I have attached an email we received from our West rep today. Our
question is, do we switch our standing order (65 copies) of Federal
Civil Judicial Procedures & Rules to Federal Civil Rules Handbook?
Have others received this too? What do people think??
Many Thanks!
Pauline E. Hennrikus
Librarian
Burns & Levinson, LLP
125 Summer Street
Boston, MA 02110
Direct: 617-345-3245
Fax: 617-345-3299
phennrikus@burnslev.com
________________________________
From: Brian.Burgeson@thomson.com [mailto:Brian.Burgeson@thomson.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2007 1:57 PM
To: Brian.Burgeson@thomson.com
Subject: Urgent - ALL Federal Civil Rules are changing, effective
December 1st!
Importance: High
Hello all - I apologize for the mass email, but there's just no other
way I can possibly get this information out to all my clients in time.
In case you have not heard (I just found out this week, and less than
half my clients so far know this), on December 1st, EVERY SINGLE Federal
Civil Rule is changing. Since the rules were promulgated in 1938, this
has never happened. These changes have mostly come about as a result of
a comprehensive overhaul by a federal style committee. There are
stylistic and substantive changes, and all the forms have changed as
well. Further complicating matters is the fact that the United States
Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in May (Bell Atlantic Corp vs
Twombley) stating that the old pleading standard for Rule 8 is based on
a 1957 case that they have concluded was wrongly decided, and needed to
be retired. The changes are so far-reaching that a prominent group of
law professors petitioned Congress to table these changes because
attorneys nationally are unprepared to deal with the drastic changes.
The decision point, however, has passed, and the rules will be going
into effect. The link for that petition is here:
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/civpro/2007/09/the-amendments-.html
What to do? - the 2008 Federal Civil Judicial Procedures & Rules will
NOT be releasing earlier than its standard March 2008 update. However,
you may be aware that Thomson West also produces the Federal Civil Rules
Handbook, which releases on November 19th, just in time for the coming
rule changes. All rule changes will be in this volume, along with all
the new forms, and a great deal of annotated commentary. There will
also be a "roadmap" at the end of each rule indicating the Style Project
changes and the non-stylistic (substantive) changes to the rules. Many
firms already purchase this title, though frequently in smaller
quantities than the Federal Civil Judicial Procedure & Rules, but not
all firms know of the existence of this title. If you would like to
purchase this title, increase your order, find out more about the title,
or inquire as to how many you will be receiving, please contact me. I
have attached an informational sheet for your reference. This title is
NOT available on Westlaw.
As I mentioned, less than half the clients I have spoken to thus far are
aware of the pending rule changes, and I only found out this week. We
had a meeting on Monday with the authors of this title, and they stated
that approximately 1500 billable hours were devoted to sifting through
all the rule changes and determining what happened to each. Hopefully
this will help to convey the scale of the changes to the rules.
Also, I will be out of the office Friday November 9th, but will return
on Monday the 12th. Please let me know if you need any more
information. Thanks again for taking the time to read this.
Brian Burgeson
Large Law Firm Sales Representative
800-328-9352 x87380
fax 800-741-1414
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Dec 03 2007 - 09:57:05 PST