In my last blog post, we looked at the various bill tracking features on theNorth Carolina General Assembly’s (“NCGA”) website. Ideally, the legislative history research process tracks a bill as it makes its way through the legislative process, and that means our next stop is researching legislative committee materials. Legislatures cannot collectively scrutinize and hear …
Calling all law students! Have you heard of the newest legal research database Casetext? If not, listen up! Dedicated to “eliminating inefficiencies in legal research,” Casetext was developed with litigators in mind, but it is intended for use by all types of legal researchers, including law students. This week, I blocked some time out in my …
Whereas most users access PDFs via free programs such as Adobe Reader that do not allow editing, Adobe Acrobat Pro gives users full control over editing PDF files. UNC Law students may not be aware that Acrobat Pro is available to them (and all UNC students and faculty) at no cost, because the process for …
State legislative history research can be a daunting task even for the most experienced legal researcher. Luckily, North Carolina makes many legislative history materials freely available online, which saves legal researchers both time and money. This blog post will be the first in a series highlighting some of the online resources available to those interested …
The Bluebook does not provide clear guidance on how to cite every authority that law students or legal practitioners need or wish to use in their papers, memos, and briefs. Sometimes, researchers will toil in vain looking for a particular rule or example to cover a less common type of source, only to find that …
For 2Ls and 3Ls who have taken professional responsibility, the March Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination (MPRE) is right around the corner! Whether it’s your first or your fifth time tackling the exam, the Law Library has some resources to help you prepare. If you’re looking for online study aids to test out your skills, the law …
Do you need to search criminal cases from the 1800s? Or find state statutes from 1903? What about an old English treatise on contract law? Tracking down historical legal materials can be difficult, but there are a number of online sources available to aid your research. An impressive number of old legal texts, reporters, and …
According to a news report from Bloomberg Law, a wave of state legislatures are currently considering consumer privacy legislation, driven by the 2018 Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data-harvesting scandal, the new California consumer privacy law set to take effect in 2020, and the European Union’s comprehensive approach to privacy under its GDPR framework. Privacy law in the …
Whether you are running a preemption check or reviewing legal scholarship to support your own research, HeinOnline’s Law Journal Library is an important resource for accessing legal scholarship published in law journals around the world. In an effort to make the contents of this resource more accessible and customizable for researchers, HeinOnline introduced two new …
UNC School of Law’s Professor Maria Savasta-Kennedy has published a new book: North Carolina Environmental Law (2018). Check it out in print at the Law Library or view it online via LexisAdvance. Professor Savasta-Kennedy’s book starts with a chapter containing an overview of the structure of NC environmental laws and the regulatory process, providing readers …