out of the Jungle.

Meg Kribble is Emerging Technologies, Reference, & Instructional Services Librarian at Nova Southeastern University Law Library, as well as a blogger, photographer, knitter, human companion to Emma and Rufus, and Twitterer. She also increases the hipster cred of OOTJ and law librarians in general by her reporting from SXSW Interactive.

Abbie Mulvihill is a law firm federal government law librarian in Washington DC, a blogger and, with Meg (and me!) one of the micro-bloggers at law.librarians.

Please join me in welcoming Meg and Abbie.

(Corrected 3/10/08)

Release of Clinton Papers Blocked

According to USA Today, "[f]ederal archivists at the Clinton Presidential Library are blocking the release of hundres of pages of White House papers on pardons that the former president approved, including clemency for fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich." Although the decision was made by the archivists, who work for the federal government, it was based on "guidance provided by Bill Clinton that restricts the disclosure of advice he received from aides [and] prevents public scrutiny of documents that would shed light on how he decided which pardons to approve from among hundreds of requests." The controversial decision could create problems for the candidacy of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has been criticized by the campaign staff of Senator Barack Obama for "not doing more to see that records from her husband's administration are made public."

Nicholson Baker on Wikipedia

Nicholson Baker,who criticized librarians in his controversial book Double Fold, discusses Wikipedia in his lively review of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, by John Broughton. The always irreverent Baker gives a brief history of the open-source encyclopedia, which he describes as being "like some vast aerial city with people walking briskly to and fro on catwalks, carrying picnic baskets full of nutritious snacks." Baker reminded me of something I had forgotten: When Wikipedia began, it "absorbed articles from the celebrated 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is in the public domain." It also pulled in a number of other reference sources, all of which were in the public domain. The effect of all this erudition was to "elevate[] Wikipedia's tone." At least for awhile. Baker recounts how Wikipedia "editors" made revisions and even vandalized some entries. As Baker says, "Without the kooks and the insulters and the spray-can taggers, Wikipedia would just be the most useful encyclopedia ever made. Instead it's a fast-paced game of paintball."

Baker describes the process of becoming a member of the Wikipedia "upper crust--one of the several thousand whose words will live on for a little while, before later verbal fumarolings erode what [they] wrote." According to Baker, these individuals need to "have a cool head, so that [they] don't get drawn into soul-destroying disputes...and some practical writing ability, and a quick eye, and a knack for synthesis." Most important is enough free time for "a long apprenticeship of trial and error." Baker says that the apprenticeship can be shortened considerably by taking advantage of the advice contained in John Broughton's new book, which "may mark a new, middle-aged phase in Wikipedia's history." Although Broughton sometimes "sounds like a freshman English comp teacher," he can help would-be Wikipedia editors achieve the self-confidence needed to "start adding, creating, rescuing."

Touro Law School Is Not for Sale

Touro Law School has announced that it is not for sale. The Law School was allegedly in discussions with Stony Brook University about a possible sale, but they never progressed past the preliminary phase. Stony Brook may still investigate the feasibility of developing a law school as part of its drive to become a major research university. Here is the story:

Law School Says It's Not for Sale
BY OLIVIA WINSLOW AND JOHN VALENTI
March 5, 2008
Newsday
Discussions about the sale of the Touro Law Center to Stony Brook University never made it past the preliminary stage, Stony Brook president Shirley Strum Kenny said yesterday.

"We had very preliminary talks," Kenny said. "We were certainly not at the point of negotiating."

Bernard Lander, founder and president of Touro College, whose main campus is in Manhattan, said yesterday he would never sell the law school. The college operates the Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center in Central Islip.

"I never met with anybody or spoke to anybody at the state university," Lander said in an interview. "I had one meeting with Sen. [Kenneth] LaValle. Period. I never negotiated with anybody." Lander said that when Touro law school dean Lawrence Raful asked him for his opinion and that of the school's board, "I said the law school charter is never for sale. Period."

Talk of a possible sale surfaced in early February in an effort to make Stony Brook the second university after the University of Buffalo in the State University of New York system to have a law school.

Kenny confirmed she and Lander had never met to discuss the law school. "There were conversations with people in the law school," she said, "but they were very preliminary discussions. We never got into any negotiations."

Kenny said those discussions did serve a purpose: They revived the idea of adding a law school at Stony Brook.

"Dr. Kenny and I have agreed to move forward and look at and explore the possibility of establishing our own law school at Stony Brook," said LaValle (R-Port Jefferson).

"It's not a new concept," Kenny said, noting that university officials first considered the addition of a law school in the 1970s and then again in the 1980s. "But now people feel it's the last piece of putting together a major research university. ... It's something we will be considering very seriously."

Though no agenda has been put in place, Kenny said a committee will be formed to study the feasibility of building a law school. "I think there is a lot of interest now in the possibility of developing a law school at Stony Brook. Now, nothing has happened on that score."

Mukasey and BC Law School

The Boston Globe is reporting that Boston College Law School has decided not to award the Founder's Medal, its highest honor, to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey when he speaks at its May commencement ceremony. The decision was announced on Tuesday by Dean John Garvey at a meeting with graduating students. The invitation to Mukasey has been criticized by BC alumni and students because of his "controversial refusal to declare that an interrogation technique known as waterboarding constitutes torture." In the future, the graduation speaker will not necessarily receive the Founder's Medal, which is "awarded to those who 'embody the traditions of professionalism, scholarship, and service which the Law School seeks to instill in its students.'" One alumnus stated that he was glad Mukasey would not receive the Medal, but feels that BC should have withdrawn the invitation "because his position on waterboarding conflicts with the university's Jesuit mission."