Legal Marketing & SEO Blog

Hi Friends,

Thanks Google! Google has put FREE US case law online in Google Scholar :) The US Federal case law database includes US Supreme Court opinions since 1 US 1 (pre - 1776), Federal Appeals opinions since 1 F 2d 1 (1924+), and many Federal District Court opinions from F Supp. Opinions from all 50 states are included since 1950. Internal page numbers are included, and cases are hyperlinked to other cases within each case. When observing a particular case, you can quickly see how the observed case has been cited (with the quote from the observed case) with links to the cases using the particular quote, in addition to a list of all cases citing the observed case.

Here are a few screen shots, but check it out yourself, and you may never return to this blog post :)

Example case Bush v Gore

Example of the "How Cited" tab for Bush v Gore

Some alternative locations for the Bush v Gore case.

Google's database of free case law has just been released (Rick Klau (@rklau) tweeted it last night as it went live :), and I am sure there will be additional features in the search functionality and data. It is fantastic that Google has put this case law online for free. Google can even use their hundreds of lawyers to test it out :)

Peace,

Tim

 
:: Take It Easy, Eagles by the Eagles

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Hi Friends,

Tom Bruce, Dan Nagy and Deborah Schaaf from the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School stopped on by for some meetings with folks on new free information projects. The LII gang met with us, Nolo, Stanford and FreeGovInfo.info :) And there was a talk on privacy on the Internet with David Schellhase & Michael Blum moderated by Kevin Haroff. Here are some pictures of Tom in action making things happen...

Tom and Nolo CEO/Founder Jake Warner discuss legal information and services delivery to the public at Nolo's headquarters in Berkeley and maybe a joint project or two :)

Tom and FreeGovInfo.info / Stanford's James Jacobs discuss free government information. Only trouble will happen when these two guys site down together.

Peace & Yes We Scan!

Tim

Yes We Scan!!!! - Support Carl Malamud to head the Government Printing Office!!!! Support Free Public Information!!!!
 
:: Sugar Magnolia, American Beauty by the Grateful Dead

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Hi Friends,

A few weeks ago the New York Times floated a rumor/great idea that Carl Malamud, the great hard working free information Internet do-gooder, was being mentioned as a potential candidate for head of the Government Printing Office. Of course, we at Justia cheered this idea on -- who better to bring government publishing into the digital age than the man whose will and technology know how has lead millions of court decisions, SEC filings, patents, Congressional videos online and other public domain documents being brough online for all to research and enjoy.

Well, it turns out the rumor is true! We wanted to be among the first to announce our unqualified support for Carl as Public Printer of the United States. Carl's vision for open, secure, and efficient government publishing will be a welcome asset to the Obama Administration, helping to usher in the new era of accessible government.

At Justia, we believe that information produced with taxpayer dollars -- including laws and legal opinions -- belong to the people. We want all Americans to have access to the law, and to achieve that end, we need transparency, accountability, and a spirit of openness in our government. Carl Malamud embodies all of these qualities.

Carl's ability to lead and organize a variety of folks in this effort has been extremely impressive. He has an incredible ability to get folks from a variety of backgrounds to work together on a common goal for the public good. Most recently, through his work with public.resource.org, Carl has made an invaluable contribution to the growing collection of free case law, codes, and regulations on the internet. His Pacer Recycling Program adds court filings, opinions, and other public domain materials.

Carl also understands and supports business. Carl has been a CEO, and he especially knows the Internet business marketplace. He has been very encouraging to us and others to use the data and materials he has collected at public.resource.org to create new products and services. He has been invaluable in helping with technology issues we face in dealing with large amounts of public data. With Carl as head of the GPO, many more small businesses, would greatly benefit from the additional access to public information (and I am sure that many more new businesses would start up as well!).

Carl's demonstrated commitment to preserving and extending our public access to the public record and government works makes him the perfect candidate for the GPO. We are promised change -- and we need someone like Carl to make that happen. Having someone with the technological and leadership skills of Carl Malamud running the Government Printing Office will make the USA a better place for all! We cannot think of a bigger win for public access to government documents!

Please join us in supporting Carl by visiting his "campaign" site and reading his policy documents: www.yeswescan.org. Carl is a great man who deserves all our support!

Peace & Yes We Scan!

Tim, Ken, Stacy, Courtney, Cicely, Vasu, Dan, Nick, Soby and the Rest of the Justia Team!!!

:: It's a New Day by will.i.am

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Hi Friends,

In early December, Justia and the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School setup a pre-beta version of "Legal Birds" of legal twitterers and their tweets, and integrated twitter feeds into the attorney profile pages in our Lawyer Directory. We have now enhanced the twitter section with graphical tools, community-building functions and better search functionality. The updated version can be found at LegalBirds.com.

Currently, LegalBirds.com

1. lists legal tweeters ("the community") ranked in a few different ways,
2. displays Twitter user IDs and a hash tag cloud (e.g., #salmonella) for the most mentioned users and terms,
3. groups tweeters by practice, location and occupation (lawyers, academics, legal professionals) so that you can find kindred spirits,
4. spotlights tweeters in Google Maps and Google Earth,
5. provides RSS feeds for subscribing to tweets by category or term,
6. allows users to perform full-text searches of tweeters and the tweet archive,

We have further integrated Twitter into the Lawyer Directory with ia Twitter tab for individual profiles. And we have opened the directory to accommodate profiles from academics (professors, school librarians, students, etc.), legal professionals (legal publishers, experts, consultants, firm librarians, non-practicing lawyers who want a community profile, but do not want to be in a "lawyer" directory), and the judicary (judges, magistrates, and court staff).

Of course, we will be adding in more features and will be integrating a version of LegalBirds.com into the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School website with some extra academic focus :). And, we will be tying it into Justia BlawgSearch as well (the Justia version of LegalBirds.com design is based on the BlawgSearch.com's look and feel).

Rankings

Everybody loves rankings... and so we have set-up a few different versions. Find the one you rank best on, and use that one when talking with folks. First a few terms:

"Community" members are those tweeters currently in the Legal Birds Community (i.e., LegalBirds.com is indexing their twitter feed). If we are not following your twitter feed, be sure to Join Legal Birds today. We are continually adding feeds from new Legal Birds.

"All" are all twitter users.

"Connections" mean two tweeters are mutually following each other (i.e., tweeter A follows tweeter B AND tweeter B follows tweeter A). We view connections as the most valuable type of relationship because these are more likely to lead to conversations in the twittersphere.

"Followers" are those that follow a tweeter.

We rank tweeters by:

Community Connections - mutual followers from the community of legal tweeters.

Community Followers - followers from the community of legal tweeters.

All Connections - mutual followers from all twitter users.

All Followers - followers from all twitter users.

Tweets Today - the number of tweets a user has made in the last 24 hours.

We have set Community Connections as the default ranking because we value it the most (both tweeters in the legal community, following each other is more likely to lead to interesting legal twitter discussion).

Google Maps and Google Earth

You can view the people in multiple ways:

• list view showing their last 4 tweets (often useful when trying to determine who to follow),
• grid view which has quick ranking stats and
• map view (see below).

We also display community tweeters on Google Maps. You can view all of the community tweeters, those in a particular category or location, or just your own community connections, followers and followees.

Of course, you can also download a KML file to see all of the legal birds on Google Earth. We also provide KML files for each of the categories and for your individual community connections, as well as tweeters you follow and those who are following you. Click here to download the KML file of all Legal Birds.

In any event, enjoy LegalBirds.com, more will be coming soon :)

Peace,

Tim & Ken

:: Free Bird, Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd by Lynyrd Skynyrd

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Hi Friends,

Justia and the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School have been building a lawyer directory the last few months to help individuals, families and businesses find lawyers and legal service organizations. (See the Justia Lawyer Directory and the LII Lawyer Directory).

We are happy to announce that this project will be moving out of pre-beta and into beta. Also see the LII Blog announcement: LII launches free lawyer directory service.

Any lawyer licensed to practice in the United States may have a free full profile. Just claim or add your profile and update. It is really easy.

The Lawyer Directory can help lawyers reach new clients. The Lawyer Directory connects consumers and businesses facing legal issues with attorneys and legal services organizations. The directory organizes lawyers throughout the United States by practice area and location. To find a lawyer, a prospective client can browse the directory by practice area or location, or search by keyword and location.

Full lawyer profiles in the directory are free. Lawyers can claim their profiles and enhance them with professional biographical data including practice areas, education, job history, jurisdictions of practice, as well as photos, videos, and links and/or feeds from legal & social networks (JDSupra, Avvo, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and SSRN), and their law firm's web site and blog.

Provide & Promote Free Information and be Rewarded with Higher Rankings in the Lawyer Directory

Lawyers who support the publishing of free legal information online, either through their own direct efforts (such as by blogging) or by helping organizations like the Legal Information Institute, will be listed higher in the rankings.

Currently, the lawyer directory awards a "Blawg" badge to lawyers who have had their blog editorially included in Justia's BlawgSearch.com directory. Submit your Blawg to BlawgSearch.com for editorial consideration - it is free :). We also award a "Legal Birds" badge to lawyers who use Twitter. More participation options will be coming soon. With the badges also come higher lawyer directory rankings - so collect them all.

Support the Legal Information Institute. Lawyers can also earn a LII badge by supporting the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School. There are three levels of support: Bronze ($250/yr), Silver ($500/yr) and Gold ($1,000/yr). The support goes to Cornell, and they will use it to hire up programming and editorial talent to put up more free information. What could be better! All of the Justia in-house lawyers have Gold LII badges :). And we are now in the process of encouraging our clients to get badges too.

Blogging, tweeting, or financially supporting LII will lead to higher rankings on listing pages but are not required to be included in the directory with a full profile. They only impact the rank order on the listings pages. So get in the directory no matter what, and then start planning how you can help the online community put up more good free legal research information to make the world a better place and get some marketing credit for yourself.

We are developing more features... but more on those later :)

Peace,

Tim & Ken

:: Revolution Blues, On the Beach by Neil Young

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President Barack Obama inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States of America

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President Barack Obama's Win on the Web

President Barack Obama

Graphic Copyright Charis Tsevis

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Hi Friends,

As most of us know, Nolo.com is the best Website for consumer and small business USA legal information. Nolo's lawyers-writers-editors are the best. Nolo.com covers everything from starting a business, employment, real estate, intellectual property, immigration, family law, tax, estate planning, bankruptcy, credit law and foreclosures.

Well... as our country slowly quickly moves into economic tough times, I thought I would blog on a new book, The Foreclosure Survival Guide written by my friend Steve Elias.

Steve Elias has been writing about legal and consumer financial issues for Nolo.com for nearly thirty years. He has been covering the recent legal and ecomomic changes that folks face, including credit, bankruptcy and foreclosure issues. Steve is currently blogging (with Albin Renauer - Go Blue!) on Nolo's Bankruptcy & Foreclosure Blog, covering the latest issues, as well as legislation on bankruptcy and foreclosure. He also blogs on The Law Reform Soapbox.

Nolo.com also has put together the Property & Money Resource Center with loads of legal and consumer content from Steve and the other Nolo editors. This resource center includes specific sections with articles & FAQs on Foreclosure, Credit Repair & Debt, Bankruptcy and Social Security & Retirement. The Property & Money Resource Center is constantly being updated with the latest information.

Steve has written a new book on foreclosures, appropriately called the The Foreclosure Survival Guide (on Nolo.com the book costs $14.99, and the immediately downloadable ebook pdf costs $12.99, you can also get the book on Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com). The Foreclosure Survival Guide has information on mortgages, including adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs), short sales, deeds in lieu of foreclosure, judicial and non-judicial foreclosure, credit counseling, liens, and using bankruptcy to deal with foreclosure.

Steve goes into much more detail in his book, but here is some information from his book about nonprofit counselors that may be able to help:

Nonprofit Housing Counselors (from Chapter 10 - Resources Beyond the Book)
I strongly suggest that you find a nonprofit housing counseling agency. The counselors there can help you assess your mortgage situation and, if possible, negotiate a solution with your lender that will keep you in your house. Lenders--which suffer economically from foreclosures and benefit if something can be worked out--are the main source of funds for these agencies. (see Ch. 4 [of The Foreclosure Survival Guide] for an in-depth discussion of finding and working with a nonprofit housing counselor.)

• The Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has a list of approved counselors. You can find a hud-approved agency at www.hud.gov/foreclosure/index.cfm or by calling 800-569-4287.
  
• The Homeownership Preservation Foundation website, www.995hope.org, offers free online counseling, among other things. or you can call 888-995-HOPE and talk with someone.
  
• The Homeownership Crisis Resource Center, www.housinghelpnow.org, will link you up with a local nonprofit foreclosure prevention specialist who may or may not be hud approved.
  
• The National Foundation for Credit Counseling will get you to a nonprofit counselor (typically HUD approved) through its toll-free hotline, 866-557-2227.

The foreclosure problems have been going on for a while and could get much worse if something is not done by the lenders and government (who will soon own large stakes in the lenders). As it is in the best interest of the lenders and the neighborhoods to try to keep people in their homes to reduce the number of foreclosures and vacant units, there needs to be something done to revalue some of these loans. We will see what Congress, President Bush and then President ??? do. And then there is the US and world economy as a whole... we will see.

For those facing credit issues, foreclosure or possible bankruptcy, check out Nolo's Property & Money Resource Center for very helpful consumer information. For those facing foreclosure, falling behind on their payments, or just need help with paying their mortgages, check out The Foreclosure Survival Guide. The table of contents of The Foreclosure Survival Guide is in the extended entry of this post.

Peace,

Tim

:: Tangerine, Led Zeppelin III by Led Zeppelin

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Hi Friends,

As many of you know (at least those in the Open Government & Law Groups), Free Public Information Hero Carl Malamud and Public.Resource.org have been working to get state codes, building codes, electrical codes and other state and city codes online for free... sort of a virtual city of free codes.

You can, right now, download these codes here on Public.Resource.org or through the Internet Archive. As a California bonus, you can also download the California Code of Regulations.

"I think his work is extraordinarily important" -- Lawrence Lessig

There is a nice article on Carl in last week's Santa Rosa Press Democrat by Nathan Halverson discussing Public.Resource.org's efforts, with some good comments from Larry Lessig and Pamela Samuelson on the policy and legal issues. We will see if this leads to some more litigation with California.

This is a great effort to put up the codes that are the most useful to everyday citizens. More free law to come (and maybe some litigation if needed).

Peace,

Tim

:: Walls, Meet Glen Campbell by Glen Campbell

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Hi Friends,

Oregon's Legislative Counsel Committee had a meeting this morning to discuss the copyright claim on the Oregon Revised Statutes. After taking legal counsel from Dexter Johnson, talking with Karl Olson, Carl Malamud, three Oregon citizens and myself, they unanimously voted to not to enforce any copyright claims on the Oregon Revised Statutes. This is great!!!

Carl Malamud presents Oregon Senate President Courtney the "Seal of Approval"

Thanks to Dexter and the Committee!!!!

Update: Carl Malamud has put online the Oregon hearing testimony and videos on Public.Resource.org.

Peace,

Tim

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Hi Friends,

Last week, the State of Oregon Legislative Counsel Committee sent Justia a notice of copyright infringement and demand to cease and desist. In its letter, Dexter Johnson, the Legislative Counsel, asked us to remove a copy of the Oregon Revised Statutes stored on our servers (or pay a licensing fee) by April 30, 2008. The letter claimed copyright on many parts of the Oregon Revised Statutes:

[T]he Committee ... claim[s] a copyright in the arrangement and subject-matter compilation of Oregon statutory law, the prefatory and explanatory notes, the leadlines and numbering for each statutory section, the tables the index and annotations and such other incidents as are work product of the Committee in the compilation and publication of Oregon law.

Now, the letter is more detailed than the copyright claim on the Oregon Revised Statutes website:

The Legislative Counsel Committee claims copyright protection in those parts of Oregon Revised Statutes that are legally subject to copyright protection.

My take after reading the above claim on their website was that the State of Oregon was claiming a copyright to the annotation section and not the code itself. Accordingly, our copy of the Oregon Revised Statutes did not include the annotations. Needless to say Oregon's copyright claim on the code itself was a surprise (understatement).

As requested in the letter, I called Oregon's Sean Brennan the same Friday and Sean explained their position, reinforced the copyright claims in Dexter Johnson's letter and said he would get us some licensing information (which is $30,000 for 2 years). He also said that Oregon had been talking with other states about how to raise licensing revenue for their codes. That was somewhat disturbing, as we want states to open up their public laws and regulations.

After the call with Sean, I talked with and sent a copy of the letter to Carl Malamud, who being a former Oregon fire fighter, has a special affection for the state of Oregon. Carl checked out the site, and wrote some letters to Dexter Johnson seeking clarification of their copyright claims.

Thursday, we (Carl Malamud, Nolo's Stephen Elias and I) had a pleasant and constructive conversation with Dexter Johnson and his team. The Oregon folks are going to think through some different options. If Oregon comes up with a solution that promotes free and open access to the laws, then we will likely avoid litigation. If not, then we will likely have to ask the courts to determine whether state governments can prohibit others from downloading, reproducing or distributing the laws. I hope that given Oregon's public interest focus, the State will adopt an approach that promotes open access to laws instead of one that maximizes licensing fees. We should know more next week.

Some prominent legal bloggers have commented on Oregon's copyright claims. See Professor Tim Armstrong's post "Can States Copyright Their Statutes?" on Info/Law and William Patry's post "Oregon goes wacka wacka huna kuna" on the The Patry Copyright Blog and Sam Bayard's post "Oregon Claims Copyright in Its Statutes -- Well, Sort Of" on the Citizen Media Law Project Blog. We agree that public policy demands that state laws remain in the public domain. To otherwise permit the State of Oregon or any other governmental body to restrict access to the laws that govern all of us would make a mockery of the legal doctrine that all persons have presumed knowledge of the law. Fortunately, many courts have rightfully declined to recognize such copyright claims asserted by states and municipalities.

Peace,

Tim

:: Sugaree, Grateful Dead Download Series, Vol. 10 by Grateful Dead

* For those interested, we are working with folks from Public.Resource.Org, Cornell's Legal Information Institute, AltLaw, EFF, Creative Commons, Stanford & Cal, FastCase, as well as many other law schools, commercial organizations, courts, and government agencies on compiling a large archive of law that will be continuously updated and freely shared. Part of that is just getting the raw law, which includes cases, codes, and regulations. As we (quickly) move forward though, we will also have shared annotations and shared publishing tools. We will then want to have copies of the law along with secondary materials on thousands of servers. In addition to providing free access to all at many online locations, we want to provide the opportunity for each government institution, court, law school, nonprofit, company, and blogger to have their very own copy of the full corpus, as well as an easy way to keep it updated. It won't be easy, but it is doable. And it helps that we are working with folks from the government. Hopefully, we will soon be able to work with and include the State of Oregon. :)

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Hi Friends,

As public domain information hero Carl Malamud is working on getting case law online and into the public domain (we have helped a bit :). Carl, donors, and the Public.Resource.org team have done a lot and... more to come...

But in addition to case law, Carl has also been working to get other public legal documents online and into the public domain. These documents include the legislative histories of the laws. So this was interesting... it looks like Thomson-West has signed an exclusive agreement with the GAO to have these legislative histories on WestLaw.

From Carl note (and originally posted on Boing Boing...

The law librarians at GAO have compiled complete federal legislative histories from 1915 on. These are the definitive dossiers that track a bill through the hearing process and into law. If you want to divine the intent of Congress, this is where you go.

GAO cut a contract with Thomson West to have these documents scanned.

Thomson West claims they have exclusive access to these public documents and even go so far as to boast that you should purchase this exclusive "product" from West because the GAO law librarians (public employees!) have done all the work for you!

If you're interesting in tracking this issue, I've created a Scribd group that has all the documents we've obtained so far. Next step: we asked for a copy of every document scanned under the FOIA laws!"

Well I am sure the US Government will give copies over to Carl to put up for free, and then back to the GAO itself to host and Brewster and the Internet Archive and Google and Cornell and the other law schools put online and into the public domain for free.

Peace,

Tim

:: The More Things Change, Heartbreak Station by Cinderella

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Hi Friends,

JDSupra has officially launched and opened its site to the public today. The JDSupra site allows legal professionals to upload legal documents, memos, forms, filings and briefs and share them with the legal community. On the marketing front, lawyers and law firms can have their own detailed profile page that promotes their practice.

Many great organizations and firms have already started contributing documents, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Morrison & Foerster (my former lawyers at my previous company :) and many many others.

Justia is in the process of doing a major data upload of the higher quality research quality briefs and filings we have aggregated from Pacer for our featured case tracking service in Justia News). We are encouraging all of the law firms we work with to participate and share with JDSupra's law library.

By working together we can help build a great new legal research library. This is a very nice start of a new free research service! So check JDSupra out and share. It will only be getting better and better as more people participate!

Peace,

Tim

:: Blue Sky, Eat a Peach by The Allman Brothers Band

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Hi Friends,

The team at FastCase have announced the largest free online US case law database at The Public Library of Law at plol.org. The site is GREAT! The database of cases includes all of the Supreme Court cases and US Court of Appeals cases since 1950 (the same data FastCase recently presented to the Legal Commons project) AND US state case law since 1997 for all 50 states in nice standardized searchable, and usable html format for all states (not the random state by state format many other sites have collected the data in).

In addition to the case law, the The Public Library of Law also has online or links to the codes and statutes, constitutions and regulations of the Federal Government and all 50 US state governments.

The Public Library of Law is a beautiful site that works! Congrats FastCase!!!

Peace,

Tim

:: Shower the People, In the Pocket by James Taylor

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Hi Friends,

Here comes the Legal Commons.

Carl Malamud and the team at Public.Resource.org with Larry Lessig and the Creative Commons gang got the FastCase deal done and the case law online. The cases include all of the Federal Court of Appeals decisions since 1950, and all of the US Supreme Court decisions.

You can obtain a copy of all of the cases at Public.Resource.org case archive. Public.Resource.org has tar balls for easy downloading of the complete data sets. There is still some fixing of the cases going on, and the community will be working to get the internal page numbering for the cases (among other features). We did an initial conversion of the Federal Court of Appeals cases on Justia with some cross linking to other cases etc.... We and many others will be fixing these up, as well as sending changes and issues to Public.Resource.org where the master copy will be provided for free to all.

Carl is inviting developers to work together to provide stronger and more transparent "operating system" for all.

Developers and interested members of the public are invited to join our open discussion group which will evaluate the format of this public domain data. These cases and codes are America’s operating system and for the first time Americans can use them with freedom.

The cases will also be up on AltLaw and PreCYdent soon (if not already) and... many many other places :)

Ed Walters CEO of FastCase worked with Carl to really make this happen. The Legal Commons financial support for these datasets came from donars including David Boies, the Elbaz Family Foundation, John Gilmore and the Omidyar Network.

When did Carl start focusing on free law?... Not too bad.

Now on to the state cases, codes and regs (year by year), some legislation updates, annotations and presto free legal stuff for everyone everywhere. LegalCommons.

Public.Resource.org announcement
Creative Commons Blog Post (Mike Linksvayer)

Peace,

Tim

:: American Girl, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

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Hi Friends,

More free case law has come online. PreCYdent has added 300,000 Federal cases to their database at http://www.PreCYdent.com. They have built in some nice community tools for commenting and rating the cases. And they have a new search engine that is focused on the link structure of cases. Bob Ambrogi's initial take was that it is pretty good. They are calling their site a "true Alpha" and they are taking comments from all interested parties to improve it. I will test it out over the weekend before the Superbowl :).

It will all be and continue to be free. PreCYdent will support the company with advertising sales.

There is also a nice interview with PreCYdent's Thomas A. Smith on the Law Librarian Blog.

In the interview Tom said that PreCYdent has all of the US Supreme Court cases and US Court of Appeals cases back to the 1950s and that they plan to soon have state cases going back 10 years or more from all 50 states, and ultimately all state and federal cases back to the beginning, as well as statutory and administrative materials.

The PreCYdent site is really nice. Check it out! Congrats to the PreCYdent team!!!

Peace,

Tim

Source: Sophisticated Search for Public Domain Law from Bob Ambrogi's LawSites Blog.

:: Going to California, Led Zeppelin IV by Led Zeppelin

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I found this photo of the U.S. Supreme Court on flickr, the photo-sharing website owned by Yahoo!. Sure, there are a lot of photos on flickr. However, this photo was uploaded by the Library of Congress. Is this the federal government's entrée into social networking? What next? Barack, Hillary, John, Mitt and Mike "friending" us on Facebook? ;-) In all seriousness, this is a great step towards increasing the accessibility of our government resources. I find it so much easier to find photos on flickr than using the boolean search on the Library of Congress website. And, if you look very closely, you'll only see 48 stars on the U.S. flag.

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Hi Friends,

Carl Malamud and Public.Resource.org have gotten together with Ed Walters CEO of FastCase and are happy to announce that they will be putting online an archive of US Appeal Court decisions since 1950 and all of the US Supreme Court cases since 1754. Here is their announcement.

Announcement

1.8 million pages of federal case law to become freely available.

WASHINGTON, D.C. / SEBASTOPOL, CA—November 14, 2007—Public.Resource.Org and Fastcase, Inc. announced today that they will release a large and free archive of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754. The archive will be public domain and usable by anyone for any purpose.

“The U.S. judiciary has allowed their entire work product to be locked up behind a cash register,” said Carl Malamud, CEO of Public.Resource.Org. “Law is the operating system of our society and today's agreement means anybody can read the source for a substantial amount of case law that was previously unavailable.”

Fastcase, the leading developer of next-generation American legal research, has agreed to provide Public.Resource.Org with 1.8 million pages of federal case law. This is a marked departure for the online legal research industry, which traditionally has charged expensive subscription fees to access this information.

“For eight years, Fastcase has been ahead of the market curve, working to democratize access to the law,” said Ed Walters, CEO of Fastcase, Inc. “At the same time, we have been advancing the science of search, combining the precision of traditional legal research with the simplicity of Web-based searches.”

Fastcase has reversed the traditional subscription model for lawyers, contracting directly with 11 state bar associations to make the national law library free for lawyers in their states. “Through this agreement with Public.Resource.Org, we are proud to expand our efforts beyond lawyers, and to make more of the law available to the general public at no cost,” Walters said.

The agreement calls for definitive paperwork approved by both parties within 30 days with Public.Resource.Org making developer snapshots of the archive available in early 2008. Public.Resource.Org is represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in this transaction. The cases will be marked with a new Creative Commons mark—CC-Ø—that signals that there are no copyrights or other related rights attached to the content.

This transaction represents a one-time purchase of a copy of data. This corpus will be integrated into the ongoing public services from organizations such as AltLaw and the Legal Information Institute, thus providing continuity of coverage into the future. Further announcements will be forthcoming on the availability of other case law, including Federal District and pre-1949 Appellate decisions.

Public.Resource.Org intends to perform an initial transformation on the federal case law archive obtained from Fastcase using open source “star” mapping software, which will allow the insertion of markers that will approximate page breaks based on user-furnished parameters such as page size, margins, and fonts. “Wiki” technology will be used to allow the public to move around these “star” markers, as well as add summaries, classifications, keywords, alternate numbering systems for citation purposes, and ratings or “diggs” on opinions.

Media Contacts

About Fastcase

Fastcase is the leading American provider of next-generation legal research, making the law accessible to more people by providing the national law library at a fraction of the cost of traditional companies. Using patented software that combines the best of legal research with the best of Web search, Fastcase helps busy legal professionals sift through the clutter, ranking the best cases first and enabling users to re-sort results to find answers fast. Founded in 1999, Fastcase has more than 275,000 paid subscribers from around the world. It is an American company based in Washington, D.C. For more information, visit www.fastcase.com.

About Public.Resource.Org

Public.Resource.Org was founded in 2007 to spearhead the creation of public works projects for the Internet. A 501(c)(3) registered public charity, Public.Resource.Org has worked across all three branches of the U.S. government to enhance the public domain.

Beautiful!!!! Thanks Ed, FastCase, Carl & Public.Resource.org!!!!

Peace,

Tim

:: Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin IV by Led Zeppelin

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Hi Friends,

The new Stanford Copyright & Fair Use site is up :) And I have not even gotten on the plane...

Mary Minow, Jon Silver and Justia's Cicely, Courtney, Dan, Nick and Vasu made it happen.

More info on the site once I land in beautiful Ithaca :)

Peace,

Tim

:: Ordinary People, Chrome Dreams II by Neil Young

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Hi Friends,

One of the biggest forces in free online legal information, Tom Bruce, Director of the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School stopped by to meet with the gang at Justia. It was great talking through ideas about the future of legal information. We are going to do some work together on new fun projects which will benefit the populations of the Internets :) It is going to be fantastic!!!

Tom visits the Cornell West campus near Palo Alto. We stopped by the key buildings on campus, the Gates' Computer Science building and the law school :)

Tom and some of the Justia programming team... who can't wait to put more free stuff online :)

Tom, Rio and Tim (me). Great beards. More photos will be up in the Justia Facebook Group :)

We are really looking forward to working with LII and putting more free stuff online! Here we go... :)

A Message from the Birds to the Pugs :)

Peace,

Tim

:: #9 Dream, Walls and Bridges by John Lennon

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Hi Friends,

Last night I had a good "trip" to the cage to add a new fast Web server for the Jurist Community and News Website run by Professor Bernard Hibbitts and his team. Ok... well technically I just watched my friend - Jurist's Technical Director Jeremiah Lee put it into the cage. The switch to the new machine will happen in the next month or so... Here Jeremiah finishes configuring the Jurist machine (the top one on the right-hand side rack) in record time. The easiest install ever. And now Jeremiah can start programming away all the new kewl Jurist features to come :)

Peace,

Tim

:: Thunder Road, Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen

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Hi Friends,

We recently added the a FREE database of Federal District Court Opinions since 2004 that are available using the opinion report in the Federal Courts' ECF. The database is updated daily.

Here is the URL for the Federal District Court Opinions:

http://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/

Categorization & Rss Feeds - We have categorized the opinions by state, court, type of lawsuit and judge and combinations of judge and type of lawsuit. You can also subscribe to each of categories through RSS feeds to track a judge or court's decisions on different issues. And we also give the cause of action for each case.

Full Text Search - We are using Google's hosted Business Custom Search Engine (http://www.google.com/enterprise/csbe/) for the full text search.

Google is now OCRing PDF image files, so even PDF files that have images of scanned documents will be, in most cases, full text indexable and searchable (just like the OCR of Google's Book Search). You will need to look at the cached copy to see the highlighted searched text though, and then find in the original PDF to be 100% that what you are reading is correct. Google should be doing a pretty good job of indexing and ocring these court decisions, although it may take a few days for a new document to show up in the index.

We allow one to search across all of the documents, or to limit the search to Federal District Courts in a particular state or an individual Federal District Court. You can also search by party name, court and filed date.

Data Limitations - This data set does NOT include all of the Federal District Court opinions.

a. Not all of the courts have upgraded to ECF 2.4. So we do not have opinions for those courts that have not upgraded.

b. Not all opinions and orders are included by the Judges. As is stated on the PACER site

"Written opinions have been defined by the Judicial Conference as 'any document issued by a judge or judges of the court sitting in that capacity, that sets forth a reasoned explanation for a court's decision.' The responsibility for determining which documents meet this definition rests with the authoring judge."

Some judges have chosen not to include any of their opinions in the opinion report.

c. Some scans of are such poor quality that the OCR failed.

Federal District Court Case Filings Database Updated

We the US Federal District Court Case Filings database has been updated with Nice Opinion Icons. When we have a judge's opinion (you will see a little gavel :). The case filings are at:

http://dockets.justia.com

And we have added browse pages and RSS feeds by judge. That should make it easier to find other cases a particular judge has ruled on that are covering similar issues (at least at the broad case type level). If we have the opinions or orders online, you can see what the judge wrote, or you may need to log into the court's ECF system and obtain the briefs and other filings (and pay a small per page fee).

The case filings and opinion databases are related, as they both have Federal Court data, it is just that the opinions database is limited to those cases where we have opinions.

More to come: We have one more features we are going to be providing for the the Federal District Court Case Filings, and another one we are going to providing for the Federal District Court Opinions that will be very kewl. But we are all going to have to wait for Vasu, Nick and Dan to finish these up this week (the pressure is on now that I have practically pre-announced more new stuff this week :)

Peace,

Tim

:: The Promised Land, Darkness On the Edge of Town by Bruce Springsteen

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Hi Friends,

Our friend & hero Carl Malamud stopped by the "Justia offices" to talk about his new public interest public information project.... making the case law and codes of the United States of America (state and federal) freely accessible in a public domain archive. See Tim O'Reilly's blog post on Carl's project (and read the comments from other big names in the free law space, including Cornell's Tom Bruce and HyperLaw's Alan Sugarman :) This archived data can then be used and worked on by the folks at Cornell, Google, Stanford.... and everyone!

Carl's high energy, amazing track record of success of making government information freely accessible (EDGAR, Patents, Smithsonian, CSPAN, Congressional Hearings...), connections with the technology, educational, political and online information communities will help make free case law happen. We are excited to be helping and we are giving our full support!

Rio, Carl, Sheba and Tim posterized poster and posterized :) Ready to work!!!

Here is Carl giving a Google Tech talk a year or so ago about getting Congressional video onto Google Video and other places like the Internet Archive. He gives a nice overview of some of previous free information projects (I am sure there will be a new Google Tech talk on the free case law project soon :)

Dogs in the Office? Carl is for them! So are we!

Check out Public.Resource.Org... Just the beginning... but this is going to be Great!!!!!

Peace,

Tim

And in our own blast from the past (term taken from the O'Reilly blog comments of Alan Sugarman and Tom Bruce :)... Hal Varian, Cal SIMS econ-info-library professor, and now Google's Chief Economist, is part of Public.Resource.Org. When Stacy, Martin and I were starting FindLaw, Hal was there at the very beginning, the Northern California Law Libraries meeting where the site started. Later on, Hal connected us up with Northwestern's & Oyez's Jerry Goldman, who we are still working with to this day (although with Justia, not FindLaw) on the Oyez and the Supreme Court Center.

:: Give It Away, Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers

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Hi Friends,

Let me start our new month of blogging with a post on the great new ABA Journal Website. The site went live a few weeks ago, and includes articles from the magazine, updated daily news and a legal blog directory. The site is from ABA Journal Editor and Publisher Ed Adams, Fred Faulkner IV and the ABA Journal Web development and editorial team.

If you have not checked the new ABA Journal Website out already, you definitely should!

The new ABA Journal site brings a new focus on current legal news, which you can subscribe to by way of a RSS feed. The over look and feel is very clean and good looking, with a lot of focus on the user experience.

ABA Journal Magazine articles from the current and past issues are available to all... for free :)

And there is the ABA blawg directory that categorizes over a thousand blogs. Very nicely done.

You can read more about the new ABA Journal Website from Bob Amrbogi and Blawg.com's Bill Gratsch who wrote about it when the ABA Journal Website first came out :)

Again, check out the site if you have not already. There is a great amount of information on the site of interest to lawyers and anyone interested in law.

Peace,

Tim

:: #9 Dream, Walls and Bridges by John Lennon

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Hi Friends,

This years BlawgWorld e-book is out from Neil Squillante, Sara Skiff and the TechnoLawyer Team.

The BlawgWorld 2007 ebook has sample posts from a number of blogs, AND a legal technology solutions guide. You can download the ebook here. It is free :)

You can also check out the ebook press materials, including a video on the TechnoLawyer blog.

So download away, read a few posts, and check out the solutions guide as well!

Peace,

Tim

:: You Get What You Give, Maybe You've Been Brainwashed Too by the New Radicals

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Hi Friends,

Turner Entertainment Networks has announced plans to re-brand Court TV as truTV starting January 1, 2008. The network will also sport a new logo, new look and expanded line-up focused on the psychographic known as "Real Engagers". truTv plans to continue with its six-hour block of trial coverage every weekday morning. Afternoons will feature Star Jones' new talk show, and prime time, early fringe and late night will continue to offer currently running series such as Forensic Files, Haunting Evidence and Speeders, and add a host of new shows in development to the line up. Exciting must watch TV...

Peace,

Tim

:: Video, The Forgotten Arm by Aimee Mann

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Hi Friends,

ALM has been sold for $630 Million to Incisive Media. You can read more about in the press releases here and here.

See Bob Ambrogi's post and Mark Obbie's post (found on LawSites) for more info...

Peace,

Tim

:: Peace Frog, Morrison Hotel by The Doors

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Hi Friends,

There is a mention on LexBlog's Kevin O'Keefe's Blog that Avvo may release their site tomorrow.

Currently neither TechCrunch Attorney Michael Arrington nor ValleyWag has info on the new Avvo site... yet... so confirmation is a leak away. We may even need to wait until the press conference, press release (and launch party) when it comes out tomorrow (?).

Here is the Seattle Post Intelligencer article by John Cook (cited in Kevin's post) about their funding from Benchmark.

My guess is it is a lawyer directory with maps, maybe with consumer legal information to draw people in. Then add a referral program where lawyers can login and get leads. But I really have no idea. Great job of keeping it secret though, Avvo is the Apple Computer of law services (and I mean that in a good way :) tomorrow should be fun :) Should be a big push out the gate! And a nice contrast to Justia's projects... that always seem to get released in Alpha/Beta -- a new one will be coming out soon :).

Onward Avvo!!!

Peace,

Tim

:: The Waiting, Hard Promises by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

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Hi Friends,

I initially wrote this up for the LMA list, but after rereading my email I figured it would be a good post. And it has Bellingham Washington in it, which is good.

There is a new free service that will be of interest to those who travel a lot. It is called Yapta and it tracks price changes in flights and then alerts you to price drops so you can obtain refunds or traffic coupons on the difference in price. Yapta just opened up their beta to new users. The url is http://yapta.com.

Slightly reworded cut down version of the Yapta press release to describe the service...

Yapta.com allows users to track specific flights from online itineraries offered at leading domestic airline websites (eg American Airlines, Delta...) or online travel agents (eg Orbitz, Expedia...), and have pricing continually monitored thereafter. Yapta thus assures that users get alerted to the lowest possible price for airline tickets. Bringing to light pro-consumer "guaranteed airfare rules" offered by many airlines, the service helps air travelers obtain travel vouchers -- and in some cases, cash refunds -- when the price decreases on tickets that have already been purchased.

In December 2006, Yapta initiated a private-beta test of the service, allowing select consumers to tag flights, receive alerts on airfare price drops, and capture refunds and travel vouchers. In just three months, Yapta alerted its 275 test users to approximately $30,000 in eligible savings and refunds, for an average net benefit of $109 per traveler.

If you or some in your firm travel a lot (eg bizdev or lawyers :), it is a good service to check out. You use it by either entering in your flight plans or tagging flights on Orbitz, Expedia or other services. (just like using del.icio.us or Google Bookmarks).

Yapta is not another airline search service, it is really best used to track decreases in prices of tickets you have already bought (or to track price changes in flights you are considering taking if the price falls). Again, the beta is now open and the url is http://yapta.com

Here are some additional resources:

Yapta.com

Yapta Press Release

TechCrunch Review

Wall Street Journal Article

I am sure the Yapta service will lead to a lot of cost savings by making the airline pricing more transparent.

Peace,

Tim

:: Jet Airliner, Book of Dreams by the Steve Miller Band

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Hi Friends,

This from Today's New York Times...

While no decisions have yet been made, he [Tom Glocer] said Reuters might hire about 50 additional journalists to create a legal news wire, integrating it with Thomson’s current offerings to lawyers.

Interesting... and I believe that Thomson will use some of their education division sale money to purchase American Lawyer Media. We will see... in the mean time, I am taking bets.

Peace,

Tim

Source: Thomson Adds Reuters in $17 Billion Bid to Be Giant New York Times (16 May 2007).

:: Thrasher, Rust Never Sleeps by Neil Young

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Hi Friends,

Tom Glocer, Reuters' CEO and likely new Thomson CEO to be, has his own blog. Just a few posts, but Tom is posting himself. Click here to read Tom's Blog.

Source: WSJ Law Blog Comment

Peace,

Tim

:: HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business School Publishing

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Hi Friends,

The new LLRX.com Web site that we worked on for/with Sabrina Pacifici is now live. While it is primarily an editorial research Website, there is a section on law firm marketing, and a lot of tech tips that are useful marketers and lawyers alike. And, from a marketing perspective, Sabrina did change the colors and add in pictures to the home page :) There is more work left to do on it, but it is live. More information on LLRX is on our law review blog.

Peace,

Tim

:: Take It Easy, Eagles by the Eagles

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Hi Friends,

UPDATE 30 March 2007: Here I am with Mr. Jurist himself, Bernard Hibbitts -- I am putting some more photos up here and here on our Law Reivew blog

Jurist, the well known legal news and law school community Website run by Law Professor Bernard Hibbitts and the University of Pittsburgh Law School Team, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this week. During the last 10 years, Jurist has become the strongest law school community site on the Web, as well as a source of continuous legal news and commentary. In 2006 Jurist was the Webby People's Voice Award winner for law sites, and every year it continues to improve, adding more and more useful features. University of Massachusetts Amherst Professor Ethan Katsh of online dispute resolution fame and University of South Carolina Professor and former CNN Supreme Court reporter Charles Bierbauer are the keynote speakers. I will be on the Law and Media in the Age of the Internet panel with Tony Mauro and Ed Adams, probably talking about python code and mysql databases and free case law. It should be great. And congrats to Jurist for 10 great years!!!

Peace,

Tim

:: By the Way, By the Way by the Red Hot Chili Peppers

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Federal regulations affect the practices of a broad spectrum of lawyers. For corporate counsel, federal regulations may directly touch on their company's core business, or they may impose additional general compliance requirements, such as in human resources, as an example. Attorneys in both private practice and public interest law face a similar impact whether they practice labor and employment, immigration, criminal law or in a completely different area.

Here are some federal regulations that attorneys in the corresponding practice areas or industries may find of interest:

If you practice in an area affected by federal regulations, you probably already recognize that keeping abreast of new regulatory developments is essential. To assist you, Justia has released the free Justia Regulations Tracker, found at http://regulations.justia.com/ (currently in beta). Justia Regulations Tracker allows a user to focus on regulations originating from a specific federal agency and subscribe to an RSS feed of those regulations.

Better yet, you can further refine the RSS feed by specifying the type of regulation or stage in the regulation making process (i.e., rules, administrative orders, notices, proposed rules, executive orders, and proclamations) or even defining certain search terms, such as all regulations that mention bovine spongiform encephalitis.

If you aren't already on the RSS bandwagon, now is a great time hop aboard. RSS feeds allow you to take a particular set of data and view it using your RSS reader. So, instead of opening a print newspaper and reading the articles that the editors have selected for you, and RSS reader allows you create your own custom news and information source from data sources that you select. For lawyers, this means reading the federal regulations, court filings, legal commentary and other resources that you decide are worth tracking. Enjoy!

Justia Regulation Tracker

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Hi Friends,

As I noted in a previous post (Federal Court Case Filings - Dockets.Justia.com).... we put up a "beta" free Website of new civil case filings. Well it has been a few weeks, and "beta 2" is here :)

Here is what we have fixed up.

1. We are now updating the dockets database continuously --- multiple updates each day.

2. We are checking for updates of previous dockets to pick up changes and corrections.

3. Faster. We have moved dockets to a very fast machine and have optimized the database for faster search results.

4. We have added additional docket information, including

a. the cause of action
b. the presiding judge (and referring judge if given)
c. whether a jury trial was demanded, and if so by which party.

5. We have put in additional links from each listing into relevant online databases, some specific to the type of case, such as patent searches for patent cases.

6. Additional interface changes. They are small, such as replacing the case number with the cause of action in the result listing pages, but they should make things more intuitive.

Anyway, we thought we had enough changes to announce a Dockets.Justia.com Beta 2. We have a lot of additional free features we are working on... but you will have to wait a bit longer for beta 3 :)

Peace,

Tim

Peace - Tim

:: Peaceful Easy Feeling, Eagles by the Eagles

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Hi Friends,

We put up a Website with the new civil case filings in the US District Courts with links into Pacer for the full docket and filing information and News, Finance, Web and Blog Internet resources. The URL is: http://dockets.justia.com

It allows you to search and track when new cases are filed by State, Court, Lawsuit Type (eg Patent Law) or Party name... or any combination. We are updating this daily (but note the courts often post the filings a day or two after they are received).

RSS FEEDS
One feature we like is the RSS feeds. You can subscribe to an RSS feed of all of the new cases for a State, Court or Lawsuit Type, or you can do a search and subscribe to an RSS feed of the search results (which you can add to your MyGoogle or MyYahoo! page). The RSS feed is nice because you can track the new cases without redoing your search everyday.

For example you could track all of the Federal Court Patent cases or all of the Federal Court cases filed against Microsoft with an RSS feed, or just those Microsoft cases that are filed in Washington State. Whatever the search criteria, you can track new cases with an RSS feed.

LINKS TO PACER, BLOG, NEWS, FINANCE & WEB INFO
Each case has an individual page with a link to the Pacer info page (you do need a subscription to access these documents at 8 cents per page - easily worth the costs for a case you care about) as well as Blog, News, Finance and Web searches on the party names. Depending on the particular case, you can often get some good background information on the parties. For example the page on Cisco Systems, Inc. v. Apple Inc. iPhone trademark dispute.

LAW FIRM MARKETING VALUE - CLIENTS/COMPANY TRACKING
The value of the database could be seen as a tracking mechanism for:

• tracking client - you may know when they get sued before they do,
• tracking companies - eg Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!
• finding new clients/cases - eg if you were a Palo Alto patent lawyer, you could track Patent cases filed in California Northern District Federal Court or all of California or the entire USA.

DAILY UPDATES
There are over 300,000 case titles since January 1, 2006, and we are updating it daily.

We are still making some user interface changes, and just added subscribe buttons for MyGoogle, MyYahoo!, Bloglines etc... yesterday, and we are going to add more functionality and editorial groupings of parties in the future. We are always looking for ideas, so if you want any additions or changes, feel free to let us know.

You can check the Justia Federal Court Filings Site out at http://dockets.justia.com/, and Happy Valentines Day.

Peace,

Tim

Peace - Tim

:: Wish You Were Here, Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd

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Hi Friends,

I would comment on Larry Bodine's (in)experience with Macs (see Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree). But LexBlog's Kevin O'Keefe (a Mac User) just sent me a post from Wil Shipley's blog that pretty much covers the Mac side.

And for more fun... read the MacLaw group posts that have been coming through... and read Larry's blog where he has put up some of the "thoughts and suggestions" himself.

But from a pure marketing standpoint... there is no faster way to get your name known by the technology community at large than to attack the Mac. Larry is now "famouser" and he knows it :).

From Justia's standpoint... we just bought another loaded MacBook Pro and 30 inch monitor for our new programmer. And we will be running Windows XP on the same computer... for testing purposes only.

And now taking a page (or partial post) out of my personal Law Blog of Fun... here are couple of GooTube videos to express some thoughts...

Peace - Tim

And on a side Seattle note... what a great Seahawks win on Sunday. It made my NFL.com Internet radio subscription worthwhile for the whole year.

:: Bet You Look Good On the Dancefloor, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not by the Arctic Monkeys

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AOL Research recently released a collection of search queries that AOL users had entered from March 1, 2006 - May 31, 2006. Attached to the data was the following description of the file contents:

This collection consists of ~20M web queries collected from ~650k users over
three months. The data is sorted by anonymous user ID and sequentially arranged.

The goal of this collection is to provide real query log data that is based on
real users. It could be used for personalization, query reformulation or other
types of search research.

The data set includes {AnonID, Query, QueryTime, ItemRank, ClickURL}.
        AnonID - an anonymous user ID number.
        Query  - the query issued by the user, case shifted with
                 most punctuation removed.
        QueryTime - the time at which the query was submitted for search.
        ItemRank  - if the user clicked on a search result, the rank of the
                    item on which they clicked is listed. 
        ClickURL  - if the user clicked on a search result, the domain portion of 
                    the URL in the clicked result is listed.

In other words, this data trove is pretty much the same type of materials that Google fought vigorously to keep out of the hands of the U.S. government. While AOL has since removed the data from its website, copies of the data file are still floating around the Internet. However, instead of downloading and processing the raw data by yourself, which is no small feat considering the amount of data involved, I've come across a website — appropriately called AOL Search Database — that lets you search through the AOL search query data by User ID, search keyword or website result.

Here's a quick review of the site.

Easy to Use. Beats setting up a database and importing 36 million lines of data.

But...

No Free Text Search. Keyword search is not the same as free text search. If I search for gps, no results are returned because gps is not on the keywords list. That's restrictive...

AND/OR. When I search for stanley cup on Google, it assumes that I want to search with all of the words; i.e., an AND operator between the search terms. In contrast, AOL Search Database assumes an OR operator between the search terms. So, stanley cup returns stanley cup, as well as morgan stanley, stanley cleaners and stanley furniture, which aren't exactly relevant to my search query.

With those limitations in mind, let's see what this data reveals.

A lot of useful data may be extracted from the AOL Search Database. For attorneys looking to build their Internet presence, understanding exactly how individuals search for attorneys will allow you to tailor your website to most effectively reach prospective clients.

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If you find yourself frequently looking up US Supreme Court cases, we've come up with a time-saving plugin for Firefox users.

Once you've installed our US Supreme Court Search plugin, look for the J-star icon in the oval search field in the upper right-hand corner of your Firefox browswer. Enter any term, hit enter, and the browswer will retrieve US Supreme Court cases that reference your search query. This plugin is also available from mozdev.org.

[ Install US Supreme Court Opinions Search Plugin for Firefox ]

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Hi Friends,

I am going to MacWorld today. If you need a free pass you can download one from Other World Computing. Apple Plasma Screen Computers (PowerPage.org) - but note New Intel MacBooks - should be kewl. So there is today's free tip or free pass link.

Here is Steve Jobs' Keynote Speach

Peace - Tim

:: Have Love, Will Travel, The Last DJ by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

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Back in July, I compared Google Maps v. MSN Virtual Earth. Since then, Microsoft has refreshed their product and rebranded it as Microsoft Local Live. I guess Microsoft Local would sound too much like Yahoo! Local or Google Local. No better way to innovate and lead the industry than to add a "Live" tag to your logo. That really supercharges your brand and differentiates it from the competition! :-) Of course, the other popular tag is 360° (See Yahoo! 360° and Xbox 360). I'll be holding out and waiting for the Live 360° version for all these applications.

Anyways, Microsoft was previously displaying the Bellagio as a black & white photo of a construction site. In five quick months, Microsoft replaced it with a gleaming color photo of the hotel. Talk about an Extreme Makeover.

And, as if to prove that there are still cool engineers up in Redmond, Microsoft added a nifty bird's eye view.

Unfortunately, you have to use their bird's eye navigation box to move around -- i.e., no smooth scrolling around the map via arrow keys. Got spoiled by Google!

In bird's eye view, the three controls are point of view (i.e., face north, south, east or west), magnification, and movement (i.e., move up, down, left, right, etc.) I found the following flaws with the bird's eye view:

1. the map loses the ability to display an overlay of street or location names; and
2. the magnification interface doesn't let the user "pull-back" enough so it's easy to get lost.

Microsoft hasn't unveiled Bird's Eye imagery for all locations yet. For now, it's limited to New York City, San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, Washington, Seattle, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, Atlanta, Albuquerque, Indianapolis and Lexington (KY).

In reality, their coverage may include some surrounding communities. As you can see above, Microsoft even provided a bird's eye view of Angel Stadium where the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim play. Even Microsoft believes that the Angels are from Los Angeles.

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Does your law firm have a web presence? One that commands attention and attracts clients? If not, you may want to focus on improving your web site's keyword selections, which encompasses the search terms that potential clients will use to locate your law firm's web site.

One form of keyword selection is focusing on the geographical location of your potential clients. For example, if you are a Houston personal injury lawyer, you would probably prefer that more of your online visitors come from Houston, Texas instead of, say, Phoenix, Arizona. By attracting more qualified visitors to your web site, you have a greater chance of converting these visitors into paying clients.

Of course, deciding to optimize your web site for Houston instead of Phoenix is an easy decision. However, to what extent should you optimize your web site for any surrounding communities? One factor may be the demographics of your nearby cities. To help you analyze demographic date, SRC and AnalyGIS have released a cool demographic mapping tool that combines Google Local maps with demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

When you click on the map, the demographic mapping tool returns the population, median income, average income, median age and other demographic information for areas within a radius of 1 mile, 3 miles and 5 miles of where you clicked. And, this maps includes all the functions of the standard Google map. You can zoom in, zoom out, slide the map around, and switch between map and satellite views.

[Via Robert Ambrogi's LawSites Via Library Stuff ]

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The Florida Department of Health offers Florida patients, personal injury lawyers and medical malpractice attorneys a valuable online tool for evaluating the background of a Florida health care provider. The Department of Health's Florida Medical License Search allows users to locate information about a health care provider by name, profession, location or license number. For example, a Miami Personal Injury Lawyer might request the record of a Medical Doctor in Dade County.

Once you click on a record, you need to click on the Practitioner Profile tab and then the Proceedings and Actions tab to view the health care provider's disciplinary and liability claims history.

Another useful web site is the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation. This web site provides information on medical professional liability (MPL) claims. For example, you can search for claims by Insurer Name, Doctor Name, County Injury Occurred In, Severity of Injury, and Indemnity Paid, among other fields.

So, a Miami Medical Malpractice Lawyer can locate all claims where the County Injury Occurred In is Dade and where the Indemnity Paid is at least $5,000,000. The web site returned 3 matching results.

If you click on a claim, you can review its details, including Insurer Information, Insured Information, Insured Person Information, Diagnostic Information, Legal Information and Financial Information.

Both of these web sites should prove to be a valuable resource for Florida patients, personal injury lawyers and medical malpractice attorneys.

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Since Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, I have been absolutely shocked by the magnitude of destruction left in her wake. In California, we've experienced our share of natural disasters, including the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. While the damage from that earthquake was extensive, it did not force the evacuation of a major American city or disperse countless families into neighboring states away from their homes, possessions and careers. The manpower, resources and infrastructure needed to handle such a mass migration is unfathomable.

Hurricane Katrina also demonstrated the limitations of our current technologies. Once the power shuts down, the cellular phones go down as well. And, without a communication system in place, the process of contacting family members or coordinating relief efforts proves to be exponentially more challenging.

Fortunately, many Web sites have emerged in the past few days to help survivors reconnect with their family members. Let me share with you some Web sites that I've visited to keep up with Hurricane Katrina news.

Charities

• American Red Cross. The American Red Cross is one of the organizations leading relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina victims. You can make an online donation from their web site. The Red Cross also features an RSS Feed of current news and press releases.
• Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund. Established by former Presidents Bush and Clinton to provide relief and rebuilding resources to help the victims of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
• GuideStar.org. Provides a database of nonprofit organizations, including program descriptions and income tax returns. Free registration required.
• Habitat for Humanity. Raising funds to help low-income families recover and rebuild.
• The Salvation Army. The Salvation Army is providing services to storm survivors and first responders in the Gulf Coast states and is also accepting online donations online.
• Second Harvest. Distributes food and grocery products. Online donation available.
• Mississippi Hurricane Recovery Fund. Serves as the state's central clearinghouse for corporations, organizations, and individuals to donate money, equipment, goods, services, volunteers, and time to Mississippians recovering and rebuilding from Hurricane Katrina.

Missing Persons

• craigslist - New Orleans. Special section on missing people. See also craigslist for other locations: Austin, TX, Baton Rouge, LA, Houston, TX, Jackson, MS, Mobile, AL, Montgomery, AL, Pensacola, FL and Shreveport, LA.
• Family News Network. Provides a contact list of those searching for missing family members due to Hurricane Katrina. In English, French and Spanish. From the International Committee of the Red Cross.
• Katrina Safe. Locate a missing person or report your own status.
• Missing Person Database. Create a missing person page or search the database. From NOLA.com.
• Missing Persons Forum. From al.com.
• Searching For Forum. From WWLTV.com

National News

• CNN - Hurricane Katrina. Special coverage section.
• Google News - Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Katrina news search. Also, as an RSS feed.
• Hurricane Katrina Full Coverage on Yahoo! News. Features news, message boards, and more.
• The New York Times - Hurricane Katrina. Special coverage section.
• NPR. Katrina web resources. Also includes Hurricane Katrina RSS feed.
• Wikipedia - Hurricane Katrina. In-depth article from the free encyclopedia.

Regional News

• 2theadvocate.com. Baton Rouge news. Powered by The Advocate and WBRZ News 2.
• ABC26.com - WGNO-TV. New Orleans news. Includes live video news from ABC26 and ABC2.
• al.com. Features Birmingham, Huntsville, and Mobile news.
• Fox 8 Live WVUE-TV. New Orleans news.
• HoustonChronicle.com - Hurricane Katrina RSS Feed.
• NOLA.com. New Orleans news.
• Shreveport Times. Includes Hurricane Katrina evacuee list.
• Sun Herald. Local news for South Mississippi, Biloxi and Gulfport.
• WDSU.com New Orleans news. Features live coverage.
• WWLTV.com. New Orleans news. Includes live news broadcast and low-bandwith audio.

Maps and Aerial / Satellite Photos

• Google Maps - New Orleans. Includes pre= and post-Katrina photos.
• Hurricane Katrina Impact Studies. Includes pre- and post-Katrina aerial photos. From the U.S. Geological Survey.
• Hurricane Levee Maps. From the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New Orleans District.
• NASA - Hurricane Katrina. Features satellite photos, microwave imagery and more.
• NASA - New Orleans and Gulf Coast Flooding in the Aftermath of Katrina. Features satellite photos.
• NASA - New Orleans Topography. Includes simulated view of the potential effects of storm surge flooding on Lake Pontchartrain and the New Orleans area.
• NOAA - Hurricane Katrina Images. Imagery of the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama after Hurricane Katrina made landfall.
• Power Outage Maps. From the U.S. Department of Energy.

Federal Government

• The White House - Hurricane Relief. Includes speeches and news releases on Hurricane Katrina.
• CDC - Hurricanes. Features hurricane recovery resources, including information about infectious diseases, mental health, food safety and more. From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Register for assistance.
• National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration. Features storm watches and warnings, RSS feeds from the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service.
  • National Hurricane Center / Tropic Prediction Center. Includes RSS feeds for individual hurricanes and tropical storms.
• Hurricane Katrina Recovery. Includes numerous friend and family contact listings. From FirstGov.gov.
• U.S. Department of Energy. Features daily situation reports and updates. Includes gas price hotline to report price gouging.
  • Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
  • Office of Electricity Delivery & Energy Reliability. Features situation reports, power outage maps and more.
• U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) - Hurricane Katrina. Includes health and safety information, as well as links to state government agencies in the region.
• U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Provides information on the government's response to Hurricane Katrina.
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Provides advisories and information on chemical and bacterial contamination in floodwaters.
• U.S. House of Representatives
  • Jo Bonner (R-Mobile, AL)
  • Terry Everett (R-Rehobeth, AL)
  • Mike Rogers (R-Anniston, AL)
  • Robert B. Aderholt (R-Haleyville, AL)
  • Robert E. (Bud) Cramer Jr. (D-Huntsville, AL)
  • Spencer Bachus (R-Vestavia Hills, AL)
  • Artur Davis (D-Birmingham, AL)
  • Bobby Jindal (R-Kenner, LA)
  • William J. Jefferson (D-New Orleans, LA)
  • Charlie Melacon (D-Napoleonville, LA)
  • Jim McCrery (R-Shreveport, LA)
  • Rodney Alexander (R-Quitman, LA)
  • Richard H. Baker (R-Baton Rouge, LA)
  • Charles W. Boustany Jr. (R-Lafayette, LA)
  • Roger F. Wicker (R-Tupelo, MS)
  • Bennie G. Thompson (D-Bolton, MS)
  • Charles W. "Chip" Pickering (R-Hebron, MS)
  • Gene Taylor (D-Bay St. Louis, MS)
• U.S. Senate
  • Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama)
  • Richard Shelby (R-Alabama)
  • Mary L. Landrieu (D-Louisiana)
  • David Vitter (R-Louisiana)
  • Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi)
  • Trent Lott (R-Mississippi)

State and Local Government

• Louisiana.gov - Hurricane Katrina. State of Louisiana's official website for dissemination of information concerning Hurricane Katrina.
  • Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco.
  • Louisiana State Legislature.
  • Louisiana Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness.
  • Louisiana Works - Department of Labor. Offers information on filing for unemployment insurance and disaster unemployment assistance.
  • City of New Orleans.
• Mississippi.gov. Official State Web Site of Mississippi.
  • Governor Haley Barbour.
  • Mississippi Legislature.
  • Mississippi Emergency Management Agency.
  • Mississippi Department of Employment Security. Provides information on filing an unemployment claim.
• Alabama.gov. Official website of the State of Alabama.
  • Governor Bob Riley.
  • Alabama Legislature.
  • Alabama Emergency Management Agency.
  • Alabama Department of Industrial Relations. Provides information on unemployment compensation in Alabama.

Courts

• U.S. Courts - Federal Judiciary Court Links. Links to Fifth Circuit and U.S. District and Bankruptcy Courts in Louisiana.
• Louisiana Supreme Court.

Bar Associations

• American Bar Association - Hurricane Katrina Disaster Recovery Resources. Information for legal assistance volunteers, lawyers needing disaster help and more.
• Alabama State Bar Association.
  • Mobile Bar Association.
• Louisiana State Bar Association.
  • Baton Rouge Bar Association
  • Lafayette Parish Bar Association.
  • New Orleans Bar Association.
  • Shreveport Bar Association.
• Mississippi Bar Association.

Publications

• Alabama Unemployment Compensation: Benefit Rights and Responsibilities. From the Alabama Department of Industrial Relations.
• Are You Ready? An In-depth Guide to Citizen Preparedness. Provides a step-by-step approach to disaster preparedness, including a section on natural hazards, such as floods and hurricanes.
• Catastrophe Risk: U.S. and European Approaches to Insure Natural Catastrophe and Terrorism Risks. From the General Accounting Office. (February 28, 2005).
• Daily Report on Hurricane Katrina's Impact on U.S. Energy. From the U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration.
• Disaster Assistance: Information On Federal Costs and Approaches to Reducing Them. [PDF] Discusses several approaches for lowering the costs of federal disaster assistance. From the General Accounting Office. (March 26, 1998).
• Disaster Management: Improving the Nation's Response to Catastrophic Disasters. [PDF] The government's response to Hurricane Andrew, in particular, raised doubts about whether the Federal Emergency Management Agency was capable of responding to such catastrophes and whether it had learned any lessons from Hurricane Hugo and the Loma Prieta earthquake. This report summarizes GAO's analyses, conclusions, and recommendations. From the General Accounting Office. (July 23, 1993).
• Emergency Disaster Training Manual for Louisiana Lawyers. From the Louisiana State Bar Association.
• Hurricane Evacuation Guide. From the Mississippi Department of Transportation.
• Improved Planning Needed by the Corps of Engineers to Resolve Environmental, Technical, and Financial Issues on the Lake Pontchartrain Hurricane Protection Project. [PDF] GAO reviewed the status of the Army Corps of Engineers' Lake Pontchartrain Hurricane Protection Project which is intended to provide hurricane protection to the Greater New Orleans metropolitan area. Because of environmental and other issues, the Project, which was to be completed in 1978, is only half finished. From the General Accounting Office. (August 17, 1982).
• In Case of Emergency. Article on tabletop exercise to develop a recovery plan for the 13 parishes in the New Orleans area in the event of a catastrophic hurricane. From the Louisiana Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness.
  • Hurricane Pam Exercise Concludes. From FEMA.
• Louisiana Citizen Awareness & Disaster Evacuation Guide. From the Louisiana Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness.
• National Flood Insurance Program: Oversight of Policy Issuance and Claims. [PDF] As a result of policy limits, restrictions, and exclusions, insurance payments to claimants for flood damage may not cover all of the costs of repairing or replacing damaged property. From the General Accounting Office. (April 14, 2005).
• Strategic Petroleum Reserve. [PDF] CRS Issue Brief for Congress. From the Federation of American Scientists.
• Surviving the Storm: A Guide to Hurricane Preparedness. Published by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency.
• Unemployment Insurance Benefit Rights Handbook. From Louisiana Works, Department of Labor.

Animal Rescue

• American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). Includes hurricane relief information.
• Best Friends Animal Society. Features animal rescue news.
• Humane Society
. Features animal rescue photos, videos and stories. Online donation available.
• Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Coordinator of animal-rescue efforts in New Orleans.
• Petfinder.com Animal Emergency Response Network. Features database for finding, fostering and reporting lost pets.

Additional Resources

• craigslist - New Orleans. Special section on relief resources, missing people, temporary housing, temporary employment, missing pets and more. Also, see craigslist for Austin, TX, Baton Rouge, LA, Houston, TX, Jackson, MS, Mobile, AL, Montgomery, AL, Pensacola, FL and Shreveport, LA.
• Find Your Insurance Company. Provides claim contact phone numbers for many insurance companies. From the Insurance Information Institute's Hurricane Insurance Information Center.
• HurricaneHousing.org. Find housing or offer free housing to hurricane evacuees. A project of MoveOn.org.

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Hi Friends,

Google has released a beta of its tool bar for Firefox... and it works on the Mac version of Firefox (as well Windows). Right on time too :)

The Google Toolbar for Firefox! -- Some more competition for Yahoo!'s Toolbar for Firefox (or just use both)

Google also released some other Firefox extensions, including a Google Send to Phone for sending text messages of Web page content to a phone number (I think this one is sponsored by the phone companies...) and an extentsion for using Google Suggest in the Firefox search box (it gives suggestions of using the stem text your entered (see previous post).

Here is the Google Blog post about the Firefox toolbar. I am sure there will be more browser search tools, some of which will work even closer with Google Desktop... in the near future.

Peace - Tim

:: Search & Destroy, Nude & Rude - The Best of Iggy Pop by Iggy Pop

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Hi Friends,

We officially released our brand new Justia Auto Recalls Center this week (legal blog readers of course had advanced notice - Bob Ambrogi's LawSites [ Post ], Sabrina Pacifici' BeSpacific [ Post ] ).

The Justia Auto Recalls Center URL is: http://auto-recalls.justia.com

For the Auto Recalls Center, we took the 50,000+ recalls and broke them down by make-model-year for each recall and then added RSS feeds for the auto recall database as a whole, each auto make, each auto make-model and each auto make-model-year.

Finding recalls for your car is easy. Starting from the Justia Auto Recalls Home page browse to your auto's Make, then Model and then Year.

For example the 2002 Honda Accord's there are two recalls.

To track any new Auto Recalls for the 2002 Honda Accord, I could subscribe to the 2002 Honda Accord RSS Feed with a news reader, or another RSS tool (RSS readers and tools) or add the RSS feed to....

...MyYahoo!. If there is a new recall, it will show up in my 2002 Honda Accord Recall module. Of course there are thousands of other RSS feeds for auto make-model-years, so feel free to track the recalls for your car(s) :)

Peace - Tim

Here is our press release "New Justia Web Site Enables Consumers to Easily Track Auto Recalls: Auto Recalls Center Provides RSS Feeds for Recalls of Every Auto, Make, Model and Year".

:: Pink Cadillac, 18 Tracks by Bruce Springsteen

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Hi Friends,

Let's take a small break from the incredibly useful free stratrgic intelligence resources for law firms that Mr. Ken Chan is providing, and get back to the important things in life - puppies and photo stamps... and the implications for actionable legal marketing.

Stamps.com is relaunching their personalized US postage photo stamps. You can once again use your own photos to make custom official US postage photo stamps. Law Firms can use photo stamps as an inexpensive way to market their services (the stamp cost is about 1.6x - 2.3x the price of postage, with additional higher volume discounts (see photo stamps pricing)).

We of course use photo stamps to show off our puppy, Little Sheba the Hug Pug (in a Justia t-shirt :). There are many different Sheba stamps (see Sheba Stamps) made during the trial period last year of the Stamps.com's photo stamps service. We will be making more Little Sheba photo stamps soon!

Law firms (or legal service companies) may want to use their law firm logo, pictures of their attorneys, or maybe even their own office dog (will we see a VersusLaw Rex or PaperStreet Saki dog stamp, soon? My guess is yes :).

In any case, Stamps.com Photo stamps is an inexpensive way for law firms and legal service companies to promote their brand to their clients and potential clients.

Peace - Tim

Also Stamps.com Photo stamps are great for non-legal marketing personal use as well... use them to send postal mail to mom and dad :)

:: Good Morning Starshine, The Sunshine Collection by Oliver

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In a previous post, I had written about setting up a custom RSS news feed through Yahoo News. I'll lead you through the set-up process since it isn't entirely intuitive.

Starting at the Yahoo! News - RSS page, scroll down until you reach the Create your own RSS news feeds field. In the snapshot below, I've highlighted it in yellow to help you locate it.

In the search field, enter the keywords for matching news articles you wish to retrieve. I've entered age discrimination in employment act in my example. Clicking on the search button then takes me to an XML data page. Copy the entire URL of this XML data page from the address bar.

Return to My Yahoo! and look for the Add Content link.

Clicking on the Add Content link takes you to the Add Content page. Look to the right of the Find button for the Add RSS by URL link.

This takes you to the RSS Add Page. Paste the URL from the XML data page into the URL field and click on the Add button. This takes you to a confirmation page which displays a sample of your customized news feed. Click on the Add to My Yahoo! button and you're done.

Now, I can glimpse the headlines for news articles involving morrison foerster and age discrimination in employment act every time I launch My Yahoo.

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