Just published by the American Bar Association, "Internet Legal Research on a Budget: Free and Low-Cost Resources for Lawyers, Second Edition" by Judy Davis and Carole Levitt directs lawyers to useful and reliable databases and explains how to use them effectively. This edition has updated information about resources discussed in the first edition, new resources and expanded chapters on Casemaker and Fastcase.

With cost-conscious clients scrutinizing legal bills, lawyers cannot afford to depend on expensive legal research databases, especially when reliable free resources are available. This updated edition of "Internet Legal Research on a Budget" will help you quickly find the best free or low-cost resources online and use them for your research needs. The authors share the top websites, apps, blogs, and other Internet resources that will save you time, money, and frustration during the legal research process.

This book will help you locate and use:

• Legal portals and directories (government, academic, and commercial);
• Case law databases (government and commercial);
• Federal Statutory research;
• Federal, legislative, and congressional materials;
• Starting points for state, local, territorial, and tribal law;
• Foreign, international, and comparative law resources;
• And more!

Davis, JD, MLIS, is a senior law librarian and adjunct assistant professor of law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. She has practiced law in California and currently teaches legal research to USC law students, works in the law library’s Reference department, and gives lectures and training sessions on legal research and related topics.

Levitt, JD, MLS, is the founder and President of Internet for Lawyers (www.netforlawyers.com) and Vice-President of CLEwebinars.com. She practiced law in California and was a law librarian in Chicago and Los Angeles. She is a nationally recognized CLE seminar speaker and bestselling Law Practice Division author. She is an expert on Internet investigative and legal research.

The post Internet Legal Research on a Budget Gets New Edition appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

CLEwebinars.com is hosting a new webinar based on the the popular and newly updated book "Internet Legal Research on a Budget" on July 8, at 1:00 pm ET. After you sign up for this webinar, you'll receive a discount code for 25% off the price of the book. This code will be active through August 31, 2020.

The webinar speakers, Vice-President of CLEwebinars.com Carole Levitt and Judy Davis, Senior law librarian and adjunct assistant professor of law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, have based this webinar on the new edition of their just published ABA Law Practice Division book, "Internet Legal Research on a Budget: Free and Low-Cost Resources for Lawyers."

The post CLE Webinar Based on popular Internet Legal Research Book Coming Soon appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

With 7.4, you can now:

• Jump directly from your search results into the Outline View to learn which libraries are part of your current subscription
• Quickly see which cases have been overturned because they are now highlighted in red in the Interactive Timeline
• Home in on the best possible results because in 7.4 Fastcase overhauled its relevance algorithm to show the best results on the top of the results list

Fastcase has also added these new partners to offer subscribers more secondary content, such as:

• Expert witness profiles from JurisPro: Brief annotations about the experts are integrated right into your search results if you run an “Entire Database” search. Then, if you click an annotation from the results list, the full-text of the expert’s profile is shown (for free). You can also search JurisPro on its own or in combination with other databases on Fastcase. Another expert witness profile database, Courtroom Insight, is new to Fastcase, but you can’t get a free look at the expert’s full-text profile like you can with the expert witness profiles from JurisPro. You can only see the brief annotation unless you have a separate subscription to Courtroom Insight.
• American Bar Association Sections’ books and treatises are not online yet, but when they are the will be treated like the expert witness results above. You will see brief annotations integrated into your search results, but unlike the free access to the full text of Jurispro’s expert witnesses’ profiles, you will not be able to view the full-text of any book for free. You must have a separate annual subscription to an individual ABA book or a practice section library of online books in order to access the full-text. The ABA books will join a group of other book publishers already online at Fastcase, such as James Publishing, HeinOnline, the New York State Bar Association, and others.
• TransUnion TLOxp: This is an investigative research database used for due diligence and to find missing people, etc. We have an individual TLOxp subscription and wonder if there’s going to be a discount if we subscribe via Fastcase. We’re awaiting a call-back to clarify this detail.

If you want to search Fastcase’s secondary materials, such as the expert witness profiles or any books and treatises, you will learn that Fastcase does not make it that easy to find them, so here’s how to find them: To view secondary material that is not jurisdiction-specific, such as JurisPro, Courtroom Insight, and books and treatises that are not from a state bar publication department, click Outline from the homepage and then choose All-Federal or any state to view the available books and treatises. To view only state-specific secondary materials, such as books and treatises from the New York State Bar Association, click Outline from the homepage and then click New York.

The post Fastcase Introduces New Features in Version 7.4 (Codenamed ‘Venus’) appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Dear U.S. Supreme Court website: The ABA Preview of U.S. Supreme Court Cases provides merit and amicus briefs from 2003-present. You first must choose a Term (e.g., 2014-2015) and then select from an alphabetical list by party name. Or, to quickly find your case from the long list, we would recommend you use your Find function (Control f for PCs and Command f for Macs) and enter part of the case name into the find box to be taken directly to the listed case. You can then choose any of the briefs to view full-text.

Another site that archives merit and amicus briefs is Scotusblog, but it doesn't go back as far as the ABA site--its archives go back only to 2007. However, it offers some useful features that the ABA site does not offer. For instance, in addition to briefs, Scotusblog includes the Court's Proceedings and Orders (docket) so you can follow various steps of the case (such as, DISTRIBUTED for Conference of January 8, 2016, as shown in the next illustration). It also offers you the ability to set up free e-alerts to receive updates about a particular case.

To use Scotusblog's archive, choose a Term to view the list of cases for that Term. They will be listed in sitting order, so click the link View this list sorted by case name to find your case alphabetically. Once you find the case, click on its title. Then you will see a docket sheet displaying the Proceedings and Orders, listed from oldest to newest, as shown in the above illustration. You can choose any of the briefs to view full-text.

As for posting amicus briefs quickly, neither site is quite as up-to-date as we would have hoped, but they're close. For example, on January 5, 2016, we were able to locate, on each site, an amicus brief filed just the day before (January 4, 2016), but we were unable to locate a particular one filed on the same day we were searching (January 5, 2016). By performing a Google search, we successfully located the amicus brief we were looking for - posted by a non-profit agency that was interested in the case, but not a party or one of the amicus curiae. So for very recent (same day) amicus briefs, your best bet is to Google it.

The post Update to “Dear U.S. Supreme Court Web Site: Where are Your Briefs?” appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

We track new developments like these to insure that our in-person CLE seminars on Internet investigative and legal research are as up to date as they can be. We have compiled the new features we include in this white paper based on our own usage of Casemaker for legal research. This white paper is designed to explain the new additions we've identified - including original screen shots to illustrate many of those features.

Due to the material's length and complexity, we are offering the white paper as a free download.

Complete the form below to download your free copy of this report.

The post The Unofficial User Guide to New Casemaker Features appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

After the Google Scholar button is installed, click the button that is now located on your browser bar (see next image). The default Google Scholar search is set for articles, so if you want to change the default to case law, click on the gear icon (see next image) at the bottom right to deploy the Scholar settings page.

On the Scholar Settings page (see next image), click into the radio button labeled “Search case law.” Then, under “Collections,” click into the “Search case law” radio button. That change will switch the database to be searched from journal articles to case law.

There are other settings you can adjust on the Scholar Settings page. For example:

• Google Scholar defaults to showing 10 results (and Google claims this provides the fastest results) but under “Results per page,” you can change this to 20 results;
• Beneath the section labeled, “Where results open,” you can click into the “Open each selected result in a new browser window” radio button. This allows you to view each result in a different tab, but whether we clicked into this radio button or not, each result always opened in a different tab;
• Another choice on the Settings page is the section labeled Bibliography manager.”  You can choose “Don’t show any citation import links” or “Show links to import citations into” one of the following: BibTex, EndNote, RefMan, or RefWorks.

To save all your new settings, remember to click the blue “Save” tab in the lower right-hand corner of the Settings page. To retain these settings forever and to deploy them on any device that you use, you must be in your Google account and turn on Cookies.

After you enter your search terms into the Search box, your search results will be displayed in a drop down list.

Note that even after you changed the search default from articles to case law search, it still refers to articles, but as you can see, these are case law results. Click the case name to view the full case or click on the large quotation mark on the right. If you click on the large quotation mark, the case’s Bluebook citation is displayed (see next image) and four bibliography manager tabs are displayed (see next image).  If you wanted to enter a citation into one of the bibliography managers, you would need to have already downloaded it.

While the Google Scholar button is a quick way to search for case law or articles, some of you might prefer to conduct an “Advanced Scholar Search: to narrow your results.

The Advanced Search allows you to search by various criteria, as shown in the next image. Next month, we’ll publish a free excerpt from The Cybersleuth’s Guide to the Internet, by Carole Levitt and Mark Rosch, which explains how to use the Advanced Search menu. Stay tuned.

The post How to Conduct a Quick Google Scholar Search with the Click of a Button appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Subsequent Case History Feature Introduced For Texas Cases Only…But Coming Soon for Others

A subsequent case history feature has been introduced for Texas cases. When viewing a Texas Court of Appeals case, a click of the “Subsequent Case History” button brings the user links to any subsequent history. This refers only to whether petitions or writs for review were granted or denied. Casemaker will be extending this feature to other jurisdictions.

Copy and Paste Feature Now Includes the Case and Statute Citation and the Case Pin Citation

When you highlight a portion of a case or statute’s text because you plan to copy it and then paste it into another document, be sure to right click to take advantage of the Copy pop‐up menu. This menu now offers you the choice to automatically insert the full Citation or the Pin Citation to the end of your highlighted text selection when you paste it into a document. For example, if you highlight the paragraph from 224 P.3d 437 (shown in the next screen shot) and then right click the highlighted paragraph, you can choose Copy with pin citation.

This will paste the highlighted paragraph into your Word document, with the Pin Citation 224 P.3d at 442 appended at the end of your pasted selection (see next screen shot).

If you right-clicked the highlighted paragraph and instead chose Copy with citation, then the full citation (which includes the case title, reporter name/volume/beginning page number, court, and date) would be appended to your pasted selection like this: 

Burbach v. Canwest Investments, LLC, 224 P.3d 437 (Colo.App.Div. 5 2009)

The post The Unofficial User Guide to New Casemaker Features appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Recently, Internet For Lawyers principals Carole Levitt and Mark Rosch shared some of their favorite secret Google search tips and ways to access expensive research databases for free with Sam Glover over at the Lawyerist Podcast.

In his introduction to the interview, Glover says:

I’ve written before about the really amazing internet research tips Carole Levitt and Mark Rosch have been teaching to lawyers for years.

If you’re thinking “hey, I know how to use Google so I’m good,” think again. You don’t know anything. You can find out just about anything you might want to find out about a client, opposing party, lawyer, or judge if you know how to look for it.

After you listen to the podcast, you will want to get one of their books. I would start with the Cybersleuth’s Guide to the Internet. And if you ever get a chance to go to one of their seminars (or to book them), do it. You’ll be glad you did.

The interview offers a preview of the types of research methods and resources Levitt and Rosch discuss in their live MCLE seminars and webinars.

Their interview begins at the 5 minute 22 second mark.

The post Internet Ninja Research Tricks | Lawyerist Podcast Interview With Carole Levitt & Mark Rosch appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

In July 2014, at the American Association of Law Libraries annual meeting, I got a sneak preview of Fastcase 7 but was sworn to secrecy. Then, in August 2014, I visited Fastcase’s headquarters in Washington, DC where CEO Ed Walters demonstrated some additional new features…still sworn to secrecy. This was its first re-design since 2003. I had just written a new book for the ABA LP Division, Internet Legal Research on a Budget. It included a chapter on Fastcase, Version 6. My heart sank. Was my book already out of date? Then, there was nothing about Version 7…until April 2015 at the ABA TECHSHOW. Once again I was introduced to Version 7 and once again I was sworn to secrecy. Then, nothing again, until today when Walters gave me an official introduction to Version 7. Now in “private beta,” this demonstration did not include a secrecy pledge. With the cone of silence lifted, here are my highlights of Fastcase Version 7.

Fastcase users will have some time to get used to the new version. Version 7 is being rolled out to bar associations and enterprise law firms on an opt-in basis. Their individual users will be able to choose whether to use Version 6 or 7 by toggling a slider on the top right side of the log-in screen. The two versions will run side by side for a year and users can toggle between the versions on an ad hoc basis, even after they have logged in and began using one version or the other. (Existing Fastcase users can request an invitation to the private beta by sending an e-mail to support @fastcase.com.) Thank you, Fastcase 7 for waiting almost a year to launch and still calling it beta for one more year. My book lives on (https://www.netforlawyers.com/products)!

Walters calls Fastcase 7 “the Tesla of legal research databases.” He explains that “it’s not a poor man’s Lexis or Westlaw.” Instead it’s a powerful tool with improved features and some features that are new to legal research databases, such as the Tag Cloud. (Click any tag to see only results with that tag.) Walters explained that Fastcase 7’s goal is to be simple to use for the typical user but also powerful enough for the power user.

Universal Search

For me, the top improvement is universal search. Finally, users can conduct searches through all (or multiple) jurisdictions and types of materials by using the Advanced Search menu. No longer does a user have to first search cases, then statutes, etc., jurisdiction by jurisdiction. Users can also conduct a very precise search by restricting a search to a specific title name.

Single Page Result

Another improvement is the “Single Page Result,” which creates a faster search experience. After viewing the search results you used to have to click to various pages to view other related information and tools, but now you will see everything at a glance—segregated into panels in one single page. The panels (shown in the next image) include: the search results, the Interactive Timeline, an expanded Suggested Results (in addition to law reviews from HeinOnline, the Suggested Results now include Forecite Results (cases that relate to your search but don’t include all your key words), Educational Materials, Attorney General Opinions, Jury Instructions, and more), and two new features, the Tag Cloud noted above and a Facets/Filters feature to narrow your search to a particular jurisdiction, court level, or material type if you did a broad search and now want to narrow it.

If you use the Facets in the left-hand column (above) and choose Washington, for example, the Interactive Timeline will re-adjust and show only results for that state.

Also making your search experience faster is the “Bottomless Research” feature, which allows you to continuously scroll through all the results without clicking next, next, next...

HeinOnline

For those not familiar with HeinOnline, this is a database of all law review articles published in the U.S. (over 2,000 titles), from volume one to the present. (This represents more than two times the size of Westlaw and Lexis law review databases). However, HeinOnline is not available for free as part of your Fastcase account. You can subscribe by the day, month, or year. Fastcase will eventually be adding the rest of HeinOnline’s offerings (Attorney General Opinions and historical statutes). No bars subscribe to Hein for members.

Customize Your Results Page

If you experience sensory overload, you can easily customize the page to expand, contract, or even close one or more of the various panels of the page. You would do this by clicking orange arrows that are located in each panel of the page.

The next image displays how your screen will look when you click on one case result. Fastcase’s results layout was originally designed for a square computer monitor but now it’s designed for the widescreen monitors found on laptops and mobile devices, which makes it more readable. Also, the typeface was changed to improve readability.

Notice that the panel on the left remains even after you click to view the full text of a case. This way, the list of all results remains displayed if you want to quickly choose another result. Also the Interactive Timeline is displayed for the case you are currently viewing.

Authority Check Report and Full-text Case Now Side by Side

If you click the red flag at the top of the case above, the next image shows how the Authority Check Report panel pops up to the left of the full-text of the case instead of in a new screen. This allows you to scroll through the case or the report from the same page.

Expand the Authority Check and Interactive Timeline Panel

The next image shows what it looks like when you expand to the full Authority Check and Interactive Timeline. When you click one of the Interactive Timeline bubbles, a pop-up box will display the paragraph where your case is cited. New to this display are the jurisdictional boxes, which show the number of cites by jurisdiction and Bad Law Bot (negative treatment) cites.

Expanded Search History List

Fastcase 7 offers an expanded Search History so you can view not only your search terms, but also the jurisdictions where you ran your search and the date you ran your search. Also, you are no longer limited to viewing only your ten most-recent searches.

Name Your Print Jobs

An improvement to the Print feature allows you to name your print jobs when you place them into a queue, which makes it easier to recall which ones to print if you decide to print them at a later time. Some older improvements worth mentioning are the ability to manage multiple documents in your queue by saving them into (1) one long continuous document or (2) saving each as a separate document by selecting Zipped. There’s also a choice to print in single or dual column.

Fastcase App

For those of you not yet using the free Fastcase App (even free to non-subscribers), it is a lighter version of the web-based version of Fastcase, and therefore will not have all the new features of Fastcase 7. However, Fastcase is currently working on a new Version 4 of the App to be released in the near future. The Fastcase App is described in great detail in both of my books: The Cybersleuth's Guide to the Internet, 13th edition, 2015 and Internet Legal Research on a Budget, 2014 (https://www.netforlawyers.com/products).

My Wish List

I think Ed Walters, Phil Rosenthal (Fastcase president), and the entire Fastcase team have done a great job adding features and functions to Fastcase 7. I only have two wishes for Version 7.1 (whenever that becomes available) and they both relate to improving Authority Check: First, I’d like to see an Affirmed flag. After all, we are supposed to cite to an affirmed decision (if one exists) instead of citing to the lower court’s decision. Second on my wish list: I’d like to see the subsequent history of an unpublished decision included in Authority. As you know, “unpublished” decisions are sometimes “published” by Fastcase (and the other legal research database vendors), but Fastcase, Casemaker, and Google Scholar don’t include them in their citator databases (Lexis, Westlaw, and Bloomberg do). Therefore, if an unpublished decision later is affirmed or reversed by a higher court AND that court orders publication of their decision, we won’t find out about it through Authority Check.

Final Words

About its cars, the Tesla website says: “Model S gets faster, smarter, and better as time passes….it actually improves while you sleep. When you wake up, added functionality, enhanced performance, and improved user experience make you feel like you are driving a new car. We want to improve cars in ways most people didn't imagine possible.” Like the Tesla Model S, Fastcase 7 is faster and smarter, but it’s even better than Tesla because you won’t have to search for a Supercharger to use Fastcase.

The post Fastcase 7: Better Than a Tesla appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

For more than a decade, the LTRC has surveyed practicing attorneys about their usage of technology in their law practices.

The results of the 2014 survey are be presented in six volumes:

• Technology Basics
• Law Office Technology
• Litigation & Courtroom Technology
• Web & Communication Technology
• Online Research
• Mobile Lawyers

The six volumes are available for purchase via the ABA Webstore for $300 per volume (ABA Members) or $350 (non-ABA Members).

The complete set of results (all six volumes) are available for purchase via the ABA Webstore for $1,550 per volume (ABA Members) or $1,800 (non-ABA Members).

The LTRC also makes summary reviews of the data available in a series of ten articles written by subject-area experts. They are:

• Security
  By David Ries
  How law firms and lawyers protect themselves and their clients.
• Cloud Computing
  By Dennis Kennedy
  Exploring how lawyers have adapted to an increasingly cloud-based world.
• Practice Management
  By Joshua Poje
  Examining the tools that power efficient law practices.
• Blogging and Social Media
  By Allison Shields
  Looking at the way lawyers communicate and market their practices in 2014.
• Technology Training
  By Adriana Linares
  Maximizing law firm technology investments through effective training.
• Legal Research
  By Joshua Poje
  The tools and practices that keep lawyers at the top of the legal research game.
• Mobile Technology
  By Tom Mighell
  Using technology to take the practice outside of the office.
• Virtual Law Practice
  By Joshua Poje
  Using technology to escape the traditional limitations of a law firm.
• Litigation Technology
  By Paul Unger
  Exploring the technology trends that impact litigators.
• Solo and Small Firm Technology
  By Richard Ferguson
  The hardware and software that solo and small firm attorneys need.

The post American Bar Association Releases Lawyer Technology Usage Statistics | Full Reports/Free Summaries Available appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.