CALI Spotlight

During the CALI Annual Member Meeting, held June 9, in New York City, attendees unanimously elected one new member and re-elected four others to its Board of Directors. “We are very fortunate to have these outstanding individuals on our Board to contribute valuable insight to the research and development, strategic planning and governance of CALI”, John Mayer, Executive Director.

The new CALI’s board member:

Professor Debra R. Cohen

University of the District of Columbia School of Law

Current term: 2016-2019

Bio

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Re-Elected to 3-year term:

Professor Jennifer S. Martin,

Saint Thomas University School of Law, Miami

Current term: 2016-2019

PRESIDENT (until 2018)

Bio

Professor Sally H. Wise

University of Miami School of Law

Current term: 2016-2019

TREASURER (until 2017)

Bio

Professor Stephen M. Johnson

Mercer University Law School

Current term: 2016-2019

Bio

Professor Patrick Wiseman

Georgia State University College of Law

Current term: 2016-2019

Bio

In New York City there are several must-see sites to visit. One of them is the CALI exhibit booth during the 2016 AALS Annual Meeting, scheduled from January 6th -10^th, at the Hilton New York Midtown. Stop by to say “hi” to the staff and ask us “what’s new!” We will be happy to speak with you about how since Thanksgiving over 17,000 law students ran over 135,000 CALI Lessons™, our electronic casebook initiative, eLangdell®, if you’re interested in adopting open casebooks that are freely available to your students, and introducing our own document assembly tool which will make A2J Author® a complete “end-to-end” product for online forms projects.

Please contact Scott Lee at scott@cali.org to schedule a private demonstration time with our staff.

CALI Staff cartoon

I want to welcome Scott Lee to the CALI Staff.  Scott started last week as our Community Marketing Specialist.  Scott has a ton of experience with various tech companies but is new to the legal education/legal tech space.  He will be CALI’s main contact to the CALI Representatives at each law school and will coordinate our activities at AALS, AALL and CALICon.   

Marketing for CALI an unusual challenge.  Almost all law schools are already CALI members, so we are not selling a product so much as encouraging law students to use our resources and law faculty to adopt or recommend us to their students.   We don’t measure success by income, but by our member’s success in providing legal education via computer-mediated means – CALI lessons, ebooks, legal process automation, instapoll, formative assessment and many other projects.  

You will be hearing much more about these initiatives in the coming months.

Scott’s contact info…

Scott Lee
Community Marketing Specialist/CALI
scott@cali.org
312-906-5316
@slee_CTSMCMECMP – twitter

The word or phrase “law library” used to mean “the place to get the law”. Before online databases, there wasn’t any other place to get the law – it was too big to put in your pocket or sit in your office. Even law firms with a few shelves of books called it their “law library”.

“Law librarians” were the people who knew where to find the law and how it interrelated. Law is certainly not self-organizing, nor is it immediately obvious what the best path is to finding the law and its meaning. You need help, guidance and tutoring, That was the law librarian.

How has this changed?

The “place to get the law” is not a room, building or book. It’s a screen that connects to the Internet. Sure, there are still books, sources and materials that are not online, but not for much longer and not nearly as ubiquitous – that’s the not the direction the world is headed. We still need help, guidance and tutoring in finding the law, but increasingly, that is seen as a UX/UI problem. With the right user interface, I can find things myself and interact more rapidly – and anytime I want. I cannot do that with a live law librarian. Plenty of analogies to make here – travel agents, buying a car, doing your taxes. With some pretty good websites and some Google-fu I am off, believing that I can do this myself. I don’t need and may not want a travel agent, salesman or accountant to help me. This is not entirely true for everyone and not entirely ubiquitous everywhere, but it’s where the world is heading.  It’s also not the best or perfect way to do things, but perfect is the enemy of good enough.

Are law librarians obsolete?

If the definition is as described above, then yes. More people are doing things that support what the purpose of law libraries do and not calling themselves librarians at all. The “library” meme is associated with books, rooms, buildings and places and the new meme is “legal information”. It’s a little painful and nostalgic, but that’s change for you – almost always uncomfortable.

I work in helping law faculty create materials that help law students understand the law. The results of my efforts overlap with what law librarians do. I make the law available (freelawreporter.org), I tutor (cali.org), publish law texts (elangdell.cali.org) and I help people get a legal work product (a2jauthor.org) – all things that law libraries and law librarians do. I am not a law librarian. I am an information professional, educator, interface designer, programmer, product developer and systems architect – but none of those things full time. I am a member of AALL.

Changing the name of our association from the American Association of Law Libraries to the Association for Legal Information is a meme change. In some ways, it feels “too soon” since the body of law librarianship is not dead and still quite kicking, but it is meme of the past when it was the only way that we found the law. Changing the name feels right, though it feels like a betrayal. I get that.  The term “Legal Information” seems to contains little space for friendships, shared causes, etc., but I guess those things are what I brought to AALL and perceived from my relationships found via AALL – they were not inherent in the association name.

I can bring those things to the new association. If I want to continue to work in this space – and I certainly do – it’s my responsibility to raise this child and make sure it appreciates its elders.  Institutional memory is a good thing, but so is progress.  Can we have both?  I think so.

This is a kind of rebirth, reboot or re-imagining and it’s actually useful to discard … no, wrong word … it’s useful to archive the old meme, but keep its spirit alive with the new one. That is what I will do when I vote YES on changing the name to the Association For Legal Information.

Deadline: Friday, October 16, 2015 (6pm CST). Email John Mayer (jmayer@cali.org) to submit nominations.

Click here for the current CALI Board of Directors.

The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) is seeking nominations of qualified and enthusiastic individuals to fill vacant positions on its Board of Directors. If you know of someone who would like to contribute to the research and development, strategic planning and governance of CALI, then consider nominating them for the CALI Board of Directors.

Please clear it with the person first to make sure they WANT to be nominated. Self-nominations are acceptable.  It helps our process if the nominee provides some background on their interest in CALI’s mission and activities.

REQUIRED INFORMATION

• Name of the nominee
• Phone number of the nominee
• Email address of the nominee
• Institutional affiliation of the nominee
• CV and/or link to home page/bio for the nominee.

Directors are required to attend TWO meetings a year (June during the CALI Conference and January during AALS). Directors serve on committees at the behest of the President of the Board and work on other projects and issues relating to the governance, strategy-setting and promotion of CALI’s mission and activities.

Directors terms are for three years at which time their service is evaluated by the Nominating Committee along with other nominees. Service on the CALI Board is voluntary and gratis. Travel expenses for the Board meetings can be covered by CALI if institutional support is unavailable.

The list of all nominees will be submitted to the Nomination Committee who will determine a slate of candidates to be presented to the CALI Membership at the Annual Breakfast to be held on Saturday, January 9, 2016, 7:15-8:30 am in New York, NY during AALS.

All nominees will be contacted soon after nominations are closed. Nominees who are chosen by the nominating committee and elected by the membership are required to attend the CALI Board meeting tentatively scheduled for Saturday, January 9, 2016 in New York.

CALI is a dynamic and forward-thinking 501(c)(3) non-profit with big plans and big ideas. CALI is supported primarily by membership dues from over 200 US law schools. Qualified Directors should have knowledge and experience that they can contribute to the ongoing dissemination, development and strategic planning towards CALI’s mission.

Some of our projects include:

* CALI LESSONS: CALI publishes over 900 web-based tutorials that are used by law students and law faculty at over 200 US law schools.  We are constantly adding new lessons and updating the existing collection.  More information is at www.cali.org/lessons.

* ELECTRONIC CASEBOOKS/EBOOKS: CALI publishes e-casebooks and other legal texts in multiple ebook formats under a the eLangdell imprint.  These are distributed under Creative Commons licenses to allow for maximum flexibility for faculty and students to use in their educational endeavors.  More information is at elangdell.cali.org.

* ACCESS TO JUSTICE/EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING: CALI created the A2J Author software platform that is used by legal aid attorneys and law schools to teach their students law process automation.  More information about using A2J Author in law schools is at a2jclinic.classcaster.net.

A reasonably complete list of CALI projects can be found here.

If you have any questions or wish to submit a nominations, contact John Mayer, Executive Director at 312-906-5307 or jmayer@cali.org.

Didn’t make it to CALIcon?  Missed a session due to scheduling?  No problem!  The CALIcon15 Videos have all been uploaded and are available for FREE viewing. You have two choices for viewing – you can visit the CALIcon YouTube page or you can find the embedded video in each session’s page.  The latter will also have speaker materials (handouts, slides, etc.), if provided.

The 25th annual CALI Conference for Law School Computing, June 18 – 20, 2015 at University of Denver Sturm College of Law is right around the corner. We’ve put together an interesting and diverse schedule that will show off some of the best work being done in the law school information and educational tech spaces. With over 70 presenters giving over 50 sessions and nearly 300 attendees  representing over 90 law schools CALIcon is the best place to learn what’s going on with technology in legal education today.

With so much going on it can be a challenge to decide which sessions to attend. CALIcon15’s web-based schedules give you the option of building personalized schedules so that you can get to the sessions you want to see.

Using “My schedule” on the CALIcon15 website

The fastest way to build a personalized schedule is to log in to the conference website and visit the schedule page at http://conference.cali.org/2015/program/session-schedule. This is the official schedule grid for CALIcon15. As you scroll down the grid you’ll notice “Add to my schedule” links at the bottom of each entry. Clicking on that link will add the session or schedule item to your personalized schedule. You can view your custom schedule by clicking on the “My schedule” tab. That’s all there is to it, just a few clicks and you have a custom CALIcon15 schedule.

Use calicon15.cali.org for more features and options

If you’re looking for more features in a personalized CALIcon15 schedule like calendar integration, email alerts, or mobile display then you can use the new interactive schedule we’ve added this year. You can find the interactive schedule on the conference home page, http://conference.cali.org/2015, or at http://calicon15.cali.org/. We are embedding the interactive on numerous CALI websites so you will see the interactive schedule in a lot of places. It’s the same schedule everywhere.

To use the features of the interactive schedule you will need to create an account on sched.org. Please note that we are not automatically creating accounts on sched.org for CALIcon15 attendees, we are leaving that up to folks who decide to take advantage of the features offered on the interactive schedule. Once you’ve created an account and logged in you can scroll through the schedule and check the session and schedule items you want to attend and your personalized scheduled will be built for you. Selecting “My Sched” from the dropdown under your avatar will provide you with access to all of the options available.

No matter which version you use, building a personalized schedule for CALIcon15 will help you navigate the conference and make sure you don’t miss sessions you’re interested in.