III. Using the Internet to Enhance Your Practice

By Kenneth Carson

Vice President, External Affairs & Alliances -

MyCounsel.com

132 Canal St. Boston, MA 02114

A.Legal Research on the Internet

  1. Any discussion of online research must acknowledge the two leaders, West and Lexis. Since most attorneys are familiar with one or both of their computerized legal research services, they are a point of departure for the program. Comparing the two is also a topic outside the scope of this program.
  2. Lexis and West are creating new, noteworthy products that incorporate access to their legal research libraries. WestWorks WestWorks[CD1], which will be launched later this year, is discussed below.
  3. LexisOne, is a new portal for small firms and solo practitioners. It is a free service that provides access to the case law data bases, limited to the most recent five years’ decisions. Searches for earlier cases and Shepherdizing are available, and the pricing is flat fee by transaction. Also included are free forms, most of which can be completed online by filling in text boxes. Lexis uses an Internet- powered version of Hot Docs document assembly software for the forms. The range of forms available for a particular field is highly variable; it is not clear whether the selection will be filled out over time. LexisOne also has an extensive collection of hyperlinks to other legal resources on the Internet. Taken together, the free research access, forms and links pages are the beginnings of a very useful online desktop. More features will be added.
  4. For full legal research functionality, there is only one online alternative to Lexis and West, which is LoisLaw, . It is priced competitively, and its decision coverage is adequate for most purposes. It lacks the range of secondary research sources that the major publishers can add alongside the case law, but it does have other attractive benefits, such as a free e-mail newsfeed, drawn from many newswire and journal sources. It does have an arrangement with MCLE for online or CD-ROM purchase of practice libraries, for an additional fee.
  5. A site called Jurisline, , sought to offer case law taken from Lexis CD- ROM’s for free, but it removed the material as part of a settlement agreement with Lexis’ corporate parent, Reed Elsevier. Jurisline does offer free access to a partial case law library at the present. It does not have statutes, however.
  6. Many law schools now publish law reviews online, in whole or in part. The University Law Review Project, , lists them by topic and also has a search engine that permits full text searching across all the journals in its data basedatabase. There is also a link at the project’s home page to a free e-mail subscription service for law journal abstracts, by topic.
  7. A limited, but very high quality, collection of legal articles, can be found at the Social Science Research Network site, . Most are downloadable, and free. The intellectual property and cyberlaw areas are particularly strong, as well as law and economics- related subjects.
  8. The Open Directory Project’s law section, at is an excellent starting point for an overview of Legal Research Resources on the Internet, divided into directory categories similar to those found in Yahoo or other search engines. In fact, the Open Directory is used by Lycos.
  9. Many law schools have online resources for particular subject areas, particularly cyberlaw, intellectual property, and technology law. The Berkman Center at Harvard Law School, offers occasional free online courses, an e-mail newsletter called The Filter, and papers and presentations from conferences. The Berkeley Center for Law and Technology has a similar site at
  10. One law school site which that deserves special recognition is Cornell’s Legal Information Institute site, which provides not only extensive links, but short, authoritative surveys of substantive areas of law.
  11. The University of Chicago Law School librarian has prepared a listing of law- related listservs that is valuable for any practitioner seeking to stay current and develop expertise in a particular field:.
  12. At the other end of the spectrum, but worth a look, is the crazed work of a West associated attorney, the 10 Hour Law School, which was prepared to help West sales representatives understand something of the law and lawyers:
  13. A simple means of accessing many basic state government or legal resources is found on the home page of
  14. Two related sites which that bring the training and perspective of skilled law librarians to the task of sorting through the mountains of law -related materials which that are available online are and . Both contain numerous practical articles and summaries of online research strategies and resources. By reviewing the articles, it is possible to gain a good understanding of the potential shortcomings of Internet- based legal research. Each has an e-mail newsletter.
  1. Internet Investigation: Information about About Corporations, Persons, and Expert Witnesses.
  2. Research aAbout Corporations
  3. The most obvious place to start is at the site of the corporation itself. Company sites are very easy to locate, just by searching on the Company company name in a good search engine such as Google. At a company site, press releases, “about us”, “management team”, “partners”, and “investors” are all good starting points for information, depending on what is sought. Frequently information will be available which that will conflict with representations made in response to discovery, such as interrogatory answers or deposition testimony of company witnesses. At a minimum, preliminary research of a company will assist in sharpening the focus of discovery requests. If particularly useful information is located, consider how best to capture it for future use. The surest authentication for admissibility may require disclosure of the material to the adverse party, by way of submitting a Request for Admissions regarding the material, for example.
  4. Corporate SEC filings are available through the EDGAR service. EDGAR itself is maintained by the SEC. It is less user-friendly than the Internet resources most people tend to encounter. Value- added services such as LiveEdgarLIVEDGAR, , make it far easier to navigate EDGAR database files.
  5. One search engine that has unique resources for business- related investigations is Northern Light,
  6. Proprietary databases of corporate information are plentiful, both industry specific and general. Hoover’s, is one of the most commonly used. An excellent source of directories and other categories of business information may be found at the University of Michigan Business School site: .
  7. Investigation services are also available. One interesting “filter” service is Company Sleuth, which will act as a clipping service for public companies, e-mailing search results to registrants on a daily basis. Of course, it provides no evaluation of the sources. The service search results may contain postings from the stock chat message boards which that have been the subject of numerous corporate defamation cases. Although insider information that is both trustworthy and relevant may be quite scarce at most message boards, it is sometimes possible to get a feel for major issues confronting management, personnel changes, and corporate history that are not apparent from company publications or other readily available public sources. The boards may also provide general industry information which that can be useful for understanding the context of legal issues at a particular company.
  8. All traditional offline credit and research bureaus now have online services, such as Dun & Bradstreet’s extensive range of products at .
  9. Information about About Individuals
  10. Every search engine has a free “people finder”; these were one of the first popular features of the World Wide Web. Most will not provide an e-mail address, but rather, permit an e-mail to be sent via the service so the recipient may respond at his or her option.
  11. In many cases, a simple search on a person’s name, using the Alta Vista search engine and others with powerful indexing, will turn up some information.
  12. Telephone directories and reverse directories are also readily available from the people search pages of search engines.
  13. For actual investigations, online services will locate individuals, run credit checks, and even investigate all available public records relating to civil judgments or criminal records. The following is what USSearch, offers for its $500 premium package; comparable searches are available from other providers:

Due Diligence Search Results Include:
  • Criminal Record Search in EVERY county the individual has lived in for the last 10 years
  • Media Search
  • Corporate Affiliates
  • Current and previous addresses going back 10 years
  • Available listed phone numbers
  • Relatives/individuals associated by last name and physical address
  • Others who have used the same address as your subject
  • Neighbors with available listed phone numbers
  • Spouses (Florida and Texas Marriages based on name only)
  • Civil Judgments
  • Bankruptcies
  • Professional Licenses
  • Property Ownership and value
  • UCC Lien Filings
*Information availability varies from state to state. /
  1. The ease with which personal information can be obtained over the Internet concerns many, when they examine the issue. EPIC is a leading privacy “watchdog”, headquartered in Washington, D.C.

It links to information about state privacy laws off its site:

  1. Finding Expert Witnesses
  2. The Internet can assist in locating expert witnesses in several different ways. Many consultants who hold themselves out as expert witnesses can be located through a variety of sites; examples will be given below. In addition, the time-honored method of locating expert witnesses—asking other attorneys who have had similar cases—can be done far more effectively using Internet resources. Finally, the Internet makes it much more practical to locate experts who may not have ever testified or worked as an expert witness in a given field. Not only is it more practical to locate candidates searching on the Internet, but the experts are also more likely to consider an engagement if the Internet can be used as a primary communication tool for transmittal of case materials and correspondence.
  3. FindLaw provides both listings of experts who have sites, and sites that are themselves directories of experts, from this page: The “Experts” pages should not be used alone, but with supplementary searches from the Directory pages that provide cross checking.
  4. The Open Directory Project has a well organized breakdown of expert sites and directories at the following topics are covered:

  • Accident Reconstruction (45)
  • Animals (3)
  • Audiotape and Videotape (4)
  • Biology (2)
  • Business (2)
  • Chemistry (2)
  • Communications (1)
  • Construction and Architecture (20)
  • Criminal Litigation (5)
  • Education (2)
  • Employment (4)
  • Engineering (26)
  • Environmental (13)
  • Family Law (2)
  • Financial (46)
/
  • Fires and Explosions (7)
  • Funeral Industry (1)
  • Geology (1)
  • Insurance (3)
  • Intellectual Property (6)
  • Law Enforcement (24)
  • Legal Malpractice (3)
  • Marine and Maritime (1)
  • Medical (25)
  • Premises Safety (36)
  • Private Investigators@ (554)
  • Psychologists and Forensic Psychology (18)
  • Questioned Documents (8)
  • Technology (6)
  • Trucking Industry (1)

See also:

  • Science: Science in Society: Forensic Science (160)
  • Society: Law: Consultants: Expert Witnesses: Expert Witness Directories
  • Attorney discussion groups are an excellent place to locate experts, because it is possible to get one or more references at the outset. On the plaintiffs’ side, the American Trial Lawyers Association site, is the logical place to begin; membership is required. Discussion groups that focus on particular types of litigation, particularly products liability, medical malpractice and toxic tort, organized by product category or the nature of the claim.
  • On the defense side, the Defense Research Institute, claims to have a database on over 50,000 experts; a search on “Igor Paul” of MIT yielded 15 deposition references. Membership is required, and there is a charge for searches.
  • There are general interest attorney discussion lists, such as the solo and small firm practice e-mail list run by the American Bar Association, called “Solosez.”
  • Experts may also be found for various topics at the “independent contractor marketplace” sites that have proliferated. Examples are Elance, and Guru, These experts are not necessarily experienced at testifying, but they may have skills and training that closely match the requirements for a particular case.
  • Faculty biographies on the sites of professional schools are also an excellent starting point for locating an expert with very particular qualifications. Many provide descriptions of research interests as well as bibliographies of published papers and courses taught. Searching for articles about the subject for which expert testimony is required in professional or academic journals, through a search engine such as Northern Light, or at a site such as the Social Science Research Network, will also provide insights about leading authorities.
  • A final word on expert witnesses: Always run the name of a new prospective expert witness through at least a couple search engines before going forward, such as Google and Alta Vista, and through litigation data bases such as DRI’s. Check your opponents’ expert witnesses out in the same manner. When opposing experts’ biographical information is provided in discovery, both bibliographic and professional references should be checked through Internet searches. Thanks to the Internet, “serial testifiers” who are not consistent in their opinions or other aspects of their deposition testimony—such as their qualifications or the extent of their paid witness work—run a far higher risk of being tripped up. The attorneys who retain them run the risk of damaging their cases.

C.Marketing Your Firm on the Web

  1. Practicing law without some kind of Internet presence is no longer an option. Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric, has said that suppliers will do business with GE over the Internet or they will not do business with GE at all. This attitude will become the norm for small businesses as well as Fortune 500 corporations, and for many individuals as well.
  2. Another reflection of the power of the Internet for firm marketing is that Sidley & Austin, one of the largest firms in Chicago, recently announced that it was giving up its listing in Martindale-Hubbell because it felt that the cost was not justified in comparison to the exposure provided by its website, and the money saved could be put to better use maintaining and improving the site.
  3. The preliminary questions are whether to create a website, or simply rely on Internet directory listings. If a website is to be built, the question then is whether to hire an independent developer or work with a major vendor. Three factors should be considered: whether the Internet presence is being considered a “basic necessity” like a Yellow Pages listing or whether a more ambitious Internet “strategy” is anticipated, convenience and price.
  4. Both West and Martindale-Hubbell will build and host websites, for a fee. They have developed this business as an outgrowth of their traditional directory services. Other vendors outside the legal market may offer attractive alternatives for the “just get something up” option. For example, IBM has offered development of a small (three-page) site and six months’ hosting for $500. The IBM offering includes domain name registration and registration with major search engines.
  5. Will your site be “Brochure-Ware” or do you want to make more of a statement? There is nothing wrong with having an online brochure as a website; most firms go this route. Typically, they select a domain name that is an abbreviation of their firm name. The alternative is to strike out and do something more daring. Remarkable examples include and The creator of one such site, wound up at FindLaw and is no longer practicing. Perhaps the first, and certainly one of the best known of the “field of practice”-specific sites was Greg Siskind’s Visalaw site, , which propelled him from a solo practice in 1994 to heading the second largest immigration law firm in the country. Visalaw gets 175,000 visitors a week.
  6. One interesting variation on this theme is providing a “back office” solution for other attorneys by offering specialized document sets or expertise for practitioners to employ in serving their clients.
  7. There are many online resources to assist attorneys as they develop an Internet marketing plan. Jerry Lawson’s site, and his book (purchasable on the site), are a good start. At the LLRX.com site, the roundtable discussions between Lawson, attorney Dennis Kennedy and the LLRX editors, found in the Archives, are very helpful. Legal website design has been studied for several years by the principals of RedStreet,
  8. The site for legal marketing professionals, marketing directors of both firms and consultants, is the Law Marketing Portal, The site contains a “pick of the posts” feature drawn from the very lively listserv that is moderated by the website’s host.
  9. Several Internet companies have been formed as legal information and legal service portals. Depending on the approach they have taken, they are either competitors of attorneys, or they are complements to attorneys’ own Internet marketing strategies for consumer and small business legal services. Nolo.com and MyLawyer.com are document assembly-focused sites that offer “do-it-yourself” packages for extremely low prices, with no attorney involvement required. USLaw.com is an attorney directory site that intends to drive business to attorneys who have paid a monthly fee to participate. MyCounsel.com is developing a network of attorneys who agree to provide services to clients who have purchased fixed-price legal solution packages at the MyCounsel.com site. Attorneys pay nothing to MyCounsel.com. They are paid a fixed price for each engagement they handle. MyCounsel.com also has an attorney database that visitors can search for no charge, and attorneys can create personalized profiles in the database. This service is also free, and attorneys who build a personalized profile that contains more detailed information than the basic listing appear at the top of search result lists. AmeriCounsel.com does not provide an attorney database, but it does perform a service as an intermediary to facilitate engagements between attorneys and clients, which is similar to the MyCounsel.com model.

D.Tips for Using the Internet to Save Time and Money

  1. Because law practices are small businesses themselves, as well as service providers to small businesses, an excellent basic resource is a compilation of 100 sites for Small Businesses from Entrepreneur Magazine, The selected sites are broken down to these categories:

 Competitive Intelligence
 Computer Rx
 E-Commerce
 Find It /  Free For All
 Go To The Pros
 Hire Power
 Money Talks /  News You Can Use
 Reference Desk
 Road Warriors
 Shop 'Til You Drop /  Transmit It
 Uncle Sam
 Virus Watch
 Web Tools
  1. The Law Practice Management section of the American Bar Association has many useful articles and reference resources at its site: The General Practice, Solo and Small Firm Section, is also a good resource; it provides online editions of its Section magazine, and a Solo practice newsletter, as well as meeting notices. The ABA home page is a good starting point, particularly off the somewhat cryptic link “Member Entities,”
  2. For personal injury case medical research, the Massachusetts Academy of Trial Attorneys has an excellent reference page providing links to online medical research tools and libraries, as well as general links:
  3. The ABA TechShow “60 Sites in 60 Minutes” presentations are very popular, providing an overview of the remarkable range of information and services available to practitioners:
  4. WestWorks will be aimedbe aimed at small firms and sole practitioners, as a “one stop” solution for law office resources, tightly integrated to Microsoft Outlook. It will be provided on a subscription model, with all software and files maintained on West’s servers, and it will feature legal research, document assembly, document management, case management, time and billing, client management, calendars and dockets. West is also involved in a major test of electronic court filing, in Orange County, California, and eventually electronic filing will be another option off this electronic lawyer’s desktop. Purchasing software maintained at the vendor’s site is the ASP – Applications Service Provider – model, which many computer and Internet industry analysts see as a powerful new model. Its attractive features include freeing end users from the nightmares of software upgrades and difficulties with incompatibility of various applications, ready accessibility from any location with an Internet connection, and avoiding large up front investments. Some commentators have questioned whether it is appropriate for a law practice, in light of the obvious need to ensure confidentiality and security, and the risk of server or communications connections difficulties. As far as pricing is concerned, it is likely that West’s competition with Lexis for this market will yield good values for the near future.

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