Laura Bergus

Today I wrote about Thomson Reuter’s new legal research product, WestlawNext, over at Social Media Law Student. I really liked using it, since it is pretty much everything I think an online research tool should be. However, it is yet to be seen how accessible (pricing-, and support-wise) this awesome improvement will be, to law schools or practitioners.

The Association of American Law Schools’ annual conference is happening now in New Orleans. I’m in Iowa, and it’s cold. While I had no idea where my legal education would take me when I entered law school in 2008, my mind was filled inspiring opportunities after seeing what was happening on the tech side of legal education at the 2009 CALI conference. I met a lot of great people last summer, and have stayed in touch with many online. Most of them, and many more progressive and aggressive educators, librarians and technicians are in Louisiana this week. Wish I were there. I’ll be following #aals and #aals2010 on Twitter. Any attendees are invited to send some warm weather, great music, fabulous food, and/or job opportunities my way! :)

Ok, I might be a bit overly-excited about the fact that Google tonight dropped a bomb on the free, online legal access world: federal AND state case law search, with legal journals, with an excellent interface and uber-helpful “How cited” and “Related documents” information. I don’t know scope of coverage here, or how and where and when Google captured and organized all of this. Go play!! http://scholar.google.com/advanced_scholar_search

So now the top three reasons I love Google are:

1. My brother works there and I <3 my brother.
2. Google knows more about me than I know about myself (just have to check dashboard if I forget any personal details).
3. FREE ONLINE LEGAL RESEARCH. Can’t wait to try out the extent of search functionality…. Yay!

Today, while in class trying not to watch the woman next to me play some pretty 3D game, I realized that this is not 1L year in one very important respect: my classmates have been diligently job-hunting for this coming summer since…last spring. I may be a bit behind.

I couldn’t have been happier with my summer job this year. I had the pleasure of working with Montana Legal Services Association, from Iowa. I was a “remote intern,” which meant I could work from my home office with secure broadband and still take care of my young daughter evenings and weekends. I was thrilled to do social media policy consultation (based largely on my Social Media Best Practices for Law Schools project) as well as a little bit of technical/web work. I was challenged to draft advice scripts for attorneys answering the statewide HelpLine, which entailed lots of statutory review and interpretation. My experience enabled me to use my web (designed Iowa Law’s new website), video, multimedia and social media experience, as well as exercise the legal side of my brain. The best part was working in the legal aid environment and meeting (albeit via GoToMeeting) so many driven and progressive people in the legal aid and legal technology fields. I learned about a few non-profits that employ people (like Kate Bladow, who used to work for Montana Legal Services) doing exactly what I would love to do.

So, this post is to let y’all know that I’m looking for a summer 2010 position. Please check out my résumé, and/or my writing at Legal Geekery or Social Media Law Student. Please contact me. Please tell your friends. Thanks.

Anyone who knows me (and apparently career services-types who read their email newsletters) knows that I got my 1L job through Twitter and this here blog. There a lot of reasons why social media, and Twitter in particular, is good for finding a job. Just last week, I got a DM from one of my online heroes asking if I was looking for a job this summer. That’s a nice surprise when you’ve been kicking yourself, even just a little bit, for saving yourself some grief by deciding not to participate in OCI.

Here are two recent Twitter experiences that made my life easier and, most importantly, made me realize that there are people out there, and they are listening:

• Bluebooking nightmare. After complaining about some inexcusably lame Bluebooking problem I was having, a few lawbrarians (@richards1000, @stephdavidson, @hmorrell) immediately jumped to my rescue on Twitter. That led to a conversation about my love for law librarians (more on that in the recent Legal Geekery podcast, episode 2), and accolades for one of my school’s key librarians, who I then emailed and encouraged to join Twitter. If you want to follow what more law librarians are doing, find links here.
• Babysitting assistance. Last night my niece and nephew spent the night, visiting my daughter. After putting the little ones to bed, I was up with the 11 year-old and a promise that she could use my computer for some online flash games. Problem with that was that I never play online games (although that may change now…). I quickly Googled “circle the cat,” a game my husband is fond of. That entertained for a few minutes, but then I tweeted for help. In just a few minutes, shortened links were pouring in. Here are a few we enjoyed:
  • Chronotron
  • Double Wires
  • Cow Maze
  • Yeti Sports
  • Boomshine

I appreciate what Twitter does for me, and I know I’m not alone.

This semester is kicking me, hard. But in an attempt to be positive, here’s a list of what’s good, or at least what could be so much worse:

• Having worked makes it much easier to work. I’m a research assistant to a professor who I respect very much. It’s tough enough fitting the work in between classes, other work and being a mom — but at least I know how to ask for a deadline, communicate openly about what I can and can’t do, and be efficient with my time. Serious thanks to my professional career for that one.
• Imagine what I could do if I commit myself this much to something I care deeply about. Every night I get less and less sleep, every day I slog through more and more pages and crank out ever-increasingly-efficient writing, and I think, “Wow, some day I could work this hard for a cause I truly believe in.” I’m pretty driven (who in law school isn’t??), but I didn’t know I could sustain this kind of output. It’s inspiring.
• I’m not writing for a journal, and I’m not doing OCI. These are probably the two best decisions I’ve made to date to safeguard my sanity. Enough said.
• I love copyright class. Ok, I know sooooo little about it, and there are a lot of IP-minded folks at my school (and in that class), but it’s really entertaining and informative. I’m grateful for at least one place where I feel really motivated to learn and participate.

Overall, it’s tiring, taxing, stressful and pushing me to the brink. But today I’m willing to say that the view is pretty good from the edge.

Today I got the following email from a salesman at ExamSoft, the company that makes the final exam software my school uses, SoftTest.

Hello Laura,

We met at the CALI conference, where we discussed some features that could be incorporated into SofTest that would be useful to students. You suggested that we add a keyboard shortcut to display the word/character count within an exam. Well, we have! I wanted you to be the first to know that the new version of SofTest released for the new academic year on September 1st will include the option of using CTRL+W to display the word/character count. Thanks for your suggestion and no there is no licensing deal for you forthcoming. :)

Bryant Weaver
Client Support Manager

I was disappointed at first that there wasn’t a big announcement on the ExamSoft website naming the ctrl+W functionality after me, but then I saw that their website doesn’t really outline any of the software’s functionality, and I felt better.

So all of you 1Ls who ctrl+W your way to a well-edited exam answer (I had two classes last semester that required word counts on the final), saving you two whole mouse clicks that it used to take to get you that same piece of information, you may not know it, but you have me to thank.

Is your school planning anything for orientation this year about building or hiding an online identity? Are you advising professors on whether or not to friend students on Facebook? Do you know if your dean has guidelines for herself or her staff on using social media?

Over 65 people from law schools around the world (mostly US but a few Canadians and at least one Brit) have joined the new network at socialmediabestpractices.org to discuss questions like these. If you are a law student, librarian, professor, counselor, administrator or anyone affiliated with a law school or legal education in general, you’re invited to sign up.

If you haven’t already, review the information for law school students, staff/administrators and employers (of law students and law grads, that is) at smbp.laurabergus.com.

You’re also invited to take this 5-minute survey about social media at your law school, offered by CALI.

I want this project to be useful, so please tell me what you think!

For all of my drum-beating about the glories of online social networking, the CALI annual conference last week was a welcome reminder of how nice it is to actually *meet* people. It was great to match real faces to Twitter avatars, and I made a point of getting to know several folks I’d never met in cyberspace. Face-to-face human interaction is good stuff.

I had the opportunity of moderating part of a group discussion of social media best practices for law schools. More than 50 law librarians, administrators and techies attended this session on behalf of their school, and not a single one of them reported having policy in place to guide them in using social media. Co-moderators John Palfrey, Sarah Glassmeyer, Denise Grey, Susanna Leers, Meg Kribble and Gene Koo collected input on how institutions are using and would like to use social media for everything from recruiting new students to publishing scholarly works.

We collected contact information from nearly 40 people who said they would like to work together in collecting data and crafting guidelines for law schools’ social media use. Preliminary suggestions for students, staff and employers of law students/grads are collected at http://smbp.laurabergus.com. Next steps include building an online community where the best-practices discussion can play out and coordinating schools’ leadership in drafting working documents. Stay tuned!

While at the conference, I also had the chance to go to two of Boulder’s fine restaurants, Cork (where we had a most entertaining French waiter who gave us no crap for ordering Australian wine) and Flagstaff House (where we sat on a covered and heated porch and marveled at a thunderstorm sweeping through the valley). We also wandered around Pearl Street (very reminiscient of Iowa City’s own pedestrian mall) and drove out into the Flatiron mountains. Beautiful part of the country.

Thanks to Josh Auriemma for the reminder of the coolness that is Wordle.

Here is the automatically generated word cloud for laurabergus.com. Pretty right-on, if you ask me.