I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to take a tour of a new research service called LawyerLinks. It's designed for corporate lawyers, and the offerings are definitely directed to that segment of the legal community. The simply-designed site provides Topics (or an Index) on the left menu, with the content displayed to the right. The Topics include Current Events, M&A News, Accounting Issues, Asset-Backed Securities, Deals, Industries, Notable Cases, SEC Information, Tender Offers, and more.
LawyerLinks works a lot like a research manual (or as Bob Ambrogi points out at the link below, a treatise). Just click on a link to drill down to more focused information. Much of the information is intended as reference, providing an overview of the legal issues. But you'll also find links to other web sites, forms, and case law summaries on these issues -- all updated regularly.
Bob Ambrogi wrote a pretty thorough review of the site, and I echo all of his comments. I very much recommend the site for corporate law researchers, and offer just a few suggestions for future versions of the site:
-- A more nuanced navigation system might be helpful. When I drilled down to certain topics, the only way to get back to the previous page was to click the Back button. Would access to a visual "bread-crumb trail" onscreen enable researchers to better navigate? Maybe.
-- I hope a Firefox version is on the way soon, for those of us who don't use Internet Explorer.
-- During the tour, I got the distinct impression that the folks behind LawyerLinks don't much like the concept of search -- that's why there's no search function on the site. Anywhere. I'm still getting used to the idea, but I really think a search function would be useful for finding information located deep within all that great content -- it might save valuable time otherwise spent on drilling down to the same information.
You can get a free 30-day trial, but after that you'll have to pony up -- it's $1/minute for a la carte users, or you can purchase a group subscription for $1,495/year. Check it out.