A couple of weeks ago our friend and hero Tim Stanley from Justia gave his terrific free-resources presentation at our Advanced Legal Research class. As an in-class exercise the next class session, we asked the students to briefly share some aspect of what they learned from Tim’s talk. One student wrote:
I learned that there are a variety of free resources available besides Lexis & Westlaw. I also learned that Oklahoma is actually one of the best states in terms of keeping their cases & statutes up-t0-date online. One of the more fascinating things that I learned was that Cornell’s US Code online is probably the best free resource of the U.S. Code . . .
Since a question earlier in the quarter from a student about FDSys was followed up by an in-class answer by Public Printer Bob Tapella, we had to follow our student’s comment about the LII USC with a visit from the LII director!
One of the joys of living in the San Francisco Bay Area for me is how, at some point or another, everyone passes through. Last week Tom Bruce, from Cornell’s Legal Information Institute was in town (we knew this from his Twitter stream) and so we tapped him to come and talk to our class. Tom gave a terrific, inspiring talk to our class. More on Tom’s visit here. Tom is an incredibly dynamic and entertaining speaker — go hear him if you ever get the chance!
Tom’s talk focused on these three not-so-simple questions:
1) Why does anybody do legal research?
2) How much should it cost?
3) How good does it have to be?
Tom began the talk by showing the Bob Berring (also a dynamic and entertaining, not to be missed speaker) video that is making the law library rounds right now.
While Tom agrees with everything that Bob says (and I guess that I do too, although I wish that Bob had said “Lexis and West” rather than just “West”), seeing the Berring clip and then seeing Tom, well, the Dan Fogelberg Twin Sons of Different Mothers album came immediately to mind. See for yourself the resemblance.
The gist of Tom’s talk is now online in a new video his LII has produced.
The LII blog has more about Tom’s visit, along with a number of related links, here
“Five guys at Cornell” have done some amazing things, and Tom gave a little preview of further good things under development. Maybe high-stakes lawyers do need and will always need LexisNexis or Westlaw, but the rest of us and the entire world needs Tom and his LII.
Erika Wayne
Paul Lomio
Kate Wilko
George Wilson
Sergio Stone
Brian Provenzale
