INTERNET LEGAL RESEARCH WEEKLY
January 28, 2007
Tom Mighell

Welcome to Issue #257 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!

News Update -- from the Inter Alia Weblog

Your E-Mail Address...for the Next 10 Minutes
In my seminars on e-mail management, I usually recommend that everyone have three (yes, three) e-mail addresses: the permanent e-mail address (the one that's on your business card -- the one you give to your friends, clients, family, etc.), the backup e-mail address (in case your primary e-mail goes down), and your disposable e-mail address -- an address you can use on the Internet that, when the spam starts to roll in, you can shut it down without losing valuable mail. Although having a Hotmail or Yahoo! e-mail address are perfectly fine for your disposable e-mail address, here's an even less permanent option: 10 Minute Mail provides you with an e-mail address that will last for only ten minutes -- after that, it's gone -- poof! With 10 Minute Mail, you don't have yet another e-mail address to remember -- what a great idea.

Blawgs of the Week
Here are some of the law-related weblogs I featured this past week on Inter Alia:

  • I'm continuing the review of ADR-related weblogs with Mediation Mindset, by technology dispute mediator Anthony Cerminaro. Anthony has a number of other weblogs, and if they're any indication, this blog should be great, too.
  • The folks at Abbott & Kinderman, a Sacramento law firm, are publishing the Land Use Law Blog. It focuses on land use, environmental, and real estate law in California.
  • Jonathan Stein's a busy blogger -- in addition to his The Practice blog, which I previewed last year, he's also discussing his own area of practice interest at the California Personal Injury and Insurance Blog. He's providing "information and insights for consumers regarding personal injury law, insurance and the tort system." Give it a look.
  • The Underdog Blog is brought to you by the criminal defense and individual rights lawyers at Marks & Katz, a law firm in Silver Spring, Maryland. It's written by Jon Katz, and he's discussing constitutional law, criminal defense, driving impaired, first amendment issues, immigration, and more.
  • I met James Province for the first time at a technology conference sponsored by the Mississippi State Bar, and he's great guy. In addition to being a lawyer, he's also an evangelist and trainer on tablet PC. In reality, he has become The Tablet Lawyer. He has created the Tablet Lawyer Blog in order to talk not only about tablets, but also about gadgets, software, and helpful websites.

Help Desk

When you're entering text in an Excel spreadsheet, sometimes it's hard to get the text to display correctly. Here are two options to make sure your text fits nicely and neatly within a cell.

  • The obvious fix -- just highlight the cell with text, right-click, select Format Cells. Click the Alignment tab, and check Wrap Text -- that will wrap the words to the next line.
  • If you want the text to display on one line, check Shrink to Fit, instead of Wrap Text. While this will keep the text on one line, it may shrink the letters to the point of unreadability. That's where Wrap Text comes in handy.

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

FEMA
I'm back to visiting federal government agencies, and this one is a bit off-season, when you consider that the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been in the news most often for its work in recent hurricane disasters. But FEMA provides disaster information in so many categories: earthquake, fire, flood, hazardous materials, landslides, nuclear, and more. The site also provides useful information depending on which group you belong to -- Businesses, Emergency Personnel, Government, Individuals, Institutions, Kids, News Media, and Professionals. In the event of a disaster, you can apply for assistance here, too.

International Journal of Central Banking
An initiative of the central banking community, the IJCB features articles on central bank theory and practice, with an emphasis on monetary and financial stability. Although a subscription costs $100/year, it appears that you can access all of the issues (currently six in all) for free. An e-mail alert is also available to let you know when new issues are published.

JurisPro
I am sure I have mentioned JurisPro before, but because it's a great site I'll mention it again. JurisPro is a free online directory of expert witnesses. The site was formed by a group of practicing attorneys, and offers listings for experts in dozens of areas, from Accident Reconstruction to Wood and Wood Products. Each expert listing will provide an Intro, contact information, references, and a link to the expert's web page if it is available. One caveat: JurisPro allows experts to advertise here, so it's not necessarily a referral-based service; make sure you do your due diligence when checking out the experts here.

Federal Rules of Civil Procedure
Nothing new here -- just an online, easy-to-use set of the Federal Rules, incorporating those changes that took place as of December 1, 2006.

National Conference of Appellate Court Clerks
This is primarily an organization for clerks working in appellate courts, but there are two great links pages for you to check out -- a full list of appellate court web sites in the United States, as well as links to all the "courts of last resort."

Finally, some fun and useful sites to start off the week:

Have I mentioned Fly the Copter? Either way, it's a fun (and not easy) game to play:

Here's an interesting shopping site -- PrivateWay allows you to purchase all those embarrassing products you don't want to have to ask for at the pharmacy.

Well, that’s it for Issue #257 – 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

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.

BACK TO INTER ALIA
SUBSCRIBE