Category «Legal Technology»

Locating Foreign Civil Codes

Lyonette Louis-Jacques expertly guides us with this pathfinder on the research required to comprehensively address the frequently asked foreign and comparative law research question – how do I to find a country’s civil code?. A researcher might not know they need a civil code, but they often do. A civil code is the key to accessing all types of private law for many civil law jurisdictions. Modeled after the Code Napoléon or Code civil des Français (1804), a civil code usually contains laws relating to personal status, contracts, torts, “delict”, “obligations”, real and personal property, inheritance and succession, marriage, divorce, family, parent and child, private international law (conflict of laws/choice of law).

Read more

Subjects: American Association of Law Libraries, Comparative/Foreign Law, Government Resources, Legal Research, Online Legal Research Services

Text to speech in new $80 Kindle demolishes lobbyists’ case against legally required TTS

David Rothman argues forcefully for uniform, immediate government and industry support for and implementation of text-to-speech technology. Rothman highlights Amazon’s use of Bluetooth-based TTS in the new $80 Kindle. The reader permits blind individuals as well as those with reading challenges to use Bluetooth headphones to hear the TTS via a wireless connection without the requirement for any special adapter.

Read more

Subjects: E-Books

Making Lemons into Lemonade: Libraries and the Challenge of the Website Transition

At the beginning of the spring semester, Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law school transitioned to a new website with a more modern look but a much more rigid architecture. As often happens with new website launches, there were obstacles to overcome – 404 errors to fix, a new navigation to learn, resources to update – as well as old website simply not transferring to the new site. In this article Ashley Ahlbrand describes some key issues her team faced and how they were addressed as a Lessons Learned for other groups pursuing the same transition.

Read more

Subjects: Information Management, Internet Resources, Law Library Management, Libraries & Librarians, Library Marketing, Program Planning

Should Colorado court documents be free on public library computers?

Jeff Roberts of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition raises the question of expanding free public access to court documents in Colorado. Specifically, he identifies the only location where a non-lawyer can view and request copies of all civil court documents from ICCES, the Integrated Colorado Courts E-Filing System. This location is the Colorado Supreme Court’s law library in the Ralph L. Carr Judicial Center in downtown Denver. Fees and access to PACER have been the topic of discussion in the legal community for many years. The urgency of this discussion and a resolution that ensures free public access to court filings is critically dependent upon the future of court law libraries.

Read more

Subjects: Court Resources, Courts & Technology, E-Government, Electronic Court Filing, Government Resources, Legal Technology, Online Legal Research Services

IBMs Watson is Now Data Mining TED Talks to Extract New Forms of Knowledge

Alan Rothman’s commentary offers actionable information about a new technology from IBM called Watson that is a powerful tool for researchers whose work engages data mining, knowledge management and competitive intelligence. Rothman attended a recent presentation that demonstrated how Watson is deployed as a search and discovery tool whose object is the huge video archive of TED Talks content.

Read more

Subjects: Business Research, Competitive Intelligence, KM
➤