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HCLL Alert
July 2004

Summer Associates Given Top 10 Reasons To Visit Their County Law Library
Rich leads a tour of alarmingly intelligent summer associates.

Top Ten Reasons To Visit Your County Law Library

  1. Public Access WESTLAW.  Includes state case law (all 50 states), federal case law, annotated statutes, state administrative codes, ALR, USCA and administrative agency decisions.  SEARCH AT NO CHARGE!
  2. Minnesota Continuing Legal Education materials. (Not available online)
  3. Practising Law Institute Course materials. (Expensive to print from WESTLAW or LEXIS.)
  4. Loose-leaf services and treatises.
  5. Law reviews and other periodicals. (Pre-1980 and most current volumes are not available on WESTLAW or LEXIS.)
  6. Court Rules pamphlets from all states.
  7. Continuing legal education and local practice materials from surrounding states (and larger states).
  8. Minnesota Appellate briefs on microfiche.
  9. Superseded statutes and regulations, state and federal.
  10. State jury instructions.
HCLL held four orientation sessions for local summer associates in late May and early June.  In addition to tours of the library and refreshments, the summer associates were given a sheet listing the resources available at the Law Library that are either not available on LEXIS or WESTLAW or are expensive databases to use through these services.  Judy Zetterberg, Head of Public Services, prepared this list of Top Ten Reasons to Visit Your County Law Library, which we thought would be of interest to our regular users as well as to the summer associates.
WESTLAW At Southdale Library -- Free!

WESTLAW logo

Did you know that online access to Westlaw is now available for no charge at Southdale Library, thanks to funding from the Hennepin County Law Library?

Focused on the Minnesota legal community, the Westlaw databases at Southdale are a sub-set of those at the Law Library. They include:

  • Minnesota Appellate Court Cases and Minnesota Statutes Annotated
  • U.S. District Court Cases, 8th Circuit, including U.S. District Court Cases for Minnesota
  • U.S. Court of Appeals 8th Circuit Cases
  • U.S. Supreme Court Cases and U.S. Code Annotated
  • U.S. Code Congressional & Administrative News

Where:

Southdale Library, 3rd floor, LawLinks*, behind the Information Services Desk.
7001 York Ave. So., Edina, MN 55435
952-847-5669

Library hours:

Monday-Thursday 10:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Friday-Saturday 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Sunday (closed during the summer) 12:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m., Sep-May only

A one-hour time limit is imposed if other people are waiting.

*LawLinks is a collaborative project of the Hennepin County Law Library and Hennepin County Library, in an effort to make more legal resources available to suburban attorneys and residents.

Government Center To Be Evacuated July 21
HCLL Staff will be walking down 24 flights of stairs to evacuate. Pity us. Or, give us chocolate.On Wednesday, July 21 the Law Library will be closed between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. for a scheduled Government Center Evacuation drill.
Focus On: Court Rules
As more legal materials have been published on the web, even state and federal court rules are now available to anyone with a computer and internet access (See HCLL's Court Rules Internet Page).  But there are still times when only a paper copy on one’s desk will do to decipher a complicated court rule or reveal the difference between a current rule and an older version.  The Law Library contains a complete print collection of current and superseded court rules (Search the HCLL catalog for court rules).

The collection includes federal court rules and rules for all 50 states as well as treatises discussing their application and interpretation.  If you need an older rule, call the Law Library.  We retain older editions of the court rules back to the 1970’s for many states and for the federal government.

Some states, in addition to Minnesota, include their court rules in their annotated statutes.  So, at the library you may be able to find case annotations for particular state court rules.  The library also, of course, owns print versions of Federal Rules Decisions, Federal Rules Service, and Federal Rules Digest.

Featured Web Site
We're optimistic.Looking for the Life Expectancy Tables/Mortality Tables?  They used to be available in the Tables volume of the Minnesota Statutes Annotated or in previous editions of the Jury Instruction Guides – Civil.  Now this information is available on the web site of the National Center for Health Statistics.  Their publication, National Vital Statistics Reports, provides the complete United States Life Tables by age, race and sex.

National Center for Health Statistics