INTERNET LEGAL RESEARCH WEEKLY
September 23, 2007
Tom Mighell

Welcome to Issue #280 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

I didn't have time to do the news this week, so we'll go straight to the:

Blawgs of the Week
Here are a few of the great law-related weblogs featured on Inter Alia this past week:

  • Law-related weblog, or gossip rag? Legal Pad LA is maybe a little of both. A publication of the National Law Journal, it's a daily blog on the local legal scene in Los Angeles.
  • Here's a nifty niche blog: Law of the Game is "your source for video game law," with information on video games, gambling, and other legal discussions. It's published by Mark Methenitis, a soon-to-be lawyer from Vernon Goodrich in my own hometown of Dallas.
  • Not a lot of RICO-based blogs out there, but here's one: the RICO Law Blog is penned by Thomas G. Walker of the firm Cosho Humphrey in Boise, Idaho. As you might expect, he's discussing racketeering litigation, both on the federal and state levels.
  • The Puerto Rico Law Blog is published by Ponce, Puerto Rico lawyer Christian Frank Fas. He's got a bilingual blog going -- some posts in spanish, some in english -- about legal issues in Puerto Rico.

Help Desk

Continuing with my series of tips on Microsoft Office applications, here's an Excel tip for you. How often do you type in some numbers into an spreadsheet cell, only to have Excel misinterpret what you want to do and turn it into a date or some other number format? There are a few easy fixes for this, to train Excel to display numbers the way you want.

Let's say you want to enter numbers like 4-23-10 -- Excel will turn that into 4/23/2010. Or maybe you just want to enter 012345 -- Excel will drop the leading zero. To get Excel to stop doing that, just put an apostrophe in front of the whatever numbers you're entering -- '012345 -- and Excel will leave it alone.

Fractions are a different story -- type in 2/4, and Excel will say 4-Feb. Type in '2/4, and it will keep the fraction. Type a zero and a space before the fraction -- 0 2/4 -- and Excel will format your fraction to its lowest value -- 1/2.

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

American College of Chest Physicians
Here's another niche member group, this one describing itself as "the leading resource for the improvement in cardiopulmonary health and critical care worldwide. As with most of these associations, much of the information is intended for members, but researchers will find some gems if they poke around enough. Chest Soundings provides podcasts on issues like COPD, end-of-life decisions, and optimal drug delivery (best of all, you can subscribe to an RSS feed to have new podcasts delivered to you). The CHEST Journal is available for subscription, but many articles are available for free.

OpenNet Initiative
ONI's mission is "to identify and document Internet filtering and surveillance, and to promote and information wide public dialogue about such practices." Here you'll find information on Internet filtering, tools and ongoing research on the subject, regularly updated news, as well as a blog that reports on state-based Internet filtering. You can enter a URL of a website to see if it's being blocked by any countries.

International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
I'll bet not many of you have an interest in knowing about criminal law in the former Yugoslavia, but this site satisfies my quota for both international law and criminal law, all in one fell swoop. You can view the video of what's going on the courtroom, when trial is in session. There's also the latest developments, the main legal documents in all of the cases, and reports on the status of the tribunal.

LemonMeter
This site is a nifty way to quickly check your (or someone else's) rights under the lemon laws of your particular state. Just provide information on what kind of car you own and when you bought it, and it will tell you if your car is covered by that state's particular lemon law.

European Union Law
Okay, so maybe I had one more international law site for you this week. Sue me. But before you do, take a look at this article, because it's a great review of electronic and print research on the European Union. It's written by Marylin Raisch, a law librarian at Georgetown Law School. In addition to the basics of European Union law, there are also links to some of the important sites to continue your research.

Finally, a few fun and useful sites to begin your week:

Do you need to "reclaim your brain"? Lumosity wants to help -- it's a brain fitness program designed to improve your memory, attention and processing speed.

Okay, I just spent 30 minutes playing Bauns, and I may go back to playing it again -- it's a particularly addictive game where you aim a silver ball to knock down a bunch of colored balls, which keep falling a little bit like Tetris.

Well, that’s it for Issue #280 – 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.

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

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