Internet Legal Research Weekly -- May 25, 2008

Welcome to Issue #301 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!

Free Research Tools Get Citators
In some of my recent seminars I have mentioned sites like PreCYdent and the Public Library of Law as good alternatives for finding case law, instead of first using a pay service. Unfortunately, they haven't had some of the great features that make West and Lexis such valuable legal research tools -- headnotes, Shepards, and KeyCite, to name a few. But two of these sites now offer basic citation information -- both PreCYdent and AltLaw now provide a list of cases that your search result cites, as well as cases that cite your search result. Bonnie Sucha at WisBlawg has a good rundown of the two new citator tools, and why they still probably aren't as reliable as the paid services. Interestingly, the Public Library of Law also offers citator services, but only if you upgrade to their $95/month Premium plan.

Locking Down your IMs
In my opinion, instant messaging is both one of the greatest internet communication tools available, and at the same time one of the most frowned-upon technologies by corporations and lawyers. I use Skype as my instant messenger, and it is invaluable for on-the-fly conversations when waiting around for an email response just isn't good enough. The security of an instant message is one reason why many do not use it as a way to communicate, because of the fear that such messages would not be confidential. Never mind the fact that with the rise of electronic discovery an instant message is discoverable! Here's a tool that won't make your IM session any less discoverable, but will definitely protect your confidential communications. SimpLite is a free product from French company Secway that allows you to encrypt your MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ/AOL, Jabber, and Google Talk IM sessions. There's also a pay version that you can use in corporate environments. Unfortunately, it won't encrypt my Skype sessions, but if you use one of the other chat services it may be worth checking out.

Collaborate on Documents, Almost Instantly
Have a document you need to review with someone else, and it needs to get done fast? Check out A.nnotate, a new site that makes document review a snap. Just upload a document (PDF, but it will convert your Word document to PDF when you upload it), and start reviewing. You can also take a snapshot of a web page and comment on that, too. The annotation tools are simple but pretty powerful -- you can highlight text and comment on it, as you would in Acrobat or other reviewing programs, but you can also "tag" your comments, which makes it really easy to search through all of the comments later on. A.nnotate also provides their own categories, like "wording," "typo," "query," "suggestion," "correction," "important," "company," and "person" -- by just clicking on the Typo category, you get a listing of all the typos noted by your reviewers. Getting reviewers to your document is also pretty simple. Once your document is loaded, click the Send button -- it will email a link to your collaborators. A.nnotate is free for up to 30 pages of documents per month. If you want to review more, you'll need to upgrade, with subscription plans ranging from $9.95 to $199.95 per month.

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

This week we continue with our series on security -- there's a lot to cover! In this issue we'll discuss the email we love to hate -- spam.

-- Don't ever, EVER respond to spam. Doing so confirms the validity of your email address to the spammer, guaranteeing you'll be on their list forever.

-- If you post your email address online, make sure you write it out -- tom(at)inter-alia(dot)net -- the spam "spiders" that troll for email addresses won't be able to read it.

-- The images in spam messages often contain "beacons" -- small web bugs that are embedded within images that transmit a signal back to the spammer, again confirming that they found a good email address. To avoid this, configure your email program to not accept images -- once you're satisfied the email is not spam, you can turn on images for the individual message.

-- Are any of you *not* using a spam filter? Most email programs come with built-in spam fighters that work pretty well. GMail's spam filter is fantastic, and my ISP's spam service (Yahoo, via AT&T) is also very good.

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!

Queen's Printer -- Government of Saskatchewan
If you need access to current Government of Saskatchewan legislation, this is the place to find it. You can choose from Consolidated Statutes, federal legislation, reading bills, regulations, repealed statutes, forms, tables of contents, and much more. There are even French language versions. Finally, the Saskatchewan gazette contains government notices, orders, and private notices required to be published. If you want to purchase paper copies of any publication, you can do so online with a credit card.

Texas State Library and Archives
The Texas State Library and Archives offers services to librarians, government agencies, and the general public. Although you'll have to visit the physical location to get most of the resources, you can still find a lot here. Check out the Catalogs and Searches page, where you can search the library catalogs of Texas agencies, and access various databases, including TRAIL, which searches over 180 Texas agency archives for publications on the internet. The home page mentions that due to technical problems, you may have trouble accessing the site at times.

Michigan Journal of International Law
Although like most law reviews you'll have to purchase a subscription for full access to the articles (print only), the folks at the Michigan Journal of International Law make most of their articles available for free (in PDF format) on the website -- back four years, anyway.

U.S. Department of Labor
I can't really do justice to this site in one short blurb -- the Department of Labor is one of the most information-intensive government websites around. Let's just say that if you want information on labor or employment law, statistics, health plans and benefits, and related agencies, you'll find it all here. You can sign up for email updates from the site, and some of the related sites also offer RSS feeds.

U.S. Court Forms (free and $$)
There are a number of sites that will provide you with forms for your legal practice, and U.S. Court Forms is one of the most well-known. They offer more than 60,000 forms, and boast a constantly-updated comprehensive collection of federal, state, and local county forms in all practice areas. With a free subscription, you'll get access to all the forms -- with a premium subscription the forms you receive are interactive (fillable), saving you time in filling out your forms.

In Nanotube, you need to protect the integrity of your tube by keeping the atoms (or whatever they are) from breaking it down.

Well, that’s it for Issue #301 – 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.