Ken Strutin focuses on the impact of social media on jurors who increasingly try to stay connected to work and home while performing their civic duty, and the resulting impact of the power of individual jurors to virtualize a trial by going online. His article collects recent and notable examples of juror online misbehavior and highlights scholarship and practice resources concerning its implications for voir dire, trial management and the administration of justice.

Resource: LLRX.com – Legal and Technology Articles and Resources for Librarians, Lawyers and Law Firms

Nicole C. Engard continues her series on best practices for libraries to leverage open source tools with a guide on publishing tutorials for using library resources. Rather than creating a printed pathfinder, she suggests creating a video tutorial instead, as the learning experience is often more engaging and has deeper impact when users see something done versus reading about it.

Resource: LLRX.com – Legal and Technology Articles and Resources for Librarians, Lawyers and Law Firms

The “craft” of legislative history construction is practiced with unique and outstanding expertise by law librarian Rick McKinney. This history is designed in a streamlined fashion so as to allow users to more easily check when provisions in the law got into bill and then check for related remarks concerning those provisions. It also has links to earlier legislation related to different titles of the Act, to the Administration’s proposed legislation in 2009, to related CRS reports, and to various summaries and commentaries of the law on the Web.

Resource: LLRX.com – Legal and Technology Articles and Resources for Librarians, Lawyers and Law Firms

Marcus P. Zillman’s guide arrives in time for holiday shopping, and comprises a comprehensive listing of shoppingbot and online shopping resources and sites on the Internet. Comparison shopping for books, electronics, gadgets, clothing, green products, hotels? Looking for coupons, discounts, vouchers or last minute deals? Do you want to support local, regional or national products and services? Marcuus’ wide ranging listing highlights reliable, efficient sites and services to compare and contrast your shopping choices, and to make the experience more cost effective and satisfying, now and year round.

Resource: LLRX.com – Legal and Technology Articles and Resources for Librarians, Lawyers and Law Firms

Ken Strutin has written extensively for LLRX.com on criminal law issues. He argues that false confessions, bad eyewitness identifications, and faulty forensics, among other problems, have shown that seemingly iron clad adjudications can reach the wrong result. A ‘guilty’ verdict only indicates that the government has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed each and every element of the crime, and not that the defendant actually committed the crime. A freestanding claim of actual innocence is a potentially powerful tool to assail a verdict that points to the wrong person. Still, courts have made only small gains in recognizing actual innocence generally as a basis for contesting a wrongful conviction. This article collects selected scholarship on “actual innocence” and litigating post-conviction claims that go beyond the procedural metrics of the trial process.

Resource: LLRX.com – Legal and Technology Articles and Resources for Librarians, Lawyers and Law Firms