One thing that the article doesn't mention is that attorneys may include links to cases or statutes cited in their briefs, as long as the source is free. For the full rule, see page five of the Supreme Court Rules regarding electronic filing of documents per the Wisconsin's Court Systems eFiling page. It reads:

Electronic briefs may be enhanced with internal links (such as a table of contents with links to locations in the brief) or external links (links to websites containing the text of cases or statutes cited in the brief). External links in an electronic brief shall not require a password for access to the case or statute. No enhancement to an electronic brief shall alter the text of the brief.

A few months ago I blogged about Jureeka!, noting that it is a Firefox add-on that looks for legal citations in ordinary web pages and turns them into hyperlinks that lead to a free version of the cited source. Pretty handy for web-based research.

But Jureeka! also installs a toolbar in Firefox which allows you to search for source material by legal citation. See the screen shot below.

After you enter in your citation and click "Find by citation" you'll be directed to a page that offers you a link to your desired document, if it is available.

Once you reach the desired website with your source, simply copy the URL at the top and paste into your brief.

Jureeka! is great for quickly locating links to statutes, case law, regulations, federal court rules, international law sources, and more. It has a success rate of around 92%.

For more about this neat tool, including a list of citation types included, see the Jureeka! blog.

Thanks to my colleague, Lynne Gehrke, for helping me recognize this new use for Jureeka!

From WSLL @ Your Service:

With the current economic situation, many people have been forced to deal with the issue of home foreclosure and are looking for information. In response, the State Law Library has created an online tutorial, Help! I'm Facing Foreclosure. The page includes a brief (under 3 minutes) video directing people to sources of information and assistance, and links to the websites of relevant agencies and organizations. Attorneys and librarians alike may find this to be a useful resource for their clients and library patrons.

The expanded EBSCO package includes:

• an upgrade to the Premier versions of Academic Search and Business Source;
  
• a major newspaper collection (Newspaper Source Plus);
  
• the leading reader's advisory service (NoveList and NoveList K-8);
  
• all three versions of Book Collection: Nonfiction;
  
• two new health databases (Consumer Health Complete and Alt Health Watch);
  
• two new education products (Education Research Complete and Educational Administration Abstracts);
  
• high school level science and history resources (Science Reference Center and History Reference Center);
  
• an auto repair database (Auto Repair Reference Center).
  
• a pair of literary/humanities collections (Literary Reference Center and Humanities International Complete)

Source: TechBits and Channel Weekly

From the Press Release: You can currently subscribe and receive all press releases and media alerts. Other information, such as Attorney General Guest Columns, featured topics of interest, and missing children alerts will be added in the near future.

Source: The Wheeler Report

Source: The Wheeler Report

From the article:

On June 23, Gov. Jim Doyle signed an executive order which calls for employees of state agencies and the University of Wisconsin system to take eight days (64 hours) of unpaid leave during each fiscal year of the next biennium...

State court employees are not subject to Doyle's order, noted Radloff, but the budget does cut approximately $1.9 million annually in salaries for non-judicial court staff.

"Basically, the money taken from the budget is the equivalent of the eight days per year," said Radloff, who still expected additional furloughs to be discussed.

Keith Sellen, who oversees the 29 state employees at the Office of Lawyer Regulation (OLR), said it is hard to estimate to what extent closing the office for the equivalent of almost two weeks throughout the next biennium would have on efficiency.

"Assuming it's eight [days] for the next two years, it will have some impact," Sellen said.

"It may result in some minor delays, but I'm not sure what percentage of time will be lost."

No PACER account is required to view the dockets, but if you wish to view the filings for a case, a PACER account is needed. FreeCourtDockets provides direct links to the filings in PACER.

To retrieve all court dockets except U.S. Supreme cases, you must first obtain an invitation code. To request a free code, you'll need to complete a form on the FreeCourtDockets website. Requests are usually answered within twenty four hours.

I received my invitation code this morning and decided to take the service for a spin. The process was cumbersome, but the results were as advertised.

When you first go to http://www.freecourtdockets.com/, you're led through two introduction screens before you even start searching. While this is fine for the first time, I'd rather not have to do this every time. Therefore, in the future, I think I'll probably create my bookmark a few pages in.

The first search page asks you to select a court type: U.S. District Civil or Criminal, U.S. Bankruptcy, U.S. Courts of Appeals, U.S. Appellate (Supreme and Courts of Appeals), U.S. Court of Federal Claims, and U.S. Court of International Trade. You're then prompted to complete a captcha to ensure that the response is not generated by a computer.

I chose U.S. District Civil or Criminal and was taken to a new page in which I was asked to specify a specific jurisdiction. My choice there was the Wisconsin Eastern District Court which took me to another page asking for the docket number and my invitation code. Click count so far: 4.

Note that FreeCourtDockets does not offer name searching capabilities. You can only retrieve dockets when you already know the court and case/docket number. Now, this might be a pretty big stumbling block were it not for Justia's Federal District Court Filings and Dockets search. Justia allows you to search by a combination of case name, jurisdiction, law suit type and date. Its search results offer information about cases filed, including the docket number, but does not offer the full docket itself (very similar to Wisconsin's CCAP).

So, I sauntered over to Justia, did a search for civil rights cases in the Eastern District of Wisconsin and pulled up a docket number. Then I went back to FreeCourtDockets and entered in that docket number, albeit with a bit of format massaging. Then I also entered my invitation code.

Next, I'm directed to a page which asks me to verify the case I want. After doing so, I finally arrive at a case with the case information. Click count at this point: 7. But, still no docket - that requires yet another click.

And I've not yet mentioned that a huge amount of ads appear along with way. Could this be the reason for the cumbersome amount of clicks - so that I'm forced to view as many ads as possible? Perhaps. But, hey, it's free. I'm not complaining too loudly.

But after all those ads and clicks (8 page clicks in all), my patience is finally rewarded with the full docket, much as it looks in PACER. And the links to obtain the filings in PACER are there also.

Where FreeCourtDockets is getting the docket content is unclear. I couldn't find anything on the site that answers that question. But, judging from the obvious visual similarities to PACER, one might suspect that it's coming directly from PACER itself.

How they are able to offer this content for free is also uncertain, but I wonder if that is what all those ads are for. Note that the Help page states that "We will continue to expand our site to include U.S. courts of appeals, docket browsing, and free pdf access when adequate funding is received from sponsors, advertisers, and from your donations."

So is FreeCourtDockets the best thing since sliced bread? No - Justia's search capabilities and ease of use kicks it butt across the playground. But, is it still very useful? Yes - it's the only source I know of for free federal court dockets.

Now if PACER would just pony up and offer its content for free, that would really be something. And could you imagine if there were a product that combined Justia's search capabilities and PACER's content? Ooh, just the thought makes me giddy!

According to the Bar, the "new home page layout now is cleaner, more visually interesting, and easier to read. The new design offers expanded news content, an improved news archive, simplified navigation, and faster access to newly released products and upcoming events, among other changes that improve accessibility."

And did you know that the State Bar as a Twitter feed? I just discovered that today.

July 1 will be a landmark day in Wisconsin legal history.

Starting that day, attorneys will be allowed to cite some unpublished Court of Appeals' opinions. Unpublished but authored opinions issued on July 1 or after can be cited for persuasive, but not precedential, authority. Per curiam opinions and summary dispositions still won't be citable.

From the article:

Justia is led by former FindLaw CEO and co-founder Tim Stanley. It's more than just attorney profiles; the company provides free case law, codes, regulations, legal articles and legal blog databases, as well as community resources.

Avvo is more focused. Its stated purposed is to help people navigate the "complex and confusing legal industry." The Web site indicates it caters to "regular people" and states that "many of the resources available today were developed for people who are already legal industry 'insiders.'"

Some additional soundbytes from the article:

• "There are other online attorney databases, such as Lawyers.com from the old standby, Martindale-Hubbell. But Avvo and Justia are free, whereas Lawyers.com is not."
  
• "What differentiates the services the most is that Avvo provides an attorney's disciplinary history, client ratings on a scale of one-to-10 and reviews."
  
• "It took about 15 minutes to complete the Justia profile, and from his perspective, there's been no downside to it."
  
• "The most significant value to Justia is the help it offers with search engine optimization, says [attorney Sean M.] Sweeney."
  
• "But Sweeney says, unequivocally, that his firm's Web site traffic has increased since he completed his Justia and Avvo profiles."
  
• It's the ratings aspect of Avvo that makes it a little dicey"
  
• "[Attorney Perlick-Molinari's] advice, especially if you practice in an area where there's high client dissatisfaction, like criminal defense or family law, is to monitor your Avvo rating and reviews often."

Here's a description from the Mental Floss Blog:

Sitting on the dais with him was President Obama. Hodgman suggested that Obama is American's first nerd president in the modern era, after a succession of jock presidents. Obama seemed to agree. Watch the video below for a cultural moment that's sure to resonate for decades to come.
Discussed: the culture war between jocks and nerds; the three kinds of Hobbits; God as a distant, uncaring Dungeon Master; Obama's victory as a Revenge of the Nerds; asking the hard questions about the president's nerd credentials; a series a stunning Dune references; some nice Star Trek references.

Here's the basic list - see Jason's full post for annotations.

1. Be yourself
2. You have something very important to say
3. Have an elevator pitch
4. You are not a "dream maker."
5. You're probably not that funny
6. Don't pretend you remember me
7. Don't be offended but I may walk away from you
8. Don't do me any favors
9. You don't have to exchange business cards with everyone: use social networking too
10. If you see me, say hello.

This is an awesome list - both funny and wise. I particularly like #2: "You have something very important to say." But I think it goes well beyond conferences--it's true of your professional life as a whole.

This has been a particularly personal lesson for me. As a young person, I was extremely shy and had fairly low self esteem - the kind of student that never, ever spoke up in class because I felt that I had nothing important to offer.

Fortunately, I got over it. It took some serious encouragement from a wonderful mentor who coached me through writing and eventually publishing my senior thesis. For me, it was that experience of having a published article that made me realize that I actually did have something valuable to say.

I've written a lot since then and presented many times, but it still sometimes amazes me that people think I've got something worthwhile to offer. I continue to struggle with my shyness but that little voice in my head that says "yes, I do have something important to say" keeps me talking.

The petition reads:

We ask the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to improve PACER by enhancing the authenticity, usability and availability of the system.

We the undersigned, urge the Administrative Office of the US Courts (AO) to make the following changes to the PACER system:

For verification and reliability, the AO should digitally sign every document put into PACER using readily available technology.

PACER needs to be much more readily accessible if it is to be usable for research, education, and the practice of law. Improved accessibility includes both lowering the costs for using PACER and enhancing the web interfaces.

Depository libraries should also have free access to PACER.

If you would like to sign the petition, you are invited to do so online.

Registration opens today! If you are interested in participating, please visit http://cssis.org after at 11:00 AM central time. Because there are a limited number of spaces available, course participants may be selected on a first-come, first-served basis.

For more information, visit the CS-SIS website.

The collection primarily spans the years 1932 through Hurst's death in 1997. The bulk of material dates between 1946 and 1980 when Hurst was a professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, where he developed the field of American legal economic history through his scholarship and teaching. The collection provides insight into the evolution of Hurst's view of legal history and his role in developing a community for legal historians.

The collection includes Hurst's personal outlines and notes; course texts; publications; publication reviews; research notes; correspondence (incoming and outgoing letters); personnel records; photographs; audio recordings; and typewriter. Correspondence, topical outlines and notes, and audio recordings compose a bulk of the collection.

In anticipation of high research demand, the majority of materials in this collection have been digitized and are freely available on the Law Library website. Researchers may browse the collection by series; search the detailed finding aid; or view the complete finding aid in PDF.

The complete collection, including those materials which have not been digitized, is available at the UW Law Library. Contact the library staff for assistance.