There’s much buzz about the new Droid phone from Motorola.  Here’s what Futurelawyer has to say:

This is the Droid you want, Obewan. If this were a fight, the ref would stop it. Debate? No contest. Droid and Android are superior to Apple’s iPhone in many ways; but, Don Reisinger of EWeek says it best. I would have put open source first; but, he hits all the high notes. I would amplify usability issues like a removable battery ( I carry a spare, which will get me through a weekend without electricity), tethering (you can browse the web on your notebook, using the Droid’s Internet connection, free turn by turn GPS navigation, voice search and navigation that works, I could go on and on. If you have drunk so much Apple Kool Aid that your brain has turned to mush, then you may think iPhone is superior to Droid. However, any even-handed look at the two leaders in the category would have to give a big edge to Droid.

Oh, and if you like technology, you should make it your business to follow Futurelawyer.

One of the easiest ways to keep up-to-date with online news and blogs is to subscribe to RSS feeds.  If you are unfamiliar with RSS feeds and feed readers, check out RSS in Plain English for a straightforward explanation.

BU Law and Boston University offer many RSS feeds to suit your needs and interests.  For example, consider

• Pappas Library News & Announcements

• BU Law RSS listing feeds about Law School News, Careers, Alumni, or feeds for JDs or LLMs

• BU Today featuring university-wide news articles

• Pappas Library Blog

• BU RSS Help listing more suggestions and providing detailed instructions about how to subscribe to feeds

Happy Thanksgiving to all!  The Library is open until 9pm this evening, and reference hours are until 5pm this afternoon.  We are closed tomorrow and open Friday and Saturday, 10am to 9pm, and Sunday 11am to 11pm.  Reference resumes Sunday, noon to 8pm.  Enjoy the holiday!

UPDATE:  The Annex is open until 3pm today and then closed until Sunday at noon.

If you obsessively monitor Supreme Court rulings or enjoy playing in fantasy leagues, FantasySCOTUS.net might be the next big thing to distract you from your casebooks.  The brainchild of recent law school grad, law clerk, and blogger Josh Blackman, the league works as follows:

For each case the Supreme Court grants Cert, you will predict

• The Outcome: Affirm or Reverse the lower Court. You will recieve 1 point for predicting the outcome correctly.
• The Split: 5/4, 6/3, 7/2, 8/1, 9/0, or 4-1-4 , or Fragmented (no discernible majority opinion). You will receive 3 points for predicting the split.
• Which Justices are in the Majority and which are in the Minority. You will receive 1 point for each Justice correctly guessed. No points for recusals.

At the end of the term, the winner will be named Chief Justice and win some yet-to-be-determined prizes.

In an article published yesterday, The Financial Times profiles the LLM programs at BU Law. Including comments from Assistant Dean John Riccardi and Prof. Con Hurley, the article discusses the LLM programs in American Law, Banking and Financial Services, Tax and Intellectual Property.

Noting that these programs draw their 200 students from over 25 countries, Riccardi observes, “The range of background – in terms of the legal traditions students come from, the educational systems they’ve been brought up in, and the professional experiences they’ve had – is astounding.”

Continue Reading »

Earlier this week, Google unveiled new functionality to Google Scholar enabling everyone to search cases and legal journals for free.  Read Google’s announcement here.

Although the completeness of Google’s case law collection and the dates of coverage are unclear (there is some date information on the Scholar Help page), here is what we do know.  Advanced Scholar Search allows you to limit searches to U.S. Federal court opinions or to opinions from one or more states.  Or, you can use Google’s Advanced Scholar Search Tips to tailor your search for more accurate results.  Once you find a case to read, the How Cited Tab allows you to see quotes from and links to other cases that have cited this opinion.  Also new on Google Scholar is a check box to include patents in your search.  As before, you can search patents separately through Google’s Patent Search.

Given worries about high research costs, should Google Scholar be a lawyers favorite place to start legal research?  Probably not. Just because something is free doesn’t mean it is efficient and the best places to start most legal research questions are practice materials, treatises, or other secondary sources.  However, when you want to search for case law or legal journals, Google Scholar is definitely worth a look.

Even without this recent development, Google Scholar is a great place to search for scholarly articles or books across many disciplines, including law.  Scholar searches and provides access to abstracts or full text of free or subscription-only electronic resources.  If you tailor your Google Scholar Preferences by choosing Boston University in the Library Links section, Google Scholar will display a Find BU button for  subscription-only sources to take you directly to the article at BU.

Are you researching foreign IP laws for your note? Copyright Watch collects and monitors national copyright laws. Organized by country, the database provides a brief summary of the status of the national copyright law, IGO membership and links to English translations of the current copyright legislation.

The ABA Standing Committee on the Judiciary is now providing “prompt, accurate, unbiased information about newsworthy and legally significant cases pending in and decided by the Federal Court of Appeals.” These alerts are written by law professors and sent directly to your e-mail.  You do not need to be an ABA member to sign-up - this alerting services is designed for the public.

Scholarship, understanding and creativity involve, in many ways, the ability to recognize connections between ideas (or between rules or statutes or holdings).  http://bubbl.us/ is a cool web tool that can help with this.  It’s free and it permits users to share ideas and, most importantly, through its graphics element, it allows users to make connections between and among ideas.  This is a good way to brainstorm or to just play around with concepts, legal or otherwise.  An example involving Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 is at the link below.  Take a look!

Rule 26 Example

Whether or not you attended the weekly workshop today on current awareness sources for legal news, some of these links may be helpful for using these tools:

• ABA Journal Blawg 100
• About Law360
• Alphabetical List of BNA Products
• Federal Tax Resources: Current Awareness
• Law Blog Portal
• Setting up Tracker News on IntelliConnect
• Using the Alert Feature (Lexis)
• Using Westclip on Westlaw

Again, the handout for the workshop is available here.