Spotlight Blog

We love each of them equally, we really do. But there's something special about new CALI Lessons. They're adorable at that age; pure and uninfluenced by the mean and hurtful things stressed-out law students will eventually say about them during exam season. And, the new ones really come out in bunches this time of year (read more about our baby CALI Lessons or we'll think you don't like them and get some sort of complex about it...)

The Conference for Law School Computing (a.k.a. CALI Conference) was conceived to be a place where techies, law librarians and faculty could get together and talk about projects, applications, workflow, staffing and new ideas that had some technical aspect. The common theme was law schools + technology. 21 years ago, this was a small crowd (we had about 70 attendees at the first conference), but today, a lot of technology is moving into the woodwork – effectively...(Read on for more)

We at CALI were saddened to hear about the recent death of Professor Craig Callen. Craig was an author of several very popular CALI lessons in Evidence. By my counts, his lessons were used by law students tens of thousands of times over the past 8 years.

The Free Law Reporter™ is where free law meets accessibility. It's an electronic case reporter that freely publishes nearly every recent appellate and supreme court opinion, from state and federal US courts.

FLR uses the RECOP project as a starting point, making its opinions searchable online and available as ebook collections, with more features in development.

If you tried to access www.cali.org at any time on Thursday, April 21st into the early morning of the next day you know it was not available. We're very sorry about this (we weren't the only ones hit by it) and we know it couldn't have been a worse time for those of you with finals approaching. Thanks to everyone for your patience throughout; and a special thanks to (read on for more)...

Faculty Colleagues - I wish to extend an invitation to faculty to attend the 2011 CALI Conference for Law School Computing, to be held at the new state-of-the-art Marquette Law School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, June 23-25 (yes, the Brewers are in town). This conference is not just for nerds or, more accurately, for the nerd in all of us. You will learn a great deal about enhancing your teaching and your scholarship in a friendly and supportive atmosphere. Please contact me or the CALI staff if you have any questions. Hope to see you there!

Scott J. Burnham, President, CALI

Make sure you keep an eye on our YouTube channel over the coming months as we upload all the CALI Conference session videos we can find. Here's Clay Shirky's keynote presentation for the 2004 CALI Conference in Seattle. And of course, don't miss this year's CALI Conference in Milwaukee.

The 2011 CALI Conference in Milwaukee is approaching quickly: June 23-25. If you haven't yet, it's time to register for the conference.

Click to read some conference updates, reminders, and a list of proposed sessions so far...

CALI partners with Chicago-Kent's Access to Justice & Technology on A2J Author, software that lets lawyers create computer-based interviews. A2J interviews simplify the court system for self-represented litigants by turning legal documents into an easy-to-understand series of questions. We're very excited about New York State Courts Access to Justice Program's new Best Practices Guide for Using A2J Author. Court systems interested in implementing A2J Author should check it out.

CALI has a few helpful how-to videos that help students complete the most common issues they run into on The CALI website. Check out - or point your students to - these videos if you're new to the website and need to register, have created an account as a guest and need access to the lessons, or need to retrieve your cali.org password. See them all below...

Congrats to a prolific CALI lesson author, and our former board president, Barbara Glesner Fines for being named one of the 23 Law Profs to Take Before You Die by the National Jurist. Here's a list of the fine CALI Lessons Professor Glesner Fines has written for us, mostly in Professional Responsibility and Remedies. 

The CALI Excellence for the Future Awards website is back up and running.  If your school is interested in participating in the awards program (free to US law schools), contact John Mayer at jmayer@cali.org. 

It's a little easier to see that CALI has a bunch of state-specific legal research lessons. Have a look at our new legal research lessons map to find your state's lessons.

Is your state not available? We have plenty of non-state specific legal research lessons. And if you know a law librarian in your state, have them contact us if they're interested in authoring a lesson for your state.

I am delighted to be invited to the AALL Vendor Colloquium next week as a “stakeholder”. I have a growing sense of unease about the relationship between legal information vendors and the law libraries, law students and law schools. This meeting has challenged me to articulate those thoughts. [Read on for more...]

We're trying out a fun, new idea for law libraries: LibTour - a virtual audio tour of law libraries. One thing about LibTour: we've QR Coded each of the audio files (QR codes are becoming a popular way for folks to access information and data from smartphones, on the spot). Read on for more...