Moritz Legal Information Blog

Do your summer or post-graduation plans include legal research? Whether you are on a journal, taking summer classes, or working at a law firm, you can continue to take advantage of the major legal research platforms. Bloomberg Law, Lexis Advance, and Thomson Reuters Westlaw all permit summer and post-graduation use, at least for certain purposes. Bloomberg does not have an “academic use only” policy and encourages use for any summer or graduate research. Lexis also does not have an “academic use only” policy and will continue to provide free printing. Westlaw permits limited use for education-related or non-commercial purposes. For more details, see the Moritz Law Library’s Research Assistant Resources Guide or ask a reference librarian. Fastcase is another legal research option for summer or post-graduation use. Fastcase provides a quick and easy way to search federal and state cases and statutes, state constitutions, administrative opinions, regulations, law reviews, and legal forms

As you are selecting your courses for the 2018-19 academic year, consider registering for a 1-credit Advanced Legal Research course taught by one of the Moritz College of Law’s reference librarians. Each ALR course is focused on a specialized practice area or jurisdiction, but all will help you to further develop the legal research skills you were introduced to in your LAWI & II courses. The following courses will be taught in next year’s spring semester: Business and Tax Legal Research (taught by Ingrid Mattson) provides an introduction to business and tax related materials as well as training and advanced research strategies for finding and effectively using these materials for legal research. Topics covered include business forms, company filings and SEC research, and foreign and international business research. In-class work will include working through research problems to resolve legal question. Advanced Legal Research: Litigation and ADR (taught by Stephanie Ziegler) focu

As we enter the final weeks of the semester, don’t forget that the Moritz Law Library provides access to supplements and study aids in print and online. Print study aids can be found in the Reserve Room on the second floor. Study aids published by West Academic or Wolters Kluwer are also available in ebook format. Wolters Kluwer online study aids include Examples and Explanations, Glannon Guides, and Emanuel CrunchTime and Law Outlines. To use these study aids, students must set up their own account at https://ebooks.aspenlaw.com/librarycard/login . Additional information on account set-up can be found on the Moritz intranet . West Academic's online Study Aids collection contains over 500 titles, including Nutshells, Gilbert Law Summaries, and Black Letter Outlines.  Please check in with the law library circulation or reference desks if you have any difficulties accessing either of these online resources.

Check out the Moritz Law Library’s new display of landmark Supreme Court cases, located next to the reference desk on the 2nd floor. The featured cases all have an anniversary in 2018. The display includes quotes and articles from Moritz professors, books you can check out, and other information on these important cases: Marbury v. Madison: judicial review (215th anniversary)  Shelley v. Kraemer: racially restrictive covenants (70th anniversary) Gideon v. Wainwright: right to an attorney (55th anniversary) Terry v. Ohio: search and seizure (50th anniversary) Roe v. Wade: abortion (45th anniversary) Lawrence v. Texas: sodomy (15th anniversary) For an interesting resource containing briefs and arguments from these and other significant SCOTUS cases, check out Landmark Briefs and Arguments of the Supreme Court of the United States, located in the Law Library’s Reference Stacks. A list of helpful databases for researching the Supreme Court can be found on the Law Library’s Lega

Whether you are writing a brief or a seminar paper, take care to avoid plagiarism. Your legal readers, from judges to fellow scholars, expect to be able to identify which words and ideas are yours and which come from others, in part to evaluate the evidence underlying your arguments. The Moritz Law Library offers resources on identifying and avoiding plagiarism in the guide to Legal Writing and Research Success. Here are a few tips: Keep track of your research. Use a research log to note useful resources, identify proper citations for each source, and trace your process.  Put quotation marks around quoted language as you work. It is too easy to copy and paste and forget to cite later.  Do not worry about overciting. In both practical and academic legal writing, because all nonoriginal content must be credited, you will see more citation than often appears in the work of other disciplines. If you need to review Bluebook basics, take a look at Peter W. Martin’s free ebook, I

Want to search for Moritz alums who practice in Cleveland? Local lawyers who specialize in health law? Prepare for networking and interviews, informational and otherwise, by brushing up on your people searching skills. The library’s Career Resources guide includes some resources and strategy for finding out about people. Since many of our students practice in Ohio, we’d like to highlight a few local bar associations with online directories: the Columbus Bar Association , the Cincinnati Bar Association , and the Toledo Bar Association . These freely available tools offer limited search options, so for a more nuanced search, you’ll need to use other tools. For example, this link illustrates a search for Moritz or "Ohio State" J.D. alums who practice health law in Cleveland, as listed by Westlaw's Profiler. Why did our search terms include Moritz and "Ohio State"? The law school adopted the name Moritz after a 2001 donation, so some alums may not use th

The Moritz Law Library seeks qualified candidates for a Reference Librarian position. This position will support the work of the Moritz College of Law's new Drug Enforcement and Policy Center (DPEC) . Other duties include providing sophisticated research and reference assistance to faculty, students, and other users of the Moritz Law Library and teaching the required first-year Legal Analysis and Writing I (LAW I) course or an advanced legal research course. The successful candidate will possess a Master of Library Science from an ALA accredited (or foreign equivalent) school and a JD from an ABA accredited (or foreign equivalent) institution; in-depth knowledge of legal sources and legal research; strong service orientation; excellent oral and written communications skills; and the ability to work both independently and collaboratively. The Moritz College of Law is an integral part of one of the world’s great educational institutions. Founded in 1891 and consistently the top-ranke