If you’re an ICLE Partner, you probably know that the Premium Partnership includes 57 online books filled with authoritative legal analysis, hyperlinks to primary law, and downloadable forms and exhibits.
You may also know that ICLE lawyers work with contributing authors to continually update these resources with changes in the law every two weeks. This means that when the Michigan Supreme Court or Michigan Court of Appeals publishes an opinion, it gets included in the discussion where applicable. When Michigan Court Rules (MCR) amendments impact a chapter, we make sure the chapter reflects those. The same goes for statutory changes, new federal law impacting our resources, regulatory changes, and more. When a major development involves significant revision requiring more than two weeks to complete, we note that in the chapter to alert ICLE Partners that changes are coming. (You’d also probably see a Legal Update or two on a big topic like that to help you stay informed in the interim.)
I think continual updating is the most valuable aspect of the Partnership, and it’s something my colleagues and I really pride ourselves on maintaining. That’s why I want to make sure people know about a neat way to review the recent changes made in a given book.
At the top of each book title page, you’ll see a “What’s New” button on the right-hand side. Clicking that button takes you to a Summary of Changes for the book, which you can choose to view by date (the default) or by chapter and section. You can also click the “What’s New” button on an individual book chapter page to see a Summary of Changes limited to that chapter.
The Summary of Changes list includes a brief description of significant changes made in the book over the last 12 months, with hyperlinks that take you right to the section with the affected discussion. While the other ICLE attorneys and I will not list every single change we make (e.g., updates to court rule subsections or statutory wording), we use this feature to help highlight the noteworthy changes impacting the chapter’s content.
So, remember, while we are constantly adding new content to your Partnership (more on that in a future blog post!), we’re also constantly refreshing the existing content to make sure it’s as useful as possible for you. Using the “What’s New” button to access the Summary of Changes on your favorite books will help you get a quick overview of the latest updates. I hope you add it to your arsenal of practice tools if it isn’t there already!
If you have suggestions for future ICLE features to spotlight in a blog post, please comment or email me at rebekahp@icle.org.