David Whelan on Sole Provider or No Provider. Plus, How Law Schools are Reducing Student Stress During Finals

David Whelan, the Director of Legal Information & the Great Library Society of Ontario, discusses his recent article "The No Legal Research Provider Landscape," and how lawyers, law librarians, and the legal industry looks at legal information services. Do you need to have multiple resources like Westlaw, LexisNexis, Bloomberg or others, or can you get by with just going with one (AKA "Sole Provider.") Do you even really need to go with one of the big services, or can you survive off of the resources provided by the local bar association? Or are there even fewer options for solo small firm environments? David covers  this, plus when things are "good enough" for some lawyers to feel comfortable in their practice. And, how that usually runs counter to law librarians and other practitioners who would never be satisfied with "good enough." 

De-Stressing the Law Students During Finals

We skip Information Inspirations this week to have a little fun. Anyone who has gone to law school knows that finals time can be stressful. We reached out to a number of law schools to ask them what they do to help students reduce their stress levels during this time. We get some great answers from:

• The University of Georgia
• University of San Diego
• University of Illinois
• Tulsa University
• University of Arkansas Little Rock
• Villanova
• Richmond
• Yale

Thanks to all of these schools for sharing. There's some great programs going on at all of these schools. We have a few more who left us messages today, and we'll make sure to get those on the next show.

If your school is doing something to reduce the stress levels of law students, call us on the Geek in Review hotline at 713-487-7270 and leave us a brief (30 seconds or so) voice memo, and we'll get it on next week's show. 

One of the things we learned from Yale's Law Library Director, Teresa Miguel-Sterns, is that New Haven apparently does have excellent pizza. Marlene, with her New Jersey skepticism says that she's going to have to try that out first hand. So look out Connecticut... 

Government Action on Legal Information

Emily Feltren, Director of Government Relations at the American Association of Law Libraries, gives us a monthly update on what the government is doing in regards to advancing access to legal information.

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