Summer Conference on Legal Information – Seattle, WA

The University of Washington School of Law hosts the fifth Summer Conference on Legal Information (the “Boulder Conference at UW Law”) July 11-13, 2013. Participation is limited to 20. To apply for the Conference, please submit a draft project for consideration no later than March 29, 2013. The draft must be more than an outline but need not be in publishable form; 8-10 pages are sufficient. The full call for papers is after the jump.
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Call for Papers on All Aspects of Legal Information

We are pleased to announce that the fifth Summer Conference on Legal Information (the “Boulder Conference at UW Law”) will be held on July 11-13, 2013, in Seattle, immediately prior to the AALL Annual Meeting. We will meet at the University of Washington School of Law’s Gallagher Law Library. We express our sincere thanks to Penny Hazelton and her staff for their generosity and hospitality in hosting the fifth Boulder Conference.

The purpose of the conference is two-fold.  First, it will provide attendees with a forum to present works-in-progress on any topic related to legal information.  Second, attendees will discuss methods and examples of testing legal research competency, in support of a recommendation that legal research be included as a subject on the Multistate Performance Test (MPT). We believe that legal research questions can be developed for testing on the MPT in a way that is consonant with the principles of legal research education articulated in the Boulder Statement on Legal Research Education and the Boulder Statement on Legal Research Education: Signature Pedagogy Statement, which can be found here. Please make sure you have read these before the Conference.

The Boulder Conference at UW Law will begin with an after-dinner reception and organizational meeting on Thursday evening, July 11, and conclude early on Saturday afternoon, July 13, to avoid conflict with AALL activities. There is no registration fee for the conference. All meals and breaks will be provided. Attendees are expected to cover their own transportation and lodging expenses. Because the Conference will be held immediately prior to the AALL Annual Meeting in Seattle, we anticipate that Conference attendees will register at an AALL conference hotel; the conference rate should be available.

The Conference will be limited to 20 attendees. Each person attending will be expected to submit a draft work-in-progress in advance of the conference; attendees will be chosen from among those submitting their work. The work should focus on some aspect of the use or teaching of legal information, such as a framework for teaching legal research within the theoretical  guidelines of the Boulder Statements (for example, information literacy theory, adult learning theory, network theory, or other educational, social science, or psychology theories), an aspect of information retrieval (both manual and automated systems, including topics like artificial intelligence and law), law and policy (issues such as privacy, copyright, and security), information access issues (such as making legal and government information more accessible to the public, both physically and intellectually), and practice issues (applications which help lawyers in their day-to-day operations).

All drafts will be circulated to everyone attending to allow ample time for reading and thought.

To apply for the Conference, please submit a draft project for consideration no later than March 29, 2013. The draft must be more than an outline but need not be in publishable form; 8-10 pages are sufficient. Please submit your draft via e-mail. Please send drafts to Susan Nevelow Mart (susan.nevelow.mart@colorado.edu). Conference invitations will be issued in early April.

If you have a staff member or colleague, including a member of your law faculty, who might be interested in attending the fifth Summer Conference on Legal Information, please forward this message to him or her. I am excited about the opportunity to encourage scholarship on legal information issues and for this conference to continue its important conversation about legal research as a core legal skill. I look forward to hearing from you.

Susan

Susan Nevelow Mart
Associate Professor and Director of the Law Library
William A. Wise Law Library
University of Colorado at Boulder
402 UCB, 2450 Kittredge Loop Drive
Boulder, CO  80309
303-492-1233