November 6, 2005

Welcome to Issue #213 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!

Lawyers and E-Discovery
The latest "Thinking E-Discovery" roundtable, written by Dennis Kennedy, Evan Schaeffer and me, is called Why Aren't More Lawyers Doing E-Discovery? It's a good discussion about why most lawyers are avoiding e-discovery whenever they can. Check it out.

Alito on the Web
Just name a Supreme Court nominee, and resources appear on the 'Net, lickety-split. Just like with Harriet Miers, the University of Michigan Law Library has a Hot Topics: Information on Samuel A. Alito, Jr. page, complete with biographical information, opinions, articles, and more. The Library of Congress also provides a page of selected resources, although to take advantage of many of these resources you'll need to actually visit the Library.

Go vertical with your search
Wow -- LookSmart has added not one, not two, but 161 vertical search engines to its site. Actually, it's just a great way to focus your search. On the main search page, you can select from Auto, Cities, Education, Food, Health, Home Living, Money, Music, Recreation, Sports, Style, Tech & Games, and Travel. Each of those pages then has additional sub-engines that you can search, broken down by category. An interesting new way to customize your search results.

Blawgs of the Week
Here's another crop of law-related weblogs for your consumption: first, David Mayer is a professor of law at Capital University Law School in Columbus Ohio. He's discussing legal issues at MayerBlog: The Web Log of David N. Mayer. Automating Invention is the blog of Robert Plotkin, a full-time patent lawyer and part-time law professor, who spends most of his time working with and thinking about computers. He writes about "the impact of computer-automated inventing on the law (primarily patent law), and explores the implications of computer-automated inventing for creativity, ethics, and high-tech industry." A nice niche blawg from the folks at Denver law firm Winzenburg, Leff, Purvis & Payne: Colorado Homeowners Association Law. Raymond Ward, who blogged at Rain Man for awhile, is now observing a lot just by watching over at Minor Wisdom. Another great niche blawg this week -- the New Jersey Eminent Domain Law blog, brought to you by the Florham Park, New Jersey firm of Carlin & Ward. Ninomania is an independent blog from Professor David M. Wayne at Regent University School of Law. As you might expect, he's blogging, among other things, about Supreme Court Justice Scalia. As he says, "Keep Your 'Yankee from Olympus' -- Give me Sancho Panza from New Jersey!" Finally, Michael Smith is a lawyer with the Roth Law Firm in Marshall, Texas, and he's gone blog-crazy. He's currently publishing three weblogs: 1) Eastern District of Texas Federal Court Practice -- a weblog devoted to practice in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, with a special emphasis on patent litigation; 2) Texas State Bar Director-- District 1 -- on his work with the State Bar of Texas; and 3) Puttering in the Study -- Michael's personal weblog with notes on family, books, history, music, and whatever else he's interested in.

Caught in the 'Net

Exalead's Smart Bookmarks = Your Own Private Search Engines

Here's another nifty feature of search engine Exalead, which I mentioned last week: Smart Bookmarks. You can essentially create links to any site that has a search feature. Here's how to do it:

If you didn't understand my directions, Exalead also explains it here.

The search engines on travel

It's always something new: now Google and Yahoo! are offering travel-related features, and both are nifty in their own way.

Google's is definitely the more basic offering -- say you're looking for flights from your town to your intended destination. Just type in those two locations ([dallas chicago] for instance), and at the top of the screen you'll get two boxes, for your departure and return dates. Then just select from the Expedia, Hotwire, or Orbitz links below and you'll get a list of available flights.

Yahoo! wins with the more ambitious feature -- the Yahoo! Trip Planner allows you save all of your trip ideas in a personalized, printable travel guide. You can plan your trip to the nth degree, adding hotels, restaurants, sights -- and you can add your own notes, directions, tags, and lots more. This looks like a terrific new travel tool.

Here's another set of tips on shortcuts -- but not keyboard shortcuts this time! Today I'll be talking about shortcuts you can use in Google to get to the stuff you're really trying to find. I have mentioned some of these before, but a refresher course can never hurt. Here goes:

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!

Alaska Court System
This is the gateway for everything you need to know about the Alaska courts. There are links for both the state appellate and trial courts; you can find slip opinions, court calendars, access detailed case information, and get general information about court activities. There's also a family law self-help center, a large selection of court forms, and a great collection of Alaska legal research links.

National Legal Aid and Defender Association
NLADA serves as an advocate for front-line attorneys and other equal justice professionals, and provides resources for those who are seeking more information on equal justice. You'll find Civil and Defender Resources, as well as materials for training and conferences. The Communications resources page offers a neat set of equal justice quotes that can be used in speeches.

Newspaperindex
Here's a very simple page that packs a lot of information: it's just a list of links to the countries of the world. Click on one, and you'll get a listing of newspapers from that country, some in English, and some in the native language. The list of newspapers is not exhaustive, I don't think -- certainly don't pay attention to the links in the USA category. But you'll definitely find some good links here.

Weather Terms for Storm Spotters
If you have ever wondered what a rain foot or helicity is (I'm sure some of you have wondered this), this glossary contains terms that are either heard or used by severe local storm spotters or spotter groups.

Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
PBGC is a federal corporation that "currently protects the pensions of 44.4 million American workers and retirees in 31,200 private single-employer and multi-employer defined benefit pension plans." There are resources here for workers and retirees, practitioners, and the media. The Practitioner page offers a ton of information: links on interest rates, premium filings, laws, regulations and informal guidance, plan terminations, reporting and disclosure, risk mitigation, and much more. As usual, a government site providing great content.

Looking for an anagram? Well, who isn't? That's why the Internet Anagram Server is so helpful.

Well, that’s it for Issue #213 – 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.

Archives: Miss an issue? You can read previous issues of the Internet Legal Research Weekly in the Archives.

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