Internet Legal Research Weekly -- May 11, 2008

Welcome to Issue #299 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!

I'll be out of town next weekend, attending the Spring Meeting of the ABA's Law Practice Management Section in Santa Fe. See you in two weeks!

Blawgs of the Week
Here are a few of the law-related blogs featured on Inter Alia this past week:

We're continuing our multi-week series on security, and this week we have a subject so important, I may take more than one week on it. That topic is privacy. Here are a few tips to keep your data private:

-- Protecting folders -- for Windows users who want to protect folders with sensitive information, check out Folder Guard (http://www.folder-guard.com, $39.95), which allows you to password-protect individual folders. For Mac OS users, all you have to do is use the Disk Utility application to create a disk image of the original -- then assign it a password. The resulting file contains the entire contents of the folder, which can be restored with a click of the mouse.

-- Passwords -- while we're talking about passwords, remember that it's a good idea to protect *everything* you have with a password. Many of the programs you use -- Word, Adobe Acrobat -- have features that allow you to assign a password to individual files.

-- I see a lot of lawyers going on Facebook and other social networking sites these days. These sites are great for interacting with others, but remember that everything you post on these sites have the potential to last, well, forever.

-- When you're surfing the Internet, Firefox allows you to configure your browser so that your surfing history gets erased every time you close the program. Just go to Options, then Privacy, and under Private Data select Always clear my private data when I close Firefox.

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!

Law Reform Commission of Ireland
The purpose of this organization is to keep the law of Ireland under review and make recommendations for its reform. The site is pretty simple, with information on law reform, and a pretty substantial library of publications that can be downloaded for free. If you have a need to research Irish legal reform (admittedly a narrow niche), this is the place to start.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission
It's been a while since I covered a federal agency -- the NRC, as you might imagine, is involved with the regulation of nuclear energy, to enable the nation to safely use radioactive materials to benefit civilian purposes. The major areas of interest here are sections on Nuclear Reactors, Nuclear Materials, Radioactive Waste, Nuclear Security, and Public Meetings and Involvement. As with most federal agencies, there is quite a bit of information to be found here, if you dig deep enough.

OKNewsBar
My good friend Jim Calloway introduced me to this site awhile back, but I haven't had time to mention it until now. The Oklahoma Bar Association has created a very useful tool for Oklahoma lawyers and those interested in law from the Sooner State. There are four major areas. The home page lists recent cases released by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals and Oklahoma Supreme Court. There's a section with Oklahoma legal news, provided by a newsfeed from Stateline.org. The National Legal News page allows you to view news feeds from the ABA and Jurist. And the Law Practice Page features two news feeds -- one from Jim Calloway's great Law Practice Tips blog, and another, "master" news feed that Jim created from several law practice management blogs. Great aggregated content!

PACER Web Links
This is just a good set of links to federal courts, both circuit, district and bankruptcy. What's great about it is that the links take you straight to the ECF (Electronic Case Filing) page for each court, so you don't have to worry about searching for them from the court's main page.

eDelaware
The Delaware firm of Potter, Anderson & Corroon is offering a great service for lawyers who need up-to-the-minute Delaware court and statutory information on their Blackberries. Just sign up (it's free), and you'll be directed to download a small application that will be installed on your Blackberry. You can then download the full text of the Delaware General Corporation Law, Statutory Trust Act, Limited Liability Company Act, Uniform Commercial Code (Articles 8 and 9), and more. You'll also receive key case summaries from the Delaware Court of Chancery as soon as they're available.

Here's another way to stay private on the Internet. With the Anonymizer, you can protect your identity online.

Well, that’s it for Issue #299 – 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.

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