An assignment from the unit on legal agency in Introduction to Law. I had dealt a few times before with general and specific powers of attorney in tax preparation situations, although in those cases I was checking the documents to verify that a military spouse was properly authorized to file on behalf of a deployed service member, instead of composing the documents to meet future needs. One of my instructor’s comments in the assignment feedback was that she found general powers of attorney quite scary, given what a poor agent could do with the power to sign contracts in the name of the principle!
Monthly Archives: November 2012
Comparison between two Last Will and Testaments
This example was the first assignment for my Computers and the Law course, meant to display the use of Microsoft Word more than familiarity with the provisions and format of estate documents. I utilized online examples to find the best legal terminology I could with my current skills.
The second example, from Introduction to the Law about 3 months later, comes in three parts. The assignment was to create a joint will and a living trust agreement, but my research revealed that joint wills are discouraged (though still technically legal) in Colorado. Instead, I executed a pair of mutual wills and prepared the requisite trust agreement. By this point I had gained a much better grasp of the necessary provisions of a proper will and was able to modify the standard language more extensively to suit my needs.
Comparison between 2 Memorandums of Law
This first example, a memorandum on paralegal ethics and Colorado rules regarding Unauthorized Practice of Law, was one of the first assignments I completed for Introduction to the Law, the ground-level course in the paralegal program. As you can see, while my general writing skills were fairly good I had not yet entirely mastered the preferred format and writing style.
The second example is from two months later, and it shows a better understanding of how to present a case brief in memorandum form and also more detailed legal reasoning.
Legal research cheat sheet
A list of web resources for fast, thorough legal research I put together for Introduction to Law. It was more than a little disturbing to me as a former librarian and FOIA officer that the state of Colorado farms its public statutes out to LexisNexis rather than managing their own website. The heavy reliance on the three dominant legal research companies (Lexis, Westlaw, and Loislaw) also made me uneasy. Call me a hippie or a hacker but I do believe that some information is meant to be free-as-in-beer and free-as-in-speech.
Primary Sources
Citation Web Location
State statute (CCR, CRS, COR) Colorado Constitution, Court Rules, Revised Statutes
United States Code (USC) United States Code
Cornell University browsable USC
Government Printing Office prior year codes
United States Code – Annotated (USCA) Westlaw signin
Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Annualized GPO edition
Local ordinance El Paso County ordinances
Secondary Sources
Citation Web Location
State digest Colorado Law Digest purchase page
Federal digest US Federal Law Digest purchase page
American Law Reports Lexis signin
Encyclopedia Wex, Legal Information Institute free encyclopedia
State LoisLaw Connect federal + one state ordering page
Corpus Juris Secundum Westlaw signin
Periodicals & treatises Hein Online signin
University of Colorado Law Review
More musings on legal ethics and information technology
Continuing on in the spirit of my post on “The Dream of the Paperless Office”, this is a research piece I did for Computers and the Law as a make-up for assignments that required software inaccessible to students with a used copy of the (exorbitantly expensive) textbook. While I understand that creating a textbook is a time-consuming process (I should know, one of my college courses created a free online textbook as a final project) and the creators deserve to be compensated for their effort, if prices become so steep that only a few students in the class can stretch their budget to accommodate a new copy of the course text, the publisher’s bottom line is still going to hurt. With free options like Coursera and Open University growing by leaps and bounds, publishers need to rethink their business models from the ground up or risk becoming obsolete.
Separation Agreement
Family Law’s toughest assignment by far was the separation agreement for the Jack and Jill Hill divorce case. The separation agreement is where the differences between the spouses really have to be confronted for the first time and the nitty gritty of breaking apart a shared household puts everyone’s nerves on edge. No wonder, then, that each section of the document has a “yes we do agree on this/no we’re still fighting about it” box to check. Divorces, like torts, are grueling but necessary processes. The anguish of divorce today is piddling compared to the long-term personal misery and resentment of the fault-based divorce days when the law forced you to lie in order to get closure. There’s a reason the government put an end to that and now allows people an escape when “the legitimate objects of marriage have been destroyed”.
Legal (Para)Eagle: Kimberley Hoff's legal blog 