Last week, the National Center for State Courts (ncsc.org) launched a set of short, easy-to-understand videos to help explain the court system as well as legal terms and processes to members of the public.  With the goal of helping Self-Represented Litigants better prepare for court hearings and more confidently engage with the courts, these illustrated videos address topics like legal advice vs. legal information, what it means to file a motion, and what to do after being served.  There are currently eight videos available, each of which can be found at ncsc.org/a2jvid ..read more

  Looking for secondary sources on real estate or landlord tenant law in Pennsylvania? You may want to consult our Pennsylvania Real Estate & Landlord Tenant Law research guide. This guide compiles both digital and print resources from our collection to help attorneys conduct research quickly and efficiently. Recommended resources include forms, free online resources, treatises, and practice aids. A number of treatises and practice aids have been compiled, many of which include forms. The guide indicated when a particular title is available on our onsite Westlaw oe Lexis Comput ..read more

  On Wednesday, April 10, there'll be free breakfast and lunchtime fare at Jenkins. (Spoiler alert: it's more than just crackers and cheese.) And there'll be some Jenkins swag, as well, for those of you who successfully complete our Digital Escape Room Challenge: The Founders Folly. And one more thing: we're designating Wednesday as Overdue Fines Amnesty Day. Just bring your overdue titles to Jenkins. We'll take 'em back and waive the fines, no questions asked. See you on Wednesday, April 10, from 10:00 am - 2:00 pm ..read more

  West Academic and HeinOnline teamed together to create the West Academic Casebooks Archive.  Available via HeinOnline, this database includes not only casebooks, but hornbooks, nutshells, and other miscellaneous West books that are out-of-print and superseded. Only editions prior to the two most recent editions of a title will be available. Casebooks are used to teach law by illustrating key principles from cases -- as opposed to a lecture or hornbook method.  Hornbooks are a primer for different specific areas of the law. They refer to legal principles that have b ..read more

  Recently I read this blog post about digital law librarianship. It has a great closing paragraph: "In a world where the legal landscape is rapidly digitizing, law librarians have not become obsolete; instead, they have evolved into indispensable digital stewards of legal information. They continue to provide essential support, education, and expertise to legal professionals in navigating the vast and ever-expanding digital realm of legal information. We should bring awareness to society that there may be an absence of a physical library, but the role of the law librarian remains ..read more

  The National Women's History Alliance has designated the 2024 Women's History Month theme as "Women Who Advocate for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion”, recognizing women who work to “eliminate bias and discrimination entirely from our lives and institutions” and who are “committed to embracing everyone and excluding no one in our common quest for freedom and opportunity.”  In that spirit, we’re featuring four titles from Jenkins’ print collection that amplify the voices of women in law. Each of these books is a compilation of essays that highlights the diverse experiences, s ..read more

  LexisNexis Digital Library, powered by OverDrive, provides access to nearly 300 ebooks which represent more than 2,900 volumes of Matthew Bender treatises, forms, and federal and state law. Members* can borrow up to five volumes with loan times of seven days each. To start reading an ebook, simply select read on the title card. There is only one copy of each ebook in the library, so if your title of interest is checked out you will have to place a hold until it becomes available. You should then be notified once it’s ready to be borrowed.            ..read more

  Although federal law often gets the headlines, state and local law have an enormous impact on our rights and everyday life. Join the Greater Philadelphia Law Library Association (GPLLA) on March 20 to hear a fantastic array of experts in state and local law discuss those laws' importance, their sources, and what to look for when researching them. Attorneys are welcome to attend.  CLE credits are sponsored by Jenkins Law Library. The schedule and registration information are below. March 20, 2024 at the Kline Institute of Trial Advocacy, 1200 Chestnut Street 11:30: Check-in a ..read more

  On February 13th, 2024, the Patent and Trademark Office published a notice on Inventorship Guidance for AI-Assisted Inventions in vol. 89 no. 30 of the Federal Register (89 FR 10043). This notice follows the "Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence" made by President Biden on October 30, 2023. The order called on executive agencies to invest in "AI-related education, training, development, research, and capacity, while simultaneously tackling novel intellectual property (IP) questions and other problems to protect inventors ..read more

  If you’ve been tasked with compiling and comparing laws across states, Jenkins provides access to various fifty-state surveys that may help save you time. Such surveys can be invaluable tools for gaining a comprehensive overview of laws and regulations across the nation, allowing users to spot legal trends and evaluate jurisdictional differences, even despite varying terminology.  Here are a handful of places where you can find multi-state surveys, either online or within Jenkins’ resources.  HeinOnline hosts the National Survey of State Laws, which is derived from Rich ..read more