INTERNET LEGAL RESEARCH WEEKLY
January 17, 2010
Tom Mighell

Welcome to Issue #355 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 blogs featured on Inter Alia this past week:

Compliance is a hot topic these days, and no more so than in the health care arena. Health Care Compliance Watch focuses on fraud and abuse issues, health care compliance programs and internal reviews, managed care disputes, professional licensing, and recovery audits. The blogger-in-chief is Ilana Sable, a health law attorney based in Brooklyn, New York.

Big firm Epstein Becker Green has another interesting blog - the Wage & Hour Defense Blog features insight and commentary on wage and hour law developments affecting employers. Major topics being covered include collective actions, DOL enforcement, FLSA coverage, tipped employees, white collar exemptions, and the motor carrier exemption, among others. It's edited by Richard Tuschman, David Barron, and Michael Kun.

The Financial Services Litigation Monitor, from Perkins Coie, discusses all aspects of consumer protection and financial services litigation, as well as lending discrimination, mortgage fraud and TILA litigation.

Here's a great idea for a group blog - the National Bankruptcy Forum is a consumer bankruptcy site, with bankruptcy attorneys all over the country contributing posts on various topics. You'll see posts on automatic stays, cars and bankruptcy, marriage and bankruptcy, protecting your property, tax issues, and much more.

Another blog from big firm Perkins Coie - Patent Law Insights features intellectual property news on topics like patent applications, licensing, portfolio analysis, valuation, and more. It's edited by Rajiv Sarathy, in the firm's Seattle office.

Help Desk

Some tips for Word users this week. There are few things worse than finding out that a document you've been slaving away over for days has become corrupted. But rather than resigning yourself to starting the document over, try these steps first.

  • Is it really corrupted? It could be Word or even Windows (shock!) that's having the problem, not your document. Try to open other documents to see if they work. Reboot your computer. Or try opening your "corrupt" document from another computer.
  • Make a backup copy of the file and store it someplace else. This won't necessarily help you recover the file, but it is always a good idea to have a pristine copy of the file available while you work on the original.
  • Did you email it to someone else? We often forget that we've shared the document with others, and a copy of it is attached to an email somewhere. You may have to add some content, but at least you're not starting over from scratch.
  • Run CHKDSK. This utility checks your hard drive for system errors. The corruption could be at the file system level, and CHKDSK may be able to fix the problem. To start CHKDSK, go to the Start button, click Run, and type in CHKDSK. If you don't have access to a Run command, go to your Accessories menu and click on Command Prompt, then type in CHKDSK.
  • Export the file to another format. Maybe Word's codes have cause the corruption. By converting it to RTF or TXT you may lose some of the formatting, but you'll at least get your text back. My favorite converter site, Zamzar, will convert your Word doc to a text file for free.
    I'll have 5 more tips next week for dealing with corrupted Word docs. Stay tuned!

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!


Updates from Twitter

Here are the articles and resources I found interesting on Twitter this week:

Legally Relevant – Sites on the Internet

The Blueprints Database
I have no idea whether any of you ever need blueprints in your legal work, but this site was too cool to pass up. This database contains thousands of blueprints for all types of vehicles and other items - cars, motorcycles, trucks, buses, ships, trains, airplanes, tanks, weapons, humans, phones, and more. With a free registration you can view all blueprints at full dimensions and interact with the community on the site.

50States
This site is an extremely useful way to keep information on all 50 states, as well as commonwealths and territories. Just click on any state, and you'll have links to just about anything you might want to know about that state - area codes, city guides, classified ads, county maps, genealogical resources, public records, state government resources, white and yellow pages, and much more.

AgEcon Search
Hosted by the University of Minnesota, AgEcon search is a free, open access repository of full-text scholarly literature in agricultural and applied economics, including working papers, conference papers, and journal articles. You can search by keywords, or browse for content by institution/journal, author, date, or subject category. Subscribe to the RSS feed to receive updates when new articles are added to the database.

American Judicature Society
The American Judicature Society works to maintain the independence and integrity of the courts and increase public understanding of the justice system. Toward that end, you'll find areas on Ethics, Judicial Independence, Selection, Public Education, and Juries, among others. Unfortunately, there were some site errors when I visited it, preventing me from accessing most of the resources. Hopefully that will be fixed when you see the site.

Law Review/Law Journal Search Engine
My friend Catherine Sanders Reach at the ABA's Legal Technology Resource Center has put together a fantastic search tool of over 300 online law reviews and journals, as well as repositories hosting academic papers and related publications. Just enter your search terms in the box at the top, and the search engine will query all of the online journals. The list of all journals searched is also provided on the site, so you can visit them separately if you want.

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

If you have less than tech-savvy friends/family, or if you yourself need occasional help with the computer, check out ShowMeWhatsWrong - it creates a screencast of what's going on the computer screen, that can be sent to the troubleshooter so he/she/you can help, when you can't be there in person.

Tetris'D is a cool twist on the usual Tetris game - you're a stick figure, being bombarded with rapidly descending blocks of various sizes. Your mission is to stay alive.

Well, that’s it for Issue #355 – 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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