Attorney Nicole Black brings context to the impact of the proliferation of social media accounts among the majority of adults in the United States. The information from these accounts has become a prime source for lawyers to mine for evidence to support their clients’ cases.
After the first criminal appeal, there is no constitutional right to counsel. Thus, the convicted and imprisoned pursuing discretionary appeals and habeas corpus relief must research, investigate and litigate as their own attorney. Law librarian, criminal defense attorney, and well-known writer and speaker Ken Strutin’s guide documents a body of law that has developed defining the spectrum between full-blown post-conviction representation and the impact of the conditions of confinement on pro se litigants.
In the past, attorney Nicole L. Black has described misguided attempts by judges to excessively penalize jurors for using social media or the Internet during the pendency of trials. In fact, over the last year, judges have gone so far as to fine or jail jurors who have used social media during trial, and legislators have proposed laws that would criminalize such conduct. This despite the fact that jurors have been violating judges’ orders not to research or discuss pending cases since the dawn of jury trials.
Marcus P. Zillman’s current annotated link compilation encompasses top value-added resources for knowledge discovery available through the Internet. The selected resources and sites provide a wide range of actionable knowledge and avenues for information discovery to leverage as part of your overall research project strategy.
Hays Butler and Emily Feltren document the process and successful implementation of dynamic, extensive project conducted over the past three years by the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) working with law librarian volunteers around the country to build the first-ever National Inventory of Legal Materials, an inventory of print and electronic legal materials at all levels of government. More than 350 volunteers have added nearly 8,000 legal titles to the inventory so far.
David H. Rothman reviews the Android Nexus 10, which he considers a standout from among the well known group of available e-book readers. David documents key reasons to choose this e-reading machine, including the 10-inch screen, which can easily display 500 or 600 words of text. He also highlights a wide range of essential apps available for researchers, librarians, knowledge managers and of course, book lovers.
Attorney Nicole Black discusses the rise in the number of lawyers using mobile devices, the growing number of apps developed specifically for lawyers, and how these apps increasingly support lawyers at every stage of the litigation process.
Lawyers are increasingly shifting their day to day operations to applications and operations that leverage the convenience and affordability offered by the concept of a paperless office. Attorney Nicole Black talks about how doing so can raise an assortment of ethical issues, since the confidentiality of client information must always be maintained, regardless of the format in which it is stored or distributed.
David H. Rothman maintains that the Harvard-originated national digital library initiative is an underachiever in K-12 matters and identifies other areas where the DPLA could better serve America’s libraries and their users. These areas range from family literacy to the content creation needs of local libraries, preservation and digital divide efforts. Rothman details specific remedies to these challenges consistent with his strong advocacy on behalf of strengthening national digital library systems.
Marcus P. Zillman’s research reveals the facets of The Deep Web, comprising in the vicinity of 1 trillion pages of information located in various files and formats that the current search engines cannot find, or have difficulty accessing. Some of the more comprehensive search engines have written algorithms to search the deeper portions of the world wide web by attempting to find files such as .pdf, .docx, .xls, ppt, .ps. and others. These files are predominately used by businesses to communicate within their organization or to disseminate topical information and work product to customers and potential clients. Searching for this information using deeper search techniques and the latest algorithms allows researchers access to a vast amount of actionable corporate information and intelligence. Research has also shown that even deeper information can be obtained from these files by searching and accessing the “properties” information on these files.