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Imagine this scenario: you get a letter from an attorney representing someone. You cannot afford to hire a lawyer. What do you do? According to Jessica Steinberg, associate professor of clinical law at George Washington University Law School in Washington, D.C., 70-98% of state cases dealing with areas of civil law such as family law, domestic violence, landlord-tenant and small claims issues involve at least one unrepresented litigant. Money is often an issue. According to the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, 80% of criminal defendants cannot afford to hire a lawyer.
Such people experience what the Legal Services Corporation has called the justice gap, or "the difference between the civil legal needs of low-income Americans and the resources available to meet those needs."
To meet that need, our library offers a legal research computer that is free to use. It runs off of the legal database LexisNexis, which allows for quick and easy searching and access to full-text documents from over 17,000 credible sources of information. I have personally used it to research local topics and it helped me pinpoint relevant legal content. Users can access comprehensive, authoritative news content, including current coverage and deep archives, as well as extensive legal sources for federal and state cases and statutes, including U.S. Supreme Court decisions since 1790. This content can easily be shared, emailed, and downloaded. Printing costs 25¢ per page.
Our staff cannot offer legal advice, but immediate technical and research support is available by calling a toll-free number at the top of each page.
Public libraries strive to offer easy access to all kinds of information. LexisNexis offers powerful search capabilities and operates behind simple, fill-in-the-blank search forms similar to what we see with Google. Your searches assess relevance faster and show where your search terms cluster and where these clusters occur, e.g., in the headnotes. You can preview passages in context without leaving your results, select a color cluster and view search terms in context, and focus on specific search words. In full-text cases, you can navigate all search term hits by clicking on a term or group of terms, and then go!
In the past few years, LexisNexis added these features: suggested search questions; all you have to do is just start typing. Or you can develop a query like you do normally, using words and commands. Lexis Answers understands what you're looking for and saves you time. You can receive a direct answer to your questions--concise and authoritative. A Lexis Answers Card headlines your results screen, along with links to the source passage and related concepts. No added searching needed. Finally, your search results compile comprehensive, relevant results for deeper analysis from across your LexiNexis. Lexis Answers also enhances each search with related terms so you cover more ground at once. This helps you discover how top cases in your search results cite each other, while also uncovering cases you might otherwise overlook and discern citing trends across jurisdictions and over time.
What is key about this type of law library is the depth and breadth of its content and its rapid updates each month.
If you are a visiting lawyer in need of quick searches for a case or a local resident looking for credible information, this resource is for you. This service would cost thousands of dollars for a private citizen to subscribe to; this free to you.
If you need print copies, we also carry the latest books by Nolo. Nolo produces do-it-yourself legal books that allow people to handle simple legal matters. We carry Nolo books on neighbor law (fences, trees, boundaries and noise), child custody and support, workplace rights, landlords and tenants, small businesses, patents, copyrights, trademarks, cars, wills and estate planning, health care, topics related to older Americans and much more.
Book of the week!
If you are going to read one book, give this one a try...
The Third Victim (Robin Lockwood series #1 by Phillip Margolin)
(Adult fiction: legal, thriller, mystery) ~ 320 pages
In a nutshell: Phillip Margolin was an attorney before becoming a bestselling author, and he uses his legal expertise to supreme effect here.
A woman stumbles onto a dark road in rural Oregon — tortured, battered and bound. She tells a horrific story about being kidnapped, then tortured, until she finally managed to escape. She was the lucky one. Two other women, with similar burns and bruises, were found dead.
The surviving victim identifies the house where she was held captive and the owner, Alex Mason, a prominent local attorney, is arrested. Although he loudly insists upon his innocence, his wife's statements and the physical evidence found at the scene, his summer home, is damning.
Regina Barrister is a legendary criminal defense attorney, known as "The Sorceress" for her courtroom victories. But she has a secret, one that threatens her skill, her reputation and, most of all, her clients. And she's agreed to take on the seemingly impossible task of defending Alex Mason.
Robin Lockwood, a young lawyer and former MMA fighter, has just left a clerkship at the Oregon Supreme Court to work for Regina Barrister. The Alex Mason trial is her first big one, a likely death penalty case, and she's second chair to Regina. Increasingly, she's worried her boss's behavior and the details in the case against their client don't quite add up.
Bottom line: "The Third Victim" is New York Times bestseller Phillip Margolin at his very best.
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Vince Giordano has been the librarian and director of the Juniata County Library since 2015.