Moritz Legal Information Blog

Meet a pair of remarkable next-gen research tools: Casetext and Ravel . Casetext provides the full text of cases for free accompanied by crowd-sourced annotations and links to secondary sources. Anyone can annotate the cases, and those annotations found most valuable can be up-voted. The site also has annotated contracts for those interested in insights from practitioners indicating which terms have fared best in court and other key pieces of information you might need as you draft agreements. Ravel Law also provides the full text of cases for free, but its primary value is a visual representation indicating which cases are significant for the points of law you are researching. Casetext is free, period. Ravel Law is free to law students; sign up with your .edu email address to get full access to all of the cases in the Ravel Law database.

Some jokes are as old as Methuselah. Actually, the oldest joke book is from the 4th century. It's a little text called Philogelos, and yes, we actually own a copy here at OSU. You can imagine, then, that joke theft is also an old practice, and where there is theft, there is litigation. Where there is litigation, there is of course a law faculty member or two interested in studying the matter. Check out the newsy version of the faculty analysis, or read the Virginia Law Review article on the subject . As a brief note on the article, the faculty authors distinguish between joke theft and copyright infringement, which should be something warranting a "hmm..." from our blog readers who are also copyright enthusiasts.

No, the title of this blog post does not refer to the poorly rated film The Internship (though I admit, I've seen worse films). Unpaid Hollywood interns  have filed a class action lawsuit seeking "back pay, damages and an order barring use of unpaid interns at Fox Searchlight Pictures and other units of Fox Entertainment Group." The interns contend Hollywood studios are violating the Fair Labor Standards Act , "which mandates that unpaid internships benefit the interns, not the employers." How many times have you toyed with the idea of volunteering (taking an unpaid internship) to develop relationships and get experience in an effort to get your foot in the door? Should the Hollywood interns expect more if it's the case that this is just the way film business is run? You might be surprised at what distinguishes interns from employees : For interns The internship, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer,

U.S. Supreme Court decisions have been coming out en masse , it seems (though SCOTUSblog does not expect any decisions this week). According to a Washington Post reporter , "Any information that emerges from big Supreme Court hearings feels like it’s been smuggled out of the edifice on First Street." The reporter then makes a case for cartoonists, i.e., "someone in the room who specializes in interpreting personal presentation and interpersonal interactions." Curious to see a cartoonist explain the latest Supreme Court decisions via gifs and videos? See the work of Ann Telnaes here.

Slate.com, courtesy of Business Insider, provides a map showing which jobs are the most unique in each state. The map illustrates which "state has far more of [each job] per capita than the nation as a whole." Ohio has far more foundry casters than any other state per capita. New Mexico is awash with physicists; Virginia is packed to the gills with "Legal Support." Legal Support is a group that includes paralegals, legal assistants, court reporters, title examiners, and other miscellaneous legal support workers. All of this data is derived from a recent report on Occupational Employment Statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics . How many people identify "lawyer" as their occupation? 592,670. And the number of judicial law clerks? 10,890. The mean (average) hourly wage for lawyers is $63.46/hour with a median of $54.95. The mean salary is $131,990.    

I admit it: I use Wikipedia as a starting point for research. If I need to know an estimated population for Peru, it's a quick and easy source. If I need to confirm that population (including how current it is), I'll likely turn to the CIA's World Factbook  (also available in print ). Why? Because Wikipedia is crowd-sourced, I have no idea how reliable or accurate the data is. Enter PediaPress, a group with plans to print Wikipedia  in part to assuage librarians' fears. Said one librarian when told of the project, "[A] lot of people — including many librarians — are skeptical of Wikipedia as a reliable research tool. But...seeing the encyclopedia in print might change some of those attitudes." While this may be true, librarians are not often judges, so for now, don't rely on the print version of Wikipedia for your legal arguments. Instead, just spend time marveling at how much content Wikipedia houses: "One thousand volumes, 1,200 pages each — mor

We’ve blogged before about Ohio State’s fabulous marching band.   Now, the band really has made the big leagues – a citation in the Congressional Record .   If you search the Congressional Record in congress.gov, you will find Representative Pat Tiberi’s remarks honoring the band, in part for “use of cutting-edge technology.”   Read The Lantern  to discover how the band used iPads this year. And that’s not the only reference to Ohio State in the Congressional Record of late.   This list of search results includes congratulations to Gordon Gee on his retirement, a recognition of Woody Hayes’ 100 the birthday, and a recognition of the law school’s recently established Grassbaugh Veteran’s Project .