Last Call: Applications to be a 2016 Ms. JD Writer in Residence Due November 1st
By Ashley Ahlbrand • October 29, 2015 •Writers in Residence
Are you a pre-law student interested in sharing your journey to law school? Perhaps you are a current law student interested in sharing tips for surviving law school? Or maybe you are an attorney interested in sharing your experiences working in a specific legal market, striving to achieve work-life balance, or reflecting on things you wish you had known before entering the job market? If you have insight to share, we want to hear about it! Ms. JD is currently accepting applications for the 2016 Writers in Residence program, a select group of writers, ranging from pre-law applicants to…
Calling All Writers! Ms. JD is Now Accepting Applications for the 2016 Writers in Residence Program
By Ashley Ahlbrand • September 16, 2015 •Writers in Residence
LSATs, law school applications, 60-hour work weeks. Sometimes we all need a creative outlet. Whether you are pre-law, currently in law school, or a seasoned legal professional, Ms. JD has the creative opportunity for you! Ms. JD is currently seeking applications for the 2016 Writers in Residence program. Started in 2010, the Writers in Residence are a select group of pre-law, current law students, and legal professionals who contribute monthly articles to the Ms. JD blog on a topic of their choosing. This year’s writers have taken us from Silicon Valley to Capitol Hill and all around the world; they…
A New Year, a New Round of Writers: Introducing the 2015 Writers in Residence
By Ashley Ahlbrand • January 02, 2015 •Writers in Residence
2014 was a whirlwind year for me. Time never flies so fast as when you're facing a monthly column deadline. Serving as a 2014 Ms. JD Writer-in-Residence was an enriching experience that has opened up even more opportunities for me, for which I am truly grateful. One such opportunity is the honor to serve as the Director of the 2015 Writers in Residence program! We have a tremendous group of writers this year who will offer a wide array of perspectives on law school and legal careers. Some will discuss the journey to law school, how they came to their…
Research Makeover: Keeping Up and Staying Current
By Ashley Ahlbrand • December 11, 2014 •Writers in Residence
I cannot believe that a year has already gone by! I have so enjoyed my time as a Writer in Residence, and I hope that you have enjoyed (or at least learned something from) reading my posts about legal research tips and tools. In some ways, I have made an effort to structure my posts such that, by the end of the year, we would have covered the research process from beginning to end. So for my final post, I’d like to briefly touch on resources to use to stay up-to-date on trends and tools in legal research. Blogs These…
Research Makeover: Strategy in Legal Research - Seeing Your Research Through from Beginning to End
By Ashley Ahlbrand • November 06, 2014 •Writers in Residence
When I haven’t been writing about new legal research tools, I have been discussing common deficiencies in legal research skills, such as legislative history research or research in administrative law. As my Writer in Residence year draws to a close, I wanted to take a step back and address the legal research process more broadly. When I began this column in January, I mentioned that legal research is often taken for granted as a lawyering skill, quite simply because we’ve all done research at some point in our education; but as I explained, legal research is a different ballgame, and…
Research Makeover: Updating Your (Research) Look with (Browser) Extensions
By Ashley Ahlbrand • October 06, 2014 •Writers in Residence
I’ve talked a lot this year about new legal research tools such as Ravel Law and Casetext that are changing the organization, collection, and display of legal research databases. But there’s an entirely different world of e-tools that can be equally beneficial in legal research and practice today: browser extensions. Browser extensions are tools that can be added onto web browsers, such as Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome; if added, these tools exist within the browser, and accomplish various tasks when you interact with particular websites or website features. Common extensions include URL shorteners and web clippers, but many exist…
Research Makeover: When Legal Research & the Model Rules Collide
By Ashley Ahlbrand • September 05, 2014 •Writers in Residence
You don’t get very far into law school before being introduced to the American Bar Association's Model Rules of Professional Conduct. These rules cover all aspects of attorney practice, from conflicts of interest to courtroom conduct. Underlying all of this, the rules begin by setting the standards for attorney competence. Rule 1.1 states, “A lawyer shall provide competent representation to a client. Competent representation requires the legal knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation reasonably necessary for the representation.” (MRPC 1.1) This competence refers to the variety of lawyering skills you learn throughout law school, such as issue-spotting and understanding procedural and…
Research Makeover: Mightier than the Sword? A Look at Capitol Words
By Ashley Ahlbrand • August 05, 2014 •Writers in Residence
Some of my favorite posts to write are the ones where I review new and interesting tools that might prove helpful to keep in your legal research arsenal. This month, I’m looking at a particularly intriguing one, Capitol Words. (It's one of my favorite types of tools too - free!) A tool of the Sunlight Foundation, Capitol Words mixes discourse with data to show you how certain words trend over time in Congress. The words measured in this tool are pulled daily from the Congressional Record, a publication containing the official record of the debates and proceedings of the US…
Research Makeover: Digging into Government Websites
By Ashley Ahlbrand • July 04, 2014 •Writers in Residence
In several of my posts this year I have mentioned various government resources that can prove helpful in conducting legal research. For instance, in March I covered several websites that are helpful in administrative law research, such as RegInfo.gov and the e-CFR; and in May I covered Congress.gov while discussing legislative histories. This doesn’t even scratch the surface of the amount of information available out there, so for this month’s post, let’s dig a little deeper. The Catch-Alls USA.gov – A great place to start your research is USA.gov, the central portal to US government websites. Here you can find…