17 May 2007. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals offers a Wiki for local practice and procedure. Launched in May 2007, there is not a lot of commentary posted yet. Currently, researchers will find the Practitioner's Handbook for Appeals.
According to a legal news article on the Wiki, its "goal is to concentrate on procedure (in both the court of appeals and the district courts) but not to cover substance." Registration using your real name and an active e-mail address is required. 9 August 2001. The American Bar Association offers information for consumers on a variety of issues including financial management, health care, family issues, buying and selling a home, criminal law, and more. 10 March 2003. Formed to facilitate the distribution of scholarly information, the Accounting Research Network (RSN) provides access to the Social Science Research Network's database of article abstracts. Search the database, or browse a list of accounting and economics sources covered, which also provides access to the table of contents for current issues. Look for the download document button, which appears at the end of an abstract, to find a link to the full-text of the published paper. RSN is part of the Social Science Research Network. 13 November 2001. Revised 10 February 2006. Document delivery service, Infotrieve, offers a database of bibliographic citations and article abstracts. It includes information from more than 54,000 journals and covers disciplines, such as science, technology, medicine and law. Query the database for free. Purchase full-text copies of articles directly from the site. Coverage extends back to 1966. Tarlton Law Library offers this database of table of contents pages from more than 750 law reviews and legal journals received by the library. Information remains in the database for three months.
Researchers may request copies of articles from Tarlton's document delivery service.
About.com, formerly The Mining Company, creators of some of the best research guides on the Web, offers this current legal news resource by Paul S. Reed. This guide spotlights legal industry news events and offers annotated links to numerous sites offer legal commentary on a variety of topics. 24 July 2002. The Center for an Accessible Society offers information and commentary pertaining to various disability issues. While the site target journalists -- giving them both facts and resources -- consumers and legal professionals alike will find helpful information. The site covers a number of disability-related topics, including the ADA, education, employment, housing, transportation, technology, and more. 2 August 2000. Energy Technology Data Exchange, of the International Energy Agency, offers a database of over 700,000 bibliographic records and full-text documents pertaining to "the environmental impact of energy production and use." Coverage includes scientific journal articles and conference reports and other gray literature from 1995.
Users must register to access the database, but registration is free. It is NOT immediate, though. In the U.S., allow about 24 hours for activation.
The database offers both simple and advanced search features. The advanced feature provides for searching ALL the fields of a record as well as limiting and sorting by publication date.
17 July 2000. Gale Group and Looksmart join forces to offer the full-text of articles from more than 350 popular and professional journals as well as newswire services. The archive dates back to 1998. Researchers may query the database by keyword. Searches may be limited to specific magazine titles. Another service from FindLaw, Legal News offers continuous updates from Reuters on topics of interest to legal professionals. Topics include the Microsoft antitrust controversy, tobacco litigation, U.S. Supreme Court actions, cyberspace law and more. 31 May 2000. This free online journal offers legal commentary "on everything related to law, from upcoming Supreme Court arguments to the latest legal thriller." 6 October 2000. The Financial Times offers a searchable database of articles from 3500 business publications. Although no details appear at the site, search parameters indicate coverage extends back 3 years. Researchers may limit searches to certain geographic regions, individual publications, or industries. 7 March 2002. Gilbert & Tobin is an Australian corporate, technology and communications law firm. It provides full-text copies of articles covering timely issues in competition law, business law, intellectual property, tax law, and more. From the home page, select the Publications tab. 27 September 2002. Revised 5 May 2008. The Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries provides a search tool - Gold Rush, for finding electronic journals. Search by keyword, subject, or title. Or, browse by title or Library of Congress subject heading. Searchers can also limit retrieval by free or peer-reviewed sources. Journal records provide the Web address, bibliographic information, publication frequency and start/end dates, and contact information. 31 August 2000. The Office of Scientific and Technical Information of the Department of Energy provides single search access to the contents of five databases: DTIC Report Collection (Defense Technical Information Center), DOE Information Bridge, EPA Reports (National Environmental Publications Internet Site), NASA Jet Propulsion Lab Reports, and NASA Langley Technical Reports. Search by keyword only. Depending on the database(s) selected, the tool returns titles with links 1) to bibliographic information, report abstracts, and full-text in PDF or 2) full-text document images. I was unable to access the NASA databases. 16 August 2007. Law librarian David Goldman launched this blog, which "explores the ramifications for research and historical memory when we embrace electronic data at the expense of print." While the commentary is brief, it points to references well worth reading; e.g., the shrinking size of the law library, bias in Wikipedia articles, a KeyCite error, and more.
"The title of this blog 'Guy Montag,' is also the name of the main character from Ray Bradbury’s classic novel Fahrenheit 451. 'He is a California fireman who begins to question why he burns books for a living. Montag eventually rejects his authoritarian culture to join a community of individuals who memorize entire books so they will endure until society once again is willing to read.' (LA Weekly)" By the Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder
HazLit is a database of approximately one-third of the articles housed at the Natural Hazards Center library. The database offers bibliographic citations and annotations to articles on disaster management. 7 January 2003. Attorney Howard J. Bashman comments on appellate court cases, news articles, and other information pertaining to the federal appellate process.
11 April 2001. Harcourt, Inc. subsidiaries Academic Press, W.B. Saunders, and Churchill Livingstone team to provide online full-text (but not free) access to articles from numerous scientific, technical, and medical journals and encyclopedias by these publishers as well as by Mosby and Bailličre Tindall. Searchers may query the database (free of charge) by keyword or category. Field restricted searching (e.g., by author, title, etc.) is also available. The advanced search template further enables searching of the MEDLINE database. Article abstracts, which include the complete bibliographic citation, are available free of charge. Full-text articles appear in portable document format (PDF) and cost $35.00 each. To purchase articles, you must register to use the site. Please note: At the time I used the site, THE PAGE REQUESTING CREDIT CARD INFORMATION DID NOT APPEAR SECURE (I.E., NO LOCK SYMBOL APPEARED IN INTERNET EXPLORER). 28 January 2002. Revised 5 March 2004. Ingenta offers a database of full text articles or bibliographic information about them. It covers more than 25,000 publications in a variety of disciplines from 1997 to date. Full text articles are available online or by electronic (Ariel) or fax delivery. Articles requiring author or publisher copyright permission appear in the database with complete citation information. Ingenta sells institutional subscriptions as well as individual pay-per-view access. The British Library offers this database containing bibliographic information for articles from more than 20,000 journals and 16,000 conference proceedings housed in the Library. This resource is for serious researchers willing to pay the annual subscription fee. 9 June 2000. This commercial database offers articles from over 3,000 sources including trade journals, law reviews and legal journals (about 60), newspapers, and wire services. Researchers may run free test searches, which offer the article title, publication, publication date, and first few words of the article. Retrieving entire articles requires a monthly or annual subscription.
The free search feature also may not include the entire database. The site's documentation lists Law Office Computing, for example, as a covered journal. But a search for 'law office computing' (use single quotes for phrases) returns no articles for this publication.
Researchers-for-hire and librarians should review the licensing agreement carefully. It prohibits using the service on behalf of others.
27 June 2002. The Global Policy Forum, a public policy organization that monitors global policy making at the United Nations, provides commentary about issues pertaining to international justice. These include activities surrounding the International Criminal Court (comes into existence July 2002), The International Court of Justice, war crime tribunals, and the Alien Tort Claims Act. For free, researchers may obtain brief advice from Cathy Pennington Paunov, The Internet Guru, review profiles of law firm sites by Mark Pruner, and read annotations to new legal resources. With a subscription, readers receive a print newsletter, email updates, and several substantive articles. 9 November 1999. The Yale University School of Medicine offers this database of information about electronic resources. Currently storing data about 101 research databases, jake provides information about the electronic indexing of individual resources. In some cases, it also reveals whether the indexing is bibliographic or full-text.
Currently in development, jake provides another means for locating difficult to find specialty databases.
14 August 2002. The law firm Jones Day provides a database of its publications covering many legal topics, including antitrust, bankruptcy and business restructuring, energy, environment, health care, securities, technology, and more. Search by keyword, or select a publication you want to review (e.g., Jones Day Memoranda) and check the "current" box to receive a list of newer items. 7 June 2001. Intellectual property lawyer Margie S. Schweitzer offers this Web site and email newsletter devoted to intellectual property legal information. The twice-weekly email newsletter contains articles, case summaries, and information about recent developments in Internet, trademark, copyright, patent and trade secrets law. Each issue includes links to cases discussed, when available, as well as articles written by IP professionals. While the email newsletters is not free, you may try it free for two months.
Additionally, the Web site offers articles and case summaries that have appeared in earlier editions of the newsletter. It also provides links to several important IP legal documents.
Professor Bernard J. Hibbitts, Associate Dean for Communications & Information Technology, University of Pittsburgh School of Law offers this compilation of electronic scholarly articles and pre-prints. Cornell Legal Information Institute offers brief summaries of law on various topics. The summaries typically include links to primary materials as well as references to authoritative print sources. 17 March 2003. Revised 16 June 2003. The ABA's Law Practice Management Section publishes this webzine covering management, marketing, technology and finance issues. Articles are available for free. The RSS news feed consists of headlines and a brief description. Revised 25 May 2000. Whether lawyer, student, or consumer, researchers will find useful commentary and recommended resources here. Parts of the site require a subscription.
LawNewsNetwork.com and law.com, both run by America Lawyer Media, merged during April 2000.
Halfway down the page on the left-hand menu, find The Real Life Dictionary of the Law by Gerald and Kathleen Hill. The resource includes more terms than other Web-based legal dictionaries and offers a feature for searching definitions.
13 April 2007. This legal information search engine queries content available in the Law.com network of Web sites as well as content from select legal information Web sites. Query by simple keyword only - no Boolean (AND, OR, NOT), no command qualifiers or other advanced search features. You may limit results by choosing from options that appear in the left-hand menu once the results display. These include information types (articles, news) and sources. 21 February 2003. Another mega site, LawGuru.com offers legal news (from various sources via RSS news feed), the former House of Representatives Internet Law Library, a directory of legal information sites, various chat rooms for discussion of legal issues, an attorney-locator service, and more. Some notable features include legal forms (incurs a charge) and FAQs, which compose numerous legal questions and answers (free). 13 January 2004. This free version of SurfWax LawKT provides directory and search access to law firm publications on numerous topics. Select a topic from the index or enter keywords in the search box at the top of the page. The engine returns links to articles written by lawyers. Terms entered in the search box may generate different results than selecting the same terms from the index.
If you select an index topic, the search results provide a link (at the top), which lets you run the query against a news article database. Doing so yields articles from news sources around the world. The briefly annotated entries helpfully include the location of the source. If instead you option to run a search using your own keywords, you can experience some of the features of the Surfwax search engine. These include keyword-in-context (KWIC) summaries of matching items. Click the magnifying glass icon next to the matching title to see the KWIC summary.
18 February 2003. The Lawyer Group offers free news headlines and abstracts covering national (United Kingdom) and international legal news. The site provides a search feature for its archive of over 25,000 news items. Lawyer News Weekly, also available here, is a weekly news update service, which appears to be free. 23 November 2004. The University of Southern California Law School library provides an annotated index to law reviews and legal journals on the Internet. The index includes a brief description of the contents of the publication as well as a notation, which indicates whether the content is available in full-text or abbreviated format. 10 August 2007. Marketing communications consultant Amy Campbell maintains this Web site devoted to legal marketing issues. It offers articles, a separate blog and a
Rollyo-enabled special search engine for finding commentary on legal marketing. Powered by Yahoo, Rollyo lets you create your own search engine. Campbell has done this and now makes her creation available via Legal Marketing Reader. Since the search engine queries blogs, it's a good way to find RSS feeds on legal marketing. 10 March 2003. Formed to facilitate the distribution of scholarly information, the Legal Scholarship Network (LSN) provides access to the Social Science Research Network's database of article abstracts. Search the database, or browse a list of legal sources covered, which also provides access to the table of contents for current issues. Look for the download document button, which appears at the end of an abstract, to find a link to the full-text of the published paper. LSN is part of the Social Science Research Network. 9 July 2001. This site, authored by attorneys, offers commentary and services primarily for consumers. Find answers to common legal questions like how to find a lawyer or what happens if someone dies without a will. Or, review checklists intended to help you avoid legal problems. The site also offers several legal forms (primarily for use in New York) and summaries of court decisions pertaining to various legal topics (banking, divorce, elder law, estate planning, health care, landlord/tenant, personal injury, tax and more). Unfortunately, these brief commentaries do not always include sufficient information for tracking down the case. 23 November 2004. Compiled by University of Mississippi law professor Michael H. Hoffheimer, this free directory lists law reviews from ABA accredited law schools and established legal journals that accept unsolicited material for publication. The information provided includes the name of the journal, the frequency of publication and the publisher's contact information. The directory is available online in PDF format. 7 January 2003. Michigan civil litigation lawyers comment on law and technology issues. The site separates issues into two broad categories: legal technology and politics. It covers news stories, court decisions, and other sources of related information. Several comments focus on Michigan law. 22 March 2007. Lexbe, a Web-based case analysis and document management system, sponsors this free collection of articles for litigators. In accordance with the site's terms of use, to be included, "[a]rticles must have been presented as part of a legal continuing legal presentation (CLE), in a bar journal, or be of similar quality, be of current interest to litigators and related legal professionals, and published in the last two years." You may search for articles by keyword or browse them by topic. Queries yield the title of the article, a description and a link to the original article, whether at Litilaw, a law firm Web site, or other Web-based location. As the collection grows, legal professionals should find it increasingly valuable. 29 April 2000. LLRX.com, a webzine on law and technology issues, publishes numerous articles on foreign law resources.
This free Web-based newsletter offers articles about research issues, legal technology, law firm management, and Internet-related legislation. Researchers will also find annotated links to sites of interest, summaries of information industry articles appearing in other publications, an intranet knowledge center, and a bookstore.
3 August 2000. MagPortal.com organizes, annotates, and facilitates searching of magazine and journal articles on the Web. Browse by category (find "law" under Society, Politics & Culture) or conduct a keyword search to find article titles and brief annotations. Icons appearing at the end of an article annotation 1) find similar articles and 2) mark articles for later retrieval. 6 January 2000. Revised 4 December 2007. LexisNexis offers a number of legal or law-related sources via this site. Find a lawyer by personal or firm name, location or practice area. Search for articles on law-related topics by keyword. Find experts by keyword or category, legal organizations or events, descriptions of key LexisNexis online resources, such as the Law Digest, and more.
Recent enhancements to the site include a side-by-side comparison feature for reviewing lawyer and law firm listings and client reviews (published with the permission of the reviewed firm).
Registration is required to access and use this site. Some services are fee-based. 24 September 2003. Mondaq Ltd. publishes brief legal articles by law and accounting firms around the world. Browse or search this site to find commentary on legal, regulatory or financial issues in about 70 countries. Topics include accounting, banking, intellectual property, litigation, offshore banking, commercial law and more. You must register with the site to access, but much of the content is free. 13 April 2001. This site offers a database containing Hudson's Newsletter Directory, a directory of more than 5,000 entries covering numerous topics including law. Search or browse the database to find newsletters covering your subject. Written for consumers, legal researchers may also find this site useful. Many essays offer links to additional web resources. 25 October 2000. This site, by Library Technology Alliance, Ltd., offers a database of information about 97,000 journals, and other serial publications, available via online services like Lexis and Westlaw. Search by serial title, ISSN, subject, or online service to find matching publications. Entries contain serial title, ISSN, and available online vendors and their scope of coverage. Vendors are linked to facilitate access. Occasionally, publication information also includes a link to the serial on the Web. 11 October 1999. This brand new Web site offers to following the current presidential race. It provides news stories from independent sources, information about the candidates including their funding, information about political donors, information from the polls, a searchable directory of political information sites, and more. 13 November 2001. Document delivery service Infotrieve offers its database of information about journals covering a variety of topics. Search the database for free to find journal titles, publisher, ISSN, language, contact information, and more. The service also lets users view tables of contents, when available. Table of contents coverage extends back several years for some publications. Users may also opt to receive journal table of contents notices by email. This site offers articles, forms, and case law on a variety of subjects. 27 September 2002. The Minnesota law firm Rinke Noonan offers an overview of various legal topics written for the layman. These include administrative and constitutional law, construction, contracts, corporations, education, eminent domain, employment law, family law, litigation, water law, wills & estates, and zoning. Some of the commentaries pertain specifically to Minnesota law. 20 August 2007. A project of the Cyberspace Law Committee of the American Bar Association's Section of Business Law, this Web site offers information for business people launching e-commerce enterprises and for businesses venturing into online sales. It contains a series of practical short articles of primary interest when starting a business. For instance, there are essays on obtaining and protecting domain names, publishing and linking to third-party content, selling out-of-state and internationally, records retention, structuring your business, paying taxes, maintaining customer information and privacy, and more. 2 June 2000. Currently in beta, Washburn University School of Law offers a database of articles and other commentary appearing in journals, newsletters, and other serial publications on government Web sites. Search by subject, title, or SuDoc number (classification). Clicking through on query matches retrieves the entire article. 26 February 2007. ResearchBuzz offers a custom search feature using the Google search engine. The customized search engine enables querying the official blogs of more than 125 politicians, actors, comedians, musicians, companies, libraries and other sources. 6 June 2000. Adobe, the creator of portable document format, illustrates a searching PDF documents in the relatively new ePaper section of its Web site. Search Adobe PDF Online enables the querying of "more than a million summaries of Adobe® Portable Document Format (PDF) files on the Web."
Unfortunately, the site offers no instructions for formulating queries, or information about its search technology. I suggested simply entering keywords without connectors or punctuation.
Initial search results provide a Web address for the location of the summary document, which appears on an Adobe server. To retrieve the URL where the document resides in full-text on the Web, click on the Adobe address (it appears in red). This opens the summary document, which contains the document title (sometimes just a filename), author, and number of pages as well as the summary and Web location.
30 November 1999. The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) offers an electronic library of scholarly articles and forthcoming research papers. Comprised of five research networks -- Accounting, Economics, Latin American, Financial Economics, and Legal Scholarship, the SSRN Electronic Library stores abstracts and full-text documents pertaining to scholarly research in these fields.
Browse or search the library by author, title, journal or topic. Read the abstracts online and then download desired full-text in portable document format.
Journals in the legal collection cover administrative law, antitrust, bankruptcy, constitutional law, contracts, corporate law, criminal law, internet law, labor and employment, environmental law, health law, intellectual property, international law, banking and finance, tax and torts.
17 March 2003. This community offers legal professionals a forum for discussing legal technology and practice management issues, as well as legal products and services. Community managers then compile the submissions into various email newsletters, which they also archive. Joining the community requires free registration. 18 October 2000. Law.com offers news and legal commentary about the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings as well as copies of the decisions (not free) and information about cases accepted for review. News and commentary appear in American Lawyer Media and affiliated publications.
Decisions, which cover select cases from the 1999-2000 Term to present, appear in chronological order or by subject. To search them by keyword, locate and follow the "advanced search" link in the right-hand middle portion of the page. Enter your key terms and then select "decisions" from the pull-down content type menu. While the engine finds U.S. Supreme Court decisions, unfortunately you cannot limit the search to this Court. Moreover, unless you subscribe to one of Law.com's Practice Centers, you cannot display the opinions.
Information about certiorari granted for the current Term also appears in chronological order or by subject. Displaying the full case summary information, which you may do without a subscription, provides case details including date the petition was granted, date for oral arguments (if known), issues presented, counsel, and amicus information.
10 August 2007. This is the companion blog for Legal Marketing Reader. It summarizes new articles available at the main Web site. It also has an RSS feed. 12 April 2001. This Web site purports to "answer every question" pertaining to a legal problem or issue. While the founding board consists of legal professionals, I found no information about who actually answers the questions. Moreover, sample answers do not always provide the name of the author. Therefore, I caution researchers to ask for source information and verify any information provided.
The site offers numerous short articles about current legal issues (e.g., employer email monitoring, child adoption abroad, the new Section 245(i) provision of the Legal Immigration and Family Equity Act of 2000), but again, many of the articles are unsigned. Consider this a potential starting point, not the be-all-to-end-all for your research.
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