Growing up in northwest Kansas in the 1970s, Peter Ninemire was on the skinny side, with long, dark hair covering his eyes and a wild streak that drew him to marijuana. When he lost his father at age 22, Ninemire says, the wheels came off completely. He fell deep into…
At his trial last year on federal kidnapping and conspiracy charges, prosecutors sought to introduce cell tower evidence purporting to show that calls placed from defendant Antonio Evans’ cellphone could have come from his aunt’s house, where the victim was thought to have been held for ransom. That’s not unusual.…
Corporations, like individuals, have the right to engage in political speech, the U.S. Supreme Court said three years ago. The “corporate identity” of a speaker did not justify a reduced level of free speech protection, wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. “No sufficient governmental…
"When people say everything's online," says Jerry Dupont of the Law Library Microform Consortium, "they're woefully uninformed." Dupont, founder of the LLMC, a nonprofit law library cooperative, estimates that of the 2 million unique volumes contained in America’s law libraries, only about 15 percent are available in digital form. That figure includes access via proprietary, commercial services like Westlaw and LexisNexis.
Across the country, law libraries are trying to adapt to the digital revolution and preserve historic and precedential documents. But budget cuts have hit hard at academic law libraries, which historically have hosted some of the most robust legal collections. And the pressures are creating concerns that the public will lose access to essential legal documents.
For example, for six years straight the acquisitions budget for the Maine State Law and Legislative Reference Library has remained flat. Like many law library officials, director John Barden has managed to preserve public access to most legal content, but he has been forced to make some tough calls along the way.
Rising costs have forced him to scrap treatises and cancel nearly half of his print law journal subscriptions. At the same time, his staff has undertaken a massive effort to digitize state legal documents that date back to the 1820s.
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After a 6-year-old Canadian girl swallowed 19 superstrong, pea-size magnets in March, she told her mother she thought they were candy. The magnets failed to pass through naturally, and a surgeon removed them three days later, finding a perforated small intestine, ulcerations in the stomach and two small holes in…
Angered that the Internet site PayPal had ceased allowing its users to donate to the controversial online publisher WikiLeaks, 14 computer users allegedly fought back. They sent PayPal multiple communication requests, a program that hackers use to saturate networks with information and crash them. One of the programmers, Keith W.…
Consumer attorney Jerry Jarzombek calls them “testaliars.” He’s talking about agents and attorneys representing creditors he says frequently falsify affidavits of service or present erroneous legal documents to his clients and to the court. The paperwork involves unpaid debts from credit cards, payday loans, medical bills and the like. “They…
While the format has its skeptics, mobile apps are revolutionizing the way law is being practiced in the U.S.—a trend that will only intensify this year, according to ardent supporters.
Indeed, the latest smartphone or must-have tablet is no longer a technological fashion statement; it’s a critical, competitive tool that many attorneys simply refuse to live without. “Smartphones and tablets are not just shiny objects to catch up on the news or update Facebook,” says Chad E. Burton, whose virtual law firm serves Ohio and North Carolina. They “can play a key role in producing work product for clients and managing a law firm.”
