INTERNET LEGAL RESEARCH WEEKLY
April 15, 2007
Tom Mighell

Welcome to Issue #264 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

PDFing your Signature
Now that e-filing is on the rise in state court and virtually mandatory in federal court, lawyers are converting their pleadings to PDF all over the place. Although the court will accept an electronic signature, why not give them the real thing? Here are step-by-step instructions on how to Create a Transparent Signature Stamp, that you can simply insert into pleadings, letters, and other documents that you convert to PDF. Great stuff.

Online photo editing, for free
I've been talking about Picnik in seminars lately, because I think it's a great way to work with photos, especially if you don't have Photoshop or some other photo editing program. Just upload your pic, and get to work -- you can edit the photo by cropping or resizing it, changing the exposure or colors, and you can also have fun with it by giving it special effects and touches. (take advantage of some of these features now, because once the site comes out of beta they'll start charging for them) Once you're done, you can save the photo to your PC or share with others via the Internet.

Blawg Update
Here are a few of the law-related weblogs I featured the past two weeks on Inter Alia:

  • George Socha is one of the real gurus in the field of e-discovery. At In Re Discovery he's "informing digital discovery decisions" by providing a random collection of electronic discovery information. A must-subscribe RSS feed for anyone wanting to keep up on the latest in EDD.
  • The Transnational Law Blog is a group effort, brought to you primarily by law students. It's designed as "a study of all law regulating actions or events transcending national frontiers."
  • Chuck Newton calls himself a Third Wave Lawyer -- one who has embraced technology and the Internet, and who has divested him or herself from the normal trappings of the traditional law firm. Find out how to become a Third Wave Lawyer yourself, at his self-titled Chuck Newton blog.
  • Public Defender Stuff is the news service of the Public Defender Investigator Network. It aggregates posts from other public defender weblogs, and posts other news and information of interest to those who represent indigent defendants.
  • Suzanne Dingwall is a former venture capitalist, now working with Venture Law Associates in Toronto, where she's representing entrepreneurs and emerging companies. At Venture Law Lines she's providing the "fashion forward thoughts of a lawyer and former VC."
  • Lex Libris is the University of Minnesota Law Library Blawg -- they're discussing research resources, general law library information, and on Fridays they have fun.
  • The Federal FMLA Blog is published by Carl Bosland, a labor and employment arbitrator working in Denver. He's providing information on Family and Medical Leave Act developments affecting the federal sector.

Caught in the 'Net

Patting myself on the back

I've been fortunate to have had several articles and podcasts published in the past few weeks:

-- Incorporating EDD into your Depositions -- the 5 Ws of EDD Depositions -- this is the latest in the "Thinking E-Discovery" series over at Discovery Resources, that fantastic e-discovery portal. Dennis Kennedy, Evan Schaeffer and I decided to tackle something a bit different in this roundtable -- the types of questions lawyers need to be asking in depositions in order to make sure they are covering the appropriate electronic documents -- some good suggestions there, if I do say so myself.

-- The Online Office: How Google and Zoho's Tools Match Up Against the Big Gun -- this article was published in the March issue of Law Practice Magazine, and it asks the question: Are the Google and Zoho online office tools powerful enough to take on Microsoft and its Office Suite? My answer, for now anyway, is no -- but these online applications are nevertheless terrific tools that lawyers should be using, in some form. Check out the article if you get a chance.

-- Well, it took almost 9 months, but The Kennedy-Mighell Report is back with Episode #5: A Legal Technology Grab Bag. Dennis and I had a great time talking about a whole bunch of things, including a post-TECHSHOW roundup from me, Dennis's legal technology trends for 2007, a discussion on whether electronic discovery is oversold, and a brief promo on our new upcoming book on collaboration technologies.

Help Desk

We're on the second week of a series on troubleshooting your computer when it's running slowly. This week: is your processor overheating?

Today's processors do a LOT of work, and in doing that they generate a LOT of heat. That's what the fan is for -- you've probably heard it revving up when your computer is working particularly hard. If the processor temperature goes over a certain level, your system can slow down. This can be caused by one of three things: 1) dust on the fan; 2) the fan motor has failed; or 3) the fan bearings are loose.

You can usually tell if there's a fan problem just by listening and touching the computer. Depending on the level of noise being generated, you may want to replace the fan itself. But you don't have to -- get a can of compressed air and blow the dust away, and see if that cuts down on the noise.

To monitor your hard drive's temperature, check out HDD Temperature or HDD Thermometer.

Next week: Bad RAM.

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

Learn about Lyme Disease
As we get closer to summer, it's probably a good idea to start thinking about outdoor dangers -- and Lyme Disease is one of them. This page from the Centers for Disease Control provides a nice overview of the illness, including a description of its symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. There are also pages that describe the transmission of the disease, as well as statistics on reported cases. Finally, check out the publications on Lyme Disease, going back to 2000.

HEALTHMap
Speaking of diseases, HEALTHMap is a great site that allows you to see, at a glance, how diseases are being reported throughout the world. This is one of those Google Maps "mash-ups" I'm always talking about -- the folks at Harvard and MIT are providing a unified view of the current global state of infectious diseases and their effect on the population. You can view the map with all diseases selected, or pick and choose the disease on which you want to focus. You can also narrow your search to a particular country. The flags provide news from four different feeds: ProMED Mail, the World Health Organization, EuroSurveillance, and Google News.

FaganFinder Image Search Engines
Here's a simple page from the great FaganFinder site -- it's a simple page, but it gets the job done. It has just about every image search engine currently available. You can either choose an engine and search from this page, or just click on the link to go to the actual search engine itself. The page was last updated in January, so it's pretty recent.

International Legal Research
Researching international law can be daunting -- it's hard to find resources in other countries, and if you don't speak the particular language you might have trouble finding information for some countries. This great page from Duke Law School gives a nice overview on the nuts and bolts of doing international legal research, and the main resources to use. Unfortunately, it deals mostly with print publications, but it's still a great guide.

LawDragon
LawDragon is billed as "Your source for legal news and lawyer information." It combines legal media along with ratings of lawyers and judges. The site provides directories to find lawyers, judges, firms, vendors, mediators, and more. You can submit evaluations of other lawyers or judges, or just read the latest legal news.

I'm on a bit of a games streak right now, so here are your time-wasters of the week:

Swords & Sandals allows you to become a gladiator for a day (or more, if you survive).

Dodge is a simple game -- just try to avoid the red dots while you chase the blue box around the screen.

Well, that’s it for Issue #264 – 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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