Best lawyer humor sites

Madeleine Begun Kane joins Lawrence Savell in noting that my "laudable launches" article omitted legal humor sites. She makes up for my omission -- a "travesty of justice," she calls it -- by naming her list of The Top Law Humor Sites for 2002.

Rules to go

Cribcard Inc. is publisher specializing in legal reference books for PDAs using either the Palm or Pocket PC operating systems. I recently came across the Web site for its Pocket Litigator series, featuring federal rules for the PDA. It just released its 2003 editions, which include the Federal Rules of Evidence, Civil Procedure, Criminal Procedure, Bankruptcy Procedure and Appellate Procedure, along with popular lawyers' titles such as A Lawyer's Life, by Johnnie Cochran and David Fisher; The Case Against Lawyers, by Catherine Crier; and Law School Confidential, by Robert H. Miller. Cribcard also publishes PDA versions of court rules for California, Florida and New York, although it has not yet released the 2003 versions.

Cribcard charges $19.95 for each of the rule sets, except for Appellate Procedure, which is $14.95. You can get PDA versions of the federal rules elsewhere on the Web for free at sites such as JurisPDA and MemoWare. However, Cribcard offers features others e-books do not have, such as hyperlinked tables of contents, rule number links, keyword searching, and a bookmark function.

I wrote an article in May 2000 on useful sites for lawyers who use Palms, The Law in the Palm of Your Hand. I recently updated and expanded that article for a chapter I am contributing to a book by Margaret Spencer-Dixon of Spencer Consulting, Washington, D.C., on Palms for lawyers. When the book is published, I'll make a note of it.

Just in time for the holidays

Among the many e-mails I received from readers who saw my article on Law.com was one from Lawrence Savell, counsel with New York's Chadbourne & Parke, expressing disappointment over my failure to include legal-humor sites. Savell operates an enjoyable site I somehow had never seen before, LawHumor.com, featuring legal humor articles he has written over the years. Better yet -- given the time of year -- Savell is producer of his own holiday recording, The Lawyer's Holiday Humor Album. It features songs sure to become law-office classics, such as "Santa And I Are Gonna Pull An All-Nighter On Christmas," "Let 'Em Sue" (parody of "Let It Snow"), and "It's Gonna Be A Billable Christmas." You can find his album at LawTunes.com.

Law.com Link

The "laudable launches" article I mention below is featured today on Law.com.

Laudable Web site launches in 2002

In the annals of Internet history, 2002 may go down as the year of the blog. Twelve months ago, few of us had ever heard the term, even though blogs had existed in one form or another since at least 1997. Today, their number is estimated to be anywhere from 200,000 to more than half a million. The explosion in blogging has been felt within the legal field, with lawyers, academics, pundits and even judges introducing blogs of their own. Many of these blogs are interesting, some quite good, and a handful truly useful.

But blogs were not the only law-related Web sites started in 2002. Other notable sites debuted, covering topics ranging from Daubert to domestic violence. In a recent column, I review some of the year's most laudable launches. Among the sites I mention:

• Blogs
  
  • TalkLeft, news and musings on the politics of crime from Denver criminal lawyer Jeralyn Merritt.
  
  
  • How Appealing, Howard J. Bashman's blog devoted to appellate litigation.
  
  
  • SCOTUSBlog, published by the Washington, D.C., firm Goldstein & Howe.
  
  
  • Lessig Blog, from Stanford Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig.
  
  
  • The Volokh Conspiracy, from UCLA's Eugene Volokh, along with his brother and other contributors.
  
  
• Topical Sites
  
  • Daubert on the Web, devoted to analysis of the Supreme Court's 1993 decision, Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, and created by Philadelphia litigator Peter B. Nordberg.
  
  
  • Legacy Tobacco Documents Library, maintained by the University of California, San Francisco.
  
  
  • Women's Law Initiative is a nationwide resource for women who are victims of domestic violence.
  
  
  • The Religious Liberty Archive, which focuses on religious freedom as it has played out in courts and legislatures.
  
  
  • Chilling Effects, a site devoted to the legal protection of online speech.
  
  
  • American Non-Governmental Organizations Coalition for the International Criminal Court, a repository of information about the United States and the International Criminal Court.
  
  
  • Global Competition Forum, from the International Bar Association.
  
  
  • Creative Commons, working to develop alternatives to traditional copyright.
  
  
• Search Sites
  
  • Teoma, the search engine that is proving itself a challenger to Google.
  
  
  • MyWay.com, a feisty challenger to Yahoo.

Government science portal

Lawyers in a range of practice areas -- from tort to IP to biotech and beyond -- can attest that scientific research is often an important aspect of law practice. Such research is now a bit easier thanks to a new federal government gateway to science and technology information on the Internet, science.gov. The product of a collaboration among 14 scientific and technical organizations from 10 major science agencies, the site indexes more than 1,000 government resources such as technical reports, journal citations, databases, government Web sites and fact sheets -- all of which are available free. Agencies participating in the site are the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, and Interior; the Environmental Protection Agency; the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and the National Science Foundation.

Statutory Construction

Launched in October, Statutory Construction Zone is an innovative blog from Washington, D.C., lawyer Gary O'Connor where he analyzes current federal cases that involve matters of statutory construction. For each case, he sets out the statute construed, the court's conclusion, and the statutory construction tools used by the court. As of now, O'Connor covers the Supreme Court, D.C. Circuit, Federal Circuit, Second Circuit and Fourth Circuit. He will add other circuits if there is sufficient interest, he says. "My goal for the web site," O'Connor wrote in an e-mail to me, "is that someone who wants to keep up with current federal statutory-construction case law (what statutes are being construed, which arguments judges are accepting or using, etc.) would be able to do so by checking this web site for 5-10 minutes every week or two." Besides practicing as an appellate attorney for the federal government, O'Connor is secretary of the nation's only Inn of Court specializing in appellate practice, the Edward Coke Appellate Inn of Court.

Google's New Viewer

Search engine Google's latest innovation is The Google Viewer, which displays the pages found as a result of your search as a continuous scrolling slide show. This lets you view search results without using a keyboard or mouse. A control bar lets you adjust the speed or stop the display altogether. A short description of each page accompanies its slide. Not the fastest way to scroll through search results, but maybe the coolest.

Another search site that already offered something similar is Wisenut, which features what it calls Sneak-A-Peak. When you search, each listed result includes the Sneak-A-Peak button. Click it and the listed site appears in a small window directly on the search results page, eliminating the need to repeatedly hit your browser's Back button as you view results.

I've Been Blogged

Sincere thanks to several bloggers who posted mentions of my blog in recent days: Ernie the Attorney, Larry Sullivan and Bill Slawski of DeLawOffice.com, and Tom Mighell of Inter Alia.

Workers' Rights

Workplace Fairness is the new Web site from the organization of the same name, devoted to providing information, education and assistance to individual workers and their advocates nationwide. It is affiliated with the National Employment Lawyers Association, a national organization of lawyers who represent employees in cases involving employment discrimination, wrongful termination, employee benefits, and other employment related matters. The site is well done and informative, with pages providing fairly detailed information on hiring, termination, discrimination, harassment, wages and hours, unemployment, workers' compensation, health and safety, and other work-related issues.

More on LeapLaw

Yesterday's report about LeapLaw noted that the basic subscription is $35 per inquiry and $15 per form. A subsequent note from CEO Denise Annunciata confirmed that an "inquiry" is the same as a search, meaning that each search results in a charge. She noted, however, that a single search can result in a lot of information. Plus, as users log out, they are presented with a "satisfaction guarantee" screen, Annunciata explained, advising them that if they are not happy with the search results, they will not be charged. As to forms, there is a charge only for forms that were not obtained from elsewhere on the Internet, that are more than three pages, and that would otherwise be difficult to obtain. "If a client feels high value was not received, they will not be charged," she said.

Legal Services Links

Maine's Pine Tree Legal Assistance recently revamped its entire site, incorporating a more stylish design and new features, while retaining many of the outstanding features it already had. For lawyers, whether in Maine or not, PTLA's site is most useful for its collection of links to legal services, legal aid, pro bono and public-interest sites throughout the world. This is possibly the best such collection available anywhere on the Web. For low-income residents of Maine, PTLA offers HelpMeLaw, designed to help users find solutions to common legal problems.

New Corporate Law Resource

After several months of beta testing, LeapLaw, a subscription "knowledge base" targeted at corporate associates, in-house counsel and small law firms, introduced its final version Nov. 21. Spearheaded by CEO Denise Annunciata, a former corporate paralegal in Massachusetts, LeapLaw positions itself as a sort of virtual paralegal, providing access to tools and information that will help a lawyer "leap" to completion of a task.

It does this primarily through a database which it says contains more than 2,000 corporate terms and definitions, more than 800 legal forms, another 800 sample corporate votes, a collection of "best practices" guides, and links to outside sources of information. Although focused exclusively on corporate law, LeapLaw promises to add other topics in the future, including real estate, intellectual property, bankruptcy, litigation, employment and contracts.

LeapLaw offers three subscription plans. The basic plan charges by the transaction, at a cost of $35 per inquiry and $15 per form. The silver plan is a site license priced according to the estimated number of users. The platinum plan is a site license that allows for customization using the customer's own forms, notes and best-practice guides.

Logging on takes a subscriber to a search page. The left column provides links to LeapLaw's "Connections" and "Laws" pages. The former provide connections to government entities throughout the U.S. in charge of Blue Sky, corporate, trademark, UCC and IRS matters. Users click on a drop-down menu to find a particular state, which takes them out of LeapLaw and onto the pertinent page of the appropriate state agency. The "Laws" section has state corporate, commercial and LLC laws, also linking to offsite sources for the text of these laws.

At the center of the start page is a search form. Enter a search term and you are taken to a results page that lists LeapLaw's matching topical pages. Search "employment," for example, and the resulting list shows pages for severance agreements, deferred compensation, covenants not to compete, non-disclosure agreements, and the like. Choose one, and you then go to a topic page that features four standard sections: relevant forms for downloading, related vote language, "LeapLinks" to offsite articles on the topic, and a best practice summary providing an overview of the law.

Many of LeapLaw's resources actually exist elsewhere on the Internet and are available to anyone free of charge. But LeapLaw does a good job of organizing these into a consistent and useful interface. The content that is unique to LeapLaw is its sample forms and votes and its best practice summaries. All in all, LeapLaw has done a nice job of organizing what it offers. The question for potential subscribers will be, Is it worth the price?

Hotels with high-speed Internet

A recent issue of SearchDay points to a resource sure to prove useful to lawyers who travel frequently -- the Geektels directory. A "geektel" is a hotel with high-speed Internet access. This directory lists more than 2,300 of them, in locations throughout the world. Browse by country and city to find a hotel in your destination. Most listings describe the type of broadband service and the cost.