Category Archives: BLS Students

Data Privacy Legal Hackathon

Data Privacy Legal HackathonThis coming weekend, on February 8 and 9, Brooklyn Law School’s Brooklyn Law Incubator & Policy (“BLIP”) Clinic along with other groups, is organizing a Data Privacy Legal Hackathon. The event will take place in three locations: Dumbo (Brooklyn), London, and San Francisco. Participants will compete in a weekend-long hackathon to create tools that solve common legal problems in the field of data privacy.

A current list of the projects as they develop is available on the Hacker League Project Page.

Speakers and judges include:

New York: BLS Professor of Law Susan Herman and BLIP Founder Professor Jonathan Askin as well as several BLS alumni, Hon. Ann Aiken (District of OR), David Wainberg (AppNexus), Wilfried De Wever (HiiL), Doc Searls (VRM Harvard Berkman Center), K. Krasnow Waterman (MIT), Amyt Eckstein (Moses & Singer), Jason Tenenbaum (Rashbaum Associates), Dona Fraser (ESRB), Solon Barocas (Doctoral Candidate, NYU), Sol Irvine (Yuson & Irvine), Heather Federman (Online Trust Alliance)

London:  Dr. Ian Brown (Oxford Internet Institute), Dr. Ian Walden (Queen Mary University), John Cummings (Innovation Partners), Stefan Magdalinski (Mydex)

San Francisco: K. Krasnow Waterman (MIT), Brian Behlendorf (Mozilla Board), Michelle Dennedy, author of The Privacy Engineer’s Manifesto” (McAfee), John Buckman (EFF) There is still space left at all the locations for participants who want to volunteer. Sign up at the hacker league website to add your skills and join a project.

For more details on the event, see the post Data + Law =  Data Privacy Legal Hackathon at the site Brooklyn Tech Triangle.

Practice Ready Law Students

The Brooklyn Law School Library’s January New Books List is now available thanks to Cataloging Librarian Jeff Gabel. The 73 titles on the list cover a wide range of subjects including female circumcision; the invisible web; western films; the Bible and law; the death penalty; hedge funds; and taxation. Two of the titles deal with the role of law schools in preparing students for the practice of law.

Teaching Law PracticeThe first of these, Teaching Law Practice: Preparing the Next Generation of Lawyers edited by Charles Cercone (Call # KF279.T43 2013), argues that law schools have a peculiar responsibility and opportunity to help accelerate the change in the packaging, pricing, and delivery of affordable legal products and services to corporate and individual clients in sustainable law firm models. Schools with practice preparation as their mission can help the profession study and improve the ways in which lawyers identify clients and their needs, and then find effective and efficient ways to serve them. The book collects some of the practice-preparation efforts of the faculty at Thomas M. Cooley Law School. The essays in the book demonstrate how faculty can prepare graduates to practice law and meet new challenges that all lawyers must face.

The Marble and the SculptorThe second book, The Marble and the Sculptor: From Law School to Law Practice by Keith Robert Lee (Call # KF297 .L444 2013), provides an understanding of what is expected of new attorneys and a framework for becoming a successful—both as a lawyer and in life. With advice on everything from choosing classes that matter in law school to the importance of writing well, attracting clients, and avoiding five basic mistakes in your first job at a law firm, the book can help young lawyers regardless of law school or area of practice.

Earlier this month, BLS Library’s Kathy Darvil, Access Services/Reference Librarian and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Law Reference participated in the Law Library Association of Greater New York’s 75th Anniversary Education Conference. The panel, called Collaborating to Produce Practice Ready Graduates, consisted of Prof. Darvil, Susan McKenna, Elaine Egan, Linda-Jean Schneider, and Yasmin Harker. Prof. Darvil’s presentation Preparing Practice Ready Graduates: Specialized Legal Research Courses is available at this link.

Martin Luther King Jr. Day and History

On Monday, February 20, in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Brooklyn Law School will cancel all classes and close most of its offices. The BLS Library will be open from 9am to 10pm.

Brooklyn Law School is providing an opportunity to participate in the National Martin Luther King Day of Service. On Monday, January 20 2014, BLS students will join thousands of volunteers across the country as they take the opportunity to carry on Dr. King’s mission of service to others. BLSA and BLSPI are spearheading a day of service by recruiting volunteers to participate in a Read-A-Thon from 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM at PS 375 Mosaic Prep Academy at 141 E. 111 St., New York, NY 10029. Volunteers will work with students as they practice their reading skills. BLS students who want to participate can meet up in the BLS Courtyard at 9:30 AM. For more information on the Read-A-Thon, visit: www.allforgood.org.

Dr. King, the most important voice of the American civil rights movement, was born on January 15, 1929 and is only the third American whose birthday is recognized as a federal holiday. In 1964, Dr. King received the Nobel Peace Prize at age 35, the youngest person ever to receive this high honor. He donated the prize money from that award to help fund his fight for civil rights in America. Four years later, Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.

The BLS Library’s first floor book display case features several print items about Dr. King including the 1978 King: A Biography by David L. Lewis (Call # E185.97.K5 L485 1978). It notes that Dr. King was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957. During his term, he traveled and spoke wherever there was injustice, protest and action. He led a massive protest in Birmingham, Alabama, that caught the attention of the entire world and provided what he titled a “Coalition of Conscience” inspiring him to write his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”. The letter became a call to action that started the Civil Rights revolution, with its drives in Alabama for voter registration for blacks, and the March on Washington, where he delivered his “I Have a Dream Speech” in front of 250,000 people.

Martin Luther King Jr. and the morality of legal practice

A newer book, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Morality of Legal Practice: Lessons in Love and Justice by Robert K. Vischer (Call # KF373.K523 V57 2013), looks at our understanding of the lawyer’s work by exploring how Dr. King built his advocacy on a clear set of moral claims regarding the demands of love and justice in light of human nature. Dr. King never shirked from staking out challenging claims of moral truth, even while remaining open to working with those who rejected those truths. His example is an inspiration for the legal profession and a reminder that truth-telling has the capacity to move hearts and minds. Dr. King’s success would have been impossible absent his substantive views about human nature and the ends of justice.

In addition to the print items, the display case has a page from the BLS Library’s digital copy of Becoming King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Making of a National Leader.

 

Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals

IFLRBrooklyn Law School students, faculty and staff can access the Index to Foreign Legal Periodicals via Hein Online. The IFLR is a subject index to selected international and comparative law periodicals and collections of essays. It is produced at the Berkeley Law Library, University of California Berkeley for the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and is multilingual. It provides information on articles and book reviews published in over 500 legal journals published worldwide. Coverage encompasses public and private international law, comparative and foreign law, and the law of all jurisdictions other than the United States, the UK, Canada, and Australia. The IFLP also analyses the content of about eighty individually published collections of legal essays, Festschriften, Mélanges, and congress reports each year. There are nearly 300,000 index records with links to over 34,000 full-text articles and book reviews via journals available in Hein Online.

Teaching Transactional Law

Brooklyn Law School Professor Bradley Borden has posted on SSRN an article entitled Using the Client-File Method to Teach Transactional Law. The full text of the 18 page article, published at 17 Chapman L. Rev. 101 (2013), is available here.  The abstract reads:

This Article presents a teaching method (the client-file method) for transactional law courses that combines the business school case-study method with the law school case method. The client-file method of teaching requires students to become familiar with real-word legal issues and the types of documents and information that accompany matters that transactional clients bring to attorneys (i.e., the contents of a client file). The method also requires students to learn and apply substantive law to solve problems that arise in a transactional law practice. Because the client-file method places students in a practice setting, it helps them become more practice-ready law graduates. Although the client-file exists in various forms in many parts of the legal curriculum, this Article describes its specific application to transactional business law courses with accompanying diagrams and a description of the learning cycle it facilitates. The method provides the promises making experiential learning accessible to a greater number of law students.

Study Rooms Reservations & Library Hours During Reading/Exam Period

During the reading and exam period, you must make a reservation to use a library study room.  Mandatory study room reservations will begin Thursday, Dec. 5, at 8:00 am; at that time all study rooms will be locked and you must go to the first floor circulation desk when your reservation time begins to charge out the key to the room.  The link to the study room reservations is on the library homepage,  under “Related Links” on the right side of the page.

Study Room Policies:desk

  • Study rooms are for the use of groups of two or more students
  • Study rooms may be reserved only for the current day and two days ahead
  • Study rooms may be reserved for periods from 30 minutes up to four hours
  • Students are permitted to reserve a room for no more than four hours per day
  • Reservations violating these policies will be deleted
  • Instructions for making reservations and a list of rooms available are on the study room reservations page

Library hours for the reading and exam period:

  • Thursday, Dec. 5 – Thursday, Dec. 19: 8:00 am – 2:00 am
  • Friday, Dec. 20: 8:00 am – 5:00 pm
  • From Dec. 5 – Dec. 19, the Circulation Desk will close at Midnight; no books can be checked out after Midnight

·        Reminders:

  • Please limit all conversations in the library – remember that your colleagues are studying too
  • no eating in the library; please go to the student lounge or dining hall for all snacks and meals
  • Do not leave valuables unattended. If you step away from your study table or carrel, take anything of value to you with you
  • And Finally, goodluckforexam2

Law School Lowdown

Brooklyn Law School Library’s latest New Books List  with its 55 items is now available thanks to the efforts of Cataloging Librarian Jeff Gabel. The titles on the list cover a wide range of subjects from abortion law and legislation to corporation law, from criminal justice to labor law, and from social media to  rent control in New York.

Law School LowdownOne title of practical interest to law students is Law School Lowdown: Secrets of Success from the Application Process to Landing the First Job (Call # KF283 .S37 2013) by Ian E. Scott. The author, a New York attorney and graduate of Harvard Law School, successfully completed the New York and New Jersey bar examinations and worked at Cleary Gottlieb’s litigation and corporate groups. Since then, he opened his own law practice, Scott Legal Services, P.C., which specializes in new business setup and business immigration.

This practical guide for success has tips on pitfalls to avoid and serves as a blueprint for legal accomplishment on a number of topics including:

  • The law school application process and tips on taking the important Law School Admission Test (LSAT)
  • Selecting a law school, applying for scholarships, and deciding between top-ranked and lower-ranked schools
  • Making the grade during that vital first year at law school
  • The best courses to take in second and third years
  • The advantages of publishing papers while in law school
  • Seeking out summer positions at law firms
  • Taking and passing state bar exams
  • Finding employment at a law firm after graduation
  • Other post-law school options, including judicial clerkships

The book’s useful appendices has yet more advice, and includes a completed model law school application form, effective résumés, and a model brief of a case for class. Based on his own law school experiences, Law School Lowdown addresses both the rigors and satisfactions that comprise the law school experience, offering the advice to will pave the way to a successful career in law. A companion blog called Law School Lowdown: The Site for Practical Law School Success Tips offers additional advice.

Social Media: Academic and Legal Risks

An article in the NY Times titled They Loved Your GPA. Then They Saw Your Tweets recently pointed out the consequences of inappropriate postings on social media. The article reads:

As certain high school seniors work meticulously this month to finish their early applications to colleges, some may not realize that comments they casually make online could negatively affect their prospects. In fact, new research from Kaplan Test Prep, the service owned by the Washington Post Company, suggests that online scrutiny of college hopefuls is growing.

Of 381 college admissions officers who answered a Kaplan telephone questionnaire this year, 31% said they had visited an applicant’s Facebook or other personal social media page to learn more about them — a five-percentage-point increase from last year. More crucially for those trying to get into college, 30% of the admissions officers said they had discovered information online that had negatively affected an applicant’s prospects.

Social MediaHigh school students are not the only ones who need to exercise discretion when using social media. Touro Law School Assistant Professor of Law Jonathan Ezor’s PowerPoint presentation Law Students Tweeting Badly demonstrates that law students need to use caution as well.  Beyond the world of academia, an item in Brooklyn Law School Library’s November New Books List shows that the problem goes much further. Social Media: Legal Risk & Corporate Policy by Fordham Law School Adjunct Law Professor Adam I. Cohen (Call #KF390.5.C6 C576 2013)  shows that lawyers and jurists, corporate policymakers, and government regulatory agencies have only just begun to address the practical business and legal risk issues raised by the proliferation of social media channels and content.

The book explores the implications suggested by the precursors of a forthcoming tidal wave of social media-related civil litigation, the spectrum of potential corporate policy approaches to reducing the risks inherent in social media use, and the social media service privacy policy minefield that all social media participants, corporate and individual, will have to navigate if they want to optimize what little control they have over information shared by using social media. The book’s highlights include the practical litigation implications of social media cases likely to be of relevance to business enterprises are examined; the issue of attorney ethics in a social media context; civil cases that have involved social media are discussed and classified by type; the reasons for having a corporate social media policy; a discussion of the fundamental areas generally covered by social media policies; and a policy creation “toolkit” that organizes and provides sample provisions with which to build a social media policy are included.

Congress.Gov Replacing Thomas

 

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The free legislative information website, Congress.gov, is transitioning into its permanent role as the official site for federal legislative information from the U.S. Congress and related agencies. The site, which launched in beta form last fall and features platform mobility, comprehensive information retrieval and user-friendly presentation, is replacing the nearly 20-year-old THOMAS.gov.

Beginning Nov. 19, typing Thomas.gov into a web browser will automatically redirect to Congress.gov. Thomas Twitter followers will be transferred to the Congress.gov Twitter account. THOMAS.gov will remain accessible from the Congress.gov homepage through late 2014 before it is retired.

To help ease the transition for users from THOMAS.gov to the new site, the Library of Congress is offering online training webinars over the next few months. Complete this form if you wish to register for a training webinar.

Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship (CUBE)

This month, Brooklyn Law School will be launching the Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship (CUBE). This new initiative will serve as a hub for exploring legal issues surrounding entrepreneurship, and for providing effective legal representation and support for new businesses. It will offer training for the next generation of business lawyers in technology, real estate, media, creative arts, energy, or any other area of enterprise with tools to support and help build the start-up successes of tomorrow.

BLS Associate Professor of Clinical Law Jonathan Askin is the  CUBE Innovation Catalyst and also Founder & Director of the BLIP Clinic. The inspiration for the project is allow BLS  law students to use their law degrees to explore new ways to represent innovative entrepreneurs, embark on ventures of their own, and trail blaze paths for the entrepreneurial lawyer and the legally-trained entrepreneur. BLS Dean and Professor Law Nicholas Allard is making a series of presentations seeking input from faculty and others about plans for the Center for Urban Business Entrepreneurship (CUBE).

EnterpreneurialThe BLS Library has in its collection Entrepreneurial Practice: Enterprise Skills for Lawyers Serving Emerging Client Populations by Nelson P. Miller, Michael J. Dunn, and John D. Crane (Call # KF300 .M554 2012). The book discusses the increasingly specialized role of law in our complex, technical, regulatory state affecting more people more frequently and more deeply than ever before. It argues that if communities are to prosper, lawyers must standardize law products and services to meet new needs, efficiently fit those services for individual clients, price those services transparently, and deliver them timely by accessible means. Lawyers who learn these new law practice conventions will have more meaningful and rewarding careers that promote the order, openness, health, welfare, and economy of their communities. These lawyers will use more mobile and powerful technology in more clear, precise, and technical means to convey better-suited law products and services to better-served clients.