INTERNET LEGAL RESEARCH WEEKLY
September 20, 2009
Tom Mighell

Welcome to Issue #343 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!

And away we go.....

News Update -- from the Inter Alia Weblog

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

  • The Employee Free Choice Act is a bill that, if enacted, would provide unions with additional ways to organize within the private sector workplace. At the EFCA Report, you can find articles, resources, insights and management perspectives on the proposed legislation. It's brought to you by Seth Borden, Alston Correll, and Richard Hankins, of big firm McKenna Long & Aldridge (with offices in New York and Atlanta, as well as 8 other locations).
  • Chuck Becker is a shareholder in the Des Moines law firm of Belin Lamson McCormick Zumbach Flynn. He practices in the areas of environmental and real estate law, and at Becker's Environmental Law Update he's discussing topics like CERCLA, the Clear Air and Clean Water Acts, going green, stormwater regulation, and even wine and global warming.
  • Here's a great niche blog by Austin, Texas lawyer Brad Bayliff. Texas Power Lines Blog provides commentary on high-power electric transmission line issues before the Public Utility Commission of Texas. Brad's providing some great coverage on what is a really important topic here in Texas.
  • H. Scott Leviant is a civil litigation attorney who handles complex and class action legal matters. Just last week, he started work with the firm of Spiro Moss, LLP, a firm in West Los Angeles, California. At his blog The Complex Litigator, Scott has accumulated a California-centric collection of comments and resources about complex litigation and class action practice. He's got some great stuff there - check it out!

Help Desk

Although I'm a big fan of the "paper-free" office, there are times when you need to print out documents for review or preparation. One of the things I want to have printed out most often is my calendar. In Outlook 2007, you're limited to a couple of different views when printing your calendar - but if you download and install the Calendar Printing Assistant for Outlook 2007, you can print your calendar in a variety of layout templates. The add-in will also let you print multiple shared calendars at once. Give it a try!

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

David Rumsey Historical Map Collection
This site isn't particularly useful for legal research, but this Map Collection is still pretty interesting. Started 20 years ago, it focuses primarily on cartography of the Americas from the 18th and 19th centuries. You'll also find maps of other parts of the world, contained in atlases, globes, school geographies, books, maritime charts, and more. There are even maps that you can view with Google Earth and in the virtual world Second Life. With over 20,000 maps and images online, it's a great resource.

ExpressO ($)
Have an article you'd like to get published in a law review? ExpressO makes it easy to have your manuscript delivered to your choice of 550+ law school reviews. Submitting is easy - just register with the site, then upload your Word (or WordPerfect, but it will be converted to Word) document to the site. Then just select the journals you want to submit it to, and add in information about the subject areas covered by your paper. The cost to submit is not free - it costs $2 per law review. There's also a listing of those law reviews that are not currently accepting articles.

Forms.gov
What a great idea (that I may have mentioned in a previous newsletter) - a supersite for federal government forms. You can search by keyword, or browse the forms by agency or by name. You'll find thousands of forms here, with 1,019 from the Department of the Treasury down to one form from the EEOC. Unfortunately, you won't find *all* forms here - if you don't find what you want, you should go to the Forms page of the agency that publishes it.

freeERISA.com
This site has been around for nearly 10 years, providing access to ten free and six for-pay databases, as well as helpful articles relating to employee benefits, human resources, and finance. A one-year subscription is $49.95, which isn't bad - although you can get all the original information for free through the Department of Labor. This is just a good service that provides the information in a reasonably easy-to-use format.

The Basic Structure of the Ecuadorian Legal System and Legal Research
I haven't featured a GlobaLex research guide in a while, so here's one on Ecuador. This one-page article provides basic information on the structure of Ecuador's legal system, as well as the legislative and executive branches. There are also a good collection of links to Ecuadorian legal websites. The article was authored by Maria Dolores Mino, an Ecuadorian lawyer. This article is a bit out of date, but I would imagine the information is still pretty current.

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

Arrr! Today's International Talk Like a Pirate Day (really) - if you're in the mood to celebrate, check out this How To on celebrating this famous day.

Got a few hours to kill? Scramball-2 looks easy at first, but it gets increasingly harder - and dangerously addictive.

Well, that’s it for Issue #343 – 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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Questions? New websites? Just want to talk? Send me an e-mail at tom(at)inter-alia(dot)net.