Cleveland Law Library Weblog

Ohio Supreme Court Justice Yvette McGee Brown Has Created a Twitter Account

At the urging of her 24-year old daughter, Ohio Supreme Court Justice Yvette McGee Brown has created a Twitter account. Her initial tweet celebrated the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote. Justice Brown is the first Ohio Supreme Court Justice to open a Twitter account. According to the Columbus Dispatch, Justice Brown "hopes to communicate with younger generations and get her followers to think about what’s going on in the community and at the Supreme Court." Click here to read the entire article from the Columbus Dispatch.

LexisNexis to Open Customer Service Center in the Philippines

If you have not already heard, LexisNexis is building a customer service center in the Philippines. This has some of its 3,000 employees in Dayton, Ohio, where the corporate HQ is located, wondering about their jobs. Although the Dayton Daily News reports that Lexis is "committed" to Dayton, Lexis has apparently been working with supplier partners in the Philippines for over 10 years.

ABA Tech Show Presents 60 Apps in 60 Minutes

The ABA Tech Show 2011 program on 60 Apps in 60 Minutes is getting a lot of buzz lately. For those of you who could not attend, click here for the list of apps that were discussed. Although very few relate specifically to law, some can help enhance lawyers' productivity and enable them to become more mobile. Dragon Dictation from iTunes sounds great for making notes on the go. Two other choices that sound good for lawyers who travel a lot are Text 'n Drive and Email 'n Drive from iTunes. These utilities supposedly read email and text messages aloud, making for much safer driving. We'll be posting some of these utilities to our section on Internet tools.

Ohio State Bar Association's New Tech Blog Provides Helpful Information

The Ohio State Bar Association's new Tech Blog called "Technically Speaking..." provides very helpful information and tips. It is written by Fred Engel, the OSBA's Director of Technology. This blog covers a number of topics, including e-mail, the Internet, phones, scanners, security, software and websites. The best tip I found lately was Fred's discussion of http://join.me, which is a free alternative to programs such as WebEx and GoToMeeting and allows you to share your screen with up to 200 other people. It is great for a simple webinar-all you need is the telephone component to also share your voice with viewers. Thanks to Fred and the OSBA, I'll be using http://join.me later this week.

PACER Courts Plan to Migrate to Require Documents to Be Filed in PDF/A Format

According to PACER's July 2011 Quarterly Announcements, PACER courts are going to be migrating to a new technical format that some people have already been using called PDF/A. According to more detailed information from PACER, the PDF/A format "... is an International Standards Organization (ISO) standard document format. The standard has been published for almost five years and is available in the current versions of all major word processors and scanning systems. It is a subset of the PDF standard which excludes those PDF features that give rise to concerns about the ability to archive documents." The key seems to be the ability of PDF/A documents to be archives for NARA. The PACER release indicates that there is no national transition deadline and that courts will establish their own dates for the changeover. Apparently, this change will not affect PACER users, who PACER hopes should be able to view both traditional PDF and new PDF/A formats with their regular PDF readers. If you want to test whether your PDF software can open PDF/A documents, try this link for a sample document. A software matrix from Adobe that I found indicates which software programs can create and validate PDA/A documents.

Our Law Library Can Help Members Who Need Co-Working Office Space

The new trend for lawyers and business people is to get away from the office for quiet phone calls, meetings or conferences. The name of this new trend where multiple people share the same space when they need it is called the "co-working office space industry." Although vendors are providing this quiet space for a fee, the Cleveland Law Library has been offering this service to members for a long time as part of membership for no additional fee. Our members can reserve our conference room for meetings, depositions, conference calls, and other business. Members should call 216-861-5070 to reserve our conference room Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

LexisNexis.com No Longer Offers Credit Card Access on a Pay-As-You-Go Basis

I just read the LexisNexis notice that it is no longer offering pay-as-you-go credit card access. For those Lexis devotees who will miss this service, our Law Library offers a robust Lexis plan with the functionality to print, download and email search results to your office. Our plan is available for Law Library members who subscribe on an annual basis.

Tomorrow's Lunch & Learn Program Will Cover Finding Cases Quickly on Lexis and Westlaw

Members-please join us for tomorrow's Lunch & Learn program on: Finding Cases Quickly on Lexis and Westlaw. Our program will run from 12:00 to 12:30 p.m., and we will provide beverages and a door prize for a luck attendee. The program materials will also be made available on our website following the program. Click here for a full line-up of this year's Lunch & Learn series.

Check Out Our New Online Catalog With Enhanced Features and Functionality

The Law Library has a new online catalog, which you can access on the Internet at the following link:

http://clelaw.bibliocommons.com

This new catalog will enable you to conduct Google-like searches or advanced searches, set up your own user ID and password, create lists of titles, and create bookshelves of items you or your law firm have used. Please make sure to set up your privacy settings for these items when you register for the first time. There are many more features available in the new catalog, and if you would like to watch a few tutorials, please use the following links:

• BiblioCommons: An Introduction http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcPZ48O4ggI
• BiblioCommons: Smart Search http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riSn1nxmkVc
• BiblioCommons:Creating Complex Queries
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORQmOkxMvj0
• BiblioCommons: Easy Account Management
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APCDGJPJzac

Our staff is ready to assist you in using this new catalog.

Lawyers Are FaceBooking Potential Jurors for Biases

An article in the Wall Street Journal indicates that lawyers are using the technology available through facebook to check for juror biases and possible dispositions on legal issues. Sometimes this leads to kicking off a juror, but it is clearly not fullproof.  The article relates a criminal case where defense cousel tried to facebook a jury, but the client was still convicted and sentenced to death. Although the article suggests that traditional voir dire questions elicit more valuable information, judges may not be able to prohibit lawyers from bringing a laptop to class and checking out the potential jurors during the process. The article concludes by suggesting that the possibilities are endless for finding information on people through other sites such as blogs.