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Welcome to Issue #127 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 visit Inter Alia and fill out the subscription form -- it's free!

The REAL reason you keep getting all that spam
I say it all the time, but nobody listens: the best way to stop spam is to stop replying to spam.

It's not all about Google
Okay, take a deep breath, and repeat with me: Google is not the only search engine on the Internet. There, that wasn't so bad, was it? There are a lot of other terrific search tools out there, and many of them are going to find things for you that Google won't. Going Google Beyond (should that be Going Beyond Google?) talks about a few of those search engines.

Your own personal search engine
Chris Sherman over at SearchDay reports on DART, a program that resides on your computer and allows you to organize and analyze your research. Looks like an interesting product. I just may have to check it out.

Back to school on the Web
MIT has announced it has posted over 500 classes as part of its Open Courseware Project. Here you can find syllabi, lecture notes, homework assignments, and exams in MIT classes that you can review for free. MIT hopes to have 1,800 courses available by 2007.

An argument for metasearch
A (probably intended) consequence of the Internet is the dominance of Google as the premier search technology available. In Trumping Google? Metasearching's Promise, Judy Luther makes a strong argument that meta-search tools hold great promise to be the future of search on the Internet. I agree. I have always believed meta-search tools have the greater potential, if only because they cover so much ground. One drawback to the meta-search is that you aren't able to use the advanced search features of any one search engine.

That was the month that was (in search engines)
Like clockwork, the first of the month brings another Search Engine Milestones from Chris Sherman. This one's for September.

Blawgs of the Week
Here's another sampling of the never-ending crop of law-related weblogs: first, David Opderbeck, an IP law professor at Seton Hall, presents Law, Science and Technology. LAWgical is a german group blog with five editors, with content devoted primarily to the law of new media. The Research Service experts at Kirkland and Ellis have started the KERBlog!, with research tips, tools, and enlightened insights. Warren Slocum, the Chief Elections Officer & County Clerk-Recorder-Assessor of San Mateo County, California, is publishing Election Central, "the Web's 1st Blog on Verified Voting, Election Reform & Democracy." Diary of a 1L chronicles the continuing story of first year law student Mike Shecket. Discourse.net, from University of Miami law professor Michael Froomkin, looks to be a very interesting addition to the blogosphere. Dispositive is "a journal on law school, music, and technology...among other things." The second German weblog mentioned this week is Jurabilis, run by a Berlin-based law school graduate. The State Bar of Texas has turned the monthly "et cetera" columns of federal judge Jerry Buchmeyer in the weblog, Say What? Great for a daily laugh. Schadenfreude, which means "a malicious satisfaction in the misfortunes of others," is brought to you by Bubba.

Researching the Land of Many Nicknames

In preparing for this article on Illinois online legal research resources, I tried to discover the state nickname. Turns out there are a lot of them. The Prairie State. Land of Lincoln. The Corn State. The Garden of the West. The Sucker State -- huh? So, which is it? I'd appreciate hearing from my Illinois subscribers on this issue. In the meantime, let's take a look at some of the great resources online Illinois has to offer.

We'll start, as always, with the State of Illinois home page. There are a lot of (in my opinion, unnecessary) links on this page, most of them "Agency Highlights." But you'll find all the usual state portal links: Living, Working, Visiting, Learning, Business, Technology, Government, and more. The Government Section has a complete listing of all Illinois agencies. A related site with many helpful state-related resources belongs to the office of the Illinois Secretary of State, which includes resources for looking up and registering businesses. You can also find the provisions of the Illinois Administrative Code. On the legal side of the executive branch, the Attorney General's Office provides, among other things, access to AG opinions back to 1995.

The Illinois General Assembly is the place to go for all things legislative from the State of Illinois. Here you can find information on legislators, and even track the legislation of your choice. The Illinois Compiled Statutes is current through August of 2002, or you can view more recently-passed legislation. If you're looking instead for municipal ordinances, you can find them at several different sites. Lexis-Nexis Municipal Codes has a number of cities covered, as does American Legal Publishing and Municode.

The Illinois judiciary is represented at the home page for the Illinois Supreme Court. In addition to the high court you'll find links to the appellate and circuit courts. Unfortunately, you won't find links to the courts themselves. That's unfortunate, because there are five appellate districts and twenty-two judicial circuits overall. Some (but not all) of the circuits have their own web pages, but I couldn't find a page listing them -- so you'll have to find them on your own. But the Judiciary site is not *completely* useless -- it contains Supreme and Appellate Court opinions dating back to 1996 (you can subscribe to receive copies of them for free), court rules, policies, docket information, research links, and more. If you're interested in another place to receive court opinions, check out Illinois Court Reports, a free service providing same-day e-mails on appellate decisions.

If you're looking for federal courts, Illinois is part of the Seventh Circuit, and has three federal judicial districts: the Northern, Central and Southern districts. There are also bankruptcy courts for
the Northern, Central and Southern districts.

The legal profession in Illinois is represented by the Illinois Bar Association, which has a number of nifty e-mail discussion groups. Prospective Illinois lawyers will want to check out the Illinois Board of Admissions; those who have been around longer may need to consult the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission. And lawyers concerned about their conduct should visit the ISBA Ethic Opinions site.

There are a number of other terrific sites the Illinois researcher will need, so I'm just going to list a few of them:

Here's a quirky little tip for you: do you rely on the Status bar at the bottom of your Internet Explorer screen? If you do, you may notice that it appears only on the first window opened, and if you open multiple browser windows, the status bar does not automatically appear. To make the status bar appear in every window, follow these steps:

Start with one Internet Explorer window open. Select View, then Status Bar. Then press the Ctrl key while clicking the X in the upper-right-hand corner of the window to close the application. Next, open My Computer and select View, then Status Bar. Next, select Tools, then Folder Options, and click on the View tab. Click Apply to All Folders, click OK, and then close My Computer. Voila!

Do you have a question about searching the Internet or your computer in general? Drop me an e-mail at tom(at)inter-alia(dot)net – I’ll post your question (don’t worry, I won’t use your real name) and try to get an answer for you!

SearchGov
This site comes from the folks who brought you SearchMil and SearchEdu, but this is a little different; SearchGOV seems to be another entrance to Google's Uncle Sam. When you enter search terms, the results all come from Google. That's okay with me, but I'd appreciate some disclosure on SearchGov's home page. The Google search automatically contains the "site" restriction, so it only searches .gov sites. The SearchGov home page also contains links to various branches and agencies of the federal government, but the contents are not very comprehensive.

TIGER -- Tailored Interactive Guidance on Employment Rights
TIGER is designed to provide a user-friendly guide through different aspects of UK employment law. You can search for information on adoption rights, employment relations, flexible working rights, maternity and paternity rights, and the national minimum wage. Each section has links featuring resources for both employees and employers. Just fill out the questionnaires that follow and receive advice on your particular employment situation. A simple site, but it definitely contains useful information.

United States Newspaper Program
Presented by the National Endowment for the Humanities, The United States Newspaper Program is a cooperative national effort among the states and the federal government to locate, catalog, and preserve on microfilm newspapers published in the United States from the eighteenth century to the present. Here you'll only find links to the various states, and the status of their efforts to catalog these newspapers. For example, the Texas project is complete, and you can download a PDF file containing an index of all the newspapers available. Getting a copy of the newspaper is up to you.

Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers
This rather simple page doesn't contain a lot of information. But it's a good place to learn about APRL, which was formed to meet the growing demand for expertise in the law of lawyering, melding substantive law, procedural rules and regulatory standards governing various aspects of a lawyer's professional life. You can download an application to join the Association, obtain information on upcoming programs, and connect with other members across the country. There's a "members only" section that might be worth a look, but since I'm not a member I just don't know.

EEONews
This employment law and human resources site contains a LOT of information, but I must admit I'm a little disappointed. A while ago I reviewed EEO News Radio, a page with terrific radio programs about employment law issues. It's connected to EEO News, but what's interesting is that EEO News doesn't have a link to the Radio program page *anywhere* on its home page. Bad planning, in my opinion. The news portion of the site has a lot of links, but no news articles -- it's all headlines. That's also disappointing. Still, there are some useful resources to be found here, so take a look around.

Are there people out there you would like to keep in touch with, but you just keep forgetting? Magic Minder might be able to help. Just provide the names of the people you want to keep track of, and Magic Minder sends you periodic e-mails to remind you to get off your duff and call them.

Well, that’s it for Issue #127 – 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.

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Questions? New websites? Just want to talk? Send me an e-mail at tom(at)inter-alia(dot)net.