INTERNET LEGAL
RESEARCH WEEKLY
September 25, 2005
Tom
Mighell
Welcome to Issue #207 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!
And away we go....
Oodles of Classifieds Ads
Oodle is a new online search engine for local classified ads. You'll find thousands of listings from local and national sources, in just about every category you see in your own newspaper classifieds. Trouble is, it's only working for 32 cities right now. How does it compare to that giant of online classifieds, craigslist? Not quite the same -- craigslist definitely has classifieds for more geographical regions, but it relies upon users to post the items. Oodle pulls in classifieds from newspapers, online job banks, and lots of other sources.Electronic Discovery and Katrina
What does the Katrina disaster teach us about electronic discovery? Not much, as far as I'm concerned. But it definitely teaches us a lot about the value of electronic documents in general, and the law's inevitable move toward digitizing the practice. Dennis Kennedy, Evan Schaeffer and I discuss these issues in our latest "Thinking E-Discovery" article, Rethinking Electronic Discovery and Paper Discovery in the Post-Katrina Era.Nu "Strongest Links" Article 4 U
Dennis Kennedy and I had a great time writing our latest issue of the "Strongest Links" on Instant Messaging Resources. We actually wrote the article during an instant messaging session on Skype, as we surfed the Internet looking for great sites on the subject. It was a rare chance to show that lawyers can have fun on the Internet too, IYKWIM. While you're reading that, check out the rest of the articles at Law Practice Today -- as usual, you'll find a great collection of articles that will help you on the business side of your practice.Blawgs of the Week
Here's another crop of law-related blogs for your consumption. First up, The Clinical Law Prof Blog is yet another blog in the Law Professor Blogs Network. It's being written by criminal law professors Pamela R. Metzger and Katherine Maris Mattes, both of Tulane Law School. The Advokids Blog is published by Saundra Gumerove, a New York attorney who works primarily with corporate clients, but also serves as an advocate to children with special needs. Gerry Riskin is a Canadian lawyer and well-known in the field of professional firm economics and marketing. He's blogging about it at Amazing Firms, Amazing Practices. Ellen Freedman is the Law Practice Management Coordinator for the Pennsylvania Bar Association, and she's also the President of Freedman Consulting Inc.. She's blogging about managing the business side of your practice at the aptly-named Law Practice Management. Brant Kuehn is a law student "who apparently doesn't have enough to write in law school," so he's expending all that excess writing energy at Somewhere in the Middle. The South Carolina Family Law Blog is the product of Ben Stevens of the Stevens Firm in Spartanburg, South Carolina. As you might imagine, the blog covers items of interest on family law, South Carolina and otherwise. Finally, Peter Tillers, a law professor at Cardozo Law School in New York, has been blogging on evidence issues at the Jurist web site for some time. Check out Tillers on Evidence.
On Searching the Internet
Jeremy Zawodny over at Yahoo has a thought-provoking post called How did you learn to search? In it he states, correctly, that most people have never been taught to search the Internet effectively. He also states, as I have been stating for years, that education and training are the missing link. His post and many of the comments that follow speak mostly in terms of teaching computer users how to form correct queries using Boolean terminology.
There's no question that training on formulating the right query is important, but it's only a small part of educating and training a person to search. Equally important is learning to develop an appropriate strategy before beginning your search. Knowing the right resource to use is a critical first step. I always tell my classes "to be a good searcher, you should know where to go before you need to go there" -- it's a little counter-intuitive, but it's true. The more awareness you have of the resources available on the Internet, the faster you'll get to them. Ask me to speak to your group and I'll show you how.
You also need to be aware of the different types of search tools available -- a meta-search tool, specialty search engine, or specialized database will almost always narrow your search in ways the major search engines cannot.
One comment in Jeremy's post made me smile: "We search engines try to make the world look all simple, uniform, and tidy." The thing is, search engines indexes are so huge these days, and in general our search queries are so poor, that the results we get are anything but simple, uniform and tidy. It's overwhelming to start slogging your way through "Results 1-10 of 1,793,000 results."
Will people be interested in "learning" how to search? I doubt it -- most folks are satisfied with their searching. As Jeremy says, we should definitely be starting in the schools.
There's nothing I hate more than a computer with lots of junk on it -- and there's nothing I love more more than cleaning out a gunked-up PC. Over the next few issues we'll be discussing different ways to de-gunk your computer, and maybe free up some space on your hard drive in the process.
No 1: Purge Your Sent Items. When you send an e-mail (in Outlook and nearly every other e-mail program), a copy of it is kept in your Sent Items folder. There's no question that some of the messages need to be kept, but I'll bet most of them can be safely deleted, especially the ones with large files attached -- you probably have copies of those files already on your computer. Here are two ways to do this:
-- Open your Sent Items folder, and make sure you have the Size column displayed (if you need help with this, drop me a line). Click on the Size column header to sort the list by message size -- then select the larger messages, and delete them.
-- I like to delete my Sent Items by date -- I will sort them by the date I sent the messages, and then delete a month or two at a time.
What if there are messages you want to keep permanently? No problem -- just move them out of your Sent Items folder. You should already be using folders to segregate messages you want to keep, and it's a snap to move these messages to those folders. It's better to have an important e-mail OUT of your Sent Items folder, where you might accidentally delete it.
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!
Legally Relevant – Sites on the Internet
Stalking Resource Center
Who would think you'd need a resource center for stalking? Oh, wait -- nevermind. This site from the National Center for Victims of Crime wants to make sure you are protected, and they have posted a lot of resources that will hopefully do just that. Here you'll find help for victims, links to stalking laws around the country, statistics on stalking, as well as publications, articles and newsletters.Tax Resources on the Web
Alan Kalman has been maintaining this site since 1998, and the home page is a simple list of tax-related topics, from Accounting Periods and Methods all the way to Worthless Securities. Most of the links will take you to the corresponding IRS page on the subject, which makes this a very helpful search index for the IRS site. But it doesn't stop there -- there are also tons of links to other sites, on those particular tax issues. A must-have site to get your tax research started.Harvard Environmental Law Review
As with most law review sites, this is no-frills, with links to the current issue, archives, and most importantly, a subscription link. And like most law review sites, you won't actually find any articles here; just a list of the articles found in each issue. Still, it's a good starting point, and could short-circuit your research time.National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty
When I first reviewed this site in 2001, I was not impressed -- it was mostly a pitch to get readers to join the organization. Four years later, and things have changed. There's no question the folks at the NLCHP want you to get involved, but they are also offering lots of good links and resources on issues of importance. The site deals with four main topics: housing, income, education, and civil rights. Each topic has its own page, with links to sub-topics and other resources, including surveys, publications, reports, and more. This site has grown up nicely.The Nixon Tapes
I left out the last part of this site title; the page provides the "secret recordings from the Nixon White House on Luis Echeverria and Much Much More." Here you'll find recordings of conversations between Nixon and Echeverria (then President of Mexico), along with translations and analysis. Not sure if you'll find any legal research use from this, but it's fun to listen to these old tapes.
Last but not least, a few fun and useful sites to get your week started:
Want to finally figure out what XHTML or PHP means? Check out the Ultimate Computer Acronyms Archive, and wonder no more.
Ready for another Game for the Brain? Check out What Was There? and test your memorization skills.
Well, that’s it for Issue #207 – 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
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