Law Librarians Scholarship

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10601/1940

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    Deo, Meera E., Mindie Lazarus-Black, and Elizabeth Mertz, eds. Power, Legal Education, and Law School Cultures. New York: Routledge, 2020. 302p. $140. Reviewed by Jamie J. Baker
    (Law Library Journal, 2020) Baker, Jamie J.
    A book review of Power, Legal Education, and Law School Cultures by Meera Deo. Baker discusses each part of the book and states that the book provides a thoughtful discussion of the systemic issues perpetuating unequal hierarchies in the legal academy and beyond. Overall, this is a recommended title.
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    The Intersectionality of Law Librarianship & Gender
    (Villanova Law Review, 2020) Baker, Jamie J.
    Like the legal writing community who has brought this issue to the forefront, it is important for law librarians to be fully included in the discussion surrounding statusXgender is the legal academy. This Article attempts to do just that. Part I of this Article provides a historical background in librarianship as a pink-collar profession. Part II discusses the pink ghetto in the legal academy and provides a history of law librarians within the legal academy. Part II concludes with a discussion of law librarians inhabiting the pink ghetto of the legal academy. Part III provides insight into the effects of living in a hierarchy, and Part IV concludes with recommendations for improvement.
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    An Underestimated Showcase of Student Scholarship: Law School Institutional Repositories
    (Duquesne Law Review, 2022) Nie, Dajiang
    Law schools have been using institutional repositories as a showcase for law journals and faculty scholarly achievements for a long time, but law school institutional repositories fail to collect student scholarship regularly. Aspects of law school institutional repositories make no sense when directly benefiting both students and law schools and failing to display student scholarship. This Article examines student scholarship in law school institutional repositories, analyzing its current status, advantages, and keys to success. The Article shows that law school institutional repositories underappreciate student scholarship, and the content of student repositories also lacks diversity. This approach impairs the positive impacts a student scholarship repository should have had on student writing and employment, law school admissions and alumni relations. The Article highlights four key points for a successful law student scholarship repository, including the quality of student scholarship, marketing, copyrights, and FERPA compliance. The Article argues, to maximize the positive effects of a law student scholarship repository, law schools must carefully design institutional repositories to expand their content and diversity.
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    Publishing Functioning JD Institutional Learning Outcomes on Legal Research: Why and How?
    (Legal Reference Services Quarterly, 2023) Nie, Dajiang
    Examines the legal-research institutional learning outcomes of 196 law schools accredited by the American Bar Association and proposes improvement to best practices. The suboptimal format and content of legal-research institutional learning outcomes contribute to this deficiency, exacerbated by challenges from the upcoming new bar examination. To improve legal-research institutional learning outcomes, law schools should distinguish legal-research institutional learning outcomes from other institutional learning outcomes, include specific and effective performance criteria, and update learning outcomes periodically. To streamline this process, law schools should draw wisdom from both external benchmarks and the expertise of internal legal-research instructors.
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    Advancing Student Learning Experience: Peer Assessment in Advanced Legal Research Classes
    (Law Library Journal, 2022) Nie, Dajiang
    Argues that a genuine need exists for embedding peer assessment in ALR courses. It presents a new approach to accomplishing this goal, offers a possible framework for implementing peer assessment in Advanced Legal Research (ALR) courses, and discusses several practical considerations for its application.
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    Successfully Shifting Library Programming in a Remote Environment
    (AALL Spectrum, 2022) Morris, Brittany
    Discusses the various ways law librarians can continue to use the lessons learned during the pandemic to improve law school programming efforts. Some of the methods discussed include moving programming online to increase accessibility, making outreach a priority, staying current to create engaging programs, and allowing the students to lead in programming efforts. These ideas will provide students opportunities to engage with the library and be involved.
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    Leadership Recs
    (AALL Spectrum, 2020) Baker, Jamie J.; Sanborne, David; Nejdl, Clanitra Stewart; Young, Eric
    A collection of responses from four law library leaders answering the question, “What book would you recommend or wish you had read before taking on a leadership role?” Each author provides a brief recommendation of a book along with information on why it would or is valuable to them as a leader.
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    A Smarter Way to Make Early and Mid-Career Decisions
    (AALL Spectrum, 2020) Drake, Alyson M.; Runge, Franklin L.; Williams, Austin Martin
    Provides guidance on some of the factors early and mid-career law librarians should consider when exploring their professional options. This articles encourages law librarians to set priorities, talk to mentors and peers, evaluate your current experiences, and finally look at some other factors like professional development goals, the role of the librarian within the academic institution, and finally management responsibilities. Overall, law librarians should take time to look at their career and situation at least every couple of year to evaluate your situation and see if a change would be welcomed.
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    On Embracing the Research Conference
    (Law Library Journal, 2019) Drake, Alyson M.
    One solution for curbing the frustrations many students feel during the research and writing process is for instructors to hold one-on-one research conferences with each student prior to writing. In these meetings, instructors can help students with the analytical component of the research process as well as practical skills like locating authorities in an efficient manner and organizing their research in a way that facilitates moving from the research phase to the writing phase. Part 1 of this article discusses the benefits conferencing has for both students and instructors. Part 2 argues that legal research conferences are a critical component of law students' skills education, both to prepare them to engage in legal analysis and to ready them for practice. Finally, Part 3 discusses the practical considerations of introducing legal research conferences into the curriculum.
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    Managing Career Success: The Philosophy of a Millennial Leader’s Role
    (William S. Hein & Co., Inc., 2018) Baker, Jamie J.
    This book is not only important for Millennial librarians to have a base of literature from which they can draw information, guidance, or inspiration, it is also important for librarians from other generations to understand what Millennial librarians have to offer and how their entree into library leadership will affect the profession. This book, with chapters written by librarians from every generation and from libraries of all kinds, seeks to fill that void. Section I brings together chapters that focus on the need for a new generation of leaders in libraries. The chapters in Section II touch on library relationships across generations: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Section III includes chapters that detail how Millennial leaders work in libraries, from outreach and marketing to blogging and collaborating. Section IV, while short, is an essential read for any current library leaders or administrators seeking to bring Millennial leaders into the library, or to cultivate the Millennial leadership that's already found in the library. Finally, Section V includes chapters on career planning for Millennial librarians.
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    2018: A Legal Research Odyssey: Artificial Intelligence as Disruptor
    (Law Library Journal, 2018) Baker, Jamie J.
    Cognitive computing has the power to make legal research more efficient, but it does not eliminate the need to teach law students sound legal research process and strategy. Law librarians must also instruct on using artificial intelligence responsibly in the face of algorithmic transparency, the duty of technology competence, malpractice pitfalls, and the unauthorized practice of law.
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    You Can’t Write Without Research: The Role of Research Instruction in the Upper-Level Writing Requirement
    (Florida Coastal Law Review, 2017) Drake, Alyson M.
    This article examines the role legal research instruction should play in the American Bar Association's upper-level writing requirement. It argues that, despite the importance that research plays in most types of writing that students do to fill this requirement (student journal notes/comments, seminar papers, independent research papers), there is little-to-no standardized research instruction in and across law schools. Finally, the article proposes four methods that scholarly research instruction can be incorporated into the law school curriculum by utilizing law librarians and suggests why law librarians are best suited for this type of instruction.
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    Beyond the Information Age: The Duty of Technology Competence in the Algorithmic Society
    (South Carolina Law Review, 2018) Baker, Jamie J.
    While law has generally been slow to adapt to technological change, the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct amended the Duty of Competence language to include a Duty of Technology Competence. This duty requires lawyers to keep abreast of “changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology.” A majority of states have now adopted this new Duty of Technology Competence, but there is little guidance on its current reach. The guidance documents mainly discuss the duty in terms of eDiscovery, electronic storage, social media, and the cloud. As society moves beyond the Information Age to the Algorithmic Society, this duty should extend to the competent use of artificial intelligence and algorithms in law. As such, it behooves the legal academy to prepare lawyers for ethical practice in this brave new world.
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    The Need for Experiential Legal Research Education
    (2016) Drake, Alyson M.
    With thirty-five percent of a new attorney’s time and over thirty percent of all attorneys’ time spent conducting legal research, law schools cannot produce practice-ready graduates without significant legal research instruction. Although attorneys hiring new associates routinely report that new hires’ research skills are insufficient, most firms are unable or unwilling to take on the cost of preparing their new associates to perform the skills they are expected to perform as members of the legal profession. Furthermore, legal research is closely tied to each of the four competencies laid out by the ABA in Standard 301, which requires law schools to ensure that their graduates are ready to be effective, responsible members of the legal profession. Because overcrowded first year skills courses are usually the only mandatory law school course with any time spent on legal research instruction, most law schools cannot honestly state that they meet these requirements without a shift in the availability of legal research courses throughout all three years of law school. With most legal research courses already having significant experiential components, designating legal research courses as experiential would allow schools to both increase offerings in legal research and to meet the ABA’s newly-expanded six credit experiential course requirement for every student. When structured appropriately, stand-alone legal research courses clearly meet the requirements laid out in the simulation category of experiential courses.