Among the most important skills all lawyers rely upon is the ability to do legal research– to find what’s needed to interpret and analyze legal issues. It’s an integral part of the “competencies” that NYLS and the ABA require of law students.  Effective research skills are vital to students engaged in any type of legal writing, to those who are clerking or participating in externships, and to those entering legal practice.

To help prepare you for the realities of law practice, we offer several courses that will make you a more efficient, confident and successful researcher.

Legal Research: Practical Skills (1 credit)

Builds on fundamental research skills through refining students’ techniques, introducing shortcuts and new approaches, and developing effective strategies.  The course focuses on finding legislation, administrative materials, and related cases; using the secondary sources relied on by practitioners; attaining greater proficiency and comfort with Lexis, Westlaw, Bloomberg, and other online research tools, including reliable free and low-cost sources.  We also offer this class with a focus on a particular substantive practice area, including Corporate & Business Law; Criminal Law; Family Law; Intellectual Property Law; and Real Estate Law.

• For the Fall ’22 semester we are offering Legal Research: Practical Skills (4 remote Saturday classes) and Legal Research: Criminal Law (7 weekday classes, in-person).

 

• For the Spring ’23 semester we are offering Legal Research: Practical Skills (4 Saturday classes, in-person) and Legal Research: Corporate & Business Law (7 weekday classes, in person).

 

Legal Research: Skills for the Digital World (3 credits)

Continues to build on the fundamentals described in Legal Research: Practical Skills.  Students concentrate on more advanced techniques and strategies and learn to evaluate online and print materials in order to choose the best and most cost-effective source for projects.  Some assignments are geared to students’ individual subject interests.  Take-home assignments test and enhance students’ ability to perform various research tasks and strengthen their understanding of important research process and strategy consideration. This class will be offered only during the Fall ’22 semester.

Want more information? Contact Associate Dean and Professor Camille Broussard or Professor Michael Roffer.

If you’re an NYLS alum studying for the Bar Exam, we invite you to choose your own personal Library carrel (on L3 or L4) for your exclusive use through the July 26-27 Bar Exam.  If you prefer to study in a room, we have also reserved room L402 in the library for bar studiers.

For those of you interested in reserving a carrel, we’ll put your name on the carrel of your choice, and you can use it as your temporary home away from home.  Who knows…you may occasionally find study treats left just for you.

All you need to do is send an email to darlene.young@nyls.edu, and indicate the number of the carrel you’d like to call your own.  All carrels are labeled by floor and carrel number.  For example, the first carrel on level L3 is labeled L3-C1, the second is labeled L3-C2; the first carrel on level L4 is labeled L4-C1, etc.

Due to Covid-19 distancing requirements, the number of carrels available for use this summer is limited.  If you would like to reserve a carrel, please do so as soon as possible.  Here are the currently available socially distanced carrels:

L3

C1	C3	C6	C8	C10	C12	C14	C16
C18	C20	C22	C24	C26	C28	C30	C31
C33	C34	C36	C38	C40	C42	C44

 

L4

C4	C6	C8	C14	C16	C17	C20	C22
C24	C25	C27	C29	C31	C32	C34	C36
C38	C40	C42	C44	C46

 

Regular habits are essential for Bar Exam study.  And we in the Library CARE about your success.  We look forward to seeing you.

At finals time, we get complaints about noise in the library. We do what we can to cultivate a quiet environment by asking people to be quieter when we observe an issue but we can’t be everywhere. We count on your cooperation to help maintain a quiet space for all.

All areas in the library are Quiet Study Zones, with the exception of the area next to the Reference and Circulation Desks on the first floor. We ask that you keep verbal communication to a minimum in all Quiet Study Zone areas and that you do no more than whisper. Cell phones and computers should be silenced completely. If you are listening to music or other audio via headphones, please ensure the volume is low enough that sound is not leaking from the headphones.

If you encounter a noisy facilities condition like a squeaky door or noisy library equipment, please report it immediately to Reference or Circulation. Send an email to reference@nyls.edu or call extension 2332. We’ll do what we can to get the problem resolved as quickly as possible.

We understand that during finals the library gets crowded, and people may be stressed and on edge, so we appreciate your cooperation in helping us maintain a quiet place for everyone to study. Thank you for your help and good luck on exams!

At a time when women lawyers were often relegated to handling only “women’s issues,” Sybil Shainwald ’76 turned that limitation into a trailblazing career.  Earning her law degree in the school’s evening program in her late 40s, Sybil went on to specialize in women’s health reform.  She litigated cases involving drugs and medical devices that have inflicted harm on women and their children.  She has written, testified, and lectured extensively on obstetrical malpractice, IUDs, unnecessary hysterectomies, hormone therapy, and products liability litigation.

She received the New York Law School President’s Award in 2007 and is a Trustee Emeritus after having served on the Board for many years. In 2004, Sybil created the Sidney Shainwald Public Interest Lecture Series at NYLS in honor of her late husband Sidney, an impassioned advocate for social justice. In 2018, the lecture was delivered by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

You can learn more about Sybil and other esteemed alums by visiting our Digital Commons.

Did you have trouble waking up on Monday?  Or maybe overslept on Sunday?  Well, changing the clocks may be a thing of the past.

On Tuesday, March 15^th, the Senate unanimously passed a bill that would make daylight saving time permanent.  Marco Rubio introduced the bill back on March 9, 2021 but unfortunately it was not voted on in time for this most recent spring forward.  The bill now moves to the House of Representatives where it will need to pass before the end of this legislative session, and then be signed by the president, in order to become law.

On February 25, 2022, President Biden nominated Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court, where she would fill the seat of the retiring Associate Justice Stephen Breyer—the Justice for whom she once clerked.  Judge Brown Jackson currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

If confirmed, Judge Brown Jackson will be the first African-American woman to serve on the Court, as well as one of the youngest justices.  Prior to her appointment to the bench, Judge Brown Jackson practiced in both the public and private legal sectors, including as a public defender.  She would be the first justice since Thurgood Marshall to have experience representing criminal defendants.

If you want to learn more about Judge Brown Jackson and about the SCOTUS nomination process in general, check out this helpful Supreme Court Nominations Research Guide. It lays out both the background of the nominee as well as the confirmation process.  You can also study the nomination and confirmation process of previous justices, including Amy Coney Barrett, the most recent appointment.

In 1869, Myra Bradwell, who had passed the Illinois bar exam, was denied admission to the bar, on the grounds that a married woman couldn’t enter into contracts because of the common law doctrine of coverture and also because of her gender.  In the Illinois Supreme Court’s view, women weren’t entitled to practice law. Voting 8-1, the United States Supreme Court, 83 U.S. 130, affirmed that decision in 1872.  Undeterred, Bradwell continued advocating for women’s rights and continued to publish the Chicago Legal News, which she had founded in 1868 and which had become the most widely circulated legal newspaper of the time.

In 1890, the Illinois Supreme Court reconsidered Bradwell’s 1869 application and granted it nunc pro tunc, retroactively making her the first woman lawyer in Illinois.

Celebrating Black History Month provides the opportunity to highlight some of New York Law School’s most distinguished Black alumni.  For our final Black History Month post, we honor Marianne Spraggins, NYLS class of 1976, who was the first African American female Managing Director on Wall Street, at Smith Barney.  Ms. Spraggins also holds an LL.M. from Harvard Law School.  Before beginning her financial career, she was an associate professor of law at NYLS and director of the school’s Urban Legal Studies Fellowship program.  Ms. Spraggins was an NYLS trustee in the 1990s and received a distinguished alumna award from NYLS in 1992.

In the early 1990s, Ms. Spraggins was appointed by President Clinton as the director of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation and she also served as a Super Delegate for New York in President Obama’s 2008 presidential election.  Past board memberships include the Apollo Theater and Africares, and she has served on the Executive Committee of the Congressional Black Caucus Institute.  Additionally, she is also a former member of the Steering Committee of The Wall Street Project, an organization founded by Rev. Jesse Jackson that advocates for minorities in the financial sector.  Ms. Spraggins’ father, Roy Travers Spraggins, also graduated from NYLS in 1950.

More information relating to these and many other prominent alumni can be found in the Law School’s Digital Commons.