Four important Library resources to keep in mind as you prepare for upcoming exams.

First: The Library’s Exam Preparation Resources web page offers a host of materials containing practical advice and strategies designed to help you navigate the exam process.

Second: One of the best ways to prepare for a professor’s exam is to see what they have done in the past!  It’s a great way to understand how your professor thinks.

The Library maintains an archive of previous years’ exams for most courses. They are found in the Exam Archive (Choose “Exams, Grades, and Registration” under the Student Resources tab) on the NYLS Portal. You can access these exams by course or professor name.

Third:  Want to find a study aid?  Check out our collection on Lexis Digital.  You can search by subject, title or author to find what you’re looking for.  You can also search our catalog to see what we have in print.

Fourth:  CALI offers a variety of lessons and podcasts with helpful tips and advice from faculty on preparing for and taking exams. To access these materials, log in to CALI; under CALI Topics, click Legal Concepts and Skills and scroll down to one or more of these lessons:

Exam Taking Skills, Outlines, and Advice for Law Students (Panel 1 PodCast)

Exam Taking Skills, Outlines, and Advice for Law Students (Panel 2 PodCast)

Exam Taking Skills, Outlines, and Advice for Law Students (Panel 3 PodCast)

Tips for Multiple Choice Exams in Law School (Podcast)

Top 10 Tips for Successfully Writing a Law School Essay (Podcast)

Below are the revised schedules for the Mendik Library’s hours of operation from Wednesday, November 24, 2021 through the end of exams, Wednesday, December 22, 2021.

As you’re finishing your Legal Practice memos, remember that citation is a very important step in legal writing.  Your reader – the professor, the judge, opposing counsel – needs to know what authority you are citing to support your argument, along with the date of the source and where they can find it.  The reference librarians are happy to help you navigate the Bluebook or answer questions about legal citation. Make an appointment with a librarian or stop by the Reference Desk. We’re also happy to arrange a Teams or Zoom session. Email us at reference@nyls.edu.

Here are a few important steps to remember:

• Determine the legal authority you’re citing to: case, statute, etc.
• Use the Bluebook’s inside covers, index or table of contents to identify the relevant rule.
• Make sure you have all of the information about the source you will need.
• Review the rule and the examples, cross check the Bluebook tables: Table T1 for preferred citation sources and Table T6 for the proper abbreviations.
• Make sure your source is updated and still good law.

Particularly during this time of COVID, New York tenants are concerned about ramifications of non-payment of rent and possible eviction from their homes. The 2020-2021 edition of this treatise by NYLS Professor Andrew Scherer, with contributions from a few New York City Housing Court judges, includes chapters about the Tenant Safe Harbor Act, which permanently bars landlords from obtaining possessory judgments for a tenant’s failure to pay rent during this time of emergency. It also includes chapters about public housing, rent control and housing courts. You can find this treatise in the Library Catalog with a Westlaw link to the current edition.

Interested in social justice? Check out HeinOnline’s Social Justice Suite and the recently added database, the Open Society Justice Initiative.

The Open Society Justice Initiative, part of the Open Society Foundation, publishes “reports, handbooks, briefing papers, legal and policy submissions, and fact sheets exploring and advocating on issues of human rights and justice.” It also “represents individuals before domestic and international human rights tribunals” and works to expand access to justice in the United States and throughout the world.

The new database provides access to works published by the Justice Initiative. It is fully searchable and includes the option to search by publication type. The database contains items new to HeinOnline and is expected to be updated annually.

We hope you had a wonderfully scary Halloween with lots of treats!  We want to give a big thanks to everyone who entered our 2021 Halloween Info Hunt!  While we promised to select 10 prize winners, because we had such great participation, we instead have randomly selected 15 lucky prize winners, each of whom will receive a prize from our selection of study aids, law dictionaries, NYLS commuter mugs, Westlaw blankets, Lexis points, and more.

The fifteen lucky students are:

• Angelina DeModna
• Rana Dola
• Jordynn Figueroa
• Julianna Iacona
• Connor Lawrence
• Shakayla Lee
• Rishai McDermott
• Marie Meltzer
• Simi Parikh
• Natallia Popchanka
• Shama Puranik
• Sophie Richard-Bail
• Shukra Sabnis
• Gurpartap Singh
• Richard Windisch

A separate email will be sent from Darlene Young to the prize winners with instructions for claiming their prize.

If you didn’t win this time, fear not, as next semester you will have an opportunity to enter our 2022 Valentine’s Day “Find Love in the Library” Info Hunt for a chance to win more great prizes.

For those students who have not yet claimed their prize from the Legally Clueless Info Hunt, please come by as soon as possible to do so.

Congratulations to all the winners!

–Mendik Library Staff

We have received recent requests from students for help in finding information about critical race theory (CRT).

Two books that will provide helpful background:
Critical Race Theory : a Primer by Khiara M. Bridges.
Book Stacks Call number: KF 4755 .B75 2019.

Critical Race Theory : an Introduction by Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic.
Book Stacks Call number: KF4755.D454 2017.

In addition, many law journals are devoted to covering this area of law.  To find the direct link to each journal use the Mendik Library’s list of E-journals A to Z.

• Alabama Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Law Review
• American Indian Law Review
• Berkeley Journal of African-American Law and Policy
• Berkeley La Raza Law Journal
• Chicana/o Latina/o Law Review
• Columbia Journal of Race And Law
• Georgetown Journal of Law & Modern Critical Race Perspectives
• Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review
• Harvard Journal on Racial and Ethnic Justice
• Harvard Latinx Law Review
• Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal
• Indigenous Peoples’ Journal of Law, Culture, and Resistance
• Journal of Gender, Race, and Justice
• Michigan Journal of Race & Law
• Rutgers Race and the Law Review
• The Scholar: St. Mary’s Law Review on Minority Issues
• Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice
• Texas Hispanic Journal of Law & Policy
• University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender, and Class
• University of Miami Race and Social Justice Law Review
• Washington and Lee Journal of Civil Rights and Social Justice

If you are interested in going beyond Google to follow the state legislative actions regarding the teaching of CRT and any related content in K-12 classrooms, you may want to use the wealth of policy and research resources provided by the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). In addition to links to all state legislative sites and bill tracking, a number of topical areas are tracked regularly.

And of course, never hesitate to Ask a Librarian for help finding exactly what you need.

Happy soon-to-be-Halloween from the Mendik Library!

Don’t forget to enter our Halloween Info Hunt for your chance to WIN great prizes such as study aids, law dictionaries, NYLS commuter mugs, Westlaw blankets, Lexis points, and more!  Just answer the six Halloween Info Hunt questions.  Your answers don’t need to be perfect—just close!

The deadline to enter is 9PM on Monday, November 1 so don’t delay!  Click here to access the questions.  Each slide includes just one question, along with step-by-step instructions that will get you to the answer.

And don’t forget to stop by the Reference Desk (beginning Thursday, October 28) for Halloween candy (no costume required).

Happy soon-to-be-Halloween from the Mendik Library!

As an early Halloween treat, here’s your opportunity to WIN great prizes such as study aids, law dictionaries, NYLS commuter mugs, Westlaw blankets, Lexis points, and more!  Just answer the six Halloween Info Hunt questions.  Your answers don’t need to be perfect—just close!

Click here to access the questions.  Each slide includes just one question, along with step-by-step instructions that will get you to the answer.

And don’t forget to stop by the Reference Desk (beginning Thursday, October 28) for Halloween candy (no costume required).

Jack ‘O Lantern In Cemetery In Spooky Night With Full Moon

This past August, the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its sixth report addressing the issue of climate change. The Sixth Assessment Report, titled “The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change,” issued a dire warning about human-induced greenhouse gases and the imperative to reduce emissions by 100% by 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change.  An executive summary details the findings and those who are inclined are welcome to peruse the almost 4,000 (!) page report.