: Hello. The CALL Private Law Library Special Interest Group met October 2 for the first meeting of the 2024-2025 session. This year we are going to focus on soft skills in private law libraries, and we started with reviewing statistics and data-driven decision making. These decisions can be as simple as which books to weed based on circulation statistics to as in-depth as which products to cancel based on little use. We welcomed a number of private law librarians for a rousing discussion on the use of stats, how we make decisions, how we report the statistics to our managing partner / C-level team / lawyers, and everything in between. We ended with a round table, as we often do, and came up with some ideas for future sessions, including how private firms bill / don’t bill for online research, how to use the stats to inform new training sessions, and will AI ever be able to run stats for us? We concluded with a call for private law librarians to volunteer with CALL’s mentorship program, which is making a com[...]
: Is it amour – or scam-more? lfair February 11, 2021 | 12:17PM Is it amour – or scam-more? By Lesley Fair Online romance may begin with Panic! At The Disco’s High Hopes , but according to a new FTC Data Spotlight , all too often it ends with the conclusion that – to quote the J. Geils Band – Love Stinks . Far be it from us to put a damper on Valentine’s Day, but reports to the Consumer Sentinel Network suggest that the injury inflicted by romance scams is on the rise. According to the new Data Spotlight , “For three years running, people have reported losing more money on romance scams than on any other fraud type identified in Sentinel. In 2020, reported losses to romance scams reached a record $304 million, up about 50% from 2019. For an individual, that meant a median dollar loss of $2,500.” Why the increase? The continued popularity of dating apps is part of the story, but the pandemic has played a part, too. For right now, the need for social distancing and masking makes the “meet cute” at the local cof[...]