The Ohio Supreme Court has just released the February 2008 bar exam results. Overall, the pass rate was 65.5%, but the rate for first-timers was 83%. The list of all of the successful candidates can be found at the Supreme Court's website and is searchable by last name, resident city, county, state or law school. The Court will administer the oath to all of these individuals at 2:00 p.m. on May 12th. Click here to read the Court's Press Release.
Thanks to a brand new innovation launched yesterday called WorldCat Local, all of the titles that the Cleveland Law Library owns are now searchable at the State Library of Ohio's website. As the State Library's Press Release indicates, the State Library of Ohio is the first state library in the country to implement a Google-like search box that allows users to search its holdings, the collections of the OhioLINK academic libraries, or the international holdings contained in WorldCat. WorldCat is ordinarily only available on a subscription basis, but the State Library has made its holdings available for everyone to search.
For those of you who are members of the Ohio State Bar Association, you can expect enhancements to Casemaker in the near future. OSBA President Robert Ware has announced that a search technology company called Collexis Holding Company has acquired Lawriter LLC, which created Casemaker. Ware notes that Collexis is planning to invest millions of dollars upgrading Casemaker, offering more features, and adding more than 3 million new documents. Currently, Casemaker provides access to codes and other materials from the 50 states and the federal system. Collexis has several existing partners, including the North and South Carolina Bar Associations, and 3 state trial lawyers associations. When the new Casemaker product is launched, the OSBA plans to offer training on its new features and functionality.
Fastcase has launched a beta or trial version of The Public Library of Law. The PLoL claims to be the biggest free law library in the world with access to cases from the United States Supreme Court and the federal Courts of Appeals, cases from all 50 states back to 1997, federal and state codes, regulations, constitutions, and court rules. The site also provides access to fee-based forms and form packages from U.S. Legal Forms that cover an uncontested divorce, incorporating a business, creating a landlord-tenant lease, filing for bankruptcy and more. Most of the forms can be downloaded in Word, and there is a good sampling of forms from Ohio that are available for purchase.
This year, Ohio Jurisprudence and the American Law Reports (ALR's) are only going to be available on Westlaw. Traditional template searching to gain access to these products on Lexis will no longer work. Westlaw will also be the only place to find the legal encyclopedias from Texas, Florida, California, New York and Michigan.
Shane Hoover of the The Canton Repository issued a story last week highlighting the issues facing Ohio's county law libraries. Hoover interviewed Stark County Law Library Director Kendel Croston about the county funding cuts law libraries are suffering this year and the proposed plans that are being considered following issuance of a Task Force report. The new plan calls for creating local county law library boards as well as a state-wide consortium to facilitate resource sharing among the local agencies. Any changes which are enacted will affect the Cleveland Law Library, which fully participated in Task Force activities. The article also summarizes the main points of each interest group's opinions and concerns about the current situation and the reform proposal.
If you have not already heard, our Law Library created its 2nd podcast this week about a brand new product we created called The Index to Ohio Legal Periodicals. After a year's worth of sweat equity, we recently launched the Index in August. Our Index currently covers 20 Ohio journals and is searchable as a pdf file on the Internet. We are constantly updating the Index with new issues, and we have plans to expand our journal coverage. There is a free sample/demo at the following link, DEMO Link, and listeners will receive the password near the end of our broadcast. Our Index is available for free to members of the Cleveland Law Library (through the Members' Only page on our website), all county law libraries in Ohio and the Ohio Supreme Court Law Library. Other interested parties can purchase a year's subscription to the Index for $150.00. Please contact the Cleveland Law Library Director for further information.
The Moritz Legal Information Blog has posted information on how to quickly check whether the FBI has a "file" on you, and, if so, how to order a copy. The place to go is called Getmyfbifile.com, where you can get help drafting the letters you need to request your "file." This same site can also apparently help you order your "file" from other agencies such as the CIA, DIA, NSA, the Secret Service, and the Army Criminal Investigative Command. Getmyfbifile.com has a companion site called getgrandpasfbifile.com for help in obtaining government files for people who are deceased.
Today, the Ohio State Bar Association launched OfficeKeeper, a totally new online product that is available for OSBA members. The full title of this new resource is OfficeKeeper: Professional Tools for Law Office Management and Client Relations, and it was created as an interactive pdf with live cross-references, URLs and other links. Multiple authors submitted chapters on: business entities; law office basics; legal resources and law libraries; time billing & accounting; case management & office operations (including new clients, collections, file closing procedures, case management software, internet security, and email); hiring, retaining and terminating employees; marketing; practice challenges like making money; quality of life issues; closing, selling or acquiring a law practice; and ethics. The product also contains a lot of handy forms in most of these areas. Check out the chapter on legal resources and law libraries.
The September issue of the American Lawyer magazine has an interesting and informative AmLaw Tech article which concludes that electronic databases have not totally replaced books, and law libraries are still having to pay for both. The article also suggests how firm libraries are becoming more like information resource centers where librarians perform work on marketing, competitive intelligence, computer training, and knowledge management projects, in addition to traditional "library" work like legal research. While discussing firm differences in billing or not billing for librarian services and database use, the article also discusses both library and vendor contracting and pricing strategies. The article is definitely worth a read for an up-to-date look at modern law libraries.
