INTERNET LEGAL
RESEARCH WEEKLY
March 12, 2006
Tom
Mighell
Welcome to Issue #225 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!
Federal Opinions through PACER
PACER will now offer free access to federal district court opinions. This only applies to courts that have installed version 2.4 of the CM/ECF software, and to opinion filed after said software is installed. Federal district courts are still the only place where it's very hard to search for opinions online. I'm really looking forward to this new feature; hopefully it will allow us to more easily search for district court opinions.Great Article Resource
A couple of weeks ago Mary Ellen Bates posted Finding Articles Online, with a nice set of links to sites that provide articles in the academic, scholarly, and sci-tech areas.New Thinking E-Discovery Article Up
The latest edition of Thinking E-Discovery, the periodic column I write with Dennis Kennedy and Evan Schaeffer, is up at Discovery Resources. It's called Practical Tips for Evaluating E-Discovery Vendors and Providers, and as you might expect we discuss how to wade through the morass of e-discovery vendors to find the help you need with your next project.Blawgs of the Week
Another week, another selection of great law-related weblogs.
Here's a handy tip for getting more out of Google Earth. You have downloaded Google Earth, haven't you? I love it, but I don't use it nearly enough. But through Lifehacker I discovered a great way to discover distances. Just choose Tools, then Measure, then draw a line between the two places you want to measure. You'll get the distance in Miles, Nautical Miles, Inches, Yards, and even Smoots. For instances, it's 530,987 inches (as the crow flies) from my house to work.
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
Applied Discovery ($$)
Speaking of e-discovery vendors (see above), Applied Discovery is a LexisNexis-owned company focusing on e-discovery services. In addition to the great services they provide, you'll find a ton of terrific educational information about e-discovery here. There are case summaries, white papers, articles, model orders and sample documents (including sample e-discovery requests), and subscriptions to monthly and quarterly newsletters.EPA Enforcement & Compliance History Online
This is the place to head to find out whether EPA has taken action against facilities for violations of federal law. You can do a quick search by just entering a zip code, city or state, or make use of the Advanced Search features that allow you to be more specific. For each search you'll get a listing of facilities and a record of each company's compliance history.Gigablast
I spend a lot of time talking about Google and Yahoo, mostly because they are the search engines I use the most. But there are a lot of other search engines out there competing for your search attention, and Gigablast is one of them. What's nice about Gigablast is that it has separated out its search functions -- there are separate pages for the Web, a Search Directory, Weblogs (10 million pages indexed), Travel (5 million pages), and Government sites (34 million pages). If you're using RSS in your legal research, you can also create feeds of your searches here, to keep constantly updated on your searches.Copyright Management Center
This site is provided by Indiana and Purdue Universities, and it's designed to serve the community with the management of copyright issues arising in the creation of original works and in the use of existing copyrighted works for teaching, research, and service. A Copyright Quickguide is offered to help you learn basic copyright information quickly. There are also guides on Fair Use Issues, Permissions Information, and Copyright Ownership.International Environmental Law and Policy
Another university site, this one from American University's Washington College of Law. This is a "comprehensive resource source," dealing with the primary topics of The Creation and Development of International Environmental Law, International Environmental Protection, and Other Legal Regimes. There are also links to Recent Developments, Treaties, Institutional Players, Teaching Materials, and much more.
Finally, some fun and useful sites to jump-start your week:
I've been playing around with Folder Lock, a nifty little utility that allows you to lock, hide, and even encrypt any number of files, folders, drives, or anything else on your computer that needs protecting. You can also use Folder Lock on USB thumb drives and other types of portable media. When you lock up a file or folder, it's completely hidden from anyone that wanders onto your computer. It's free to try, $35 to keep.
Ever come across an interesting-looking bug and want to know more about it? Well now you can at What's that Bug?
Well, that’s it for Issue #225 – 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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