INTERNET LEGAL RESEARCH WEEKLY
December 16, 2007
Tom Mighell

Welcome to Issue #286 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

The Mother of all Shortcut Resources
My friend Jim Calloway is a big fan of shortcuts -- in the many tips programs we have presented together in the past few years, he always has some great tips about shortcuts for different programs, and how shortcuts can help you be more efficient when navigating throughout these programs. If you too have a thing for shortcuts, then you have to make sure KeyXL Keyboard Shortcuts is one of your bookmarks. They have thousands of shortcuts, for all kinds of programs on different platforms -- Windows, Mac, Linux, and even Web apps. The breadth of shortcuts here is nothing short of amazing.

Sharing Your Stuff with Others
Do you ever find something on the Internet that just know your friends or colleagues would appreciate? Sure, you can email them a link to the page you find, but there are better, more interesting ways to to this, and Google can help. With their Shared Stuff widget you can easily share what you find on the Internet in a number of ways. To start, just drag the button on the Shared Stuff page to your bookmark toolbar. Then, whenever you see something you want to share, just click Email/Share, and a box will pop up. You have three options: you can email it to someone, post it to your very own dedicated Shared Stuff page, or post it to Facebook or one of several social bookmarking sites. This is a great and really easy way to share the things you find with others.

Blawgs of the Week
Here are just a few of the great law-related blogs mentioned on Inter Alia in the past few weeks:

  • Post Process is a blog about "everything to do with E-discovery & ESI" (electronically stored information). It's published by an as-yet anonymous consultant in the electronic discovery and computer forensics field. Also check out his EDD Bibliography, which has an impressive listing of e-discovery case law, broken down into categories.
  • Law Department Search is the blog of Courtney Sapire, a recruiting consultant focusing on corporate legal departments and in-house counsel. She provides tips and tricks on how to find and get an in-house counsel job, as well as featured job listings around the country.
  • The Truck Injury Law Blog is published by the Law Offices of Morgan Adams, a Chattanooga attorney. He's discussing issues like driver problems, accident help, and safety.
  • Here's a great niche blog -- the Life Insurance Compliance & Regulation Law Blog is the blogchild of the Currin Law Office of Greenwich, New York. Cailie Currin is providing updates and discussion on life insurance compliance, annuity compliance, and insurance regulation.
  • Another niche blog dealing with insurance law. The Reinsurance Law Blog is brought to you by the Tulsa firm of Stauffer, Graves & Nathan. They're discussing topics like contractual liability, disability benefits, and new opinions and laws in the area of insurance law.
  • Yet another niche blog for you. The IPR ADR Blog is one such blog -- they're discussing ways of resolving intellectual property disputes by way of the alternative dispute resolution process. It's a group blog, brought to you by attorneys who both litigate and mediate IP disputes -- they include Victoria Pynchon, Les Weinstein, Eric van Ginkel, Michael Young, and Judge John Leo Wagner.

Help Desk

Can I get a show of hands from those of you who use Styles in Word? I thought so -- not many of you. I realize that Styles are supposed to simplify the way we create and navigate a document in Word, but c'mon now -- they're a pain to deal with, and they just don't look right. Did you know you can modify the Styles? Here's how, in both Word 2003 and Word 2007:

In Word 2003, just click Format, then Styles and Formatting. Click the down arrow that appears when you move the pointer over the style you want to change, and select Modify. You'll then get a set of formatting options that you can use to change the style to your preference. Don't forget the Format button in the lower left -- it contains even more options. Click Add to Template and then OK.

In Word 2007, it's a bit different. You can see your Styles on the Home Ribbon. Four styles show by default, but you can click the arrow to the side to select More. Select Apply Styles, and then choose the pull-down menu to find the style you want to change. Click Modify, and you'll get the same formatting box as in Word 2003. Click OK, then Reapply, and you're done. You can also find different types of styles under the Change Styles button.

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

Bureau of Labor Statistics
I'm sure I have mentioned this site in the past, but it's worth another look. Part of the Department of Labor website, this site is chock full of labor statistics, in categories, such as inflation and consumer spending, wages and earnings, international labor, productivity, demographics, and much more. There's no RSS feed to keep up-to-date, but you can subscribe to the BLS News Service to get regular updates by email.

WebElements
This site may be better suited to your high school-age children, but if you need information on specific chemicals this may be a good place to start. From the Periodic Table of Elements, just select one of the chemical elements. You'll get some advertising, but also a lot of information about each element. You can learn about it from a biological or geological standpoint, the different compounds using the element, nuclear, elemental and electronic properties, and even links to books on the subject. There's also a WebElements Scholar Edition (http://www.webelements.com/webelements/scholar/) for university and school students.

Cognistar ($$)
Cognistar is a CLE provider for lawyers. For only $695/year, you have access to all of the courses offered on the site. There currently appear to be several hundred courses available, in topics such as business law, ethics/professionalism, health law, intellectual property, litigation, skills training, taxation, and many more.

Construction Risk
This site is maintained by J. Kent Holland, a Virginia construction lawyer. The site is full of great resources on construction law. You can subscribe to the newsletter that comes out once a month, or browse the other resources on the site, including links to construction associations, conferences, legal resources, risk management, governmental sites, insurance carriers, continuing education, and environmental risk.

DrugDigest
The mission of DrugDigest is to provide you with the tools you need to stay informed about the wide variety of medicines on the market today. The drug library contains frequently asked questions about a wide variety of medications, and you can also check for interactions between two drugs. You can compare how the drug you are taking compares with other drugs in its class. There are also a set of interactive tools that can help you ask your doctor the right questions, check for potential drug savings, gauge your health risk assessment, and print out a medication checklist.

Finally, here are some fun and useful sites to start off your week:

Mango provides free language lessons in ten languages, and two courses for learning english. There are over 100 lessons for each language, which are provided in audio and slide presentation format. Don't have time to learn a new language on the computer? No problem -- with Mango on the Go you can burn the lessons to CD, listen to them on your iPod, or even download notes, vocabulary and phrase lists in PDF. And did I mention it was free?

And if it's too cold to get out to the links to play a round, try playing a round of Office Mini-Golf.

Well, that’s it for Issue #286– 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