October 30, 2005

Welcome to Issue #212 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!

Wiki takes on bird flu
Check out the Flu Wiki, which was established to provide current, regularly-updated information about avian flu and the possibility of an influenza pandemic. Lots of good links here on bird flu, pandemic statistics, and how you can help.

Master your spreadsheets
We're already gearing up for ABA TECHSHOW 2006, and the program grid is taking shape. One of the sessions on our Applications track is titled "Excel at Excel" -- of all the Office applications, it's probably the least used/understood by lawyers. If you don't know much about Excel and want to get a headstart before TECHSHOW, check out Get to Know Excel, an audio course that will teach you some of the basics -- how to create a workbook, enter text and numbers, and insert/delete columns and rows.

Blawgs of the Week
What's this? MORE law-related weblogs? Yup. First up: Unlearned Hand is a blog "about law, being a student, Catholicism, beer, philosophy, sociology, and whatever else interests me." Christopher Jones is an attorney with Millberg Weiss, a firm known for class action securities work. He's blogging about what he knows at the PSLRA Nugget, which allows you to "keep abreast of the latest securities class action case law with a quick (and relatively painless) daily dose of the Nugget." Here's another blog from the Law Professor Blogs Network: the CrimProf Blog features information on criminal law, from Gabriel J. (Jack) Chin (University of Arizona College of Law) and Mark Godsey (University of Cincinnati College of Law). Urban Beat is the blog of Anthony Reeves, who wants to bring an urban perspective to legal information from a counselor at law specializing in Social Security law and any general legal issues. The Unreasonable Man is "a rising second year law student ... at the University Of Minnesota Law School....providing commentary on life, law school, and his admittedly warped slant on selected current events... but mostly, it's just his chance to bitch." Dan Tokaji is another professor at Ohio State's Moritz College of Law who is blogging -- this one is about election law. The Equal Vote Blog provides information and insight on the laws governing federal, state and local elections.

I *HATE* Reading Layout in Microsoft Word. I know MS was trying to be helpful and all, giving us a "book-like" reading experience. But I just don't like it -- even worse, I hate that MS makes it a default, automatically opening all Word documents in that mode. Fortunately, it's a snap to turn it off:

Just open Word, then choose Tools, then Options, and click on the General tab. Make sure the box next to Allow Starting in Reading Layout is unchecked. Then click OK, and you're good to go.

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!

Kansas Criminal History Record Check ($$)
The state of Kansas allows members of the public to receive criminal records, for a fee. If you are a Kansas resident (or have been convicted of a crime in Kansas), you can check your own records, or you can obtain the records of anyone else. The cost is $17.50 per record. If you want certified copies, or a complete record of a person's criminal history, you'll have to order the records by mail.

LegalSpan ($$)
LegalSpan has been offering online continuing legal education since 1998. Currently the site offers CLE through providers from all but eight states. Just click on a state and you can see the catalog for that particular jurisdiction. The prices appear to be pretty reasonable -- $25-$30 an hour on average. If you're in need of quick, on-demand CLE, this might be the place to check.

Healthline
This is a new medical search engine that wants to help you "connect to better health." The site provides what they call "medically guided search" -- you don't necessarily have to know all the medical terms in order to find information. For example, just type in "arthritis," and you'll get a set of boxes at the top of your search results that will help you narrow your query. You can broaden your search by selecting "connective tissue disorders," or you can narrow it by selecting "rheumatoid arthritis" or "fibromyalgia." Healthline also has a nifty feature called HealthMaps, which features a pop-up map with additional search terms -- for rheumatoid arthritis you'll find Incidence, Cause, Remission Signs, Symptoms, RA in Pregnancy, and much more. You can even tag the sites you find so you'll be able to visit them again.

Llesiant ($$)
Gee, I'm showing a lot of fee-based sites today. Llesiant provides a product called Legal Advantage, which is designed to deliver premium business intelligence direct to your desktop. You'll have access to periodicals, company profiles, breaking news, company and industry developments, competitors, financial data, EDGAR filings, and more. Unfortunately, you'll have to contact the company for more information if you're interested.

MDEX Online ($$)
Yep, another fee-based site. MDEX is a "national full-service medical legal consulting firm." There are several services available. The Daubert Tracker allows you to find out if your expert has been challenged in the past. There's also an Economic Damage Expert Locator, Wage Impact Calculator, Life Expectancy Calculator, Medical Procedure Cost Analysis, and those are just the Quick Tools. MDEX also offers more in-depth services, including medical records review, litigation support services, economic damage assessments, and social security consultation.

Well, that’s it for Issue #212 – 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.