Guess what? Summer is literally just weeks away!  

Shortly your final exams and papers will be a distant memory as you begin your summer jobs and clerkships. Starting in May, however, several of our subscription-based  legal research resources restrict student access over the summer, to help avoid the use of nonprofit educational passwords at paid summer employment. However, each service treats summer access a bit differently, and there may be further variations for continuing vs. graduating students. Here’s your guide to summer database access:

• Bloomberg Law accounts are valid between school terms and for 6 months after you graduate. Your BUSL Bloomberg account may be used for both academic and employment-related purposes, including full access to federal court filings . If you do not already have a Bloomberg Law account, you may Request A Law School Account with your BU email address.
• LexisNexis this year will provide unlimited access this summer to Lexis Advance, its next-generation research interface.In June, Lexis will be moving entirely to Lexis Advance.   That means that all current law school  home page (Lexis.com) ID’s will no longer work.  If you currently have a working Lexis Advance ID and password (http://advance.lexis.com) then you are all set and need to nothing.  If you use your old Lexis.com ID only, you need to ensure that you are registered with your Advance ID.  Please contact, Michael.campion@lexisnexis.com, to obtain that ID.  You will be able to access Lexis.com, and the law school home page with your Advance ID only.   The Lexis.com interface will be available for academic (non-commercial) use only until July. 2013 graduates will have full access to Lexis Advance through July 31; continuing students will have unlimited access until August 31.
• Westlaw offers extensions of your Law School password for academic work, including: summer classes, journal work, projects for faculty, moot court, unpaid/non-profit public interest internships or externships, or a pro bono project that is required for graduation. Commercial use of your Law School password (such as at a law firm summer job) is strictly prohibited. May graduates can also extend their Westlaw passwords to obtain 10 free hours of research time for bar exam study. If you qualify for a summer extension of your Westlaw password, log in to the extension page and follow the instructions.
• Other Law Library Databases: Access to Boston University databases for continuing students is available over the summer with your BU username and password. Recent graduates will find that their off-campus, password-based access to other subscription databases (such as HeinOnline and LegalTrac) expires very quickly after graduation. Alumni may access many University and Law School subscription databases on-site via the reading room computer terminals.
• Click HERE for more information.

For more information about access to library resources for the graduating class of 2013, bookmark our guide to Law Alumni Services.

Summer hours for the Pappas Law Library following graduation begin May 20th and will be from 9-5 Monday through Friday.

Wishing you a restful and productive Summer!

(medical or medicinal) /s marijuana /s states

What will this search turn up?  Why would you want to use this search string instead of simply typing in your terms?  Learn the answers to these questions and more at the Power Searching Certification Class.  This class will be offered Tuesday (4/2), Thursday (4/4), and Friday (4/5) from 1-2 PM in Room 334.  Questions? Email me at jekblaw@bu.edu.

The latest issue of U.S. Law Week (Law Week) includes, as usual, stories on a wide range of topics,  as well as detailed coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court. It also illustrates the continuing integration of BNA products (formerly the Bureau of National Affairs) into Bloomberg Law.

One story reports on the oral argument before the Supreme Court yesterday in the Arizona voter registration case and provides a link to the full text of the argument transcript. (The transcript is also available from the Court’s web site.) Another story on copyright law covers the recent decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that the use on a clip from the Ed Sullivan television show in the stage musical Jersey Boys is protected by the fair use doctrine. The story provides a link to the full text of the court’s decision, housed in the Bloomberg Law environment.

To sign up for email delivery of Law Week or to select from dozens of other Bloomberg BNA updates, go to BNA’s Law School Professional Information Center, and click on “Sign up for E-mail Updates.” After a brief registration process, the user can click the boxes next to the update titles she wants to receive by e-mail, and click Save to confirm. In the case of Law Week, email options include the standard weekly headlines or highlights, or a mailing that can be customized to include only stories involving selected topics, courts, agencies or states.

Registering for a Bloomberg Law account provides another access point for BNA updates.

Law Week also maintains a Twitter feed (@BBNAUSLawWeek) that provides one more way to follow news and get links to Law Week stories, court opinions and more.

BNA’s Internet Law Resource Center is where many existing areas of law (criminal law, taxation, jurisdiction, intellectual property, First Amendment, and communications) are challenged to define rights and responsibilities in a “new” frontier.  Whether you equate cyberlaw with the “Law of the Horse,” like Judge Easterbrook, or think there’s something more like Professor Lessig, there are great materials here for you.  The Internet Law Resource Center provides access to cases, current awareness publications, and analysis from practitioners who specialize in Internet Law.  So the next time you need to research how the law has moved forward in the Internet Age, be sure to check out this resource.

Here are the dates for upcoming vendor training sessions on their respective platforms:

Lexis: Click here

Westlaw: Click here

Bloomberg Law:

American LLM Training:

October 10: 2-3 in room 820

October 12 11-12 room 1420

JD Training:

Oct. 23 1-2 room 1420

Oct. 24 330-430 room 820

Oct. 25 1-2 room 1420

RSVP to Eric Malinowski emalinowski@bloomberg.net

or, register with a Bloomberg Law student representative at the Bloomberg Law table on Thursday’s from 10-2 in the Law Lobby.

OCI is quickly approaching, and you may be wondering how to best approach your interviews.  Bloomberg Law has created an “Acing Legal Job Interviews” series of podcasts to answer some of your questions.  The first video, on preparation, can be accessed here.  Sign in to Bloomberg Law to see the rest of the series (found under “Videos and Podcasts” in the middle of the main page), which includes videos discussing on campus interviews, call backs, and what to do after an interview.  If you don’t have a Bloomberg Law password, sign up for one here.

Please remember that there are important access restrictions associated with the use of our subscription-based  electronic databases.  As Summer approaches I thought a timely reminder might be helpful.

Bloomberg Law subscription remains active throughout the Summer and can be used to research federal and state cases, statutes, rules and regulations.  Bloomberg Law also includes foreign and international law databases, U.S. congressional information, federal and selected state court dockets, news and corporate information.  Bloomberg encourages law students to use their academic access to Bloomberg Law as much as possible, even when working for law firms. (For those of you graduating, BL is available for 6 months following graduation.) Sign up here if you have not yet done so.

Lexis Summer use begins on June 1st and is restricted to Lexis Advance. (This is a change from previous years’ policy.) If you have not yet registered for your Advance ID and PW, check your email(s) for notice from Lexis, and if you don’t see it – contact michael.campion@lexisnexis.com, to obtain your Advance temporary ID and PW.( Graduating students have access through August 31st on Advance.) Access restrictions include these points:

Lexis Advance:

• Summer course preparation and assignments
• Research associated with Moot Court, Law Review, or Law Journal
• Research associated with pursuing a grant or scholarship
• Service as a paid or unpaid research assistant to a professor
• An internship, externship or clinic position for school credit or graduation requirement
• Study for the bar exam
• Research skill improvement for educational purposes

Westlaw Summer access begins on June 1st and ends on August 1st.

You are eligible to register for a Summer extension if you are:
· enrolled in summer classes,
· working for a law review/journal or moot court,
· working for a faculty member as a research assistant, or
· working in an unpaid public interest internship/externship (excluding court and government settings).  Unpaid means ANY form of compensation (including stipends, fellowships, or expense reimbursements) invalidates the qualification.
The link for requesting extensions is here.

If you do not qualify to request an extension as explained above, your access will be limited to 40 hours of access in each of the months of June and July.

Graduating Students may apply to extend their passwords beyond May 31st for 5 hours of access per month in June and July.

A favorite mantra amongst many law librarians is “It’s not all available online.”  I can’t tell you how many times I heard this in legal research classes during law school.  Although this statement is true, and it’s also true that Google does not crawl the entire universe of information, I think these messages are sometimes interpreted as an intent to create forbidden resources.  The truth is, Google Scholar can be a great source for patents, and online research can be a lot more efficient than print.  The key is knowing when to use one source or version over another.  This judgment has to be made by the researcher.

Another fear librarians have for their legal research students is over-reliance on keyword searching.  Google has conditioned all of us to expect the answer after entering a few words related to our query.  Unfortunately (or fortunately), legal research is not always that simple.  Why, you might ask, would it be fortunate that legal research is not simple? (Overlooking, of course, that I’m a librarian and helping people navigate legal information is what I’m paid to do) It’s fortunate for you for a similar reason; if legal research was simple, anyone could do it, and clients wouldn’t need to pay you to do it for them.

These issues become even more important in practice.  I am going to leave you with a quote from Greg Castanias, the head of Jones Day’s Federal Circuit Practice, in response to a question about legal information vendors (for the entire interview, click here): “[I]f young lawyers understand that legal research is a human act, based on judgment, then they can see the suppliers of legal information for what they are — sources of legal data that may or may not be available in other places, in other mediums, at lower or no costs.  They are not ‘magic machines’ into which a young lawyer types a few words and gets output that justifies his or her $160,000 per year starting salary.”

The controversially named “Defense of Marriage Act”—the Federal law banning same-sex marriage recognition—was for the first time challenged this week before the US Court of Appeals for the First District in Boston. The Act had been previously declared unconstitutional at the district court level in July, 2010. This appeal, launched at the time by the Department of Justice—which is no longer being supported by President Obama— was continued after the U.S. House of Representatives intervened. (Author’s note:  Anyone care to research how often that strange set of circumstances has occurred in U.S legal history?)

For a closer look at the docket and filings give Bloomberg Law a try.  The case is:   Gill v. Office of Personnel Management Docket #10-2207.

For commentary see,

The Atlantic: The Losing Argument for the Defense of Marriage Act

WBUR: Appeals Court Hears Gay Marriage Law Case

New York Times: Appeals Court Hears Arguments on Gay Marriage Law

Chicago Tribune/Reuters: Court Hears Appeals Over Anti-Gay Marriage Law

Broadside (Video): DOMA On Trial In Boston

Los Angeles Times: DOMA: US Appeals Court Takes Up Defense of Marriage Act

Bloomberg Law has just consolidated the BNA Law Reports on one easy to use page.  These reporters are a fantastic tool to consider using for keeping current. The reporters are grouped together by subject on the “News and Analysis” page and now they’re even easier to locate.

Sign-up for Bloomberg Law here.
(Click here to read more about Bloomberg Law’s tools for keeping current.)