Congo Week 2026
UConn Law is celebrating its fourth annual Congo Week, taking place this year from October 18-24th. The purpose of Congo Week every year is to raise global consciousness about the situation in the Congo and advocate for peace, justice and human dignity in partnership with the Congolese people.
This 19th anniversary overall of Congo Week honors the millions of lives lost in the Congo conflict while recognizing the resilience, dignity, and potential of the Congolese people. This year’s events explore the challenges facing the DRC and the possibilities for a future in which its people can share more fully in the country’s resources, health, and prosperity.
Schedule of Events (keep an eye out for the email with more details):
- Monday, October 19th
Access to Health, the Ebola Outbreak, Protections for Healthcare Workers, and the Government’s Public Health Response
- Wednesday, October 21st
Business and International Relations, U.S.-DRC Strategic Minerals Agreements and their Implications for Policy, Business, and Congolese Communities
- Thursday, October 22nd
Women’s Rights, Maternal Healthcare and the Effects of Armed Conflict on Women
Feel free to read the 15 books selected to capture these topics in a book display across from the front desk of the library. Or have a look at these handy PDFs for a primer:
- Basic Facts on the Congo
- 10 Reason Why Congo Matters
- Mineral and Elements in the Democratic Republic of Congo
- Coltan and the Congo
- Women of the Congo, their stories
Either way, be sure to join us to examine the global forces shaping the DRC and their implications for law, human rights, and social justice.
What Makes Lawyers Happy?
Law Student Mental Health Day is a chance to look beyond surviving law school and think intentionally about the life you want to build in the law.
Why did you go to law school? It’s a question worth considering as UConn Law celebrates Well-Being Week, culminating with what the American Bar Association has designated Law Student Mental Health Day on October 10th (falling this year on a Saturday, the best mental health gift of all, a day off in theory). The programs on offer are not merely pleasant breaks from the grind. They encourage skills and habits that may prove just as important as anything learned in the classroom, applicable as law school is bearing down on you and even more relevant as you enter a profession with a complicated reputation for well-being. Insert lawyer joke here.
Why did I go to law school? The honest answer is that I didn’t know what else to do with my life. I was a political science major teaching English in Japan and had reached something of a dead end when a friend suggested that we study for the LSAT. I was curious about how the law worked, so why not jump into the deep end? At least I got to do it in Hawai’i.
I suspect my decision was not so different from those of many students around the country. Plenty of people have committed to three demanding years and a substantial amount of money to the vague idea of pursuing a legal career, perhaps because someone once told them they were good at arguing. The good news is that it worked out for me, though not exactly how I had expected. I discovered ways to use my legal training beyond the courtroom-centered path that law school often emphasizes, first as a legislative attorney and now as an academic law librarian. And it’s truly what I want for you too, for it all to work out.
What does any of this have to do with mental health? Quite a lot actually. I was fortunate to stumble onto a path that has brought me plenty of professional satisfaction and personal happiness, but getting there was not all sunshine and roses. There were difficult stretches, and for a time I fell into a coping pattern that is all too familiar within the legal profession, drinking too much with friends after a hard day. Eventually, I reached a point where I could begin prioritizing my well-being. But I can also see how easily things might have gone in another direction, particularly if stuck in a work environment where no amount of yoga could fix the underlying problem.
That is why intentionality matters. Understanding what is likely to support your long-term happiness can help you make more deliberate choices now about courses, experiences, workplaces, and the kind of lawyer you hope to become. There’s no need to rely solely on luck and hope that the struggle will be worth it like I did.
The ABA’s Mental Health Toolkit for Law Students points to the study, “What Makes Lawyers Happy?: A Data-Driven Prescription to Redefine Professional Success.” Drawing on data from several thousand lawyers, the study found that the factors most strongly associated with well-being were internal and psychological: feeling competent, having autonomy, being authentic, and feeling connected to others. Money- and status-oriented measures, including income, class rank, law review membership, and law school ranking, had little to no association with lawyer well-being. Billable hours naturally had a negative reported impact. It’s a counterintuitive finding that the things that law school makes easiest to measure and pursue are not necessarily the things that will make a legal career satisfying.
Whatever brought you to law school, you are here now. There is no better time to think critically about what you want your future to look like and what you want your legal education to make possible. The research suggests that some choices will matter far more to your well-being than the conventional markers of success.
My hope is that Law Student Mental Health Day gives you room to think beyond managing stress in the moment. It can also be an invitation to think bigger: What kind of work will give you purpose? Where will you have autonomy? In what settings can you be yourself and build meaningful connections with others? What would it mean to pursue a legal career with your well-being treated not as an afterthought, but as a priority? Big questions for sure, but even in considering them, you are probably left already headed in a happier direction.
Hope to see you at yoga!
Introducing: The Ioffe Collection
Few scholars have had as much influence on the study of Soviet civil law as Olimpiad S. Ioffe (1920-2005). Born in what is now Ukraine, Ioffe became one of the Soviet Union’s most respected legal scholars, serving for more than two decades as chairman of the Civil Law Department at Leningrad State University before emigrating to the United States. After a fellowship at Harvard Law School, he joined the faculty here at UConn Law, where he continued his scholarship and teaching until his retirement in 1998.[1]
Following his death, his family graciously donated his entire personal library of over one hundred titles to the UConn Law Library. Most are in Russian, but his broad and varied collection includes a smattering of titles in languages such as Chinese, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Kazakh, and Polish. The collection first came into the hands of my former colleague, archivist Lea Wallenius. Lea worked diligently with a Russian-speaking UConn Law student to translate titles and locate Worldcat records for them, but didn’t have time to complete the project before her retirement.
For several years, the books sat on my shelves, looming over me as a reminder of work left undone. At first, I was flummoxed about how to approach the project. Although I took a year of Russian as an undergrad a million years ago, all that remained in my head was how to (slowly) sound out Cyrillic writing. I certainly didn’t have the language skills to translate the dozens of titles awaiting cataloging. The library didn’t have the budget to pay for professional translation of the entire collection, either. What to do?
Enter the hero of the hour: Microsoft Copilot. Although I regard generative AI with a healthy dose of the skepticism one might expect from a professional librarian, I freely admit that Copilot valiantly stepped in to fill the gap between my knowledge and my hope of cataloging Ioffe’s collection.
I took photos of the title pages of the books, uploaded them to Copilot, and it would provide me nearly instantly with a translation, as well as a typed version of the title in Russian so I could easily search Worldcat. I cross-checked enough of the translations with Google Translate to feel reasonably confident in Copilot’s skill in this area.
Even better, Copilot was able to transcribe and translate numerous handwritten inscriptions in the books. This painted a richer picture of the books in Ioffe’s collection; for example, it revealed that many were gifts from the authors to their former professor, demonstrating just how much Ioffe helped shape the study of Soviet civil law.
Thanks to Lea’s groundwork and my collaboration with Copilot, Ioffe’s entire private library is now searchable in the catalog and available to be viewed in the law library’s Special Collections. To make an appointment to view Special Collections material, please contact the library at lawlibrary@uconn.edu, call (860) 570-5200, or feel free to stop by the front desk to enquire in person. A catalog of the collection is available and searchable at https://uconn-law.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/collectionDiscovery?vid=01UCT_LAW:01UCT_LAW&collectionId=81155247660002433&lang=en
Written by Susanna French, Metadata and E-Resource Management Librarian
[1] https://www.courant.com/obituaries/olimpiad-solomonovich-ioffe-hartford-farmington-ct/
Meet the new Westlaw, same as the old Westlaw?
As the semester has gotten underway, and you’ve logged into Westlaw, you may have noticed that things look very different. There has been a lot of handwringing about how the new platform design centers its artificial intelligence to do legal research on your behalf. Rightfully so? That’s more complicated than it seems at first glance and deserves some in-depth consideration. Why has Westlaw made this choice? One that seems to upset legal research experts so much? It’s worth looking at the history of the company and what guided similar changes in the past to glean some insight.
John B. West, and his West Publishing Company (founded with brother Horatio) began publishing The Syllabi in 1876. It was originally a weekly news sheet that reported on cases decided in the Minnesota courts. The unmet need was timely information about developments in the law, as publication of the opinions took much longer otherwise. It was wildly successful and their efforts soon expanded into Wisconsin and the product was renamed The Northwestern Reporter. This is what eventually developed into the West National Reporter system as we now know it.
But there was a problem. That’s suddenly a whole lot of case law to digest (no pun intended). How do you find the opinions relevant for your case? The West American Digest System was the key (no pun intended) that unlocked the puzzle. Each case was evaluated by an attorney-editor, who summarized the points of law present. These are the headnotes you see at the beginning of a West published opinion and still see on the database today. Those headnotes are then assigned a topic and key and arranged accordingly in a multi-volume set of books called Digests. In this way, you had a subject index of sorts to find specific points of law and you still do!
And that was how research was done for close to a century. Until the advent of … dun dun duuunnn … the computer. While Lexis was founded as the first company to get the law up and running on a terminal, Westlaw was hot on their heels. Law schools in 1990 first began giving students codes to create their own accounts and access the database on their own machines. And having the text of the law electronically available naturally opened up new ways of finding legal materials. But in the early days of these databases, the information was rigidly organized and to run searches you had to know how to communicate to the database exactly what you wanted using everybody’s favorite, Boolean Terms & Connectors. So, while the law was more directly available than ever before, you still had to know how things were organized and anticipate the kind of language you hoped to find, and craft your search accordingly. Also, again, still can to this day!
This started to change when I first went to law school with the launch of Westlaw Next. I was warned by my librarians at the time not to rely too heavily on the new interface because I might become addicted and my research skills would suffer as a result. Sound familiar? What exactly was on offer with Next that could potentially corrupt my future in the law? This is when Westlaw made the switch from making users make explicit choices about where and how to search, to putting a giant search bar at the top and telling them to give it a go with natural language searching. What had changed in the information environment that made Westlaw think this was the future? In the early 2000s, Google had become so popular that instead of searching the web, we started to refer to it as Googling. User expectations had shifted.
I find it ironic that here we are at a moment in history in which Google itself is threatened by the rise of generative AI and shifting its business models accordingly. Westlaw is simply following suit. While they have employed AI for years to power its relevancy ranking and who knows what else in the background, it has slowly but surely been releasing new AI forward products since ChatGPT came on the scene. Which lands us smack dab at the beginning of the semester and a new homepage that now loads with AI Deep Research front and center. Westlaw is betting that user expectations have shifted once again and wants to be the product that meets the need.
But does AI Deep Research actually meet the need? That’s the subject of a much longer blog, but I’ll just share from my own experience, I never got addicted to what Next offered because it was simply an additional tool to take advantage of on the database. I knew then, and still teach to this day, that all the major developments noted here are still available to us on Westlaw as it exists now, as you’ve already seen me highlight over and over again. Let’s hope that’s the message that sticks. Unfortunately, Westlaw has just made it much harder to find how to do so. At the end of the day, that’s my real beef. Not with AI itself, but making the full range of search possibilities harder to discover, because you should never be relying on a single technique to get the job done. If you need help navigating this new landscape, set up a 1-on-1 with the reference team from our homepage, library.law.uconn.edu, and we’ll be glad to show you the history of Westlaw in action from the convenience of your laptop.
Please Welcome the Library’s Newest 1Ls
Welcome to a new academic year at the UConn School of Law!
Whether you’re returning or arriving on campus for the first time, we’re excited to see you. The start of the semester is one of our favorite times of the year in the Law Library. Familiar faces return, new faces appear, and the building starts to feel like a community again. Of course, you incoming students aren’t the only newcomers around here…
While you were away, we welcomed several new resources to the Law Library in preparation for your arrival. And since we know that getting to know a whole new class of people can be a little overwhelming, we thought we’d help with the introductions.
So, please meet some of our newest library “1Ls”:
First up is Aspen. Aspen is the classmate you want to sit next to when a concept just isn’t clicking. They’ve read the material already, have a different way of explaining it, and aren’t going to judge you for asking, “Wait, what does that actually mean?”
The Aspen Learning Library gives you access to Aspen’s collection of study aids; including classic titles like E&Es, Emanuel’s, Glannon’s, and more; which can help you review legal concepts, prepare for class, and approach difficult subjects from another angle.
Then there’s PLI. PLI is already thinking about practice. While the rest of us are still trying to figure out where the classroom is, PLI is wondering what you’re going to do with all this legal knowledge once you graduate. Maybe cause a little trouble, who knows, let’s hope it’s the good kind.
PLI Plus provides access to Practising Law Institute’s collection including practitioner-written treatises and practice guides, forms and checklists, and materials from PLI’s continuing legal education programs.
Every law school class has someone who seems to know what’s happening in the world. That’s NewsBank. The NewsBank World News Research Collection provides access to news coverage from around the world, making it useful when your research requires more than statutes and cases and you need to understand what actually happened on the ground.
Max Planck
Max Planck is the serious one. You know exactly who I mean. They may or may not smoke a pipe. They have somehow already read 400 pages, have strong opinions about comparative constitutional law, and can explain the constitutional structure of a country you’ve never even heard of. We’ve added the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Comparative Constitutional Law and the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law to help with exactly those kinds of questions.
And the rest of the class…
We’ve also welcomed new resources from Elgar, Oxford Handbooks Online, and HeinOnline, covering everything from intellectual property and comparative law to international organizations and state commitments with foreign governments. Certainly no slouches either!
All of these resources may not be the ones you need to meet during orientation, but you’ll be glad to know that they are around when the right research question comes along. And, of course, the Library’s old friends are still here, too. Blackstone is a 100L+ at this point.
So welcome back. And to our incoming students, welcome to UConn Law! We’re very glad you’re here. We hope you’ll get to know your classmates, your professors, your Library and eventually, some of these newest members of the research community.
And if you’re ever not sure who you should be talking to, there’s always a librarian nearby who can help with the introductions! On all fronts!!
Motion to Celebrate: Granted. Congratulations, Bar Takers!
Congratulations to all of our bar takers on getting through the grueling gauntlet of two days of test taking! Along with those in Maryland, Missouri, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, and the Virgin Islands, you will forever be able to say that I was one of the first to take the NextGen Bar. Guinea pigs, we salute you!!
We’ve come a long way from the first bar examination administered orally in Delaware County in 1783. And you have the American Bar Association to thank for the near extinction of diploma privilege for law school graduates. (Keep fighting the good fight Wisconsin…) Just be glad you didn’t go to one of the law schools in Japan that literally had zero students pass that country’s test one year. I also take back what I said earlier about Washington because things didn’t go as planned… Exam currently rescheduled for September 1-2.
However things turn out for you in life, whether you pass or not, is impossible to say, so enjoy as much time as you’re able to for yourself before turning to the next thing whatever it may be, you’ve earned it!!! And don’t be strangers here at the library even though you’ve graduated, we can still be a valuable resource for you as you head out into the wider world of law. Best of luck.
How the Library Saved My Life
As I prepare to leave law librarianship, I keep returning to one realization: the library changed—and ultimately saved—my life.
As a child, I was dyslexic, off the chart hyperactive, and so unable to self-regulate that I was expelled from multiple schools. Ritalin, touted in the 1970s as a miracle drug, was offered as a solution to my exhausted parents. It subdued my hyperactivity enough that I could make it through the school day, though it did little to address the challenges I faced as a learner. Unable to read until third grade, academic and social struggles led to such relentless bullying and rejection that I eventually tried to run away.
There was, however, one place where I didn’t feel judged: the library.
Librarians encouraged me, helped me become a reader, and gave me a sense of safety. The library became a place of hope and healing. I’ve since realized libraries offer that same refuge, possibility, and human connection to many whose stories often go unseen.
Years later, that refuge became my calling.
My first library job was at Hartford Public Library at The American Place. There, I met people whose struggles far exceeded my own: adults learning to read after missed opportunities in childhood, parents navigating technology just to support incarcerated children, the Digital Divide, patrons facing mental illness, loneliness, and housing insecurity.
In Hartford Public Library’s Immigration Program, I witnessed extraordinary resilience. I met women who had survived unimaginable violence. I met the Bosnian couple who had lost their spouses and children in the war and found each other in a Refugee camp, giving them a second chance at happiness.
I met a Polish widow who continued attending ESL classes even after mastering English, because her fellow students had become her only source of companionship, and a man from Brazil with Alzheimer’s who cried when he was granted the disability waiver and awarded U.S. Citizenship.
I celebrated with a pre-literate woman from Ghana who passed the writing portion of the citizenship exam through determination and the help of volunteer tutors. Their stories reminded me that libraries are places of dignity, hope, and belonging.
In serving others, I began to heal. Over time, I came to see my learning disability not as something to hide, but as part of the person I had become and a call to help others. It feels especially meaningful to reflect on that journey during Disability Pride Month, which reminds us that our differences are not barriers to belonging—they are part of who we are.
I arrived to UConn Law Library with enthusiasm and a deep belief in the mission of libraries, but not yet the confidence nor skills to succeed. In law school and the workforce, I worked hard to hide my disability, compensating, and afraid to disclose it for fear of judgment.
My intelligent, generous and patient law library colleagues shared their knowledge and skills. I saw that eccentricities and challenges could be celebrated, rather than disparaged. What I viewed as shortcomings could also be strengths. I learned from them, and together, we supported students and public patrons who need an ear to listen to, to feel accepted and belonged.
Libraries taught me that every person deserves a place where they are welcomed. I carry profound gratitude for the colleagues, mentors, patrons, and libraries that saved me.
Libraries save lives every day. Mine just happens to be one of them.
I can only hope that, in some small way, I have helped libraries do the same for others.
Juneteenth: Recognizing Freedom and Equality
Juneteenth, also known as Freedom Day or Emancipation Day, is the oldest known celebration commemorating the end of slavery in the United States. While the Emancipation Proclamation became effective on January 1, 1863, the news took time to make its way around the country. As such, it was not until June 19, 1865, when the Union army brought word of the proclamation to enslaved people in Galveston, Texas, making them among the last to be freed, thus Juneteenth commemorates the day in 1865 when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas to take control of the state and ensure that all enslaved people be freed.
On February 25, 2021, H.R. 1320 and S. 475 were both introduced to establish Juneteenth as a federal holiday. S. 475 was signed into law on June 17, 2021 and Juneteenth National Independence Day became a Federal holiday. In June 2026, the vast majority of these states (30 plus D.C.), Juneteenth is a permanent holiday by law and commemorated annually, according to records compiled by the Congressional Research Service. At least 33 states have designated Juneteenth as a legal holiday.
Juneteenth became a legal state holiday in Connecticut through Public Act 22-128, which Governor Lamont signed into law in 2022. It requires every June 19 to be observed as Juneteenth Independence Day beginning in 2023. If June 19 falls on a Saturday, the legal state holiday will be on the prior Friday, and if it falls on a Sunday, the legal state holiday will be on the following Monday.
Governor Ned Lamont noted the significance of Juneteenth his press release of June 14, 2023:
For far too long, Juneteenth and the end of slavery have not been truly appreciated as a major part of United States history to the extent that they should…embracing this history is an important component of educating everyone about how our nation was built and the significance of what this day means. When we ignore the impact of slavery, we ignore who we are as Americans and the extraordinary injustice that it created. Making Juneteenth a legal state holiday does not erase the cruelty of slavery, however it makes it clear that Connecticut acknowledges this gross injustice in our collective history and recognizes its impact.
HeinOnline’s database Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture and Law is available through the UConn Law Library. This database brings together all known legal materials on slavery in the United States and the English-speaking world. Read more about this database in the HeinOnline Blog.
Learn more about Juneteenth with the following sources:
- Congressional Research Service Fact Sheet: Juneteenth: Fact Sheet
- National Archives News: Juneteenth
- Check out On Juneteenth in the UConn Law Library DEIAJ collection
UConn Law Library will be open on Juneteenth from 9-5. You can check out which offices are closed in Connecticut on Juneteenth as well as Juneteenth celebrations across our Nutmeg state.
Juneteenth stands as a testament to the resilience and determination of the African American community in the face of oppression and injustice. Its significance underscores the enduring struggle for freedom and equality in America. As we commemorate Juneteenth, let us not only celebrate how far we’ve come but also recommit ourselves to the ongoing pursuit of justice and equality for all.
Celebrating Diversity: Pride Month 2026 at UConn Law Library
Behind the Scenes at the Law Library: Paws, People, and Summer Support
Summer at UConn Law Library sees graduates preparing for the bar exam and students beginning internships, many students are managing significant demands all at once.
But no one succeeds entirely on their own. Whether students need a study space, research assistance or support, librarians are here for them throughout the summer.
Our pets are our “support squad” that help remind us of the importance of patience, routine, and care along the way. Some are highly skilled at interrupting Zoom meetings or sitting directly on important papers. But all contribute to the sense of connection and balance that can be difficult to maintain during stressful periods.
In fact, the library pets seem uniquely qualified to give summer survival advice:
Human: Anne Rajotte, Associate Director of Research, Instruction, and Scholarship
- Take a walk (or a zoomie break) when your brain needs it.
- Keep a routine — the cats are onto something.
- Never underestimate a strategic nap.
- Touch grass occasionally. Literally.
- Ask for support when you need it; even cats meow for attention.
- Reward yourself after hard things. Treats work on humans too.
So this summer, we’re introducing some of the behind-the-scenes members of the law library team: the pets who keep librarians company while we support our students all summer long.
Meet the UConn Law Library Support Squad
Human: Susanna French, Metadata and E-Resource Management Librarian
Human: Tanya Johnson, Instructional Services Coordinator & Research Librarian
Human: Faye Bates, Technical Services Librarian
Fun Fact: Nyx helps make sure gravity is still working by periodically knocking items off counters.
Human: Tanya Johnson, Instructional Services Coordinator & Research Librarian
Fun Fact: Blip is a green-cheeked conure who loves helping Tanya make videos for her classes
Human: Elisabeth Umpleby, Associate Director of Collections, Discovery, and Systems
Human: Anne Rajotte, Associate Director of Research, Instruction, and Scholarship
Human: Adam Mackie, Research and Instructional Services Librarian
Fun Fact: Pato is an Emotional Support Rubber Ducky “My Main Squeeze”
Human: Maryanne Daly-Doran, Digital Services Research & Instruction Librarian
Fun Fact: Georgie attends every virtual meeting, whether invited or not.
To everyone studying, working, interning, or preparing for the bar this summer: the law library is cheering you on. Whether your support system includes classmates, coworkers, family, friends, librarians, pets, or all of the above, remember that you do not have to get through this season alone.
We’re here to help — and our pets are rooting for you, too.