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Legal Research and Writing

Unleash Your Inner Scholar: Why Solos Should Write A Law Review Article

December 12, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant
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Seems that ATL Editor David Lat is concealing a dirty little secret underneath his robes.  As you know, by day, David toils as a mild-mannered blogger exposing the secrets of, and dishing out biting commentary on AmLaw 100 firms.  But after hours, he busts out his secret inner scholar and transforms into a veritable Volokh, [...]

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Amazing Free Legal Research Tool for Lawyers Who Lease

December 7, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant
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Solo lawyers who draft or review oil, gas or natural resources leases face a tough road. For starters, these types of leases are often much trickier than standard leases for office space or wedding halls – there are distinctions between surface and sub-surface rights, leases for easements and rights of way versus, full fee versus [...]

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Proposed ABA Ethics 20/20 Rules Will Require Lawyers to Oversee and Monitor the Accuracy of LEXIS, Westlaw and Other Computerized Legal Research Services

November 17, 2011 by Carolyn Elefant
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As lawyers, we’re bound to abide by applicable statutes and precedent — yet most lawyers refuse to heed the law of unintended consequences. That’s the error committed by the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 with its most recent changes lto ABA Model Rule 5.3, Responsibilities Regarding Non Lawyer Assistance.  In its zeal to frustrate lawyers’ [...]

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Get Jargon, Get Rid of Jargon

August 25, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant
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If you’re an aficionado of legal jargon (and come on, aren’t all of us lawyers, at least when we’ve had too much to drink?), why not indulge yourself with two free e-books of jargon on project finance and corporate finance, courtesy of Latham & Watkins, with an H/T to Three Geeks & A Law Blog. [...]

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Thank You, Justice Scalia for Remembering Who Pays (the Client!) for the Vanity Footnote

March 14, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant
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If you’re a solo or small firm lawyer who litigates against biglaw, you’re probably familiar with the vanity footnote — that smug, yet entirely superfluous annotation to legislative history, obscure law review article, treatise or string citation included in many large firm briefs.  Though intended to corroborate a case cited in the text or flaunt [...]

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Fastcase Makes FREE CaseLaw on the Spot a Reality!

January 30, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant
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To live in an era of wish fulfillment is an amazing thing.  That’s exactly how I felt yesterday when I downloaded Fastcase‘s just released and 100 percent FREE legal research app for the iphone.  Yes, I can now search a full database of state and federal cases and statutes right on my phone for no [...]

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My Trip Out [to] West: A Preview of WestlawNext

January 28, 2010 by Carolyn Elefant
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Earlier this week, I traveled to Thomson Reuters/West’s headquarters in Eagan, Minnesota to preview, along with a group of other bloggers, a demonstration of the next generation of Westlaw, WestlawNext (go to the end of post for a round up of coverage).  Though originally, I’d intended to comment on the product from the solo/small firm [...]

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Free Legal Research by Google & What It Means

November 17, 2009 by Carolyn Elefant
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What do I think about Google’s recent launch of a free, online legal research tool as part of Google Scholar?  (disclosure: my husband works for Google, but isn’t involved with the legal research project) Funny you should ask, because I’ve been tracking, evaluating and most of all, patiently awaiting the arrival of a functional, robust [...]

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LEXIS Responds To Earlier Post

November 9, 2009 by Carolyn Elefant
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A representative from LEXIS responded to my earlier post,LEXIS, You Could Have Had Us Solos At Hello Unfortunately, I have been experiencing some serious problems with the comments feature of my blog and as a result, have missed many comments.  I would never, ever not post a comment to a site, even if it is [...]

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LEXIS, You Could Have Had Us Solos at Hello

October 27, 2009 by Carolyn Elefant
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On the surface, this article about Lawyers.com‘s upcoming television ad campaign, which is intended to attract more consumers to its site, seems like nothing more than business as usual in a down economy.  But there’s far more to it than that.   The Lawyers.com television strategy is both a reminder of lost opportunity by Reed-Elsevier (parent company to Lawyers.com and Lexis-Nexis) to gain footing [...]

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