INTERNET LEGAL
RESEARCH WEEKLY
February 3, 2008
Tom
Mighell
Welcome to Issue #287 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!
Wow -- it's been over a month! New year...new computer....it's great to be back! Thanks for being patient -- now back to our regular programming, in a super-sized edition of the newsletter!
News Update -- from the Inter Alia Weblog
ProcessLibrary Upgrades its Service
A few years ago I mentioned ProcessLibrary, a great site that helps you identify the unknown or mysterious processes running on your computer. They've upgraded their service in the past few months, introducing ProcessQuickLink. It plugs in to your Windows Task Manager, adding a green "i" button next to each process. Just click the button, and you'll be whisked to the ProcessLibrary page describing the process you want to know more about. An even easier way to use an already great service.Perform Acrobat-Like Moves on the 'Net
Have you ever received a PDF file that needed editing, but didn't have access to Acrobat or any of those programs that can edit PDFs? No matter -- you can now edit PDFs online, for free, with PDFHammer.com. The offerings are a bit limited for now -- all you can do is delete pages, reorder pages, or append PDF files to each other. But the service is free, and it's definitely helpful if you happen to find yourself without one of the standard PDF-editing programs.Blawgs of the Week
Since the last issue, I've mentioned a whole bunch of great law-related blogs. Here are just a few of them:
- Altman Weil has long been a big player in the legal consulting field; it was only natural that they eventually get into the blogging business, too. Cotterman on Compensation is authored by Jim Cotterman, focuses on lawyer compensation and law firm finance.
- To start off your 2008, check out the Law Consulting Blog, from Cordell Parvin. He helps to motivate and inspire lawyers to identify and achieve their purpose, values and goals. Cordell's discussing business development, emotional intelligence, mentoring, coaching, being a lawyer, and more.
- The national firm of Littler Mendelson is well-known for their employment law work, and they're showing some of their knowledge off at the Workplace Privacy Counsel blog. Published by Philip Gordon, the blog discusses such topics as background checks, biometrics, email communications, lifestyle privacy, identity theft, genetic testing, and other issues.
- The blog Securing Innovation is brought to you by IP.com, a company that provides some great intellectual property tools to the legal community. The company's first product is the Prior Art Database, which provides a centralized location for publishing and searching technical disclosures. At Securing Innovation, they're talking about a lot of what they do, as well as managing intellectual property, patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. Great blog -- give it a look.
- Here's another example of the great niche law blogs that are out there. The Egg Donation and Surrogacy Law Blog discusses egg and sperm donation as well as surrogacy issues that arise in the law. It's brought to you by Theresa Erickson, a Poway, California attorney who is one of the few lawyers in the United States practicing exclusively in the area of family formation law.
- Another terrific niche blog is the Asset Search Blog features information on asset searching, fraud investigation, and legal strategies for recovering hidden assets. It's published by Fred Abrams, a New York attorney who has recovered tens of millions of dollars hidden in offshore tax havens.
- A fellow ABA TECHSHOW speaker and friend of mine, Brett Burney, has been out on his own with an e-discovery consulting firm, Burney Consultants. At his new blog ediscoveryinfo he hopes to help bridge the chasm between the law and the frontiers of electronic discovery. He primarily talks about e-discovery issues, but he's got some good stuff about legal technology there, too.
- The National Insurance Law Forum is a public service intended to facilitate discussion and an exchange of ideas and information among insurance industry professionals, risk managers, attorneys, policyholders, students, and others with an interest in the development of American insurance law. The main contributors are Kevin Merriman (Rochester, NY), Sara Thorpe (San Francisco), Michael Aylward (Boston), Diane Polscer (Portland, OR), and Christopher Martin (Houston).
- Here's an interesting niche blog -- the Healthcare Neutral ADR Blog aims to connect at the intersection between alternative dispute resolution and healthcare law. It's brought to you by Healthcare Neutral, a New Jersey company founded by attorney Richard J. Webb. Here you'll find lots of discussion on arbitration, mediation, and other issues as they relate to medical malpractice claims, hospitals and medical staff, and other healthcare matters.
- This is a great idea for a blog -- Best Practices for Legal Education is sponsored by Albany Law School, and edited by Professor Mary Lynch. As for the blog's purpose, I'll let it speak for itself: "This site was created with two goals in mind: 1) to create a useful web-based source of information on current reforms in legal education arising from the publication of Roy Stuckey’s Best Practices for Legal Education and the Carnegie Foundation’s Educating Lawyers; and 2) to create a place where those interested in the future of legal education can freely exchange ideas, concerns, and opinions. This has the potential to be a great resource for legal educators and all other interested in legal education.
- Here's an interesting combo international law blog: ChinaLat Law features business and legal issues affecting China, Latin America and the United States. It's published by the Miami firm of Diaz, Reus, Rolff and Targ, and more specifically by associate Hongwei Shang.
An easy way to keep your programs up-to-date
One way that the bad guys gain access to your computer is through old or unpatched software. Windows is a prime culprit here, but it's not the only software with potential security holes. I've been using a great new program from Secunia called the Personal Software Inspector. When you fire it up, the PSI will scan your system and report back those programs which are Insecure, End-of-Life (no longer supported by the developer), and which programs have been patched. You can view information about why the unpatched version of your software is insecure, and in most cases click a link to download the latest version. Oh, and did I mention it was free?
You can configure the PSI to start on boot, so that it's always monitoring your programs. Or you can turn off that setting, and only scan it at your convenience. Either way, it's a terrific way to keep up with out-of-date programs on your computer.
Another great program is UpdateStar, which does essentially the same thing as Secunia's PSI, but with one difference -- it will also provide links to update out-of-date programs that do not pose security risks. It's free, too.
Help Desk
Deleting Duplicate Entries in Outlook
I love my Treo, but I don't sync it that often with my work computer. That's because it has a bad habit of duplicating my contacts and calendar entries on my computer, which is a real pain to fix. In the past, I have used add-ins from Sperry Software -- they have some a great Duplicate Appointments Eliminator and Duplicate Contacts Eliminator, which really do a great job of deleting the duplicate entries. But sometimes the add-ins don't play well with my work version of Outlook, so I usually wind up uninstalling it.
However, there is a way to do this for free, and I'm guessing it works on both Outlook 2003 and 2007. Just check out this tutorial from Tech Recipe on How to Delete Duplicated Contacts. This method gets you to add a "Date Created" column, and you can then delete all contacts created after a certain date (i.e., when you last did a sync). Warning: do this right after a sync, or you may wind up deleting non-duplicate contacts you subsequently add to Outlook.
I assume (but have not tried) that this method will work for your calendar items as well, as long as you are working with them in List view.
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
Collaborating on Public Cancer Data
Here's a site for the science geeks in our audience. Published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, The Cancer Genome Anatomy Project helps to provide analytical, collaborative tools on cancer research to the scientific community. The left menu bar provides a listing of the projects with CGAP data, such as the Clone Registry, Gene Expression, Cancer, Chromosomes, and other projects. I don't understand most of what's on this page, but as usual, it looks like the National Institutes of Health are providing some great resources to the public.Embassy of France in the United States
The official U.S. presence of France, the Embassy of France provides a lot of information on France, primarily news and travel information -- but all of it useful. There are links to publications and regularly updated news items relating to issues in France or other countries with french interests. The "France in the US" link provides information on how to find your local french consulate, and the "Going to France" link has some good, practical advice on those wanting to travel there.Foreign Law Research
FLARE is a collaboration between some major collecting law in the United Kingdom. This is just a jumping-off page, but it leads you to a number of terrific research guides to the law of foreign jurisdictions. This is really where you want to spend most of your time -- that information is held on the site of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies. You'll find a legal research guide to many countries, some of them hosted by GlobaLex (see below).General Counsel Roundtable ($$)
The GCR is a team of lawyers, economists, and other professionals that provide services to corporate legal departments, including guidance on compliance issues, proprietary tools designed to save time, and data that can prepare a general counsel to make decisions and board presentations. There's not much to this site unless you're a member -- so if you happen to be a general counsel and are interested in finding resources to help you with your job, submit an application for more information.Research Guide on Transboundary Freshwater Treaties and Other Resources
Anyone who reads this newsletter knows that I *love* the GlobaLex research guides. This guide to Freshwater Treaties is compiled by Barbara Bean, a Reference and Public Services Librarian at the Michigan State University College of Law. In this guide she provides information on Water Basics, Treaties and other International Agreements, applicable international organizations, cases, commentary, and much more. As usual, a great resource provided by GlobaLex!
Finally, some fun and useful sites to start off your week:
Check out the Barnes & Noble Review -- a weekly selection of news and reviews on books, music and film.
See how tall you can build an apartment building with Tower Bloxx.
Well, that’s it for Issue #287 – 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.