VALL Fall Meeting at Lewis Ginter

by Patricia Petroccione

If you weren’t at the VALL 2016 Fall Meeting on October 14, you missed a very engaging event. Lara Dresser and the program committee, Alison Hancock and Chris Vassey, put much thought and effort into planning the entire day, which began with a light breakfast and ended with an invitation to stroll the grounds of the Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens. The meeting was held in a room with a lovely view of the gardens. We were honored to have Donna Nixon, Electronic Resources Librarian at UNC Law Library, as our AALL Executive Board visitor.

AALL Executive Board visitor, Donna Dixon (photo courtesy of Ben Almoite)

The program included the timely topic Cybersecurity Trends, quite appropriate since October was National Cyber Security Awareness month. The speaker, Joseph Racynski, technology manager at Thomson Reuters provided a sobering overview of the types and effects of data breaches. Fortunately, he offered several recommendations to enhance security, such as update patches and perform internal security audits. The second program on Competitive Intelligence was very enlightening. Michelle Gernhardt, Hunton & Williams, and Arlene Fletcher, Crowell & Moring, highlighted how analytic and research skills may be combined to gather and interpret information to enhance an organization’s strategic decisions. It is a developing field in which librarians should prepare to participate. The final presentation was a workshop led by John Worth of Virginia Commonwealth University. He provided excellent strategies and examples for managing and advancing one’s career. At the conclusion of the meeting, there was an opportunity to explore the gardens, or wander through the extensive and tempting gift shop.

 

Attendees enjoying breakfast before the program (photo courtesy of Patty Petroccione)

 

The time and dedication of our wonderful presenters is greatly appreciated, thank you all. We also value the support of our sponsors, Thomson Reuters, Wolters Kluwer, Bloomberg Law, Priory Solutions, LexisNexis and SirsiDynix; thank you as well.

VALL President Patricia Petroccione opening the meeting (photo courtesy of Ben Almoite)

Finally, thank you Lara, Alison and Chris for an inspiring and interesting day of information, delicious food and the great outdoors.

See you all at the Spring meeting on April 21, 2016.

Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship (CADF) Project on Co-curriculum development and alternative research method in Nigeria

by Anthony Brown Ikwueme

As one of the recipients of the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship (CADF) Award for 2016, I was in Nigeria from May to July of 2016 at the University Of Nigeria Faculty Of Law, Enugu Campus, where I worked with the law faculty to jointly develop a new curriculum and teaching methodology with substantial practical contents. Ultimately, the goal of the project was to help the law program at the host institution train law students who would be practice-ready upon graduation.

 

Nigeria is a common law country with over 170 million population, making it the most populous and arguably the biggest economy in Africa. The regulation of the program of legal education in Nigeria is shared between the Council of Legal Education (hereafter “the Council”) and the Nigerian Universities Commission (NUC). The Council is charged with the regulation of the contents of legal education in Nigeria, while the NUC has the statutory function of approving law programs at the universities and maintaining quality of legal education in Nigeria.  The law program comprises a 5-year undergraduate or 4-year direct entry program at any Nigerian accredited law faculty. Upon graduation, a law student then proceeds to the Nigerian Law School for another year of vocational legal training prior to admission to the Bar. 

Law Students Week

The project involved a review of the host institution’s curriculum, establishing legal clinics, partnering with law firms and courts to provide students with practical experience, and finally developing an alternative research method to supplement the poorly existing electronic sources for doing legislative history research.   

  

First, I established stakeholders’ buy-in of the project without which full implementation of the proposals would be impossible. I successfully reviewed their curriculum and made suggestions on areas needing change in order to effectively integrate bibliographic instruction with practice-based courses. Also, the host institution had an extinct Law Clinic program. Rather than introduce a new one, I offered practical steps on how to revamp the program in the face of lack of funds that characterize public education in Nigeria. I adapted an alternative means of doing legislative history research in the absence of any developed method, which combines resources at the office of the Clerk of the State Assembly and daily newspapers that are in circulation within the host institution state. 

Finally, I offered suggestions on how to help students improve their writing skills by incorporating legislative research into Legal Methods course as part of the proposed Skills program for the host institution. Besides these successes, I wish I had the opportunity to see my proposal on how to revamp the Law Clinic, as well as the attachment to courts and private law firms, fully implemented before the end of my trip. I hope to go back sometime in 2017 after the host institution would have started implementing the proposals. This project would not have been possible but for my sponsors - the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Institute for International Education (IIE).

VLA Council Meeting Highlights, Sept. 9, 2016.

submitted by Terry Long, VALL liaison to VLA

·         Jobline has exceeded expectations, even though posting charge has increased; it has brought in $16,000 so far this year.

·         Membership is strong – 986 members

·         The 2017 annual conference will be held in downtown Norfolk.

·         The 2016 conference at the Homestead has sold out rooms; any late comers will be given a list of nearby hotels in which to make arrangements. There are 400 registrants for the conference.

·         The Ad hoc Website Content Committee was voted to full committee status.

o   The committee is working to add more content to the website and functionality.

·         Legislative Committee reported that they are unsure the current $500,000 increase in state-aid will stay in the budget in light of the shortfall in state revenues.

·         The Professional Associates Forum is soliciting programs for its conference in May to be held at the Newport News Marriott City Center on May 22, 2017 http://www.vla.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=522:call-for-session-proposals--2017-vla-professional-associates-conference----what-s-in-a-name--&catid=21:latest-news

·         The License Plate ad hoc committee needs 450 applications before the end of the year in order to get approval for a license tag promoting libraries to be issued; to date only 17 applications are on file.  The cost for the plate is $10 in addition to the annual tag fee.

Please sign up for one  –  I did.   http://www.vla.org/vla-library-license-plates

AALL 2016: Evolving with Efficiency

By Alison Hancock

 

Even though I have only been employed as a law librarian for two years, the theme of the AALL 2016 Annual Meeting, “Making It New Creating the Future,” strongly resonates with me.  The legal market, technology, and access to information are all rapidly and constantly changing.  It is a challenge, to say the least, to find a way to evolve with these changes without breaking our backs or the bank.  The programs that I attended and conversations that I had with other librarians at the AALL 2016 Annual Meeting gave me some great ideas about how to make quick and efficient changes that will be valuable to the users of my library.

The keynote speaker, Will Evans, discussed the using Lean Startup principles when designing new programs or services for our users.  Lean Startup emphasizes the importance involving users in the process of creating programs and tools that we design for them.  The Chicago Pubic Library presented later in the conference on how they have applied Lean Startup principles to their programming.  They explained that while at first the idea of getting users involved in the process of creating new programs may seem like it is slowing the process down, it actually speeds things up because programs that are not effective are cut before they are fully developed.  I am excited to apply some of these Learn Startup principles to projects that I am working on in my library.

Additional sessions gave me ideas about tools that my library could utilize or create.  I especially enjoyed the Cool Tools Café because its informal setup allowed for more interaction between the attendees.  I was able to learn not just about the tools that the presenters were using but also about the comparable tools or different applications that my fellow attendees are using in their libraries. I also attended a session about quickly creating video tutorials and a session about creating dashboards which gave some great ideas about how I can facilitate access to training and to personalized content in my organization.

Overall, I was very impressed with the creativity and helpfulness of the librarians who presented and who I interacted with at AALL.  I left the conference excited and hopeful about the future of our profession.  I am extremely thankful to VALL and to my employer for making it possible for me to attend the AALL 2016 Annual Meeting in Chicago.

 

AALL 2016: New ideas for legal research instruction

by Jason Zarin

As a recent transplant to Virginia and new member of VALL, I was very fortunate to receive a grant this year to attend the AALL annual meeting in Chicago. The reference librarians at the University of Richmond Law School are reevaluating the way legal research has been taught over the last few years and are investigating ways to improve the course taught to first-year law students. Accordingly, this year’s theme “Make It New: Create the Future” was particularly apropos.

I had the opportunity to attend two presentations that were exceedingly useful on the topic of improving legal research education: “Leave treasure hunts to pirates: creating experiential research courses” and “How Are We Doing?: Using Outcomes Assessment to Improve Legal Research Instruction.” 

“Pirates” focused on the ABA standards requiring students to take six credits of “experiential learning” and how to incorporate these requirements into legal research instruction. The presenters recommended making students’ final legal research project be the research for a legal memo presented as a research log. The attached picture is their suggested grading rubric for the log, which required the students to identify and use relevant secondary sources and find the leading state cases, statutes, and journal articles.

How do we know if our students are actually learning was the theme of “Legal research course assessment.” A few years ago, the University of Florida changed its legal writing course to make first-year legal research a separate stand-alone class taught and run by the law librarians. In order to determine success and shape the course for future years, UF makes regular assessments: (1) Are we teaching the right things? (2) Are students learning and retaining the information? (3) Can students apply what they’ve learned? UF sends a short survey to returning second-year students on whether they felt adequately prepared and confident for the research work they did during the summer. They also survey employers as to their own evaluation of these summer associates’ research skills.

I also had the opportunity to present at the Cool Tools Cafe on using Clio (a law firm practice management tool) to manage research assistants, assign them tasks, and track their time. I also attended the advocacy workshop and worked as a mentor to a first-time conference attendee.

Overall, the 2016 annual meeting was one of the more valuable AALL conferences I have attended in terms of interesting and useful programming. I returned from the conference abuzz with new ideas and directions for our legal research instruction. I am very grateful for the financial support VALL was able to provide me to attend the meeting.