Author: library

Have You Tried Loislaw Yet?

Loislaw is a comprehensive, user-friendly, low-cost electronic legal research service.  It offers access to a wide range of primary and secondary materials for federal as well as all fifty state jurisdictions.  Secondary sources and bar association materials are somewhat limited in the law school edition.  Loislaw also offers an electronic clip service, a citator (GlobalCite), and a variety of productivity features and services. 

Once students register for Loislaw, they have access throughout their law school program.  Service continues through summers and there is no restriction on use.  Best of all, it’s available free to law students for 6 months following graduation.  If you’d like help with Loislaw, stop by the Reference Desk or contact The Loislaw Support Group at 1-800-364-2512.

To sign up for Loislaw and get New York Law School’s code for registration, go to this URL: http://intranet.nyls.edu/pages/3018.asp

 

Memorable Tax Cheats

Tax time calls to mind one of the most infamous tax-scofflaws – Al “Scarface” Capone.  A notorious Prohibition-era gangster, Capone managed to elude justice for scores of violent crimes, including Chicago’s infamous 1929 Valentine’s Day Massacre. In 1931, however, a federal grand jury indicted him for tax evasion.

Witnesses at trial testified that Capone had never filed an income tax return but regularly made large expenditures indicating an ample income. For example, a boathouse had been constructed at his Florida home, his weekly butcher’s bill averaged $200-$250, and shortly before Christmas in 1928, he purchased thirty gold and diamond belt buckles at $275 apiece.

On October 17, 1931, after deliberating for eight hours, the jury convicted Capone on twenty-three counts. He was sentenced to eleven years imprisonment and fined $50,000. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the conviction (56 F.2d 927).

Capone served seven and one-half years (five of them at Alcatraz) before his release in November 1939. With deteriorating physical and mental health (attributed to syphilis) Capone never returned to Chicago but spent his final years quietly at his Florida home, where he died in early 1947.

You can read more about Al Capone at:

4 American National Biography 358 [E 176.A446 (Reference)]; Francis X. Busch, Enemies of the State: An Account of the Trials of the Mary Eugenia Surratt Case, the Teapot Dome Cases, the Alphonse Capone Case, the Rosenberg Case, William S. Hein & Co. 2007 (available on Hein Online); Federal Bureau of Investigation, Al (Alphonse) Capone.

Categories: Law

Developing a Research Strategy

While legal research isn’t rocket science, it can be quite challenging, especially when you are just getting started with a project.  Why not try our Developing a Research Strategy template?  It’s designed to help guide you through important stages of the research process, serving as both a  roadmap and a checklist.  Copies are always available at the Reference Desk, but you can also find them on our web site.  Navigate to Research Tools and Sources and then to Legal Research Tip Sheets.

Major Online Catalog Enhancement: Pathfinder Pro

The Mendik Library is pleased to announce a major enhancement to its online catalog. The Pathfinder Pro feature allows  users  to search the catalog to discover which resources are owned on a particular topic, and then click on a “Find Other Resources” button that opens up a screen that lists major subscription databases such as Hein Online, Index to Legal Periodicals, LegalTrac and 17 other databases and catalogs. Choosing any one of these will cause the program to run your catalog search in that database.

In addition, the Pathfinder button also allows you to make the same search in the catalogs of Brooklyn Law, NYU Law, Cardozo Law, Fordham Law and Columbia Law libraries.  It also covers more general sources such as JSTOR (an archive of journals going back to the 19th century), Google Scholar and WorldCat (a  catalog covering the holdings of most American libraries).  In most of the legal databases, the search made in the catalog will return thousands of hits. However, each data source allows you to refine a search and narrow the results down to a specific set.

Updated Bar Exam Resources guide

In connection with the school’s annual Bar Kickoff program, the Library has updated its bar exam resources guide. It includes links to sites and resources such as the National Conference of Bar Examiners, the board of bar examiners for the states of New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and Massachusetts, bar preparation courses, past practice exams, reports about the bar exam and the video of the Bar Kickoff.

Tax Season—Tax Forms—Tax Resources

It’s that time of year again!! Are you looking for tax forms?  You can find federal forms at the IRS site at www.irs.gov.  If you are looking for New York forms, go to  www.tax.state.ny.us/forms/default.htm.  There is also a handy site for all state tax forms at www.50states.com/tax

Are you taking any tax classes this semester?  Do you ever need to quickly find a tax “reg” or private letter ruling, or even a section of the Internal Revenue Code which is not in your class supplement?  If so, take a look at the new edition of Tax Research Resources on the Library’s site. This website is a guide to both print and electronic resources available from the NYLS Library.

You may access most of the electronic resources from offsite, and the guide explains exactly what to do to use them.  If you need help beyond this guide, send a note to the reference desk at reference@nyls.edu, call us at (212) 431-2332, IM us at nylslib or stop by and see us in person in the library on the 4th floor at 40 Worth St.

Freedom of Information Day

Monday March 16 (James Madison’s birthday) marks the celebration of Freedom of Information Day in the United States.  The day was designated in a 1986 Congressional resolution signed by President Ronald Reagan.  Freedom of Information Day is now part of the related celebration of “Sunshine Week.”  According to sunshineweek.org:

Sunshine Week is a national initiative to open a dialogue about the importance of open government and freedom of information. Participants include print, broadcast and online news media, civic groups, libraries, non-profits, schools and others interested in the public’s right to know. Sunshine Week is led by the American Society of Newspaper Editors and is funded primarily by a challenge grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation of Miami. Though spearheaded by journalists, Sunshine Week is about the public’s right to know what its government is doing, and why. Sunshine Week seeks to enlighten and empower people to play an active role in their government at all levels, and to give them access to information that makes their lives better and their communities stronger.

Additional information about Sunshine Week and  Freedom of Information Day is available from the First Amendment Center.