The Oklahoma Bar Journal August 2022

F rom the E xecutive D irector

Dog Days of Summer and Pie By John Morris Williams

I GOOGLED THE TERM “dog days of summer” and found that it may have origins as far back as the Roman emperors and even has a biblical reference. I just generally thought it meant the hot days in summer. I was close enough in my assumptions to not feel totally ignorant. But it is good to look things up, like what has changed in the law after the last session of the Legislature. Most of the legis lation goes into effect Nov. 1. The dog days of summer are an excel lent time to catch up on what has been recently passed into law and to be prepared when the laws go into effect – that would be frost on the pumpkin time.

Every year, the Oklahoma Legislature passes legislation that affects the practice of law, and often civil and criminal procedure bills are in the mix. My research indicates that 417 new bills were passed. This includes those signed by the gover nor, veto overrides and bills that became law absent the governor’s signature. Eight of those bills were Title 12 bills that every lawyer who practices civil law probably should read. There were 18 Title 21 bills and 19 Title 22 bills that passed this session. Those who practice criminal law may be wise to review these. The invariable question is how do I look these up? There are a couple of ways. One is to search

the session laws on the Oklahoma Secretary of State website. That site has a nice search feature powered by Westlaw. It is especially good to search by topics and keywords. There is another way that is, in my opinion, most beneficial. The OBA Legislative Monitoring Committee lists all the bills that passed the last session in its community library, indexed by statutory title number. The lists contain sum maries of the bills that make them easy to review. If a member sees a bill they want to know more about, the Oklahoma Legislature website or the Secretary of State website both are good locations to get the full text of bills. There is one catch: You

48 | AUGUST 2022

THE OKLAHOMA BAR JOURNAL