INTERNET LEGAL RESEARCH WEEKLY
April 12, 2009
Tom Mighell

Welcome to Issue #333 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

The Return of the Kennedy-Mighell Report Podcast
It has been awhile since Dennis Kennedy and I have recorded one of our podcasts on legal technology -- we had a lot of fun doing them. That's why we were thrilled when the Legal Talk Network offered to serve as the new hosts for our show -- we jumped at the offer. Our new episode, Reality Check: The Impact of Legal Technology for Lawyers also has a new format -- we discuss three topics of interest, and close the show with some quick Parting Shots of legal technology info that you need to know now. But the biggest change is the addition of a third co-host -- for this episode, we've got the fantastic Adriana Linares, legal technology goddess extraordinaire, joining us for a fast-paced discussion. Give it a listen, and if you like it, subscribe -- via LTN's RSS feed, or in iTunes. We plan on recording a new podcast every two weeks, so stay tuned!
http://bit.ly/TKMR1

Blawgs of the Week
On Inter Alia, I am still featuring blogs from big firms. Here are some of the great law-related blogs mentioned this past week:

  • Quirky Questions is brought to you by Dorsey and Whitney, and has an interesting format. Every week, attorney Roy Ginsburg will pose an odd or interesting employment law or human resources question that in-house counsel and HR professionals might encounter at work. He posts the question on Monday, then gathers thoughtful, creative and humorous responses from the readers all week. The following Monday, he publishes his analysis of the issue, and posts a new question. Great idea!
  • Our next stop on the big-firm blog tour is Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, and the blog is InsureReinsure.com. As you might expect, the blog is brought to you by the firm's Insurance & Reinsurance practice group, and provides mostly news stories from the insurance/reinsurance world.
  • Fox Rothschild is a giant in terms of the number of blogs the firm publishes, and the Eminent Domain and Real Estate Litigation Blog is just one great example. David Snyder is posting stories there about condemnation and real estate litigation, including appraisals, redevelopment, road projects, and more.
  • Next up from Fox Rothschild is the Employee Benefits Legal Blog, which is written by Keith McCurdy, an attorney in the firm's New York office. He's discussing employee benefits as they are related to labor and employment matters.
  • Another blog from Fox Rothschild? Yup. This one is simply titled Physician Law, and it provides current news, updates, and useful tips relating to legal issues affecting physicians and non-institutional providers in their personal and professional lives. Todd Rodriguez, an attorney in the firm's Exton office, publishes the blog.
  • The Fox Rothschild blog onslaught continues with the Tax Litigation blog. Five of the firm's attorneys contribute to this blog, which features commentary on current tax cases and doctrines, as applied by the courts and the IRS.
  • One of my hometown law firms, Strasburger & Price, is blogging about Fair Credit Reporting Act news at The FCRA Blog. It's published by a group of Strasburger lawyers, and they're providing case summaries involving Fair Credit Reporting Act issues.

Help Desk

The problem of dealing with "Sent Mail" in Outlook affects a lot of people -- a lot of those emails need to be properly dealt with, and placed in the right folders. If you could automatically move all Sent Messages to your Inbox, it might force you to deal with them. Here's how:

  • Select Tools, and then Rules and Alerts.
  • Click the New Rule button.
  • Near the bottom click "Check messages after sending," then click Next.
  • Click Next again without checking any condition
  • Click Yes to confirm that this rule applies to all messages
  • Check the box "move a copy to the specified folder"
  • Click the word "specified" and select Inbox
  • Check the box "assign it to the category category"
  • Click the underlined word "category" and select or create a category
  • Check the box "Stop processing other rules"
  • Click Next and Next again
  • Name the rule and click Finish

This procedure makes you assign a category to the email messages, so you can tell them apart from regular incoming email. If you're willing to take the chance, you can skip that part altogether.

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

Vietnam Legal Research
I'll end my brief trip through the GlobaLex collection with a page on Vietnam Legal Research. This page was published by Anh Luu, a Vietnamese lawyer who is working for a London firm. This guide, which was last updated in June 2008, provides a good background on the Communist Party of Vietnam, National Assembly, Administration, Judicial System, Alternative Dispute Resolution, and the legal profession in Vietnam. Luu notes that research resources are still not plentiful, but she does list a few.

Institute for Information Law
Part of the University of Amsterdam, the Institute for Information Law is the largest research facility in the field of information law in Europe. On this site you can read the latest publications as information law applies to intellectual property, privacy, media law, advertising and consumer law, and even food law. There are also pages describing the research being done at the Institute, as well as links to legislation that is relevant to the Institute's fields of research. The menu items are not consistent, so you may have to click all of the links at the top of the page to get to every page.

Kansas Legislature
Every now and then I like to visit state sites to see how (or whether) they are making information available to the public. I hate to say that the Kansas Legislature page hasn't made tremendous strides in providing new and interesting types of data. Sure, you can track bills (even in batches, for a fee), and you can listen to live proceedings from the House and Senate Chambers. But there aren't any new tools like RSS feeds so that researchers can find new ways to keep up with the latest in Kansas legislation. It's a solid site, and provides everything you would need -- it's just not very exciting.

Public Library of Law
I'm sure I've mentioned this site before, because I really like the concept -- it's part of a trend (I hope, anyway) of making caselaw freely available to the public. It's brought to you by the people who created Fastcase, and you can get access to all U.S. Supreme Court and Circuit Court opinions, state court opinions back to 1997, statutes and codes from all 50 states, regulations, court rules, and more. Unfortunately, on visiting it now, I see that you don't get "all" of the results -- to get more, you have to subscribe to a Fastcase plan. I'm not sure I like that tactic -- as a legal researcher, I may not know if a case I need is being hidden from me until I subscribe to the service. One thing I *do* like is the ability to share results in any number of ways -- to Twitter, Facebook, your Delicious bookmarks, and Digg, among others. I just wish it was *all* free.

Legal Dockets Online
This service has been around for a long time -- here you can research and obtain public records, court case dockets, filings, and more, from all 50 states. Most of the databases contained here are free -- just click on a state and you'll find links to federal and state court case dockets, state and county property, recordings and liens, criminal records, and a lot more.

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

Are you a yard sale fanatic? Check out the Yard Sale Treasure Map -- it uses Google Maps and Craigslist to map out yard sales within a particular area -- choose the sales you want to check out, and the site will print out a series of directions from sale to sale.

With Crossblock, the goal is simple: just cross out all the squares on each screen.

Well, that’s it for Issue #333 – 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

Now available: The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell

Subscription Information: Visit Inter Alia to manage your email subscription. If you no longer want to receive the newsletter, just click on the link at the bottom of this newsletter.

Archives: Miss an issue? You can read previous issues of the Internet Legal Research Weekly in the Archives.

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