Leading the way, the Alabama Bar Association in 1887 adopted the nation’s very first Code of Ethics for lawyers. Revised repeatedly since then, Alabama’s legal ethics rules often require interpretation and analysis. When consulted for advice, the Office of General Counsel of the Alabama State Bar issues both formal and informal opinions bearing on the professional responsibilities of Alabama attorneys. To find Alabama bar ethics opinions, look to these sources:

1. The ABA/BNA Lawyers’ Manual on Professional Conduct [KF305/.A8/A3/Reference].

This looseleaf service publishes summaries (but not full text) of most formal ethics opinions issued by the Alabama bar from 1986 to date. Currently, the service omits informal opinions. Look for the set of volumes labeled "Ethics Opinions" on the spine.

2. The Alabama Lawyer [Periodicals/Lower Level].

Alabama’s bar magazine publishes selected formal opinions. Some are in full text. Others are summaries of opinions in areas of special significance. Typically, the magazine reprints opinions of broad interest, not necessarily recent releases. For instance, many lawyers request a copy of the opinion on the retention and destruction of client files. Although released in 1993, the opinion appears in the January 2005 issue of the Alabama Lawyer.

3. LexisNexis.

Cumberland’s Lexis subscription includes access to the National Reporter on Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility (ETHICS; ETHOP). This reporter, published by University Publications of America, provides full text of state bar opinions on legal ethics and professional responsibility. The service covers almost every state, including Alabama. Excluded jurisdictions are Delaware, Louisiana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma and Puerto Rico. Coverage varies by state, and is not always complete. The Alabama section appears selective, not comprehensive.

4. Alabama State Bar, Office of General Counsel (OGC).

The OGC publishes full text of many (but not all) of its formal opinions from 1981 to date free on the Web at www.alabar.org. Opinions are edited to exclude identification of parties involved. Currently, the OGC renders less than five or so formal opinions a year. They designate most by year and number, such as 2005-01. Depending on the source cited, some opinion numbers bear the prefix "RO." Besides formal opinions, the OGC issues many informal ethics opinions that are unpublished. The available print and electronic sources for Alabama bar opinions typically exclude informal opinions, and possibly some formal opinions as well. However, complete copies of all opinions are on file with the OGC.

Perhaps the best way to ensure comprehensive research is to contact the OGC by e-mail. Ask for a listing of all opinions rendered on a particular topic whether formal or informal, published or unpublished. Then, request copies of any that are unavailable (full text) in a published source. Find current e-mail addresses for OGC staff on the Web at www.alabar.org. Follow the link near the top of the page for "Contact."

Remember that opinions issued by bar associations do not have the force of law. Nonetheless, they offer considered guidance for conduct and may be persuasive to a court. In researching legal ethics issues, ask a reference librarian for help if needed.

[For illustrations in this article, see http://lawlib.samford.edu/cio/ciomar06.pdf.]

Two new 4800 series HP ScanJet scanners are available in the Lower Level Lab in the Law Library. The scanners will scan images and text. To start a scan, look for the HP Solution Center icon on the desktop of the lab computer.

Double click the icon to start scanning. The HP Solution Center will open and offer many choices including scan picture and scan document.

To scan text and save it as a Word file, click on the Scan Document button.

Under Scan To, click on the drop down arrow and be sure to select Microsoft Word as the File Type.

Then click the Scan button to begin the process.

A new window will appear with scanning options. Click OK to accept the settings.

An image of the scan will appear. Here, the scan may be lightened, darkened, resized, sharpened, etc. When ready, click OK to finalize the scan.

Scanning to Word will begin.

A new dialog box will appear asking if there is another page or image to scan. Click yes if there is another item to scan. If not, click no. Word will open and display the scanned text.

If help is needed with scanning, please contact Grace Simms, Computer Services Librarian, glsimms@samford.edu, or ext. 2687.

If you are looking for the full text of a legal journal, you can now go directly to HeinOnline from the online library catalog (http://library.samford.edu/ gateway01/english). For instance, if you know you need an article from the title Florida Law Review you can search it in the online library catalog and know that we have it in print on the Lower Level or click on the link to the HeinOnline full text site. If you are off campus, you will be prompted for your ID and password before you get into HeinOnline. HeinOnline can still be reached through the web page under “Research Aids” as well. At this point, only the journals of HeinOnline are in the online library catalog, not the treatises. If you have any questions, contact a Reference Librarian or Lanie Williamson, Serials Librarian at lpwilli1@samford.edu.

[For illustrations in this article, see http://lawlib.samford.edu/cio/ciomar06.pdf.]

To use SamfordWireless or SamfordSecure, a proxy is necessary.

For Internet Explorer users, click on Tools, Internet Options, Connections tab, Lab Settings button, put a check in the box next to use automatic configuration script and enter the following: http://proxy.samford.edu/proxy.pac. Then click OK. Click OK on the Internet Options box to exit the set up.

For Firefox, click Tools and then Options. Be sure that General on the left is highlighted. Under the General settings, click the Connection Settings box. Click the button next to Automatic Proxy configuration URL. Enter the proxy: http://proxy.samford.edu/proxy.pac Then click OK. Click OK on the Options box to exit the set up. Netscape 8 proxy set up is the same as Firefox.

For Opera, click on Tools, Preferences, Advanced Tab. Click Network on the left and then click the Proxy Servers button. Put a check in the box next to use Automatic proxy configuration. Enter the proxy: http://proxy.samford.edu/proxy.pac. Then click OK. Click OK on the Preferences box to exit the set up.

For Mac users, click on the System Preferences under the Apple menu. Click on Network. Click on location and choose new location – you may call it wireless, samford, etc. For Show, select Airport. Click Proxies. Put a check mark next to Web Proxy (HTTP). For Web Proxy Server, enter proxy.samford.edu and enter 8080 after the colon. Then click Apply Now.

Please contact Grace Simms, Computer Services Librarian, at glsimms@samford.edu or 726-2687 for help.

Law students looking for work close to their studies should consider the Law Library. The Law Library has positions available at the Circulation Desk. Contact Ed Craig at 726-2714 or elcraig@samford.edu for further information.

Find the answer to that question and more on the Education and Careers page of the American Association of Law Libraries web site. There are many career opportunities available for people with both a law degree and a graduate degree from an accredited library school. This web page has links to articles and material that can give information about law librarianship as a profession.

The University of Alabama, Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS), is the only American Library Association-accredited program in Alabama. One of the classes offered, Law Libraries and Legal Resources, introduces the concepts of law library management and the techniques and materials of legal research. The University of Alabama also has an online MLIS degree program available.

In academic and research libraries, one common institutional priority is to maintain a retrospective (historical) collection of scholarly journals and other serial publications reflecting the events, research and attitudes of prior eras. While mass market book stores and many smaller public libraries can concentrate on meeting the public’s need for current issues of a publication, research and academic libraries must normally retain older issues which may not have regular use, but still retain significant value for future research needs. Policy problems arise for research libraries when these voluminous historical collections result in library space shortages and costly maintenance issues.

The fairly recent creation of two online database services, HeinOnline and JSTOR, is an indication that the periodical publishing industry and the library community are cooperating to address this problem. While HeinOnline covers legal periodicals and JSTOR covers scholarly journals of nonlegal disciplines, both products concentrate on providing broad retrospective coverage of their disciplines’ journals without interfering with the publishers’ commercial interests of selling current issues of the publication. That is to say, in most instances, these databases will attempt to provide all but the last few years’ issues of a publication for the benefit of historical research efforts.1 They both provide keyword searching of the full-text of their journals; additionally, they both display photographic images of the journals’ printed pages rather than the uniform database text (commonly seen in LEXIS and WESTLAW) which is always subject to potential input errors by database staff.

How is JSTOR and HeinOnline significant to legal research when the long-established LEXIS and WESTLAW database services have an abundance of law reviews available for full-text searching? A rarely noticed problem that seems to evade both LEXIS and WESTLAW users when searching their law review databases is one of coverage; while both of these database services spend a great deal of effort adding the most current issues to a journal’s database, a particular journal’s issue coverage will likely start in LEXIS or WESTLAW sometime in the 1980's or early 1990's (there are exceptions to this for a few of the most prominent journals). Also, some of the WESTLAW databases for law journals provide only “selected coverage” of journals in the 1980's and early 1990's, meaning that not all of the articles in those journals can be found in the database. These two types of coverage gaps result in possible missed hits of crucial articles when performing keyword searches in these database services. JSTOR and HeinOnline are designed to provide access to older journal issues which database services such as LEXIS, WESTLAW and their nonlegal counterparts seem to have little inclination to do.

When would HeinOnline and JSTOR be accessed in a typical legal research strategy? These retrospective database services could be ideally used to complement research done on conventional “current” databases (such as LEXIS and WESTLAW) by filling in the time gaps described in the previous paragraph. In order to do this, however, researchers must be cognizant of the time coverage limitations of the current databases searched; this information is available on LEXIS and WESTLAW database descriptors as well as in many of the nonlegal commercial database services. Here are a few examples of how these retrospective database services can help “fill in the gaps”:

Columbia Law Review

LEXIS v.82-current (1982-current)

WESTLAW v.81-current (1981-current)

HeinOnline v.1-101 (1901-2001)

Cumberland Law Review

LEXIS v.24-current (1993/1994-current)

WESTLAW

"Selected Coverage” v.14-23 (1983-1992)

Full Coverage v.24-current (1993-current)

HeinOnline v.1-35 (1970-2005)

Harvard Law Review

LEXIS v.96-current (November 1982-current)

WESTLAW v.63-current (1949-current)

HeinOnline v.1-115 (1887-2002)

Journal of Law and Economics

WESTLAW v.37-current (1994-current)

LEXIS v.37-current (1994-current)

JSTOR v.1-43 (1958-2000)

Political Science Quarterly

WESTLAW v.115-117 (6/2000-10/2002)

EBSCO Host Academic v.90-current (1975-current)

JSTOR v. 1 - 114 (1886 - 1999/2000)

As you can see, depending solely upon LEXIS or WESTLAW for comprehensive periodical coverage can be perilous to the researcher. If a researcher is trying to perform comprehensive research on a topic, knowledge of these time coverage limitations is critical; otherwise, important research may be missed because the full-text searcher has assumed that all articles using his keyword terms have been found.

If off campus, HeinOnline and JSTOR can both be accessed by using your Samford ID and password.

If you have any questions about performing research in periodicals and journals, contact a reference librarian in the Beeson Law Library.

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1 JSTOR has a “moving wall” that “represents the time period between the last issue available in JSTOR and the most recently published issue of a journal.” The size of the wall depends upon its agreement with the particular journal’s publisher–the time period is usually the latest three to five years of issues.

Information about the Langum Project can be found online.

Source: Langum Project for Historical Literature Prize Winners, http://www.bplonline.org/EventsandExhibitions/Langum.asp (March 21, 2006).

This is the last issue of CHECK IT OUT for this semester. Three issues will be published during the Fall Semester beginning in August 2006. If you have any ideas or suggestions as to ways we can improve, contact Becky Hutto via e-mail at rmhutto@samford.edu. We look forward to the Fall Semester and new issues of the newsletter.