Monthly archives: February, 2010

FOIA Facts: Why the Wait?

Requesters who are new to using the FOIA statute often complain that they have filed a request within the last month but haven’t receive their documents yet. FOIA expert Scott A. Hodes explains that the congressional budgeting process does not specifically provide FOIA operations within an agency a set line item amount. Thus, FOIA Offices usually have limited resources from within their own agencies to fulfill requests.

Subjects: FOIA Facts, Freedom of Information, Government Resources

Ethics of Legal Outsourcing White Paper

The practical reality for US and UK attorneys engaging in or contemplating Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) is that the outsourcing of both core legal and support services across the legal profession is nothing new. What is different today with the emergence of the LPO industry is that both core legal and legal support related services are being outsourced to lawyers, law firms and corporations located offshore in countries such as India, South Africa and the Philippines. Mark Ross analyzes how the outsourcing of legal work by a law firm or legal department to a legal outsourcing company or an entity located offshore raises specific issues pertaining to the outsourcing lawyer’s ethical obligations to his or her client.

Subjects: Features

Preserving Born-Digital Legal Materials – Where to Start?

Sarah Rhodes discusses the monumental challenge of preserving our digital heritage. She argues that law libraries specifically have a critically important role to play in this undertaking as access to legal and law-related information is a core underpinning of our democratic society. Our current digital preservation strategies and systems are imperfect but tremendous strides have been made over the past decade to stave off the dreaded digital dark age, and libraries today have a number of viable tools, services, and best practices at our disposal for the preservation of digital content.

Subjects: Features, Information Management, Law Librarians, Legal Research, Legal Technology, Library Software & Technology, Technology Trends