Nevada Rental Foreclosure

If you are a renter who's dwelling unit is being foreclosed upon, the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada has a useful summary of Nevada law on rental foreclosures. The summary includes sample letters to the new owners, step-by-step lists of what to do if you are served with a summons and complaint and information for Section 8 tenants.

http://www.lacsn.org/consumer-rights-project/foreclosures/

Updated 6/22/11 to correct the Legal Aid of Southern Nevada link above (scroll down to Rental Foreclosure)

The Clark County Civil Self-Help Center has a page on Eviction after Foreclosure: http://www.clarkcountycourts.us/CivilSHC/landlord-tenant-evictions/eviction-foreclosure.html

The Nevada Dept. of Business & Industry also has a website with information for tenants of foreclosed properties: http://foreclosurehelp.nv.gov/Renters_Eviction.htm

If you do not want to negotiate with the lender directly, there is a list of local nonprofit housing counseling agencies you may contact: http://foreclosurehelp.nv.gov/docs/HousingCounselors.pdf

Nolo's Foreclosure Survival Guide Available Free on Nolo Website

Nolo's Foreclosure Survival Guide is the first book available free from the Nolo Law Library site. Find out more at Nolo's Bankruptcy and Foreclosure Blog. While the library does not own this title, it does own many other Nolo products, some of which are available for loan. Search the catalog to see which Nolo books are in the library's collection.

When What Happens Online Ends Up in Court

Poor judgment + social media = 10 Cases Where Online Activity Came Back to Haunt

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. The same is not true of what happens online. With increasing regularity, litigants, lawyers, witnesses, jurors and even judges are seeing their online activities come back to haunt them in court.

Unpublished Orders on Westlaw

Some months ago Westlaw began adding unpublished orders to the Nevada Cases database. These orders are not citable in Nevada courts per SCR 123.

If you are searching NV-CS and wish only to retrieve published opinions, use the following search string to exclude unpublished orders from your result:

search terms % ci(unpublished)

or

search terms AND NOT ci(unpublished)

Be sure to use the "and not" operator at the end of your search. Note, this only works when using Terms & Connectors.

Carson City has Joint Petition for Divorce on website

Carson City has posted Joint Petition for Divorce with/without Children on their website in both Microsoft Word format and PDF. Forms

Updated: Carson City is no longer making forms available in Word format.

Sonia Sotomayor

The Library of Congress has added a page of links to selected resources on Judge Sotomayor to its page on Supreme Court Nominations.

Robert J. Ambrogi wrote a good article reviewing websites with free access to caselaw. The Nevada State Bar offers access to Fastcase for Bar members.

Washoe County Law Library's Foreclosure page

Myndi of the Washoe County Law Library sent me this link to their webpage on foreclosure. Check it out.

Foreclosure help from the government

Nevada has put together an excellent website for foreclosure information:Nevada Foreclosure Help! Las Vegas also has an excellent foreclosure workbook online, the Nevada Foreclosure Information Workbook.

Wake-Up Call on Slipshod Search Terms

From the New York Law Journal:

Evidently weary of deficient keyword searches, U.S. Magistrate Judge Andrew J. Peck recently issued a self-styled "wake-up call" to members of the bar in the Southern District. Instead of attorneys designing keywords without adequate information "by the seat of their pants," Peck appealed for keyword formulations based on careful thought, quality control, testing and cooperation.

Hidden gems

Websites often have hidden gems, sometimes referred to as Easter eggs in IT parlance. I would consider http://www.washoecourts.com/index.cfm?page=filing_office (drop down menu to divorce information) as one. This is a page on divorce information such as what types of divorce do not require a court hearing. If you know of an "Easter egg" hidden on your website please let us know and we'll share it with our readers.

HeinOnline Offers "Getting Started" Webinar

The Supreme Court library subscribes to HeinOnline. It is available from a public access computer in the library (and at the desktop for Supreme Court staffers - call the Ref Desk x41640 if you need the password). Hein is offering a web-based seminar next Wednesday, April 15 from 10-1 PDT. Register here.

For those of you unfamiliar with HeinOnline, it contains databases of searchable images (PDFs) of law reviews, government documents (CFRs, session laws of all 50 states, historical congressional documents), United Nations and American Law Institute documents.

For more information including announcements of new databases, search info, tips and tricks and more on HeinOnline, check out the HeinOnline blog.

Supreme Court Unveils New Website and Domain

The Supreme Court unveiled its new domain and website this morning. A feature of the new website is summaries of the cases before the court. The court is also streaming oral arguments and archiving audio files of prior oral arguments (though there's a bit of a lag before they are posted).

Fla. Bar Association Sued Over Ban on Client Testimonials

Public Citizen has sued the State Bar of Florida on behalf of attorney Joel Rothman challenging the constitutionality of its ban on client testimonials in attorney advertising.

The case stems from Rothman's use of the online lawyer directory Avvo, which not only lists attorneys but also ranks them on a scale of one to 10 and gives clients an opportunity to review attorneys.

Rules on attorney advertising in Nevada can be found at NRS 7.045, RPC 7.1-RPC 7.4.

Prime Interest Rates

Every January and July the Nevada Division of Financial Institutions publishes the Prime Interest Rate according to NRS 99.040(1). To view this pdf which lists the rates from 1987 to 2009 go to their website .

Forms

We have many links to forms on our website. We add links constantly as we find new forms posted or older forms updated. These forms are meant to be used as a template, or an example, since each situation is different and one form does not fit all. If you find a form that you think would be useful to link to on our website, please let me know.

Petition for Judicial Review

The Clark County Civil Law Resource Center has developed instructions and sample forms to petition for judicial review. You can find the forms on the Eighth Judicial District Court Probate website under the section "Petitions and Order Packets."

Updated 4/9/10: The Petition for Judical Review has been moved to the Civil/Criminal/Probate Forms Library section of the Clark County Courts website. The forms are listed alphabetically and you will need to scroll about two-thirds of the way down the page to find the petition.

Welcome to the Nevada Supreme Court Library Blog!

Check back often (or add us to your RSS reader) for updates on new titles; additions to Self-Help Resources, including forms; and alerts when new rules are adopted by the court. We'll also be featuring new Federal documents and discussing legal research tips.