Florida State Law RC Tech News

Google Book Settlement

Information about the Google Book Settlement has been posted on the web.  Here's a statement from the Google Book Settlement site:

This is the settlement administration website for the Google Book Search Copyright Class Action Settlement. The purpose of this website is to inform you of a proposed Settlement of a class action lawsuit brought by authors and publishers, claiming that Google has violated their copyrights and those of other Rightsholders of Books and Inserts (click for definitions), by scanning their Books, creating an electronic database and displaying short excerpts without the permission of the copyright holders. Google denies the claims. The lawsuit is entitled The Authors Guild, Inc., et al. v. Google Inc., Case No. 05 CV 8136 (S.D.N.Y.) The Court has preliminarily approved the Settlement. For further information, please review the Notice.

The Settlement Agreement is here.
More documents relating to the Google Book Settlement can be found here.
A statement by the President of the Authors Guild is here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Legal Education Commons

CALI has created a Commons for sharing legal education materials.  Here's an excerpt from their web page:

The Legal Education Commons (LEC) is the place to find and share legal education materials including syllabi, podcasts, presentations, and more. Faculty and librarians from CALI member schools can upload materials under a Creative Commons license that allows colleagues and students to find and use the materials.

The LEC also offers access to over 700,000 federal court opinions from the public.resource.org collection. As with other resources in the eLangdell system, these cases can be re-edited and incorporated into course materials.

Faculty, librarians, and staff of CALI member schools are free to contribute, via upload, MS Word, Powerpoint, Wordperfect, PDF, RTF, or text files as well as MP3 audio files.  The maximum size for any file is 50 megabytes.

See the CALI Legal Education Commons website here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Annotated Justinian Code

For those interested in Civil Law, the University of Wyoming is hosting an English translation of the Justinian Code with annotations. 

See it here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

What's a Legal Simulation

Law School Innovation has an interesting post titled What's a legal simulation?  Here's an excerpt:

If Paul Maharg has his way, American law professors may soon have as much in common with the game referees in World of Warcraft than Prof. Kingsfield from The Paper Chase. Maharg, author of Transforming Legal Education, is working with CALI to distribute and support software that enables legal educators to run legal practice simulations. SIMPLE (SIMulated Professional Legal Education) provides a framework for students to engage in transactions typical of real-life legal practice, providing the kind of contextualized knowledge and skill that the Carnegie Study and others have demanded.

Read the whole post here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Law Schools Customize Degrees to Students' Taste

An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education discusses how law Schools are customizing law degrees.  Here's an excerpt:

The curriculum at law schools has undergone a major transformation in recent years, as many have set up niche programs to attract students. A few critics, however, are beginning to speak out against the trend, arguing that it is driven largely by marketing considerations and hurts legal education.

Read the whole article here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Barack's BlackBerry

Obama may get to keep his BlackBerry after all.  See an earlier post here. 

Read an update here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Survey Gets Law-School Students' Thoughts on Laptops

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article titled: Survey Gets Law-School Students' Thoughts on Laptops, Writing, and Ethics. The article discusses the role of laptops in law schools as well as writing and ethics and was based on a report titled: The 2008 Law School Survey of Student Engagement. Here's an excerpt:

Students who used laptops for class-related activities, like reading case briefs or taking notes, were more likely than students using laptops during class for other purposes to be engaged in classroom discussions, synthesize concepts from different courses, and work hard to meet faculty expectations, the survey found.

The trick for professors, of course, is to ensure that students are actually using computers to study law.

The survey, now in its fifth year, is administered by the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University at Bloomington and measures various aspects of the law-school experience, including how students spend their time and how well they have learned. Participating schools use the information to assess their performance and develop practices to better teach law.

Read the Chronicle article here.

There's more information on the report here.

The survey results are here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

MSE360 search engine

A new search engine mse360 is worth a try.  It displays Wikipedia and blog results to the left,  web results center and image results to the right. 

Posted by Jon Lutz

Sony Digital Reader

The Kindle isn't the only digital reader, Sony also has an excellent digital reader.  Here are some of its features:

• 6" Display
• E-ink paper-like touchscreen
• Built-in LED reading light
• Search, annotation, and highlighting capabilities
• Adjustable text sizes
• Long battery life
• Holds approximately 350 books
• Thousands of eBooks available

See more here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Teknoids

Teknoids is a Drupal enhanced web site about technology use within a law school or law firm environment. It can be viewed at www.teknoids.net/. The site is brand new and while they are migrating content over from the old site, it's still available at ly.teknoids.net/.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody

Senators Carl Levin and John McCain on December 11th released the Executive Summary and Conclusions of the Report on Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody.

Read the Executive Summary here.

More information can be found here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Investment Deficit in America

The Campaign for America's Future Center has released the Report The Investment Deficit In America: Yesterday's Achievements, Today's Problems, Tomorrow's Solutions.  Here's an excerpt: 

America’s future growth and prosperity depend on a secure supply of affordable
and sustainable energy. With the price of oil likely to rise over time, instability
overseas, and a few entrenched interests dominating the market, this is a crucial
time for government intervention. Emerging new energy technologies promise
new possibility: scientific innovation, new jobs, and a rejuvenated industrial base.  Public support can help tip these fledgling industries from ideas to success stories of  green enterprise. Government needs to invest in research and development, create sound tax policy, and enforce the rules.

Read the report here.

Posted by Jon Lutz