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To rank well in most legal scholarship ranking systems which count “all-time citations,” scholars must have thirty to forty years of nearly continuous scholarly output.  This leads to an undercounting of women and other time-limited groups and prevents existing rankings from surfacing the current top scholars according to Rob Willey, Melanie Knapp, and Ashley Matthews from George Mason University Law Library.

They have designed A New Inclusive Scholar Rank that includes more women as well as newer scholars and…
Continue Reading New Legal Scholarship Ranking is More Transparent, Inclusive of Women, Newer & Non-Traditional Scholars

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Since 1973, the University of Wisconsin Law School’s Hastie Fellowship has been a leader in guiding and increasing opportunities for lawyers of color and other underrepresented communities to become law professors.  In celebration of its 50th anniversary, the UW Law Library has created a display that explores the history of the fellowship and honors Professor James E. Jones, Jr., the guiding force in its creation.
The display also celebrates the more than 50 Hastie Fellows who have gone…
Continue Reading Display Celebrates the 50th Anniversary of UW Law School’s William H. Hastie Fellowship

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The UW Law Library is thrilled to announce the launch of a new repository collection: the Herman Goldstein & Problem-Oriented Policing Collection.  Longtime UW Law professor, Goldstein was an international leader in policing and criminology and is credited with introducing more just and effective strategies for police to carry out their duties.

Goldstein’s work covered the most important aspects of policing in democratic societies: the broad nature of the police function, political accountability of the police, the exercise…
Continue Reading UW Law Launches Herman Goldstein & Problem-Oriented Policing Collection

The University of Wisconsin Law Library is very pleased to welcome our newest librarian – Scott Park!  Scott joins us as the Digital Collections & Reference Librarian which is a new position at the Law Library.  Scott will oversee our rapidly growing UW Law School Digital Repository, curating new collections, working closely with law faculty and students, and supervising student workers.  He’ll also be part of our dynamic and talented team of reference librarians.
With nearly a decade…
Continue Reading UW Law Library Welcomes Scott Park as Digital Collections & Reference Librarian

BadgerLink recently announced that it has renewed contracts for two newspaper collections featuring content from Wisconsin.  These are great collections for researching local and state-wide issues and events. Almost 500 Wisconsin newspapers are available in BadgerLink collections.
Newspapers published in large Wisconsin & U.S. cities
U.S. Newsstream includes current and archival (to 1980s) U.S. news featuring key national and regional sources including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Newsday,…
Continue Reading BadgerLink Renews Contracts for Wisconsin+ Newspaper Databases

Here’s a trio of articles about the use of generative artificial intelligence in legal writing:

Using AI to assist in the representation of a client is neither new nor an automatic violation of the Rules of Professional…
Continue Reading Trio of Articles Explore Questions about the Use of AI in Legal Writing

The Wisconsin Document Depository Program is a statutorily mandated program that requires Wisconsin state agencies to provide copies of their documents to preserve and make available a record of major state government programs. Documents are made available in two ways: at depository libraries like the University of Wisconsin Law Library and online through the Wisconsin Digital Archives.

  • The Wisconsin Digital Archives contains state documents that describe activities of state government including statistics, reports, and studies published by government agencies

…
Continue Reading Three Digital Collections of Wisconsin State Government Documents

This summer, UW Law Library will be refreshing our fifth-floor space with new carpeting. To that end, the library will be closed Monday, June 26 to Friday, June 30 as new carpet is installed at and around the fifth-floor entrance. In addition, furniture and equipment on the fifth floor may be moved or unavailable in the weeks before and after the closure.
However, if you have a legal research question or need library materials, staff will still be available…
Continue Reading UW Law Library Closed from June 26-June 30

Feedspot, a social feed reader that curates news feeds from online sources, has recently compiled a list of the Top 80 Wisconsin Law Blogs. What a great round-up of content from legal experts in the Badger State.  I’m honored that WisBlawg appears as #2.
The ranking is based on

  • Relevancy
  • Blog post frequency, freshness, total posts
  • Social media follower counts and engagements
  • Domain authority
  • Age of the blog

Continue Reading WisBlawg Ranks #2 in List of Top 80 Wisconsin Law Blogs

University Staff are the backbone of UW Madison campus operations. This includes everyone from library assistants, accountants, steamfitters, painters, translators/interpreters, financial specialists, and many more specialized personnel whose expertise enables students and faculty to conduct their work with efficiency, comfort, and satisfaction.
Each year, UW Madison recognizes select University Staff for their outstanding contributions.  I am very pleased that two UW Law Library staff members were recognized this year.
Eric Taylor received a University Staff Recognition Award for his…
Continue Reading Two Law Library Team Members Recognized by UW Madison

Two interesting developments on attorney use of ChatGPT in court filings:

A New York attorney is facing sanctions for using ChatGPT in an affidavit that he submitted without checking the accuracy of the information it provided.  From Business Insider:
“Six of the submitted cases appear to be bogus judicial decisions with bogus quotes and bogus internal citations,” [Judge Kevin] Castel wrote… Neither the lawyers for the airline nor Castel himself were able to find the cases mentioned in…
Continue Reading Pitfalls and Certifications on the Use of ChatGPT in Court Filings

I’m very proud to share that the University of Wisconsin Law Library, in partnership with the National Indian Law Library, the Open Law Library, the UW Great Lakes Indigenous Law Center, and the Stockbridge-Munsee Community Band of Mohican Indians, has been awarded the 2023 Public Access to Government Information Award by the American Association of Law Libraries for our Digital Publication of Tribal Laws Pilot Project.
The right to know the laws by…
Continue Reading Digital Publication of Tribal Laws Pilot Project Wins AALL Public Access to Government Information Award

One of the hottest topics in legal technology (really, all of legal practice) is the rise of ChatGPT and other AI-related tools. We’ve already seen an influx of existing and new tools that integrate some form of AI, particularly generative AI tools that allow lawyers to quickly create documents and analyze their work.
Over the past year, the Law Library staff taught courses (and will continue to do so each year) on legal tech and advanced legal research. One…
Continue Reading Generative AI Legal Tools – a white paper snapshot

Here is the latest faculty scholarship appearing in the University of Wisconsin Law School Legal Studies Research Papers series found on SSRN.

In this paper, I undertake a qualitative exploration of how social regulation of speech works in practice on university campuses, and of the extent to which social regulation in practice affirms or undermines the stereotypes and caricatures…
Continue Reading Recent UW Law Faculty Scholarship: The Anatomy of Cancel Culture; The First French BIT; Taxpayers’ Tax Election Regrets; The International Law Origins of Compact Theory: A Critique of Bellia & Clark on Federalism; and Transparency, Accountability, and Influence in the International Investment Law System

The latest episode of the Wisconsin Law in Action podcast from the UW Law Library features Elizabeth Manriquez, Head of Reference and Scholarly Support and manager of the UW Law School Digital Repository.  She joins host Kris Turner to discuss the numerous collections and features of our repository, as well as several new and upcoming collections.  Manriquez also provides insight into the future of scholarly communications and information discovery.

Last month, the Digital Repository celebrated its 5th…
Continue Reading WI Law In Action Podcast: Elizabeth Manriquez on the UW Law School Digital Repository

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The University of Wisconsin Law Library seeks an energetic and intellectually curious professional to join our team as the Digital Collections and Reference Librarian.  This newly-created position will be responsible for the day-to-day management of our growing, open-source UW Law School Digital Repository while also supporting an amazing group of legal scholars and law students. The position will play an integral role on our Public Services staff and in our nationally recognized scholarly visibility program. 
The application is…
Continue Reading UW Law Library Seeking a Digital Collections & Reference Librarian to Manage our Growing Repository