Internet Legal Research Weekly -- September 14, 2008

Welcome to Issue #309 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!

Get Yer Legal Tech Reviews Right Here!
Lexbe is an interesting, versatile company. Their core business is the sale of a web-based litigation management application that provides case analytics and document management tools. But like all good Web companies, they also give away some great stuff for free. First it was Litilaw, a fully-searchable online collection of more than 900 recent legal articles from lawyers and firms around the country. Now they're providing a different type of document collection: litiReviews offers links to more than one hundred free legal and litigation software reviews collected on the Internet. Even better, they've categorized the reviews so you can browse by a particular type of software. I'm not sure how quickly the articles are added to the collection, and I hope they are doing something to make sure the reviews don't get outdated by new releases of software, but I sure appreciate a resource like this.

Blawgs of the Week(s)
Here are a few of the great law-related weblogs featured on Inter Alia the past two weeks:

I'm still handing out tips for those of you who use the Firefox browser. This week, let's talk about passwords. Firefox has a great password manager, but it has one big weakness: anyone can access and view your password list with just a few clicks. Fortunately, it's easy to fix, by setting up a master password. Just select Tools, then Options, then click the Security icon. Check Remember passwords for sites and Use a master password. In the Change Master Password dialog box, enter a your "master" password -- obviously something you will remember but which no one else can guess. Click OK, and you're done.

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

MedLine Plus: Prostate Cancer
Here's a page from the great MedLine resource, with loads of information on prostate cancer. You can get the Basics, including the latest news, diagnosis/symptoms, treatment, prevention and screening. But you can also find multimedia tools, research links, a reference shelf, and a lot more. It's just a page of links, but it's a very useful page of links.

National Immigration Law Center
Here's a site on a controversial subject in the news; the mission of the NILC is to protect and promote the rights and opportunities of low-income immigrants and their family members. There's a great page on immigration law, with information on arrest/detention, driver's licenses, judicial review of immigration decisions, and trafficking, among others. You'll also find a pages on employment law issues as well as public benefits. You can even subscribe to the Immigrants' Rights Update newsletter.

Northwest Territories Judgment Database Search
If you ever have the need to search the judgments of the Northwest Territories, this is the place to come. Just enter the style of the case, the subject, name of the judge, or docket number, and you'll get the basics about a particular case, including the statutes and cases considered in the decision.

Criminal Law Conversations
This is a really interesting site from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, although it's not really for the average researcher. This project invites criminal law scholars to contribute to a criminal law "conversation," which will be published along with other conversations in a book. Just click on Status table, and you can take a look at all the "conversations," as well as where they are in development. You can also download a copy of the current document. You'll definitely find a lot of interesting article topics here.

LexisNexis Practice Area Community
What? A free resource from Lexis? It's true -- the Practice Area Community offers updates on various legal subjects, from Bankruptcy Law to Tax Law. Each area features news, analyses and case law developments, most of them for free. You'll get a list of recent news in that area, as well as links to pay features. If only RSS feeds were available, so we could get these updates automatically!

Finally, a few fun and interesting sites to start out your week:

I'm writing the newsletter today while now-Tropical Storm Ike rains on me, so I'll mention a site recommended by my good friend and subscriber Debbie: Umbrella Today? is a really simple site -- just enter your zip code (or any zip code, really), and it will tell you whether to pack an umbrella before you leave for work or the park. You can even sign up for text messages here.

And because I hope the rain will go away soon, I'm playing Sunny Day Sky, where I try to help a teddy bear fly over cars without getting smushed.

Well, that’s it for Issue #310 – 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

Now available: The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell

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