Category Archives: Westlaw

Legal Research System of the Future

If students at Brooklyn Law School are frustrated with legal research systems, they are not alone. In a blog post called The Legal Research System of the Future, New Jersey lawyer, technologist, and author John Miano has put together an interesting series of videos about his frustration with legal research systems. In them, he relates that from his initial encounters in law school with Westlaw and Lexis, he has been saving ideas on how these systems could be improved. The series of videos presents these concepts in the hope that someone will build a legal research system that is more than a Google box on top of a legal database.

The videos are available below.

Part I: Content Formatting

Just reading content in a legal research system is a chore. This video addresses how content should be formatted in a legal research system. A link to this Scientific American article that addresses the background of some of the issues raised in the Part I.

Part II: An Irreverent Look at the Legal Research Market

This is a humorous look at the stagnation in the legal research market. It explains why there is now an opening for a new legal research system.

Part III: The System Canvas

How the Legal Research System of the Future should use the system canvas from a customer perspective.

Part IV: Citations and Citators

The central theme of this latest vided is that a legal publisher does not need an army of editors to produce the best citator on the market.

Summer Access to Bloomberg, Westlaw, and Lexis (Update)

All three of the research platforms available to Brooklyn Law School students provide students access over the summer. However, there are different steps that students must take to keep their passwords activated, and some limitations do apply.

Bloomberg

Bloomberg is offering students full access to BloombergLaw.com all summer with no academic use restriction. This means that students are able to use all of the available resources on the BloombergLaw.com platform even when performing research in their summer jobs. Passwords can be obtained by contacting our Bloomberg Account Manager, Pamela Haahr. For students who need some additional training on Bloomberg, three Prepare to Practice trainings are coming up on Tuesday, April 3rd, 5:00pm-6:00pm, Wednesday, April 11th, 1:00pm-2:00pm, and Tuesday, April 17th, 1:00pm-2:00pm, all in Room 603. To reserve a spot, email Pamela at oribe@bloomberg.net with the subject line, “Bloomberg Law Training.”

Westlaw

All students will automatically receive 40 hours of Westlaw and WestlawNext usage this June and July. For additional access to Westlaw and WestlawNext over the summer, students just need to register at www.lawschool.westlaw.com. Look for the image that says “Need Westlaw this summer” and follow the instructions to register. Academic use only restrictions apply for summer.  Passwords may NOT be used for research for law firms, government agencies, corporations or other purposes unrelated to law school coursework. Students graduating this year can extend their passwords by following the special link for graduates. in addition

LexisNexis

LexisNexis will be offering students full access to Lexis Advance all summer for educational use only. To participate in this program, students need to have a registered Lexis Advance ID. This is a separate and different ID from the standard Lexis.com ID. Lexis Advance Summer Access does not include international content. Students that need access to specific content available only on Lexis.com (i.e. international materials) can content our LexisNexis Account Executive, Megan Cowden, at megan.cowden@lexisnexis.com

WestlawNext is Coming to Brooklyn

This month marks the official launch of WestlawNext. Brooklyn Law School law librarians test drove this new platform on February 17th.

According to Betsy McKenzie at Out of the Jungle, “WestlawNext has been in development for more than five years.”

Westlaw programmers studied legal researchers and analyzed the researchers’ interface with Westlaw. Academic law librarians provided feedback as part of the development process. Westlaw also conducted in-depth analysis of users’ real research logs, recreating the searches and looking for opportunities to improve the search, retrieval and ranking. Westlaw also convened focus groups, design reviews, and performance testing.

WestlawNext provides a legal research experience that mimics the ease of use customers have come to expect from Google, says Jill Schachner Chanen of ABA Journal.

McKenzie blogs at Out of the Jungle and is the Law Library Director at Suffolk University does a great job of looking under the hood and explaining the features of this new platform.

McKenize asserts that:

This is not “googlization” of legal research. There is some similarity because they are looking at customer linking. But they are building an enormous “back end” to this research system that looks simple at the front. The system does in the background all the things law librarians have wanted good researchers to do: do background reading, get extra terms, carefully choose database or even combine them, So it is also not dumbing down legal research. It is, rather, doing it for you, automatically. However, it still gives you the choice, and the tools to do the Boolean search, to use the field searching, and to do all the powersearching things that long-time skilled searchers have learned to do.

Westlaw plans to launch WestlawNext to law students in Fall 2010 semester, this is according to Anne Ellis, Senior Director, Librarian Relations Thomson Reuters as noted in Law Librarian Blog.

Brooklyn Law School Library will be demonstrating WestlawNext to faculty in March 2010, watch for details.

BLS “new” Proxy Server Instructions

On Friday, November 13th, Brooklyn Law School Library learned from several users that the proxy server which provides you with access to many of our subscription services (such as Hein, BNA, JSTOR) was not working properly with the new BLS web site.

BLS Building

RIP Old Web Site

A website response team quickly moved into action.

Phil Allred, BLS’ Chief Information Officer, has created a work around until the web site developers can address this issue.

Maria Okonska, BLS Library’s Manager of Bibliographic Operations, developed easy-to-follow instructions to assist you in enabling the proxy server.

Thanks Phil and Maria!

To enable the proxy server, you need to make some adjustments to your web browser. BLS Library has posted detailed instruction for accessing the proxy server and they are located on our web site here.

BLS Library apologizes for your inconvenience.

BLS Library reminds its users to let us know about any problems you may be having  access our resources.  Contact us at refdesk@brooklaw.edu

 

 

Guide to Westlaw OnePass Security Change

signon_onepassWestlaw has rolled out its OnePass password security change since November 1st.  It is a new sign on process where Westlaw users are to create their unique usernames and passwords.

OnePass security changes must be implemented by January 31. 2010.  It affects all passwords used to login to  Westlaw, TWEN, and lawschool.westlaw.com.

Here are resources to assist you with customizing your OnePass username and password:

Introduction to OnePass

OnePass Step-by-Step Demo

Quick Reference Guide: Registering Your Westlaw Password

Accessing West Products with OnePass

Your Westlaw Password May Need Strengthening

westlaw_logoWestlaw, a Thomson Reuters company, is asking its users to update and strengthen the passwords.  This change will affect all passwords  used to log-in to  Westlaw, TWEN, and lawschool.westlaw.com.

Westlaw will require all users to have username and password called OnePass.  The majority of Brooklyn Law School (BLS) students already use OnePass to log on to Westlaw sites.

Beginning on November 1, 2009, all BLS Westlaw users  including faculty, staff and students will need to create their own OnePass account.will be asked to begin to create or update their OnePass accounts to make them secure, in an effort to meet today’s newer password security standards.

Instructions for Updating your Westlaw Account:

  • Updating Your Account Information? – Click here If you are an existing member of TWEN who has already registered a Westlaw password please select this option.
  • OnePass Username requirements. At least 8 characters in length and include at least 2 of the following 4 characters:  uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numerals. Special characters restrictions: period ( . ), at ( @ ), hyphen ( – ), or underscore ( _ ). Email addresses are valid usernames. Must be unique from all other OnePass users. Can be saved as a cookie. Forgotten username can be emailed to user with validation of email address and answer to security question.
  • OnePass Password requirements. Follow these OnePass Password requirements. Passwords must be at least 8 characters in length and include at least 3 of the following 4 characters: uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numerals.  Special characters restrictions: period ( . ), at ( @ ), hyphen ( – ), or underscore ( _ ). Can NOT be saved as cookie. We do NOT recommend using an email address as a password.

Password strengthening timeline for these changes are as follows:

  • November 1, 2009; Academic customers will begin to see messaging on lawschool.westlaw.com, alerting them to the updated security requirements. Customers will have a grace period in which to create or update their OnePass account. This grace period will end on January 31, 2010..
  • January 31, 2010: All Brooklyn Law School Westlaw users will be required to either create a new OnePass account or update their existing OnePass account before they are able to log-in to lawschool.westlaw.com.

If you have specific questions as to how this impacts you, please contact our Westlaw Academic Account Manager: Stefanie Efrati.