Announcements

Financial Links Catalyst Awards Luncheon

The Financial Links Annual Catalyst Awards Luncheon will be held at Smith Barney (10 S. Wacker Drive, Suite 2800, Chicago) on November 8 from 12:00 noon to 1:30 p.m. Lunch will be served. Please bring a photo identification. The Financial Education Program instructors’ meeting follows at 1:30 p.m. Instructors are required to attend.

Contact Patrick Hain at 312.263.3830 or patrickhain@povertylaw.org to register or for more information.

Tools for Keeping Current While Avoiding Information Overload
Staying informed of legal developments and news is a challenge for most of us. In a sea of information sources, what are the best websites for poor people’s advocates seeking to stay informed on various topics? What technology tools are available to aggregate relevant information and serve it to you on demand?

Four articles recent posted to eJustice can help. Legal Research on the Internet is a guide to the best sources for substantive legal information of interest to poverty lawyers. An accompanying article describes the features of the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law website, which serves as an information hub for legal aid advocates. Really Simple Ways to Keep Up with News and Information describes really simple syndication, or RSS, and how to use it to keep track of news that is of particular interest to you. A final article features links to particularly useful RSS feeds. Each article includes links to helpful screencasts that offer demonstrations of the topics discussed.

A Revised Edition of the Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys

The Federal Practice Manual for Legal Aid Attorneys, an invaluable resource for legal aid and public interest lawyers, has been updated. Edited by Jeffrey S. Gutman, professor of clinical law and associate dean for Academic Affairs at George Washington University Law School, and published by the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, the 2006 edition is now available in PDF format. Topics covered include preparing for litigation, jurisdiction, drafting and filing the complaint, causes of action, pretrial and trial practice, limitations on relief, and relief. Individual chapters from the manual are available for download free of charge from the Shriver Center’s online Poverty Law Library.

An HTML version of the manual, including links to hyperlinks to statutes, case documents, and model pleadings, is forthcoming on eJustice.org, the Shriver Center’s national technology project. The HTML version will also include links to several supplemental materials, such as annotated model pleadings.