Current Issue

Welcome to Issue #162 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!

Reading the news, anonymously
Do you hate registering at news sites, giving up your personal information just to read the news? You're not the only one.

Finding Court Records Online
The Secrets of Online Document Retrieval provides a brief and useful tutorial to finding court pleadings and other documents online, primarily using CourtLink, Court Express, and PACER. Although I'm sure the pay services have good resources, I would start with PACER, which at 7 cents a page is the more cost-effective alternative.

Are Spam Filters TOO Good?
Spam is now a part of our daily existence. Fortunately, filters have emerged that can cut out the junk, and greatly reduce the crush of mail that invades our inboxes every day. Unfortunately, some of the filters being used are too strong, and the result is that valid e-mails are being deleted without our knowledge. Here's what's new on the spam-fighting frontier.

The month in search engines
Miss any of the July search engine news? Chris Sherman recaps the highlights in Search Engine Milestones for July 2004 (the title says August, but it's really July).

Fight spyware through your toolbar
The Yahoo Companion Toolbar comes bundled with Anti-Spy, a spyware/adware detection program that can monitor your computer for the bad stuff. Chris Sherman has a review of the new toolbar.

New research organization tool
Nextaris is a new service of Surfwax that aims to help you get control over your research. Registration for an account is free, for 100MB worth of storage space. For a yearly fee, you can get 200MB of storage. There's a rather simple page where you can use a number of search engines, and save them to your online folders. There's also a NewsTracker for news searches. As Tara Calishain points out, a nice feature of Nextaris is what you can do with the research your gather -- publish it, share it, organize it, and more.

Keep up with labor news
The Department of Labor is now offering free e-mail updates of newly available information on its website. This ability to make the research come to you will reduce the time you spend searching for it.

A new way to save your research
I'm always looking for new ways to save the research that I capture when searching the Internet. I'm a big fan of Net Snippets, but I'm not above checking out other products as they come along. Last week Chris Sherman posted a review on Content Saver, a product that works much the same as other web-capture software. One interesting feature offered by Content Saver is the ability to simultaneously save pages that are linked to the original page you're trying to save.

Blawgs of the Week
Here’s an extra-large helping of the law-related weblogs I have found over the past two weeks: Skelly, a lawyer living in Idaho, is writing Arbitrary and Capricious, where he notes that "to live outside the law you must be honest." Spyware Warrior features news and information in the continuing war against spyware. David Finn, a former Dallas judge and now criminal defense lawyer, is writing on criminal defense issues at the appropriately named Dallas Lawyer -- David Finn. The University of Baltimore Law Library Weblog offers news and links (but mostly links) of interest to the law school community. CeCe Gassner of the LifeTech Law Group is blogging about legal and regulatory developments related to the life sciences, bioagriculture, and nanotechnology, at Law Under the Microscope.

Justice Arthur Gilbert of the California Court of Appeals is, by his own admission, shamelessly posting selected columns he has written for the Daily Journal during the last decade, in Gilbert Submits. Biz Bang Buzz, a new blog from Anthony Cerminaro, covers news and information relevant to entrepreneurs, executives, and others interested in business and technology. Marcia Oddi is an Indiana lawyer, and while her Indiana Law Blog focuses on Indiana law, it also discusses developments in law and technology of interest to lawyers everywhere. The E-LawLibrary Weblog is the project of Edison Ellenberger, a law librarian at a law firm in Cleveland. The folks over at the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy are blogging on constitutional, criminal, and other legal matters. For a law-student driven blawg, this is pretty good stuff.

Help Desk

Here's a quick and easy way to create a personal search engine for a specific website, for those of you who are using the Google Toolbar. Just navigate to the site you want to search, enter your search terms in the Google Toolbar, and then click "Search Site." The results you get from Google will be limited to that website. This is similar to using the "site:_____.com" syntax in Google, but it's even easier.

Does this feature exist in other search toolbars? I haven't checked it out.

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!

U.S. International Trade Commission
There's not much to this site, which provides trade expertise to the legislative and executive branches of government. The home page only contains links to "New and Notable" items, but there's no question the information being linked to is valuable. The menu at the top provides access to publications, investigative information, dockets, and available testimony from recent hearings in the Information Center.

Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy
This page is designed partly for students, to introduce them to environmental law and policy questions and encourage debate on those issues. But it's also designed to be a forum for others to exchange views on the environment. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any place on the site where discussion was available; maybe the forum takes place offline. But here you'll find information on current research and programs, publications by members of the Center, as well as the goings-on at the Law Clinic.

Office of Defense Trade Controls
I'm not sure why anyone would need to conduct research on this page, but what the heck. Part of the U.S. State Department, this page lists entities and individuals who have been convicted of violating or conspiring to violate the Arms Export Control Act, either statutorily or administratively. That's it. That's all there is here.

U.S. Law Schools News Brief
Provided by St. Thomas University School of Law in Miami, this page publishes news releases from law schools across the country. Each item provides access to the news release, a link to e-mail the story to a friend, as well as a link to the law school in question. The releases are also browsable by category, including Achievement, Current Issues, Newsmakers, Campus Speakers, and Administration. This is a nifty page for those interested in what's going on at our nation's law schools.

ACLU Legislative Update
The ACLU has long been known as an organization that challenges governmental action on behalf of those whose civil liberties are perceived as being violated. This page shows updates and materials on federal legislative issues, including criminal justice, drug policy, immigrant rights, national security, and more.

Argali White & Yellow
I have been using this software download for awhile, and I love it. Argali is a stand-alone metasearch tool for yellow and white page listings, and a bunch more. You can also search toll-free numbers, reverse numbers, area codes, zip codes, and e-mail addresses. The program is free to use; if you don't like all the advertising (there's a lot), you can buy an ad-free version for $29.95.

Need a glossary? eGlossary will point you to dozens of glossaries on various subjects, from plastic arts to automotive.

Win a goldfish by placing 3 ping pong balls in the fishbowls. It's hard! (you won't really win a goldfish)

Well, that’s it for Issue #162 – 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.

Subscription Information: If you want to keep on receiving issues of the Internet Legal Research Weekly, send me an e-mail at tom(at)inter-alia(dot)net, or visit Inter Alia and sign up there! If you no longer want to receive the newsletter, just click on the link at the bottom of this newsletter. Or, send me an e-mail at tom(at)inter-alia(dot)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 tom(at)inter-alia(dot)net.