Join us for a new, free webinar, "How Data Can Help You Win: Finding Background and Investigative Information to Support Your Cases and Transactions" on Wed, Jun 17, 2020 at 2:00 pm EDT at (https://linkon.in/3hmPMXe). (This program is not available for CLE credit.)

Vice-President of CLEwebinars.com Carole Levitt, a leading educator, attorney, law librarian, and ABA author on Internet investigative and legal research, demonstrates how investigative research databases help attorneys quickly and cost-effectively uncover comprehensive background information they need for their cases and transactions.

Carole will be joined by Aleck Ragsdale, a professional training specialist with TransUnion for 5+ years, who has a strong focus and expertise in Law Enforcement and legal investigation training. He has assisted and presented to customers nationwide in their use and understanding of TransUnion data to solve complex business challenges.

After you sign up for this webinar, you'll receive a discount code for 25% off the price of Levitt's new ABA Law Practice Division book, "Internet Legal Research on a Budget: Free and Low-Cost Resources for Lawyers." The discount code will be active through August 31, 2020.

The post Free Investigative Research Webinar | June 17, 2020 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.

First, to pricing: A report comparing two subjects is priced at $19. You can add additional subjects at $3 per subject. The price of the interactive diagram showing the connections is $2. Note: You will first have to run a $2 search for each subject (to select the correct subject) and then add that subject to your Favorites folder.

Second, to our opinion: We’re on the fence. Our two subjects had nothing in common according to the Relationship Report.

However, when we manually compared subject one’s and subject two’s comprehensive reports to each other, we noticed that people with subject two’s last name appeared in the possible associates, possible relatives, and neighbors sections of subject one’s report. Although these names did not appear in subject two’s comprehensive report, it is still conceivable there could be a connection between my two subjects. We would prefer to see these types of possibilities in the Relationship Report so we could at least have the chance to explore further, either by more research or simply asking my two subjects (via interrogatories or at deposition) about their relationship with the people in question.

To read the brief Relationship Report user guide, see http://linkon.in/tloxpnewrelationship.

The post Update to “New Relationship Report in TLOxp” appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

We recently wrote this overview of our current favorite pay investigative research database TLOxp for the Attorney at Work Website.

The day it was published, we learned about this new "Relationship Report" that TLO offers.

The post Every Lawyer’s Investigative Research Database – TLOxp appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

"This additional investigative tool will save you valuable time by running one report connecting both subjects, compared to running two individual reports and then manually comparing the contents of two separate reports," the company said in the User Guide that also served as a de facto announcement of the tool.

The report is accompanied by an interactive diagram showing the connections.

When TLOxp launches this new Report, subscribers simply add the names of their research subjects to a Favorites folder and then select any two subjects in the folder on whom to run the comparison report. 

TLOxp has not announced the cost of this Report, but states that it will be available on a transactional basis, so it WILL NOT BE part of your pricing plan if you have a flat rate. Once the Report is launched, you will be able to view the pricing options by clicking the Pricing link in the My Account tab.

The post New ‘Relationship Report’ in TLOxp Investigative Research Database Compares Assets appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

In an e-mail to customers, TransUnion | TLOxp said:

Your new rates for these items beginning on January 1, 2015, will be:

• • Transactional Searches will be charged $2.00
  • Transactional Comprehensive Report will be charged $10.00
  • Transactional Business Report will be charged $10.00

If you are currently under a per seat or flat rate pricing contract, the searches and reports that are included in your contract are not impacted by this change.

TLOxp (formerly known as TLO.com) is an inexpensive investigative research database (similar to Accurint) that we have written about previously, and often discuss at our seminars and in our books.

The post TransUnion | TLOxp Raises Rates on Investigative Database Searches appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

The search can be run independently or in tandem with other searches if the “Social Media/Run Search” Icon is displayed. TLO explains that for the price of $1.00 per hit (no hit, no charge), your search results might include: name, age, gender, potential online profiles for a subject that link directly to external social websites, and profile photographs (see next image).

In these results, for example, if you click on the Facebook result displayed for Carole’s email address (https://www.facebook.com/carole.levitt), Carole’s timeline is displayed to you (see next image), but with very limited information if you are not logged in. Even then, unless you are her Facebook friend, you won’t see much information because of Carole’s privacy settings. However, you will at least be able to verify that she has a Facebook account and can ask a judge to order her to turn over the account if you can show the judge that the information is relevant to the matter at hand.

For those who have a “User Groups” account with TLO, your administrator will need to activate the Social Media Search feature, but for all other TLO customers, it will be available automatically. The search is only available on a transactional basis and not included in flat rate or per seat pricing plans.

But, Just How Useful is This New Search?

Searching by email address does not assure that TLO’s results will be complete, even for public profiles, because users on some social media sites (e.g., Facebook) can suppress their email addresses or use a “throw-away” email address that you are not aware of. Even assuming you are using your subject’s correct email address, if your subject has created a private profile or a restricted profile, you might not retrieve a complete view of your subject or any view at all.

Nevertheless, we think the TLO search is useful because it will at least save you time (and thus money) by searching 145 sources simultaneously.

Is There Another Way To Do This Same Type of Search For Free?

We don’t know of another site that scours 145 social media sources simultaneously, but Rapportive (http://www.rapportive.com) does something retrieve some results similar to the TLO social media search. However, it only returns information from the major social media sources (Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Twitter). Rapportive is a free browser plug-in for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox and for MacOS’s Mailplane app (which works with GMail or Google Apps domains). Rapportive was developed as a business relationship management tool to display, in the margins of your GMail inbox, information about the person who emailed you by matching their email address to their public social networking profiles.

However, you can use Rapportive to accomplish some of the results of TLO’s Social Media search. To do this, type your subject’s email address into the “To” field of a new Gmail message – but don’t send the message. Instead, just hover over the recipient’s email address and Rapportive will display the social network information it can locate for that address in the right-hand margin of the composition window. If Rapportive detects any social media profiles tied to that address, a link will be displayed, as shown below.

The post Automated Social Media Search at TransUnion/TLO appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

We have previously written about the availability of this license plate recognition data (LPR; also known as license plate reader data) from the investigative research database TLO.com. Currently, TLO is the only investigative research database/service source we are aware of for that information.

Pending California Senate Bill 893 (SB 893) would extend the period law enforcement could retain LPR data and limit access to this kind of data outside of law enforcement. SB 893 would prohibit the sale of LPR "data for any purpose" or the sharing of LPR data "to an agency that is not a law enforcement agency or an individual who is not a law enforcement officer."

Additionally, under current California law, LPR data cannot be retained for more than 60 days. SB 893 seemingly extends that period beyond five years but limits access to data held for more than five years "only for law enforcement purposes, pursuant to warrant or other court order."

With an apparent aim to protect the privacy of California residents, SB 893 also contains a provision that allows "an individual whose information is sold or disclosed in violation of this title [to] bring a civil action and shall be entitled to recover any and all consequential and incidental damages, including all costs and attorney’s fees."

According to TLO's original press release announcing their "Vehicle Sightings" license plate reader database, their collection encompasses "a massive database of one BILLION vehicle sightings and the addition of up to 50 million new sightings each month." "Vehicle Sightings provides valuable information for locating subjects and investigating the historical whereabouts of individuals and vehicles." While it is not stated how these sightings are captured, law enforcement agencies and auto reposession companies have been utilizing similar license plate capturing technology for some time.

At a recent live MCLE investigative research seminar a lawyer told us how he was able to use license plate reader data to locate the vehicle of an individual who had been avoiding service of process - and determine that the location where the vehicle was parked was the individual's place of employment. The attorney was then able to locate the individual and serve the papers. Passage of California SB 893 would apparently end this kind of access to non-law enforcement users in California.

The post California Senate Considers Bill Limiting Sale of License Plate Data appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Although we have been assured that nothing will be changing (e.g., pricing), TLO has recently changed some of its subscriber requirements (not necessarily related to its sale).

In the past, after you qualified to become a subscriber, you were automatically given access to full SSNs and DOBs – as long as you had an office that was not in your home.  The home office is no longer an issue, but you must now submit to a site visit ($60) if you want to be approved to access full SSNs and DOBs and you must meet the following requirements:

• Your computer must be in a room that has a door that can be locked;
• You must have access to a shredder;
• Your computer must be protected by a password.

The post Investigative Research Database TLO Acquired by TransUnion appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.

Today we tested out the Advanced Search - Vehicle Sightings database. According to the TLO Web site, "it offers an overview for the sightings of vehicles by license plate. Under 'Sightings Preview' you will find the pictures of the vehicles at the time of the sighting. From this free preview, you will be able to run a detailed Vehicle Sightings Report for Current (last 30 days), Recent (31 to 90 days) and/or Historical (older than 90 days) sightings. The Vehicle Sightings Report will display a picture of the vehicle at the time of the actual sighting, as well as exact date, time, and location (latitude/longitude with a link to maps)."

You can search by full or partial license plate number and can add in a state if you know it. We searched for the two vehicles we own usng the full license plate number and added in the state where the vehicles are registered. The result that was returned was for a vehicle with a slightly different drivers license plate. The results provided a picture of the vehicle (and Sandia Peak in the background), its license plate, the date and time of the sighting, longitude/latitude, and that it was sighted in "Tamaya, NM." (Note that while there is no such town in NM, that is the name of the Santa Ana Pueblo in the tribe's native language.)

While the content of the results are very impressive, bringing back a wrong result was not useful. If there were no results for the license plate we searched, it would be better to have been informed there were no results instead of trying to bring back a sighting of a vehicle with a license plate number that was close to our number.

In response to our clicking the "Unhappy" button that accompanied TLO's results for this search, we received the following response from TLO Customer Support:

"Licence [sic] Plate Recognition (LPR) software, along with optical recognition software in general, has gotten a lot more accurate over the years. However it isn't perfect yet and there are still some characters that give them trouble I's an 1's and 7's and T's for instance. This is why we give you the Sightings Preview to view before you run the report."

The post Investigative Research Database TLO Offers Vehicle Sightings Database appeared first on Continuing Legal Education (MCLE) in California, MCLE Los Angeles, CLE Orange County, Irvine & San Francisco.