Novalawcity

Video of the Week: Even Stevphen - Halloween

Halloween is next Wednesday, so here's something a little different for this week's video. 

Before The Office and The Colbert Report, Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert were correspondents on the Daily Show. In this October 2000 Even Stevphen segment, Colbert reveals a childhood deprivation and gets some coaching from Carell...on the fine art of trick-or-treating.

If you're as big a fan of "fake" news as I am, you'll be happy to learn that the entire archive of the Daily Show (back to Jon Stewart's January 1999 debut) is available for free online at www.thedailyshow.com, incorporating many features similar to YouTube. You can watch videos of new shows the day after they air. The videos are all tagged, and I found my all-time favorite clip in a matter of seconds.Way to go, Comedy Central!

Law students, enjoy your Halloween! Finals will be here before you know it.

Is your lawyer a poet and you didn't know it?

Hofstra's Virtual Library Cat's Eye View points to an interesting website.  Strangers to Us All: Lawyers and Poets is devoted to lawyers who are poets (or poets who are lawyers, if you prefer to reverse it).  It includes many links to online lawyer poetry, alphabetical and chronological indices, a U.S. Civil War section, and a miscellaneous index with lists of women, presidents, jurists, and congressional poets.  It's full of biographic and bibliographic information as well.  A fascinating find!

What can law schools do better?

Law School Innovation blog posts that the theme of the Complete Lawyer online magazine's current issue is "What Can Law Schools Do Better?"

Among the highlighted articles:

• Practicing Lawyers Can Change Legal Education
• We Need To Produce Lawyers, Not Technicians
• Law School Innovations Result In Broader Students
• Educating Law Students For Leadership
• Developing A Personal And Professional Identity In Law School
• Turning Law Students Into Lawyers

Though not part of the focus features, the issue also includes a review of Best Practices for Legal Education, and articles about leadership, associate retention, and several work-life balance issues.

Florida Electronic Federal Depository Library

The State Database of the Day blog recently featured the Florida Electronic Federal Depository Library (FEFDL), a free database where you can find comprehensive and well-organized links to Florida city and county information, including statistics, court systems, planning and land development codes, public officials, local newspapers, and libraries.

Kid's Federal Gov't Page

The U.S. Federal Government's Web Portal for Kid's is revamped and easy to use: Kids.gov

Hurricane Katrina resources

As the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, New Orleans and areas of the Gulf coast affected by this deadly storm continue to recover.  For a good round up of sites and sources dealing with Katrina and its effects, visit the Librarians' Internet Index Hurricane Katrina page.

The index includes almost 250 resources from the Katrina Legal Aid Resource Center to LSU's Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes to USA.gov's Hurricane Recovery site and more.

Mission: Laptop Security

Here at NSU Law, students are required to have laptop computers.  Entering 1Ls will be picking theirs up tomorrow, so this new resource is timely.

OnGuardOnline, sponsored by the FTC, is a site that "provides practical tips. . . .to help you be on guard against Internet fraud, secure your computer, and protect your personal information."  Mission: Laptop Security is a full page dedicated to tips for keeping your laptop physically safe.  Among them:

• Treat it like cash.
• Get it out of the car...don’t ever leave it behind.
• Keep it off the floor...or at least between your feet.
• Don’t leave it “for just a sec”...no matter where you are.

Check out the page for more tips and more details.  There's even a "Mission: Laptop Security" game to play to see how much you know.

Don't forget to keep your anti-virus files current as well!

Tip: BeSpacific.

Tracking the nominees

Tracking new developments with the U.S. Supreme Court is easiest through convenient web resources.  NSU's Law Library and Technology Center uses the Special Legal Bulletins web page to keep you up-to-date on current events. 

The Special Legal Bulletins page links to the University of Michigan Law Library web page on U.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, and its earlier one on John G. Roberts.  The Ann Arbor News reports on the law library's efforts and describes some of the content of the Miers web page:

"The new page is one-stop shopping for anyone curious about Miers' career and writings. Here readers find court documents for more than 20 cases in which Miers served as counsel while working for a Texas law firm, and more than a dozen articles by Miers, most from the Texas Bar Journal. There are links to the growing body of New York Times stories about Miers, and links to several sources of biographical information."

Florida Bar web site redesigned

The Florida Bar has refreshed the look of its web site as of June 1, 2005.  According to the Florida Bar News, the goal was to make the site more attractive, easier to use, and to have the site's contents available in three clicks or less.  The web site address has changed from flabar.org to floridabar.org.