http://laurabergus.com Law student + web & media background = belief that legal services should be affordable, accessible, and online. Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:42:45 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en 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 ... http://laurabergus.com/2010/01/westlawnext-cool-tool-but-who-will-have-it/ 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 ... http://laurabergus.com/2010/01/association-of-american-law-schools-conference-where-im-not-this-week/ 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 ... http://laurabergus.com/2009/11/google-scholar-advanced-search-case-law/ 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 ... http://laurabergus.com/2009/10/looking-for-a-2l-summer-2010-position/ 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 ... http://laurabergus.com/2009/09/twitter-is-valuable/ 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 ... http://laurabergus.com/2009/09/2l-is-hard-but-i-guess-it-should-be/ 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 ... http://laurabergus.com/2009/08/there-are-worse-things-in-life-to-feel-cool-about/ 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 ... http://laurabergus.com/2009/07/join-my-networ/ 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 ... http://laurabergus.com/2009/06/smbp-part-4/ 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. http://laurabergus.com/2009/06/every-blog-needs-a-wordle-word-cloud-post/