New Self-help Tool Launched by Massachusetts Probate & Family Court

This  month, the Massachusetts Probate and Family Court, the Massachusetts Justice Project and other collaborators announced a new online resource to help self-represented litigants more easily complete court forms in child support cases.  This tool takes a litigant through an interactive interview and compiles the answers to prepare legal forms.  The press release announcing the launch of this tool noted that the "Massachusetts Probate and Family Court is among an increasing number of courts around the country partnering with legal aid programs to develop online document assembly interviews to increase and improve access to the courts."

The interviews, supporting educational videos and written content can be accessed at
http://www.masslegalhelp.org/legal-forms.

Supreme Court Decisions Reduced to Haiku

Tired of reading excessively long Supreme Court cases?  How fortunate for those of us with shorter attention spans and even shorter memories that Houston IP lawyer Keith Jaasma condenses U.S. Supreme Court decisions to seventeen syllables in his Supreme Court Haiku Reporter.  Not only is it entertaining reading, it might also be a valuable study aid to help young law students memorize all these pesky case names for a closed book exam.

PALMprint - Preserving legal research sources

Boston College Law Library has joined the PALMprint ("Preserving America's Legal Materials" or PALM) initiative with other law libraries to commit to the preservation of print legal research source materials.  PALMprint focuses on the need to ensure future access to key primary U.S. legal material in print format.   The cooperating law libraries will work with the Legal Information Preservation Alliance  and NELLCO (a consortium of law libraries) to accomplish this preservation goal.

New database: Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution

The law library recently acquired the digital edition of the Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution.  This important historical source, a twenty-five volume set in print, is a landmark work in historical and legal scholarship.  It draws upon thousands of sources to trace the Constitution’s progress through each of the thirteen states’ conventions. This digital edition allows users to search the complete contents by date, title, author, recipient, or state affiliation and preserves the copious annotations of the print edition.  It also includes an index and is easily browseable via a detailed table of contents.  All pages of the text are available in PDF version of the print edition, in addition to the default web-based presentation.  The database is now featured in our law library database list. 

Keep an eye out, as we are in the process of purchasing the remainder of this Founding Era collection, which includes the papers of James and Dolley Madison, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington. 

Lawn Chairs for Law Students!

  

What's missing from this picture?  You!  Want to escape to a quiet spot on the grounds and do some reading and studying?  The Law Library has lawn chairs (and yes, they're BC colors!) you can check out and keep for 2 hours.  So, stop by the Information Desk and check out a chair to take to your favorite sunny or shady spot.

New Hampshire Adopts Uniform Bar Exam

New Hampshire is adopting the Uniform Bar Examination, a test coordinated by the National Conference of Bar Examiners. Applicants who take the Uniform Bar Examination in New Hampshire can transfer their scores to other jurisdictions who have adopted the test.  The other jurisdictions who have adopted the Uniform Bar Examination are:  Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.  More information on the Uniform Bar Examination and the portability of the scores can be found on the Uniform Bar Examination webpage.  The date of the first administration of the Uniform Bar Examination in each of the adopting jurisdictions is listed in the UBE FAQs page.  Instructions on how to transfer your Uniform Bar Examination score to another jurisdiction are found on the UBE Transcript Services page.

What do we mean by the "back of the line"?

NBC Latino/NBC News is running a series of stories from now until April 19th on the current immigration system and the lives of immigrants in the United States.  The first of the stories, The Immigration Line: Who's on It and for How Long? points out the "back of the line" is a misnomer -- there is no single line where you patiently wait your turn and get in.  The article goes on to describe the various visa categories for immigrants and the numerical limits on those visa categories.  The article provides tables, bar graphs and pie charts from the Department of State, showing the visa waiting lists, the estimated number of applicants waiting for legal status and the estimated number of years applicants wait, depending on their category and country of origin.