New Jersey Law Librarians Association (NJLLA)
A Chapter of the American Association of Law Libraries
In response to a growing number of people who forgo hiring a lawyer when heading into court, the law library at Howard County Circuit Court is providing five hours of free legal assistance each week to litigants who plan to represent themselves.
The Maryland State Law Library awarded a $9,100 grant to Howard to cover the expenses of the three-month pilot project, which began last week.
For more on this story, click here.
Those of you who are planning to take cruises this summer might be interested in this blog post by Mary Flood about just how many of your rights you sign away in the standard cruise contract! The post discusses a presentation that was made to the Southwestern Association of Law Libraries during a five-day legal conference that took place on a Carnival cruise ship.
Tricia Kasting discusses how to prepare a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis of law libraries in this article for Law.com.
Under a new state law, local municipalities are now authorized to tap into public libraries’ “excess funds.” In a nutshell, if a public library does not spend all of its budgeted money and the local government gets the approval of the library trustees, the money could be returned to the municipality. For more details, click here.
Mary Whisner has written a comprehensive article about what it is like being a law librarian and how one can become one.
This article by Margi Heinen and Jan Bissett describes some helpful free legal websites such as FindLaw, LexisOne and the Public Library of Law.
Connie Crosby writes an interesting column urging law librarians to be advocates for their profession.
From the April 3rd edition of the University of Buffalo Reporter, Protecting Books From Ravages of Time, Nature, Kevin Fryling reports on the steps taken by UB Law Library staff after “[a]n overnight storm surge [] leaked through the roof [] and left thousands of books, periodicals and research materials—including some rare and highly specialized items—severely damaged or destroyed.
Workers repairing the University of Connecticut law library are finding the 12-year-old building has more serious damage than originally anticipated. For the gory details, click here.
This article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette discusses how small, boutique law firms are prospering these days. According to the article, one of the reasons that small firms can keep up with the big boys is that “technology has leveled the playing field. Legal research is now almost exclusively Internet-based. Gone is the requirement that a law firm have stacks of expensive books in its law library….As the cost of technology has dropped dramatically, small firms are becoming just as competitive as large firms.”