Spotlight Blog

Update 10/13 8pm: Classcaster is up and running again. Head over to classcaster.net or your favorite Classcaster blog and see for yourself. We're sorry about that.

10/13 5:30pm: We're experiencing some technical issues with Classcaster at the moment. Class blogs and others, like LibTour, are currently unavailable. Please bear with us as we work to fix the problems. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

Clear your calendar. The 2012 CALI Conference for Law School Computing® will be held in San Diego, Thursday-Saturday, June 21-23 at Thomas Jefferson School of Law.

Watch this blog, Twitter, or Facebook for future CALIcon12 announcements. And if you want to relive past conferences, we've uploaded to YouTube any and all past conference video we had stored away on servers. Enjoy!

In law school every Civil Procedure, Criminal Procedure, and Evidence student needs a copy of their respective federal rules. Another book to buy, right? Not necessarily.

We've partnered with the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School to publish the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Criminal Procedure, and Evidence in ebook format. The books are completely free to download and use, but please consider a donation to LII. Our eLangdell books are open and lack any DRM, so they're compatible with iPads, Kindles, and much more. Have a look...

We've heard your collective feedback and implemented a few updates for one of our favorite faculty features: LessonLink score tracking (a LessonLink FAQ if you're unfamiliar).

New options for current LessonLinks.

What used to be the "My LessonLinks" tab is now called "Current  LessonLinks" (you'll need to login at cali.org to see LessonLink pages).

Your links are organized into groups called courses. Each of your current courses now has some new options...: 

A2J Author was created by CALI for Chicago-Kent's Center for A2J. The software creates automated, online interviews that help unrepresented litigants more easily produce legal documents.

Use of the software continues to grow in the legal aid community. Illinois Legal Aid Online, for instance, just launched five new A2J interviews on expungement of criminal records.:...

Students tried one hundred and forty-one times, only two did it. Both Shawn Chang of University of Georgia and Vincent Costa of Touro Law Center completed the CALI Punctuation and Grammar for Law Students Challenge, answering all questions in the lesson correctly. Congratulations, guys! We'll contact you both with details on your prizes. As a consolation, everyone who took the challenge is surely a better writer now. Thanks to all who participated. Stay tuned, we may do this again.

Faculty, did you know you can easily track student usage for CALI Lessons you assign with LessonLink? That's right, no more requiring student screenshots or print-outs as proof that your students ran the lesson. It's simple to create LessonLinks, and the student scoring data shows up in your CALI profile's "My LessonLinks" page as long as students run the lessons through the exact links you give them.  Here's a LessonLink video to show you how.

Sure, running our Punctuation and Grammar for Law Students lesson will help you with common legal writing mistakes. But if you run the lesson through this exact link within the next week, you could just win a prize. Ok, maybe a Starbucks giftcard doesn't compare to the higher legal writing grade you will surely receive. But still, here are the details...

Today is our newest staff member's first day; Sarah Glassmeyer is now our Director of Content Development. She comes to CALI from the law librarian world where she's well-known as an innovator and leader in the community. She was even named one of the Fastcase 50 legal innovators along with John, our Executive Director. Needless to say, we're thrilled to have her aboard. You can follow her through her Twitter account and her blog. Read her take on joining CALI. Welcome to CALI, Sarah!

You've heard about the new CALI viewer and why students should be excited about it (compatibility with tablets and smartphones, for one).

We didn't forget about faculty in all the excitement. We've built into the new Lessons some very handy special features visible only to faculty users. Here are the details:...

CONGRATULATIONS CALI LESSONS! We know how much you needed some changes. But, you're always spending your time helping desperately stressed-out law students learn the law. That's why we rounded up the crew and decided to give you an Extreme Makeover: CALI Lessons Edition.

Today, 8/10/2011, is the day we officially unveil to the whole world your new look and features. We've made the new lesson viewer the default. Read on...

Watch out for big changes here at cali.org on Wednesday, August 10, when CALI Lessons will work on smartphones and tablets, have a completely new look, and add a host of new features. Because this Wednesday we officially send CALI users who push the Play/"Run Lesson" buttons to the new CALI Lesson Viewer.

A note on the LessonLink score tracking feature for faculty users:...

The fine folks at Fastcase just named the Fastcase 50: "the fifty most interesting, provocative, and courageous leaders in the world of law, scholarship, and legal technology." John Mayer, CALI's Executive Director, and Sarah Glassmeyer, our soon-to-be Director of Content Development, were among those honored. ...

Update 8/10/11: The new viewer is out of beta, it's now the default when you click the Run Lesson.

Law students with iPads, iPhones, and other tablets and smartphones, your wait is over. Today we made a beta version of the new CALI Lesson viewer available to all students registered here at cali.org!...

There is not a lot of hand-holding in law school. As an incoming 1L, a certain base level of skills and knowledge is expected of you. In order to make it in law school you should a) recall the very basics of the law - high school level civics stuff, b) be able to write free of many grammar and punctuation problems, and c) recognize what plagiarism is and know how to avoid it.

Coincidently (or not), we at CALI have three CALI lessons that deal with each. Respectively:...

• Where Does Law Come From?
• Punctuation and Grammar Basics for Law Students (part 2/advanced also available)
• Plagiarism - Keeping Out of Trouble

If you're set to become 1L this fall, get the CALI authorization code from a law librarian at your school and run through each of these lessons. Do it now, before the busyness of attending law school sets in.

If you work at a law school as a librarian or professor, think about assigning one or all of these lessons to your incoming students.