INTERNET LEGAL RESEARCH WEEKLY
September 1, 2002
Tom
Mighell
Welcome to Issue #80 of the Internet Legal Research Weekly, a newsletter that delivers relevant and timely legal research information, and other fun stuff, to your inbox every Sunday. If you like what you read, please forward this newsletter to anyone you think might be interested, and encourage him or her to do the same! To subscribe, all you have to do is send an e-mail to ilrw-subscribe@topica.com. It’s free!
Have you visited Inter Alia yet? If you haven’t, drop by – I try to update it every day with new and interesting information on the Internet, legal research, and other things. Plus, there are some items on the website that won’t make it into the newsletter each week. The HTML version of this newsletter is also available there.
For those subscribers in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, I am speaking on Friday, September 6 at Noon at the Dallas Bar Association’s Friday CLE. The ambitious topic is “What Every Lawyer Needs to Know About Internet Legal Research.” Drop by if you’re in the neighborhood.
I hope each of you has a safe and fun Labor Day Holiday!
And away we go…..
News Update
You Mean There Are Other Ways to Search Besides Google?
A Google fan and writer for the San Francisco Gate confesses that there are other options besides Google, and many of them work just as well, if not more so.Science Search Engines Gets New Features
Scirus, a science search engine I reviewed several months ago in the newsletter, has launched a new version with more than 107 million science-specific pages available:
A Conversation with Alex
Last week, the University of Pittsburgh School of Law introduced Alex, a “bot” designed to help you find legal information. Here’s the transcript of the conversation I had with Alex:Alex: Hello! I'm ALEX. What's your name?
Tom: Tom.
Alex: Have we talked before, Tom?
Tom: Yes.
Alex: I thought I remembered you! what is new?
Tom: Not much.
Alex: My mistake. How can I help you?
Tom: I'm looking for information on toxic mold litigation.
Alex: What information did you say you were looking for?
Tom: Toxic mold litigation information.
Alex: Litigation is a legal case, controversy or lawsuit, generally undertaken to enforce a right. The parties to such disputes are called litigants.
Tom: No, toxic mold.
Alex: I am sorry you feel that way.
Tom: Toxic Mold.
Alex: I am afraid I have no information on that country. Are you from Moldova?
Tom: Ha!
Alex: Why didn't you answer my question?I understand Alex works better if you just type in the words for the area of law in which you're interested.
The Wave of the Future
Electronic discovery is becoming ever more prevalent in litigation nowadays, and unsurprisingly not many people know about it. Check out the link above for a primer on the subject from Law.com.Medical Ethics
I’m still buried working on a book chapter and some presentations, so my good friend and law librarian Sharon McClelland has provided me with a great topic this week – and the subject is medical ethics. We talk a lot about legal ethics here, but those of you who represent (or sue) doctors should also be interested in the ethical issues facing those in the medical profession. Here are some terrific sites to get you started.
You can probably guess that the first and best place to start with medicine is the American Medical Association – and you’d be right. Just click on Physicians in the upper left-hand corner, and select Ethics from the drop-down menu. First you’ll find the Council of Ethics and Judicial Affairs, which provides you with links to the Code of Ethics, recent ethics opinions, reports, and an area to report ethical violations. There’s also an Ethics Resource Center, with educational resources, outreach programs and products, continuing medical education information, and end-of-life care issues. Finally, the Institute for Ethics is an academic research center on the subject. Patients also have a Medical Ethics link in their menu, with all sorts of pertinent information and answers to frequently asked questions. One of the more interesting features is the Virtual Mentor, a monthly publication with articles designed to strengthen “the ethics and professionalism of tomorrow’s physicians.”
Another good site for medical ethics information is the National Library of Medicine’s Directory of Health Organizations Online. A search for “medical ethics” returned 90 results, including the McGill Center for Medical Ethics and Law, The American Society of Law, Medicine, and Ethics, Public Responsibility in Medicine and Research, and a number of sites on bioethics. Many of the results came from geriatrics websites, presumably because end-of-life issues are a key focus of medical ethics commentators.
The Journal of Medical Ethics is published by the British Medical Journal publishing group. For $99, you can subscribe to the entire contents of each issue of the journal. But even if you don’t want to subscribe, you can see the tables of contents for all issues, and abstracts of most of the articles – these aren’t one sentence abstracts, but are much more in-depth. In addition, you can get e-mail alerts for all future issues delivered to you (again, just the table of contents). If you don’t want to pay for the whole year, you can request copies of individual articles for $8 each, or a 30-day pass to the site for only $25.
The MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics was established in 1984 to establish an interdisciplinary program that focused on the practical, medical, and moral concerns that confront patients, health professionals and clinical and basic science investigators. The Center's activities include: 1) medical student teaching; 2) postgraduate fellowship training; 3) clinical research programs focusing on improving quality of patient care; and 4) patient care activities, including the development of an ethics consultation advisory service for patients, families, physicians and nurses. The Center's Internet presence offers links to the faculty, information on fellowships, events, courses, consultations, and other medical ethics institutes around the world.
These are just a few of the many medical ethics sites on the Internet – some of the sites listed above contain links to many more ethics resources – give them a try! If you know of other medical ethics sites I didn’t mention here, drop me a line at tmighell@swbell.net and I’ll mention them in a future issue!
Help Desk
Do you ever get return receipts for your e-mails? Would you like to be able to control them better? If you have Outlook as your e-mail program, there are two things you can do. First, if you want to see in advance which e-mails have return receipts requested, just add a column to your Outlook inbox. Right-click anywhere on the column headings for the inbox and select Field Chooser. In the drop down list at the top of the dialog box that appears, select All Mail Fields. Then find the Receipt Requested field, drag it into the heading area of your inbox, and position it where you want it. From now on, e-mails with a return receipt will have “Yes” in that column.
You can also control how Outlook responds to return receipt requests. Select Tools | Options, then the E-Mail Options button, the Tracking Options. The three options near the bottom of the dialog box let you choose to send responses to return receipts always, never, or only after asking you. If you use Outlook Express, the sequence is Tools | Options | Receipts.
Do you have a question about searching the Internet or your computer in general? Drop me a line at tmighell@swbell.net– I’ll post your question (don’t worry, I won’t use your real name) and try to get an answer for you!
Legally Relevant – Sites on the InternetErnie the Attorney – Law Headlines
For the next few weeks, I want to highlight interesting or important legal weblogs, or Blawgs. This week, it’s Ernie the Attorney, otherwise known as Ernest Svenson, a New Orleans attorney who maintains a terrific weblog on the side. Among the great features of his blawg is a collection of Today’s Legal Headlines, which he updates each day with new and interesting legal developments. Give it a look.U.S. Government Information on the Web
For those of you who find FirstGov tiresome or difficult to navigate for government information, perhaps this site can help. Maintained by St. Mary’s University in San Antonio, it’s really a directory of other college libraries that collect government website links. There are two ways to search – the alphabetical index at the top gets you to individual subjects, which in turn display links to the particular university library containing that information. You can also go directly to the Government Information pages of each college directly from the home page.
International Agreements Database
Speaking of government information, this Database is wonderful. It contains bilateral and multilateral agreements on any topic imaginable – arms control, radioactive waste management, computers, energy efficiency, fossil energy, science and technology, and I’m just getting started! You can search by subject, or by individual country, which is particularly useful. Each agreement is provided in PDF format. There’s also a nice page of links to pages that concern the treaties and agreements listed.Legacy Tobacco Documents Library
What an amazing resource – this Library offers searching, viewing, and downloading of over 4 million documents relating to cigarettes – scientific research, manufacturing, marketing, advertising, sales, and more. The documents date back to the 1950’s. There are several sub-libraries you can search: Tobacco Institute, Council for Tobacco Research, Lorillard, R.J. Reynolds, Philip Morris, Brown & Williamson, and more. You can view the documents in TIF or PDF format, and the Book Bag feature allows you to save up to 500 records in a session, then download or e-mail them all together when you are done.
This is one of the first mobile phone number directories I have come across on the Internet. I hesitate to mention it, however, because it’s an “opt in” directory – the only numbers contained in the directory are for those individuals who have signed up for the service. My guess is most of your searches here will be fruitless unless the person you’re looking for actually found this site and decided to supply his or her mobile phone number. There are a few links to additional services, including a reverse cell phone lookup service, where you can get the name connected to a cell phone number for just $85. Not a great resource here, but worth mentioning because the concept is good.
And now for some fun and useful sites – the first is both fun AND useful. If you have trouble avoiding parking tickets AND you live in New York, Washington, D.C. or San Francisco, ParkingTicket.com may be for you. Sign up for the service, provide a lot of details about the circumstances of receiving your parking ticket, and if your ticket has a valid defense you'll get a "Dismissal Letter" to present to your local judge. Check it out.
If you're a lawyer who has a thing for writing poetry, you might want to check out Hearsay, a site for poetry written by lawyers. You can write on any subject, or in any form, but you must be an attorney to submit.
Well, that’s it for Issue #80– I hope you liked it! If you did, pass this along to anyone you think might be interested, and encourage him or her to subscribe. Also, feel free to drop me an e-mail any time if you have questions, or if you have websites or other topics you want included in a future issue.
Tom Mighell
Subscription Information: If you want to keep on receiving issues of the Internet Legal Research Weekly, send an email to tom@inter-alia.net, or visit Inter Alia sign up there! If you no longer want to receive the newsletter, just send me an e-mail at tom@inter-alia.net and I'll remove you from the list.
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Questions? New websites? Just want to talk? Send me an e-mail at tmighell@swbell.net.