ALR Student’s Corner: Decoding the law behind a ubiquitous experience

Experience with K-12 education is nearly ubiquitous. Almost everyone remembers their own experiences, some more fondly than others, sitting in class, working on assignments, and going to football games or senior prom. Many of us will broaden these experiences by sending our children to schools, or making careers in the K-12 setting.  However, despite this shared experience, not many of us have taken the time to understand the legal considerations that shape schools; by dictating the length and content of the classes, the assignments required for completion, and the content allowed at school events, almost every occurrence within the school day is proscribed by law. To understand these issues and more, Education Law: an Essential Guide for Attorneys, Teachers, Administrators, Parents, and Students is a great place to start.

LOCATION:

Education Law: an Essential Guide for Attorneys, Teachers, Administrators, Parents, and Students is located in the Treatise section of the Charlotte School of Law Library on the Environmental, Healthcare, Education, and Entertainment Law Shelf. Locating the call number, KF4119.G47, from the Library catalog, using the search terms “education law,” takes you right to the treatise.

CONTENTS:

Contained in a single volume, the second edition of Education Law was published in 2007. The resource contains a Table of Contents, References Page, Endnotes Page, and Index. The Table of Contents is divided into 20 broad areas of education law (i.e. Fourth Amendment—Search and Seizure) with more specific, related issues underneath (i.e. Drug-sniffing Dogs). Each chapter also begins with this delineation to allow for more targeted reading without returning to the Table of Contents. The Endnotes section provides the citation for many important cases related to education law and sentence summaries of many of the holdings. Summaries of each case, instead of only a few, would have been more helpful. Finally, there is a general index that provides an appropriate amount of terms and cases.

HOW TO SEARCH:

To illustrate how to search this treatise, suppose you learn that your child’s high school will institute random drug testing of all students next year. You see this as an invasion of your child’s privacy and want to challenge the policy.

Armed with Education Law, you begin by checking the Table of Contents. You immediately notice that “Chapter 10: Drugs, Weapons, and Zero Tolerance Policies.” Upon scanning the sub-topics, however, you realize that the chapter deals with the repercussions of drug use, not testing for drug use. You know that your child is perfect and would never actually use drugs, so you are not concerned with the punishment. Instead, you want to focus on the privacy concerns of allowing random testing.

You then turn to the Index and search for “drug testing.” Luckily, this term appears and provides for more specificity: 1) of student athletes and 2) of students engaged in non-sports extracurricular activities. Both of these are located in “Chapter 11: Search and Seizure.” The relevant pages in Chapter 11 provide an overview of recent cases that deal with schools’ drug testing of students, with and without reasonable suspicion. Therefore, it provides a metric by which to measure, and probably challenge, the school’s proposed policy.

CONCLUSION:

Education Law provides an easy-to-follow introduction to areas of educational law with both analysis of case law and relevant statutes. To supplement this information, visit Education Law Center, ACLU’s Students! Know Your Rights, and Georgetown Law Library’s Education Law Research Guide.

CITATION: Gerstein, R. (2007). Education law: an essential guide for attorneys, teachers, administrators, parents, and students.  Lawyers and Judges Publishing Company: Tucson, Arizona.

~ C. Matthew Ferguson, Class of 2013 ~

Last Chance: Law Library Book Giveaway!

We still have materials left over from the month long book giveaway. Please come by the Law Library Circulation Desk between the hours of 9 am and 4 pm Monday through Friday to see what we still have left.

Ask for Circulation Staff (listed below) at the Circulation Desk to assist you in locating the books. You can claim any books you are interested in and set up a time to collect them with the staff.  If you would like more information please contact Brooke Rideout at brideout@charlottelaw.edu.

Circulation Staff:

 Kim Allman: kallman@charlottelaw.edu
Aaron Greene: agreene@charlottelaw.edu
Erica Tyler: etyler@charlottelaw.edu
Brooke Rideout: brideout@charlottelaw.edu

~Brooke Rideout~

ALR Student’s Corner: Workplace Discrimination, Privacy and Security in an Age of Terrorism

  Introduction:    

Treatises offer a wealth of background information on a particular topic, and should be one of a researcher’s very first authorities to consult when dealing with a new issue. The aim of this post is to walk through how to locate and use a particular treatise dealing with employment law issues, Workplace Discrimination, Privacy and Security in an Age of Terrorism (2007), as well as the contents of this treatise.

How to Locate the Treatise:

To find the resource, head to the Charlotte School of Law Library, located at the Suttle campus, and follow the signs within the library through the glass doors to the treatises section. The call number for this particular treatise is KF3319.A2C67 (using the search terms “workplace discrimination” in the CSL Library catalog gets you here).  Within the row of compact shelving labeled “KF3315-KF3736,” the treatise is located on the first section of shelves to the left, on the middle shelf.

Content:

In a nutshell, Workplace Discrimination is a single volume treatise from 2007 that examines some of the more common employment discrimination issues with more of a focus on how the laws have been altered or interpreted differently since September 11, 2001 and the subsequent War on Terror. Because of the contextual focus, the treatise is of good size to give an adequate overview of the issues.

The treatise is organized into four distinct sections – Workplace Discrimination, Workplace Privacy, Collective Bargaining, and Physical and Emotional Security – and one main Table of Contents that displays the various subtopics under each section. The treatise does suffer, however, from the lack of an index. As such, it’s really up to the user’s knowledge of the general issues in determining how easily they will be able to locate material solely through the Table of Contents. The Table of Contents does an adequate job including buzzwords for topics, like “Workplace Stress,” “Profiling,” and “Labor-Management.”  However, it should be noted that these topics are scattered about to fit within the four categories above, and are not organized into a more traditional topic list that sort of builds on topics from the ground up. As such, I think this treatise should not be used as a first look into employment discrimination issues. Instead, I think researchers would be better suited using this treatise once they’ve already built a foundation of information on the topic and subtopics through a more traditional, straightforward treatise or other secondary source.

Navigating the Treatise:

Let’s say you have a client who is a few years away from retirement, but was recently diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. As a result of the diagnosis, she also battles severe depression. The depression worsens the multiple sclerosis, and the multiple sclerosis worsens the depression. She has recently been in discussions with her employer over what she could and could not perform, and the employer has given her an ultimatum: continue doing the job she has done for many years, or have her employment terminated. What do you research the issue to best help your client?

As suggested above, I think the first step might be to consult a more traditional treatise to get an initial overview of the related issues. That way, when you’re ready to consult Workplace Discrimination, you shouldn’t have any trouble perusing the Table of Contents to find the relevant sections and chapters. Even without consulting another treatise first, however, you may be able to wing it and find your way by browsing the Table of Contents. Through an initial browsing of the content, Chapter 17 (page 501) – “Workplace Stress Claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act” – should immediately jump out. “Workplace Stress” would have been a difficult search term to come up with on my own, but the term “disability” from the chapter title grabbed my attention, as I would have likely used “mental disability” as an initial search term in an index, had the treatise included one. The good thing about this particular chapter is that it does not rely so heavily on the terrorism context, and is instead a more straightforward examination of workplace stress claims.

Conclusion:

Workplace Discrimination, Privacy and Security in an Age of Terrorism is an easy read, and deals with issues through an interesting lens. Because of the treatise’s niche-like status, it may not be the go-to secondary resource for employment discrimination.  However, I think the treatise works well as an advanced resource, undoubtedly helpful to anyone with facts even loosely involving terrorism or its impact on America’s culture and laws since September 11th.

Useful Alternatives:

While I don’t think there is great, free alternative to this treatise that provides employment discrimination information under such a lens as terrorism, there are plenty of alternatives that provide a wealth of information on employment discrimination issues in general. One such alternative, the American Civil Liberties Union, runs an employment discrimination blog, complete with up-to-date trending topics, key issues, videos, and more.

~ Zachary Oakes, Class of 2013 ~

Progress in Pictures — Charlotte Plaza Library Construction Update

Fifth Floor

Fourth Floor

Fourth Floor

Fifth Floor

Fourth Floor

Fifth Floor

ALR Student’s Corner: Family Law Litigation Guide with Forms

This blog post attempts to provide a brief overview of the treatise entitled Family Law Litigation Guide with Forms, which is published and updated by LexisNexis.  The treatise is available in print at the Charlotte School of Library in the treatise section, within the shelving for “Family Law.”  The search terms “family law litigation” in the CSL catalog gets you here with the call number KF 505.F354.  To date, the treatise consists of four volumes, inclusive of forty chapters, a Table of Cases, and an Index.   The Index is located at the back of the last volume, rather than in each volume.  Each volume is updated annually (typically in August or September of each year) with a “Publication Update” provided by LexisNexis.

Each chapter provides an in-depth discussion of the procedural and evidentiary rules for each topic (i.e. discovery, depositions, marital property, spousal support, child support, termination of parental rights, evidence, etc.) with citations to primary authority.  Additionally, each chapter contains a “Forms” section, which includes practice checklists, sample discovery, sample motions, and other family law forms.   There are multiple chapters for each topic, and each chapter has its own table of contents at the front.  For example, discovery is covered over seven chapters (Scope, Discovery Devices, Planning Devices, Interrogatories, and Production of Documents).  This makes the treatise a very comprehensive guide to each aspect of family law.  This treatise would be particularly useful to an attorney who is new to practicing family law because it provides an overview of each topic, cites to primary authority, and contains forms which are a great starting point.

As a law student, the organization of the Index makes sense; however, it would be difficult for a lay person to navigate.  The index is organized using broad topics, such as “Child Support”, “Abandonment”, “Briefs”, “Attorney Client Privilege”, and “Cross Examination”.  Some of this terminology is not familiar to lay people.  Under each topic, there are several smaller sub-issues arranged alphabetically.  If a researcher is successful at navigating the Index, or knows enough about a topic to generate specific legalese search terms, the Index can be very useful; however, I found it just as easy to browse topics by Chapter, since each chapter is so specific and contains its own table of contents.

Overall, this treatise is comprehensive and user-friendly, and the forms are a great supplemental tool. On the negative side, the treatise is expensive, particularly for a solo practitioner or small-size firm.  As such, if a lawyer does not have access to this resource through a law library, he or she may have to find a more cost effective, alternate source.

For North Carolina attorneys, the Rosen Law firm, which has offices in Raleigh, Charlotte, Chapel Hill, and Durham, provides several great resources that are available for free online.  The website provides access to resources for two categories: (1) Child Issues (which covers Child Custody and Child Support) and (2) Spousal Issues (which covers Absolute Divorce, Alimony and Support, Domestic Violence, Mediation, and Property Division).

Each topic contains several additional, useful resources, including step-by-step guides, articles, forms, videos, podcasts, relevant statutes, and other tools such as payment calculators.  The website also contains a section where any person can post questions to which a lawyer from the firm will respond.  This resource can be useful for attorneys and is more user-friendly for lay people.  In fact, I have used this source as a lay person, prior to having any knowledge of family law in North Carolina.  While the source is user-friendly, it provides a more general overview of major issues, but is not nearly as comprehensive as the LexisNexis treatise discussed above.  Additionally, practitioners may find it time consuming to have to weed through questions and other postings by lay people that are case specific, and not general practice questions.  Overall, however, it is a great free resource for general information for lawyers and lay people, or a great place to begin a research assignment for a general overview.

~Jessica E. Price, Class of 2013~

Mediation — The Present and the Future

According to many, civil litigation has changed drastically and irreversibly.  Judge Mark W. Bennett, a U.S. district judge for the Northern District of Iowa, provides a satirical reflection on the American civil trial system in the Spring 2013 issue of Litigation, which celebrated the journal’s 40^th anniversary this year.  (Obituary: the American Trial Lawyer, Born 1641-Died 20?? by Judge Mark W. Bennett, Litigation, Vol. 39, No. 2, Spring 2013, p.5.)

Judge Bennett writes:

The American trial lawyer (ATL), who, in innumerable ways, enhanced the lives of so many Americans and made the United States a fairer, healthier, safer, more egalitarian, and just nation, passed away recently.  Although a precise age is uncertain, ATL is believed to have been at least 371 years old at the time of death.

Kenneth P. Nolan, a senior editor of Litigation and partner at Speiser, Krause, Nolan & Granito in New York City, provides a similar perspective, referring to the civil trial as “a dinosaur,” an extinction that resulted in the “loss of the soul of the profession.”  (Sidebar: Mediation by Kenneth P. Nolan, Litigation, Vol. 39, No. 1, Winter 2013, p. 59.)

Bennett argues that the trial attorney has been replaced by the “American Litigator,” which he jokingly refers to as the “bastard child” of the American Trial Lawyer and Alternative Dispute Resolution [ADR].  (Bennett, supra.)  He believes ADR devices, such as mediation and arbitration, were the result of “a genetic mutation of the civil justice system.”  He explains that the civil jury trial began to vanish after the 1986 United States Supreme Court decisions in Celotex-Anderson-Matsushita,[1] along with its more recent decisions in Iqbal & Twombly.[2]  According to Bennett, a civil trial attorney’s “lifeblood was trying cases in the courtroom.”

Nolan agrees, noting that “[i]nstead of inspiring a lethargic jury, we sit in lifeless conference rooms and advocate before restrained, thoughtful mediators with nervous eyes.  We argue with all the passion of an accountant at tax time.  It’s business, everyday business, lacking the fervor of cross-examination, the thrill of closing argument.”  (Nolan, supra.)

Empirical data supports these perspectives.  In 1936, one fifth of all civil filings in federal court ended in trial, according to the Spring 2013 issue of The North Carolina State Bar Journal.  By 2002, that percentage dropped to 1.2% and, at the state level, only 0.6% of civil filings were resolved by a jury trial.  (“So How Much is My Case Worth?” by Shannon B. English, The North Carolina State Bar Journal, Vol. 18, No. 1, Spring 2013, p. 18. [3])

Author Shannon B. English, vice president of a litigation consulting firm in Winston-Salem, contends that the implementation of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and the courts’ interpretations thereof have significantly altered pretrial practice by requiring practitioners to focus on “information- gathering via the discovery process.”  (English, supra.)  Thus, she adds, “the facts of a case are typically uncovered and understood by all parties well in advance, thereby negating the need ‘to see what comes out at trial.’”  English’s analysis effectively explains the shift away from trying cases and toward settling them, described and examined by both Bennett and Nolan, supra.

For better or worse, all parties would agree: “Mediation is the present and the future.”  (Nolan, supra.)  It seems the days of regularly trying civil cases have come to an end, and, according to Nolan, it just may be time “for a proper Irish wake.”

---

[1] Known as “the trilogy,” Matsushita Elec. Indus. Co. v. Zenith Radio Corp., 475 U.S. 574 (1986), Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc., 477 U.S. 242 (1986), and Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317 (1986) are viewed as a collective mandate for federal courts to embrace the use of summary judgment to dispose of cases prior to trial.

[2] Together, Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009) and Bell Atl. Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544 (2007) heightened the pleading requirements for plaintiffs in federal court.

[3] The author references an article titled “The Disappearance of the Civil Trial in the United States,” Yale L.J. (Fall 2012), Yale Law School, Public Law Working Paper No. 256.

~Shannon Reid~

ALR Student’s Corner: North Carolina Contract Law

You Will Be a Transactional Lawyer – Whether You Wanted to Be One or Not

When I decided to attend law school, I had visions of myself standing in front of a jury box waxing eloquent about the merits of my client’s claim or defense. I would NOT be one of “those” transactional lawyers who spent their time agonizing over just the right word to place in some boring clause, within an even more boring contract. Surprise! I realize now that almost every lawyer will be a transactional lawyer, and will be one on a fairly regular basis. The reason for this is that nearly all agreements, reached by the attorneys for parties involved in a legal action, must eventually be reduced to writing. In order to achieve the best result for your client, you will want to be the attorney to volunteer to draft the agreement. You will agonize over the right word, because there is an art to drafting a contract.

Last semester, I reluctantly began a contracts drafting class with Professor Hefferan in order to fulfill my advanced writing component. Though I began the class with something less than enthusiasm, I am now convinced that this has been the most valuable class I have taken in law school. Not everyone has had the opportunity in law school to take an in depth course in contract drafting. Because of this fact, the treatise North Carolina Contract Law (2nd ed. 2001) and its cumulative supplement (2012) can be a valuable resource for attorneys required to draft a contract or agreement on behalf of client.  They can be found in the CSL Library by using the call number KFN7550.H88, or by searching with the keywords “North Carolina Contract” in the Library’s catalog.

What the Treatise Has to Offer

Lawyers practice within distinct jurisdictions, and the quirks of the jurisdiction as they apply to an area of law are important, even vital to practitioners. This treatise focuses its attention on North Carolina’s requirements for contracts as they are informed by state statutes, the North Carolina Supreme Court, and the North Carolina Court of Appeals. The first part of the book addresses the basic elements of contract formation and contract enforcement. The second part addresses contracts for the sale of goods under the Uniform Commercial Code, which North Carolina has adopted. This treatise is easy to search and use as it is divided by section numbers comprised of the chapter number followed by a topic number (i.e. Chapter 3, topic 44 is designated as §3-44 and is an introduction to the topic of contracts signed under seal).

The Importance of Jurisdiction Specific Research; Contract Under Seal

Part one of this volume is filled with references to North Carolina case law that will help expand an attorney’s understanding of some of the unique features of the state’s approach to contract law. For example, North Carolina is a jurisdiction that has unique statutory and case law surrounding contracts that are signed under seal.

I decided to create a brief research exercise within the volume related to the signing of a contract under seal. Both the table of contents and index contain information to help a lawyer or other legal professional easily navigate this topic within the treatise. You can find the topic of seals quickly within the table of contents; other terms useful to search, such as “seal,” “statute of limitations” and “consideration,” are contained in the index. What constitutes a seal and the implications of its use, or lack of use, are fully covered. Quite important to both plaintiffs and defendants in North Carolina would be the knowledge that generally a contract signed under seal has a statute of limitations that is ten years, rather than the normal three-year statute of limitations applied to contracts.

Conclusion

This treatise is an invaluable tool for those in the legal profession who draft, or seek to enforce or interpret contracts within the jurisdiction of North Carolina. I believe it is so useful that it is a text many legal professionals should consider purchasing for their own library. It is available from LexisNexis for $217.00. With the treatise in hand, North Carolina case law noted within it can be retrieved for free through the North Carolina Courts website. Statutes referenced in the text can be found on the internet for free as well through the North Carolina General Assembly website. Additionally, the internet provides many websites where sample contracts can be viewed, one example is www.onecle.com. While it is almost always helpful to have a template to follow, templates do not explain the law or the consequences of failing to understand contracts law in a particular jurisdiction.

~ Kathleen Vogel, Class of 2013 ~

ALR Student’s Corner: The Environmental Law Practice Guide — An Explosion of Environmental Exposition

Prior to exploring the Environmental Law Practice Guide, I often wondered—why would I use a treatise to research a legal topic when I can use online research tools such as Westlaw or LexisNexis? What possible benefits could there be in physically picking up a print version of something I can find online? So, I picked up Volume 1 of the treatise and flipped through it and had an instantaneous moment of clarity – this treatise had it all, and I simply could not believe it.

Treatises generally provide a neutral, yet broad scope on a specific legal topic, while simultaneously providing historical analysis, statutory authority, and some narrow topical depth. Some treatises also feature forms or useful practice tools. I expected this when I chose the Environmental Law Practice Guide. I also expected general information about each type of environmental law. Instead, I found oceans of information that would ordinarily take weeks or months to compile without the help of this multi-volume series.

Why on earth was I so excited over this treatise? Perhaps because I spent seven years of my former professional life as an environmental consultant for industrial manufacturing companies working on so many different environmental and legal issues that took teams of people to keep all of them straight. Each client had his own specific set of environmental issues: permit requirements; reporting requirements; waste disposal, health and safety issues; treatment, storage and disposal concerns; and on-and-on. In these eleven volumes, I found, not only the holy grail of information, the relevant and current law for each type of environmental issue, but also forms, definitions, acronyms, history, and requirements. A wave of jealousy hit me as I realized how “past me” would have completely benefited from this resource as a consultant, and how much time “future me” as an attorney would save (insert maniacal laugh).

To locate this resource, go to the “Treatise” section of the law library and find call number KF3375.Z95E58. This is an eleven-volume practice guide, which spans four Units covering both state and federal environmental law. The Units are: 1) Procedures, 2) Environmental Quality, 3) Regulated Substances and Waste Management, and 4) States. The Units are then broken down into forty-one Chapters, such as Hazardous Waste, Endangered Species, or Environmental Impact Statements. The Chapters are further broken down into Parts: Part A Legal Background; Part B Procedural Guide; Part C Forms; Part D Reference Guide. Each environmental topic or Chapter is laid out in the exact same manner, even though the contents of each Chapter are very different to one another. The entire organizational format is reflected in the General Table of Contents. The pocket part, or the “Publication Update,” which is updated several times per year, is located at the very front of the first volume and reflects the most current updates.

Additionally, there is a “How to Use This Publication” which is particularly helpful, because the resource has grown in size considerably as the area of law has grown to impact so many different types of transactions. The treatise also includes an Internet Directory after each topical chapter for free and useful internet sources narrowly tailored to the Chapter. Overall, this organization is ideal for each environmental topic because one client may have more than one issue and the legal background, procedural guide, forms, and references are all in the same location for easy and quick access.

In the last volume, I found something incredibly useful—an acronym table that lists and defines over 1,400 of the pesky environmental acronyms that seem to plague this field of law. The only critique I have about this treatise is the lack of visual rhetoric, photos, color, or graphics. But honestly, environmental attorneys, consultants, or “science-types” do not need the fluff and prefer to get to the statistics, science, answers, and the law, which this resource provides in abundance.

To put this treatise to the test, I conducted a brief research experience on a specific environmental topic: the definition of hazardous waste. This may seem like an easy topic to search, but under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the definition of hazardous waste can be different depending on how the materials are used, re-used, recycled, or reclaimed. Locating this topic under Chapter 26, Hazardous Waste, was very simple. I used the search terms, “hazardous waste,” “RCRA,” and “solid waste,” which all lead directly to Chapter 26. The legal background defines the statutory authority and many cases that describe the various interpretations.

Overall, this treatise covers the entire field of environmental law and can be an invaluable tool for attorneys, regulators, corporate and facility managers, and environmental consultants—all who deal with these real environmental problems. Environmental Law Practice Guide may not be able to answer every environmental issue, but this treatise will certainly lead the researcher in the right direction, and not on a fishing expedition.

~ Kelly Johnson, Class of 2013 ~

Book Giveaway!

The Charlotte School of Law Library is launching a Book Giveaway! These are treatises, reporters, and state statutory items that will not move with us when we relocate the Law Library uptown. These materials will be available for free on a first come first served basis. We are going to offer these items in phases with the students and alumni having the first opportunity to make reservations.  In our second phase, we will give the faculty, staff, and Law Library attorney members the option to reserve materials.  Finally, any remaining materials will be offered to local libraries and other institutions.

The dates of these phases are:

•  April 15 to April 26: Open to Alumni and Students

• April  29 to May 10: Open to faculty, staff, and attorney members

• May 13 to May 31:  Open to local libraries or other institutions and individuals

You will need to provide the means to pack and transport the materials you wish to have. The Law Library will provide book trucks to move the books to your vehicle. We expect many of these items to go quickly.

Go to this website to view a list of the items and to access the form needed to reserve these items: https://sites.google.com/site/bookgiveawaycsl/

~Brooke Rideout~

Summer Access to Westlaw

Wondering if you can use Westlaw this summer?

Password extension for acceptable uses is available at www.lawschool.westlaw.com.

Find the button above on the Westlaw landing page (see bottom right of page) and click GO.  Follow the instructions on the Password Extension page.  If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Mary Susan Lucas, Reference Librarian, at mlucas@charlottelaw.edu.

Happy researching!

Questions about LexisNexis summer access?

Check out our earlier blog here.

~Mary Susan Lucas~