Re: Michigan Bankruptcy Laws re: Correspondence Law Students

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All I wanted to know was if the Rittenhouse decision was still good law. I have taken legal research at an ABA
school, and am familiar with Shepardizing, Keycite, all of Nexis, Westlaw, etc. Free websites can give you almost
any district, appeals or SCOTUS decision, but do not provide information as to whether or not this is good law or
not, as they do not provide links to other cases, precedent, etc.

My current law school does not provide access to Westlaw or Nexis.

Thank you for the information and your time, and the lecture.

I will have the memo, with a proper reference page, on your desk first thing in the morning.

I think I will just call Rittenhouse up and ask him. It would be a lot faster.

Crown Prince

On 11/01/08, -- wrote:
> I think you owe me a report (memo) on what you find in your future research on whether the Rittenhouse case
> [291 F.3d 925 (2002)] is still good law. You may have to go to the law library to do your research or you may
> be able to use the "Find Law" free site to do some of your research (probably not all of your research
> though). I gave you the Shepard's report so 90 percent of your work is done in finding out if Rittenhouse
> [Id.] is still good law. In your memo (if you choose to honor me) please use pin cites in Blue Book format.
>
> Research is the most important part of the practice of law. It looks cool to see the lawyers on Boston Legal
> get up and wing it in court with a great speech which wins their case. That is TV. In a real practice you do
> research until your eyelids can no longer be held open before you open your mouth. You may have to go to a
> university or supreme court law library to do research even if you do have a Lexis or Westlaw subscription
> because not everything you need is there. Books are cool. Hours go by and you find you learn much more than
> with the click of a mouse.
>
> Have you ever Shepardized a case by book? It is tedious and time consuming. It is the way lawyers did it
> until a few years ago and many still do. In law school we had to do manual Shepardizing even though we had an
> electronic version. It was really good training. But of course you need a law library to do that, something
> that WCSL doesn't have for you.
>
> Finally--I want to point out that the research you requested was available online through free search engines
> except for the Shepard's report I decided to include for you. In the real practice of law, the guy you ask for
> help on research paid his/her dues to learn how to research and they will most likely tell you to do your own
> research. You are a student so I helped you.
>
> Let me know what you find.