The best method

This is your humble author’s best bet for simple file protection while you’re at university:

[A USB drive ready to be plugged into a computer, source: Wikipedia]

There’s a lot of sense in using these small, inexpensive devices to store your data while you’re studying. They are extremely portable, not only between locations but also between computers. I could plug my USB stick into a university lab computer, hand it to a print shop or plug it into my own laptop and the files on it can be read off with no problems or issues whatsoever. I often copy files that I wanted printed copies of to my USB stick so that I can print them off on the much cheaper bulk laser printers in libraries than on my inkjet at home.

It depends on your requirements, obviously, what you need but generally I would go for a stick with a capacity of a few gigabytes. There’s really no reason not to do this now because costs have dropped so much. Fancier models are nice but speed and security are often overpriced in the eyes of users who just want a plug and play flash drive. I picked my 8GB stick off Amazon.co.uk for about ten pounds. An 8GB stick will be effectively limitless as far as your homework is concerned. I keep a great deal of information on my USB drive, case reports, journal articles, coursework, etc but try to ensure that there is no personal data on the stick, just in case I leave it lying in the library or have it stolen from me and 8GB goes a very long way when you are using it to store text.

I use a [Windows briefcase (remember those?) on my flash drive which will sync with my home computers with a single click. The Briefcase is an ancient feature in Windows since Windows 95 but one which proves very useful to me nearly every day.

For other people simply dragging the folder over will be more than enough to keep a copy of your work but it lacks the synchronization features that using a Briefcase (or another sync program) will give you.

The online method

Online storage is a relatively old phenomenon but one which has only recently taken off. While people have had the opportunity to store their files remotely for many years the tipping point has come when it became easy and fast to do so. While people who still have dial up connections will gladly tell you how slow it is to browse web sites this is nothing compared to the ~3kb/s effort of sending a substantial amount of data the other way.

The most common domestic Internet connection is the Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) which divides a phone line up into various bands for upstream, downstream and voice. This allows the connection to do all three operations at once. That’s great for being able to answer the phone at the same time as use the internet but the way that the phone line divides up the data frequencies does not divide it equally – it’s asymmetric. Generally people will have hugely quick download speeds and considerably slower upload speeds, maybe as little as 10% of the download speed. This provides a massive barrier to anyone who wants to send a lot of data across their connection because it simply takes a lot of time.  For smaller amounts of data, though, it’s very convenient.

There are many options for online storage:

The handiest application I’ve found for my online storage has to be the Gmail Drive. This shell extension for Windows allows you to mount your googlemail account as a drive in Windows and copy files to, save to it from programs and generally use it as you would any other drive. The only difference is that the files are saved in your Gmail account as attachments in emails which you can access from anywhere you have Internet access. The storage limit is about 8GB and no single file can be more than 10MB but if you only use it to back up your text file homework and notes this is more than enough. You may have to reduce the length and complexity of file names to get it working just right but that’s a rare issue for most users.

You could do this manually by emailing yourself files as attachments which will let you access them from wherever you have Internet access but the drag and drop of Gmail Drive is particularly convenient for me.

A slightly more involved method is simply to use an online storage provider; these can be free but often charge monthly fees for their services and provide gigabytes of easy to access storage which you control through an often very colourful and polished downloadable application. I find these to be too much for my requirements which are served by not much more than an email account but they are a good, easy to use option for people who don’t want to get too involved in the technical background.

The network method

If you have more than one computer in your house, for example I have my work laptop and I have a more powerful desktop computer that I use for games and other entertainment tasks, you can use them to store your data in more than one place and improve the redundancy. I personally use a simple Windows SMB based network to create network shares that I can mount and use as regular drives and that does everything that I need the network to do, backup wise.

Even if you don’t have another computer you can still use a network to back up your data. Most people on broadband connections use a router to connect their computer(s) to the Internet and the router is a device which is naturally good at connecting lots of devices to networks. The standalone option is a NAS device:

[One example of a consumer NAS, source: Amazon.co.uk]

Network Attached Storage is a previously only business technology which suddenly became considerably cheaper and suddenly a lot more economical for the home user. These devices are roughly speaking specialized, low cost computers that have enough power to control a hard disc and a network connection and some have features like automatic Bittorrent downloads, which allows the device to run all day and night and not tie up a “real” computer. They come in two main varieties – prebuilt and barebones. Barebones units tend to be a cheaper purchase (but there can be a premium once you factor hard drives into that price too) than complete versions but you have to provide your own hard drives but that gives you flexibility as to your capacity. Prebuilt versions already have drives installed and generally arrive at the user ready to be plugged in the wall and used.

The sneakernet method

Sneakernet [sic] is a term that describes when instead of electronically connecting two computers you save the file you want to share to a disc and physically take it to the other computer. This is useful in situations where you want to save a copy of your work for future reference and want it to be safe from hard drive failure or being stolen from you while you’re out. It is not a bad plan to burn coursework and other essential pieces of your own work to a CD so you can store it at home if the worst should happen. Given the size of coursework files you could get a sizeable portion of your entire written handiwork stored on an old school floppy disc, I certainly remember family members finishing their entire university career with a small stack of floppy discs tucked into their notes. Those discs will still faithfully hold the files that were put on them in years past and that’s all that can possibly be asked of a backup.

No matter what method you use, remember to do it often!

Backups are of no use to you whatsoever if you haven’t got a recent copy of a file that’s suddenly disappeared. If you leave your backups for too long you risk running into a situation where the copy you have is not one which can really help you. I personally keep my USB drive nearly perfectly up to date because I keep the USB drive plugged in a lot of the time and it’s a moment’s work to click “Update All” in My Computer when I’m finished working.

Try to get yourself into a habit of backing your files up regularly when you’re working so you’re not left with outdated copies when disaster strikes.

Hopefully habits picked up in university with stay with you throughout your professional life and in an era where data losses seem to occur on a weekly basis you will be the professional who knows to keep a redundant copy of your client records locked up in a safe place and to use encryption (more on this later) on data that goes out of the office.

*If you’re particularly fervent in your quest for data protection you can bear in mind that the protection that backups give you is redundancy and the only thing that using more than one of these systems can do is improve your security. I personally have copies stored on both my computers as well as on flash drives.

The Student Law Review, published by Routledge Cavendish is a publication bordering on the “terrifyingly polished” and I find it to be a very interesting read that I try to pick up whenever I can.

I’ve done a quick and rough digest of the contents of this edition, and it’s a very, very long post so I’ve added it after the break. I will be back later to fact check but right now I’m just impressed at myself for getting this typed up. These are in no way the whole articles, or indeed perfect outlines of the articles themselves, I was more interested in putting out what the publication covers instead of violating the copyright on the articles themselves:

The publication is split into sections by area of law covered and the Summer 08 edition covers :

Administrative Law

The Student Law Review provides two case reports for two very recent (this year) Canadian cases discussing the old standard question in any liberalist law school – separation of powers. In particular, the result of a challenge regarding the parole board. These cases are still wet on the page and overseas, so this is the first place that I found the reports of these cases which is very interesting.

Civil Liberties and Human Rights

The article on page 5 is particularly interesting – a report written by Professor Helen Fenwick from the Human Rights Centre at the University of Durham – about the viability of blasphemy law. It’s these kind of interesting, unexpected questions which makes the SLR so interesting to me. The article notes the issues arising from the (designed entirely to protect Anglican sensibilities) details of the existing and how this fits into the modern context, after it was resurrected on behalf of Mary Whitehouse of all people in response to the Gay News’ “The Love that dares to speak its name”, with other faiths and also the limitations it naturally places on freedom of expression and therefore – the European Convention on Human Rights.

Civil Litigation

This is an expose on the Limitation Act 1980 and the effect that this has in cases of sexual abuse – where allegations may be made with very little proof but yet there is a distinct, in my opinion, public interest in seeing a prosecution, however, this may be offset by the fact that defendants may have to spend many thousands of pounds defending themselves from allegationns for which there is nearly no evidence to be discovered at all – and to an unfavourable jury, failing to provide evidence may been seen as a very negative action indeed.

Constitutional Law

The constitutional law article is an interest particularly close to my heart – the extent of domestic covert surveillance and the legal foundation for it. I’m interested in watching the development of something which could utterly revolutionise both how people behave as well as how trials are conducted. I’ve seen enough on TV of the police patiently recording drug dealer’s conversations to see how useful it could be but I can think of how it needs controlled too and this article is interesting for this reason.

Criminal Law

The criminal law section this edition is actually interactive, which I think is a brilliant touch for a publication aimed at student. This section is looking at the accuracy of a number of fictious jury directions – for example:

Attempt
You have heard that the defendant entered the door of a bank where he was not a customer and that he had in his pocket a replica gun. He was spotted by the security guard and immediately turned round and left. He has been charged with burglary and attempted robbery… I now turn to the charge of attempted robbery. You must not convict the defendant of attempted robbery unless you are satisfied that he intended to commit theft and intended to use force in order to do so ar at least intended to put someone in fear that he would use force in order to do so. If you are satisfied on that matter, you still must not not convict the defendant unless you are satisfied that he had actually got as far as making the attempt, that is that his actions had gone beyond preparation such that he could be said to be “on the job”. You may consider that his actions were such that they had only one explanation, namely that he was ment on robbery. If so, that will make clear to you that his actions had gone beyond preparation and that he had made an attempt.

Commentary
Certainly the defendant cannot be guilty of an attempt if he das not got an intention to commit the full offence, here robbery. Certainly also, the defendant cannot be guilty unless his actions have crossed over from acts of mere preparation, so that he can be said to have made the attempt. The error the judges made was in the last two sentences of the extract above. It was wrong to direct the jury on what used to be know as the “equivocality theory” and to instruct them that the defendant must have gone beyond preparation if his actions were unequivocal, inexplicable on any basis other that that he had the necessary intention. That was wrong begause firstly the equivocality theory probably never was part of the law, it did not survive when the common law offence of attempt was replaced by the statutory effence of attempt in the Criminal Attempts Act 1981. Any specific pre-1981 tests of proximity no longer apply and the usse of whetther the defendant has beyond preparation is now simply one of fact for the jury: Gullefer [1990] 3 All ER 882.

As you can see, the direction sounds perfectly correct on the law except in one point which is technically not an accurate point. While robbery is not a Scottish crime equivocality theory is an issue which appears up here too, with the same caveat of the statutes which limit it. It’s perhaps a little early for a student to be learning about how to make jury directions but nonetheless it is a very effective way to revise exact (and exact knowledge is important) knowledge of legal principles.

Employment Law

The Employment law section is of interest to students who do not work on a permanent contract as it concerns the legal rights of agency workers – since agency workers do not qualify under some of the strongest workers protective legislation, and lose some of the protectiotns that permanent workers have. Andrew Bell, from Nottingham Law School uses the case of James v London Borough of Greenwich [2008] EWCA Civ 35, which showed the rights arising to an agency cleaner who had to take some time off of work due to illness. The council who had previously used her services argued that she was not entitled to the same benefits as a permanent employee and could be replaced at any time.

English Legal System

Gary Slapper, from the Centre for Law at the Open University, writes an interesting article about legal professional privilege, a tradition which he explains as being due to:

“You don’t want to live in anarchy, you want to live in a soriety of laws and rules. As there are thousands of laws, you don’t want to have to become an expert yourself on them all, any more than you want to learn medicine just so that you can be your own doctor. You want experts on the law: lawyers. So, a society should encourage citizens to go to its lawyers for advice whenever they are in difficulties. To ensure the client-lawyer communications are completely private and confidential.”

It’s an interesting issue, one that I have most often seen in relation to the confidentiality that exists between a priest and a confesser. While, admittedly, this would be fine for an advocate because if the client admits to their crimes to them there is still a process in place for them to either be convinced to plead guilty or to change their representation. The example where it becomes strained is where a client goes to a solicitor not for representation, but for advice about a situation which is illegal. The typical example goes to R v Cox and Railton in which a libellous publisher went to his solicitor to be informed that he couldn’t sell property for his business partner and the man then asked if “anyone knew about the partnership except for you”. The solicitor was later called as a witness in the resulting trial and the testimony was part of the case which convicted them.

You would never admit to a crime to a lawyer if you knew this would then lead to your own prosecution but how about for events which you do not know are illegal? But, also, the other thing issue is that, unlike a doctor keeing a patient’s details private, there could be a public need that the information – for example a confession about a crime, be reported leaving this a contested area morally.

Equity and Trusts

This section includes a series of collected by M A Ramjohn, from Thames Valley University from around the world. Again these are right up to the minute and represent the current opinion of case law in the field. It’s a very useful resource to have a collection of extremely relevant cases which have only just been decided. As well as giving recent authorities it also lets a student see how recent events have played out behind the scenes legally. The cases cited here revolve around dishonesty and the tests for this. Dishonesty is a massive problem in trusts (ironically) because so much of the legally binding element in directly suited into keeping the parties honest.

European Union Law

Again, this section is a recent case report but, for some reason, despite the astonishing length that I generally associate with European Court of Justice and European Court of Human Rights reports I still find the reports fascinating and exotic – even down to the party names. I suspect this feeling of the exotic will fade rapidly the more I read of them but the fact is, right now, I think there’s a lot of charm to the European cases that I’ve read. I think that the fact that the European courts are the very last resort and tend to be for only the most serious and meritorious cases means that it weeds out a great number of cases which won’t be as interesting or as contested.

The case which Jim Davies, from the Centre of European Law and Integration at the University of Leicester looks at is a computer law one which came before the ECJ in January of this year – Productores de Musica de Espana (Promusicae) v Telefonica de Espana SAU which involves the issue of the downloading of copyrighted materials. The question which was referred to the ECJ was if the Spanish law which Telefonica based its argument on, while valid in Spain may have broken Community law. This was to deal with the issue of if ISPs could be used to gain real world information which would then be used to locate the people who are responsible for the downloading. This comes from the Belgian case SABAM v Scarlet which made this possible.

Evidence

The evidence column comes from the pen of Lisa Mountford, who is a solictor and a Barrister who is also attached to Staffordshire University Law School and discusses something fundamental to evidence law – the “admi[ssion] of hearsay in the interests of justice”. We have all seen legal dramas in which the hero witness has said “I didn’t do it, I heard that [...] did it, not me!” and the opposing laywer stands up and says “Objection – hearsay” and the judge immediately shoots back a “sustained” and tells the jury to disregard it. This example is uniquely American legal drama but nevertheless – this is a genuine point which has to be got around if the only evidence that can be provided is hearsay. If the only reason that your witness knows that someone did a crime was that someone else had told them, then there is no way that you can. The Criminal Justice Act 2003 actually defines what kinds of hearsay can be admitted, generally on the basis that they are essential to the case and there is a very difficult test involved with a lot of discretion on the part of the judge. The article also mentions that the admissability of a confession depends on the person who makes it, up until R v Y, where not only the person who made the confession is implicated, but also the people who were mentioned in it.

Family Law

The family law column comes from M E Rodgers from Nottingham Law School and describes probably the most extreme case in family law – a child being removed at birth. This case is chosen due to the topical nature and the fact that it is an effective cautionary tale where the effect that the removal would have been acceptable – had the correct procedure been followed and since there were mistakes made in the process that ended up in the child being removed from G the whole case was decided in G’s favour.

Health Law

Andrew Alonzi, who is a solicitor and a senior lecturer at Nottingham Law School discusses the Mental Capacity Act 2005 which came into full force on the 1st October 2007 and codified the issue of advance decisions to refuse medical treatment. It’s the living will for someone who does not want medical treatment for an illness or in the case of a heart attack or the like – however, there are a long series of checks before it can be confirmed that the person who refuses treatment is mentally capable of deciding that they do not want to be treated. This has to be a careful process because if someone decides to refuse potentially life saving treatment this is a weighty decision which is one that.

It is a very picky area of law which needs to be specifically addressed by someone who wants to decide to refuse treatment – because should a person who has refused, say, to be intubated if they stop breathing suffer a heart attack they can still be resucitated with a defibrilator and the events which are specified must be present (say, a loss of mental capacity after a stroke – up until there is a loss of capacity, they can still be treated in the way that they have refused) and should someone be able to prove that there are reasonable grounds (a fairly broad standard) that the person who refused treatment was unaware of circumstances that would have reasonably affected their decision – something which a reasonably diligent lawyer working with a doctor can almost certainly very quickly work out in short measure.

Intellectual Property Law

There is an interesting crossover here – with an IP challenge to a bioinformatic system. This leads to a question of the policy associated with patenting software in the UK – previously software inventions were not protected by the UK patent office. However, the European policy will allow software to be be protected this way.

Mark Van Hoorebeek, from Bradford University Law School, show that there are only four main requirements that are required for an invention to be patented – the invention must be new, must involved an inventive step, has an industrial application and (according to the Patent Act 1977 it must not be excluded by 1(2) or (3), which is unfortunately – at 1(2)(c):

It is hereby declared that the following (among other things) are not inventions for the purposes of this Act, that is to say, anything which consists of: a scheme, rule or method of performing a mental act, playing a game or doing business, or a program for a computer.

Which sadly means that the whole computer program is forbidden, no matter how well it qualities under the other three points. However, in Europe, it is possible to patent a software application and therefore, there is a gap in the domestic law which, according to my professors, would be filled by the Community law.

International Trade Law

Dr Jason Church, from the University of Westminster, provides a student eye view of how to use the Hague Visby rules in your studies to deal with issues of international carriage. It’s a reasonably short article packed with practical advice for law students faced with questions on this topic – Church reports that the questions are popular because of the schematic layout of the system and this advice may come in useful in the future once I start to look at jursidictions outside Scotland.

Jurisprudence

Stuart Toddington, also from the University of Westminster, gives an interesting look at the jurisprudence of “Universalism, Multiculturalism and the Rule of Law” which looks at the faults of the traditional universalised way of looking at people under the law to looking at the individual traits of the people involved and how this affects their position. It’s a fundamentally different approach which has begun to slowly sweep the legal field, one very heavily publicised example is in the changes to the treatment of victims of rapes in trials. Technically a rape victim is just another eye witness but there is a major difference from them to someone who spotted a drunken driver enter a car. The issue of multicultuarism leads to another problem – one in which societies which have vastly different priorities to the standard English or Scottish legal system, for example, someone who rates their loyalty to the State (the sworn oath of honesty) less highly than their loyalty to family (who may be on trial) may not be as honest a witness as would be hoped. The issue of dealing with this is a big problem in a modern, multicultural world where people are different but considered to be exactly the same before the law. It is also seen in the famous “same but different” decision which meant that segregation was still allowed in the US up until fairly recently.

Land Law

Dr M J Dixon, Reader in the Law of Real Property, Queen’s College Cambridge, writes about the effect of an Appeal Court decision (Ofulue v Bossert [2008] EWCA Civ 7) about adverse possession. The interesting fact is the issue of the now settled spill over of ECHR decisions which affected this case which means that the state of European law more tellingly affects this area of law, the possession of land, than previously confirmed.

Tort Law

Firstly, you immediately see that this publication is not entirely Scottish in intent and, in fact, it really could not be any less Scottish with serious effort. The cover story is about how to qualify to the bar, in New York and this section here happily talks about an area of law which is huge in the rest of the world – especially in common law systems because of its origins in England, but called Delict here. Nevertheless, although the systems are distinct and different this does not mean that the issue of fault and injury differ that dramatically even though the jurisdiction changes and the basic lessons from both are pretty much directly applicable.

Roderick Bagshaw, Tutor and Fellow from Magdalen College, Oxford gives a report on limitation and a report on negligence. In the first case, the tort case is one which is raised by victims of sexual abuse during care who missed the time limit but argued that they should still be able to claim. They claimed that the claims for deliberate abuse were for breach of duty”. This meant that, as the abuse was in the line of employment it circumwents the issue of Stubbings v Webb [1993] AC 498 which held that “claims for deliberate assault were not ‘for negligence, nuisance or breach of duty’ and thus, the employers of the abusers should be vicariously liable for their injuries. “The decision turned on the interpretation of the phrase ‘for negligence, nuisance or breach of duty, in a statute”

The case also provides guidance on the point at which the claimants have knowledge – that is they know “a) that the injury in question was significant” and “c) the identity of the defendant” and this is tested under the stanadardof the reasonable man – which leaves a lot of discretion the courts. It is interesting even from a lay perspective to see what counts as knowing from a legal perspective.

The other case, which deals which negligence relating to a public authority, is Jain v Treant Strategic Health Authority [2008] 2 WLR 456, this is to do with the question of an unlicenced nursing home. The challenge resulted from the owners being alledgedly reckless with their registration, the appeal was allowed, although one judge dissented. This case also looks at the

Book Review

The books reviewed this edition are:

The main piece is about “Revenue Law – Text and Materials” byDavid Salter, Natalie Lee and John Snape and the short piece by Tim Vollans, Coventry University Law School highlights the strength of previous books on the subject and the strength of this one. It’s an interesting sentiment where the field can be covered by a textbook and a casebook.

The other books recieve less attention but nonetheless have a useful mention, sounding like a blurb:
International Law 6th edition, Malcolm Shaw

“Malcolm Shaw’s engaging and authoritative International Law has become the definitive textbookfor instructorsand students alive in this increasingly popular field of academic study. The hallmark writing style provides a stimulating account, while maintaining detail and academic rigour. The analysis integrated in the textbook challenges students to develop critical thinking skills.

Key Features
Completely updated 6th edition contains:
New chapter on international criminal law
Dedicated chapter on the International Court of Justice
Detailed references throughout encourage further reading on the part of the student at either an undergraduate or postgraduate level.
High level analysis ombined with stimulating and engaging writing style.”

Also noted in the book review section is:
The Law and Policy of the world Trade Organisation, Peter Van den Bossche

Also worth noting is the 20% discount code offered from Cambridge University Press if you use the discount code on this page, with the price of law textbooks it is always worth looking at any savings you can find.

For those whose law schools are not as generous or would prefer to have a copy delivered to their home the Student Law review costs £16.50 for a 1 year subscription or £39.50 for 3 years, which includes a 20% discount. The publication comes out 3 times a year. The magazine is subsidised through adverts which dot the pages. The adverts are, for the most part, uninvasive and they are all scrupulously

The Student Law Review subscription line can be contacted on +44(0)17553 681813 and the subscription form is inside the magazine.

This was an unexpected challenge of a post. Normally, I would have split this post up into separate reports on each of the articles and publish each one as an individual post but in this case I wanted to show what the typical edition of Student Law Review contains and I think I have shown that it contains a great deal of unusual content, however I was trying to do it in a minimal style. The full edition is nearly 60 pages long and full of dense text so these few thousand words were not the easiest to cut down. I personally think that any law material you read during down periods is beneficial to your overall development as a law student – one of my tutors actually recommends trying to read three cases a day -presumbaly for four years, which is a staggering undertaking, so I feel that reading periodicals which are themselves entertaining may not train you to read the primary sources of law but are still a side of legal reasoning that is worth exposing yourself to.

It’s called Snapter and I’m pleasantly surprised with how effective it is. I tested it out with my camera phone and a copy of 100 Cases Every Scots Law Student Should Know and and as long as you remember to abide by the rules the program gives you: take the photos from straight above with the spine vertical in the image then you can reliably create a very readable pdf from the images. It’s not a quick process, and it’s almost certainly the most processor intensive application you will ever use for your legal studies but the results are very surprising and usable. I’ve done an example here with Scott Adam’s “Way of the Weasel” which I chose because it includes text boxes and images alongside text – so it’s actually more complicated to scan than most law textbooks.

Snapter has a deceptively simple design of interface for what is a powerful program with many features and controls hidden in the boxes, for the best results you should set the controls each time you use Snapter but the defaults manage well on their own. I found the most useful option was the “original size

Basic photographic principles apply If you used a higher resolution camera and better lens with a tripod you would see better results than these, these test shots came from my 3.2Megapixel SE k800i camera phone which I chose because it’s the only camera I routinely take to the library. Users with newer phones with 5 or more megapixel cameras will almost certainly find that the pdfs produced are extremely readable even on small text. I intend to use Snapter to replace my photocopying, this makes the $50 pricetag for the full version (needed to fully enable the program’s Book mode after the free trial expires) extremely affordable. With photocopying running at about 3-6p per sheet the expense of photocopying personal copies of cases becomes substantial. Also, filing the vast amounts of photocopying which you naturally generate as a law student is a task which requires considerable discipline to avoid the dreaded student “pile of paper under the desk”, being able to directly create pdfs of reference books without needing to photocopy them is more economical and more ecological, with the added advantage of not being able to lose the files as easily as the photocopies.

There are other book scanning solutions but these tend to rely on the user being able to scan the book using a specially designed flatbed scanner(for example the PlusTek Optiscan) which is less than ideal in a law library. Snapter’s advantage comes from the convenience of being able to take a record of the exact text you need on the fly using nothing other than the devices you would already be carrying.

You can use it to inexpensively produce copies of cases for other people as well, instead of needing to recopy each page of your own photocopy for others you can simply email the pdf around, and you can also do the processing on your laptop as you are in the library, all while using your university’s reproduction licence. It’s not the fastest process so be aware that it will both drain battery life and take its time but it’s the only example of automatically transforming photos of books into documents that I’ve seen.  It’ll save paper, money and the environment in its own small way.

The direct competitor to this are the online legal databases which also give you the option of downloading a digital copy of the report to your computer and I find these a better option than hurriedly produced snapter pdfs, however, Westlaw does not provide copies of textbooks nor does it provide copies of cases which are either very old or very obscure and it is these situations where snapter shines.  If your law library provides paper copies of journals or law reports which are not available online in full text format then you need some way to make a copy for yourself.

With many of the most sought after books only available on loan from the library for a matter of hours a student may sometimes find that they spend the entire time they have with the book running it through a photocopier instead of reading it. A fast camera can take photos of every page of a textbook within a university’s stort loan time, this means that books which are extremely sought after (for example the set textbook) can be copied out. The prohibitive expense of photocopying a textbook is considerably lessened when you are operating in the fixed cost of a digital camera and a copy of Snapter, and remember that with law textbooks retailing for around £40 (and science subjects cost even more) from the university bookshop any use that a student can get from the library is to be pounced on.

For those students who are also looking using snapter to produce copies of music, students in Glasgow can use the libraries of other higher education institutions, including the Glasgow School of Art and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama on a reference only basis which means that you can use the RSAMD to find sheet music for yourself.  I read here that Snapter was less impressive at capturing music books but I disagree based on my experiences using the newest version.

I was so surprised that snapter gave such poor results on capturing music that I immediately grabbed a book of scales off my shelf and tried it for myself, I believe I have a newer version than was tested since I downloaded my copy last night. Again, I used a Sony Ericsson k800i camera phone which is only 3.2Mpx and although some of the text is smudged (small bold text had a harder time of it) because of the resolution and the height I had to take the picture at to get both pages in frame the edges of the picture were detected perfectly and there was no issue seeing marks on semiquavers or the like.

I’m all for snapter, I think it’s designed for times you couldn’t bring an automated book scanner with you – in my case when I’m at the reference library and it does very well using even phone photos in those situations. It beats having to scan photocopies at home or having no copy at all, that’s for sure. I think it will provide a very important service for students above all, but remember that the possiblity to generate digital versions of paperwork is often very useful even just for collaboration with other people by email. For instance emailing digital copies of forms to other professionals. Consider Snapter to be an extremely flexible (allowing for the easily foxed edge detection), inexpensive digitiser which can be used anywhere that a photocopier or a scanner would also work, with much less footprint and less time spent with the original.

Firstly, you will need a word processor, this is a given at law school and it will be difficult to use a computer without one for any school. Generally the only requirement is that you submit marked work in a format which your law school can understand – in my case this means .doc (or .rtf, but you lose some of the features of the former). These formats cover nearly every word processing system in the world. .Doc is officially Microsoft Word’s format but it has been reverse engineered a number of times over the years and is now available in nearly all competing products.

I personally use Microsoft Word 2007 for writing my papers and even these posts but there are a number of extremely good competing programs available. The most famous is probably OpenOffice.org which is available for all the systems a law student would consider using, the best element in OO.o’s favour is that is sold free. Another is Google Docs which has the advantage of letting you access any documents you have written using a web browser – this avoids problems of leaving files on your computer at home. You are able to edit the documents as you would in any other word processor and, like the others, this also supports .doc. If you are willing to convert files between programs you may be interested in using a program such as DarkRoom (originally seen on the Mac as WhiteRoom) which allows you to simply write onto the screen with no other distractions, it’s a good move if you’re using your computer for taking typed notes, but beware – DarkRoom lacks features such as a spellcheck, word count, most certainly does not complete words for you and cannot save in .doc format, but never the less it is an entirely different way of writing which can avoid you being distracted by any other items on the screen and that is a valuable .

Secondly, presentation software – today you can often use the Powerpoint slides that a professor has lectured with to help you study. These files are a lot less compatible with competing products but I have had good results from both OpenOffice’s presenter and Google’s in displaying the slides. Fortunately the first casualties in a compatibility problem are fancy effects while you are really only concerned with the content of the slide. PC and Mac versions are available for each of the options given. OpenOffice and Google Docs will also run straight away using Linux if anyone wishes to use that option – probably most likely on an ultra low cost laptop like an EeePC. Running Microsoft Office on these ultra low cost laptops is very possible but somewhat more convoluted.

Third is a good pdf reader. I happen to prefer PDFs to doc files for files I want to have a permanent, read only record of – like case reports. I would not want to run the risk of having accidentally erased part of a case which I would like to later rely on and it also helps me physically distinguish my own work from research at a glance.

Options abound for pdf readers, Adobe’s own free Acrobat Reader is very effective but is becoming increasingly bulky with features added which are not necessarily helpful. You may get better performance from a lighter program such as Foxit Reader which provides the same functionality – you’ll still be able to read your case reports but you’ll also be able to annotate it as well, which is a major advantage that the free Acrobat Reader can’t do, the $299 version of Acrobat can but that’s extremely expensive and not really intended for students to use. All of the major legal databases provide an option to save cases to your computer in pdf format so this makes a lot of sense while researching.

Finally, a web browser, as mentioned there is such a thing as a online legal database which you will use a lot at law school, my personal favourite is Westlaw but there are many others available which provide subtly different sources and interfaces for you to use, some resources such as HUDOC (the European Court of Humans Right’s portal) are nigh on essential for taking part in some classes. I’m still waiting for someone to develop some form of meta search for these but I think that day cannot be long off. Through these your web browser will give you access to case reports, journal articles and legislation. In fact, the internet is rapidly becoming the best research tool you have. Critically, your university library will almost certainly use an electronic record service, this may allow you to browse the catalogue and reserve books until you travel to the library physically, one of the sneakier moves is to reserve books from the lecture hall as they’re announced to improve your chances of getting the rare library copies of assigned textbooks. This saves a lot of time looking for books and time saved away from fruitlessly perusing the stacks is worth its weight in gold when you are working hard on assignments. Your web browser will probably be the only program that you use for degree work more than your word processor.

I should mention that LexisNexis has changed greatly since even I started my law degree and is much more responsive when used with a browser other than Microsoft Internet Explorer. I was disapointed with the need for Lexis to reload its sources page every time I clicked one box, as opposed to letting me select a number at once, this has now been fixed and the main draw of Lexis – the dizzing array of searchable sources – can now be properly used in Opera and other non Internet explorer browser. This also makes the choice of using a Mac or Linux computer a better option than it used it to be as there is no loss of functionality when using Lexis.

My copies of Word and Powerpoint are official versions which came as part of Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate, normally this is hugely excessive and I would not recommend it but in the first part of my first year Microsoft started a teachers and students only service allowing them to buy the Ultimate version for £40 if they could provide a valid .ac.uk email address, which I consider reasonable enough to purchase, considering that I will use the program for years as it has all the functionality that I need. Had this deal not come around I was planning to use OpenOffice but decided that I wanted to use OneNote so this made the deal very good.

OneNote is really a good program – it provides you with a mixed media digital notebook, it lets you combine your pdf case reports, typed (or recorded) lecture notes and supports handwriting support. I’ve even been able to use the movie insert function for webcasts. It means that all your notes are combined into one searchable form, and searches are not always perfect for law students to use (I advise everyone to avoid searching for words when reading cases), but being able to find specific points in textbooks or lecture notes (like being able to search for “remedies” for instance) very quickly is a great time saver which would have taken a good deal longer even with a casual scan through yourself. I find the virtual printer that it adds to your system indispensible as a way of getting a permanent record of a page without using a printer. I also use OneNote as a way of saving my receipts from online shops without wasting paper, if it should happen that I need to print a copy of the timestamped record off – I have one stored in OneNote.

Computers have really revolutionised the way that people study law and if you plan out your methods in advance you can really benefit from having a computer with you while on campus. Don’t underestimate how much of your degree can be solved through books and there’s nothing worse than reading a book later in the year and realising it would have been helpful.

I personally try to do as much research as possible online, as far as finding reports and journal articles goes – simply because photocopying begins to be a considerable cost when you factor in the amount of reading that we have to do – and not to mention that I find myself sidetracked by getting into conversations with people once I’m at the library. I also prefer having a .pdf record of the case on my usb stick rather than a thick and heavy paper stack in my bookcase, not to mention the effect this must have on the environment. When presenting you should have a hard copy of the case or article which you are relying on, ideally with a copy to hand out to the significant parties, such as the other side and the judge during a moot, ready to hand in case clarification on a point you do not personally remember is called for but when researching to type up assignments there is a lot less difficulty in simply using the copy on your computer, especially for bibliographical data.