?: Do grammar & punctuation errors effect/affect how U view professional communication?

The RIPS Law Librarian Blog is a publication of the "Research Instruction and Patron Services" Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries.Essay blog post on the importance of teaching law students email communication skills.American Association of Law Librarian

Competitive Intelligence: Giving Our Students A Leg Up

The RIPS Law Librarian Blog is a publication of the "Research Instruction and Patron Services" Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries.Essay on the importance of teaching competitive intelligence and business development skills to law students.American Association of Law Librarie

Law 101: Everything You Need to Know About American Law, 3d ed

Law 101: Everything You Need to Know About American Law, Third Edition. By Jay M. Feinman. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Pp, xii, 363. ISBN: 978‐0‐19‐539513‐6. US$27.95. Law 101 is an engaging work that informs and challenges the reader to question and evaluate legal process and theory, judicial opinions and society itself. At the end, the reader is left with a deeper understanding of the law as a living organism developed through a fine balancing of competing needs and interests. The goal of the book is to demystify the law and prepare the reader to make better judgments about what the law should be. For those readers trained in the law, reading Law 101 is an afternoon spent silently reminiscing (and maybe gently chuckling) with old friends such as Marbury, Palsgraf, Griswold, Yoder and International Shoe and with those about whom we still remain in awe: Marshall, Brennan, Blackmun, Cardozo, Hand, O’Connor, Kennedy and so many others. For other readers, it is an opportunity to expand his or her knowledge of the law and to develop an understanding of the political, social and historical influences that make it complex and subtle. In the end, the readers of Law 101 will be better educated about the U.S. legal system and able to understand the nuances and forces behind such actions as the U.S. Supreme Court’s reduction of Exxon’s punitive damages for the Valdez oil spill or the inability of communities to prevent protests by Fred Phelps and members of the Westboro Baptist Church at military funerals

The International Information Consultant: A Primer on Avoiding Potholes, Perils, and Pitfalls

Consultants are retained to assist libraries in identifying, designing, and implementing solutions to a wide variety of strategic, management, operational, and human resources issues. The goal of the library-consultant relationship is to improve the operations of the organization. Although often unrecognized as such, law librarians are natural consultants. Librarians are problem solvers, and as such develop and use many of the same skills as consultants in their everyday roles in the law library. For those versatile librarians skilled in change management and interested in pursuing these challenging professional opportunities, this article discusses best practices for library consultants and provides advice on how to avoid pitfalls in the context of an international case study. Part I of the article provides an introduction to professional consulting. Part II discusses the author’s case study, a six-month fellowship with the Legal Resources Centre of South Africa. Part III then concludes the article with an articulation of the skills and talents exhibited by successful consultants to enable interested readers to better understand if consulting is an opportunity matched to their professional interests and skills

One Last Thing on My Summer To-Do List

The RIPS Law Librarian Blog is a publication of the "Research Instruction and Patron Services" Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries.Essay on teaching practice technology to law students.American Association of Law Libraries

Using Competitive Intelligence Instruction to Develop Practice-Ready Legal Professionals

Competitive intelligence is the identification and use of internal and external information to inform business decisions. Integrating competitive intelligence instruction into the law school curriculum is another option to use when preparing “practice-ready” legal professionals. First, it broadens the curriculum experience beyond the courtroom with its introduction of basic corporate, regulatory, and transactional documents, and second, introduces students to the critical decision-making and business-development skills lawyers use to identify, investigate, and develop business leads necessary for a financially viable legal practice

Locating Company Information for Business Development and Due Diligence Purposes

Due to an increasingly competitive business environment, lawyers need to systematically identify, collect, and analyze external information for use in organizational decision making. This systematic process commonly known as “competitive intelligence” is “garnering resources within law firms and is now seen as a useful business tool.” Lawyers are interested in gathering and analyzing industry data to better represent current clients and to develop new business from existing and prospective clients. In addition, lawyers are interested in understanding what is going on with their legal service provider competitors

A View from the Flip Side: Using the Inverted Classroom to Enhance the Legal Information Literacy of the International LL.M. Student

Peer-reviewed articleInternational students enrolled in LL.M. programs in U.S. law schools come to the programs with a wide variety of legal experience. As part of their introduction to U.S. law, students take a legal research course to prepare them to competently undertake the research necessary to complete a master’s thesis, and perform legal research in clinics, internships, externships, and U.S. law firms and legal departments. This article argues that the “flipped” classroom pedagogical model is a better model to use for developing legal information literacy in international LL.M. students than the traditional classroom model. In support of this, it presents the author's experiences in implementing the flipped classroom to teach legal research in an international graduate law program and offers offers guidance to others seeking to use the flipped classroom model to teach legal research

I want an aluminum foil hat!

The RIPS Law Librarian Blog is a publication of the "Research Instruction and Patron Services" Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries.Essay on teaching technology in the legal academy.American Association of Law Librarie