Using the Internet to Enhance Your Practice
By Kenneth Carson
Vice President, External Affairs & Alliances - MyCounsel.com
132 Canal St. Boston, MA 02114
ken@mycounsel.com
A.
Legal Research on the Internet
a.
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.
b.
Lexis and West are creating new, noteworthy products that incorporate access to their legal research libraries.
WestWorks, which will be launched later this year, is discussed below.
c.
LexisOne, www.LexisOne.com, is a new portal for small firms and solo practitioners. It is a free service that
provides access to the case law databases, 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.
d.
For full legal research functionality, there is only one online alternative to Lexis and West, which is LoisLaw,
www.Loislaw.com. 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.
e.
A site called Jurisline, www.jurisline.com, sought to offer case law taken from Lexis CD-ROMs 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.
f.
Many law schools now publish law reviews online, in whole or in part. The University Law Review Project,
www.lawreview.org, lists them by topic and also has a search engine that permits full text searching across all
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the journals in its database. There is also a link at the project’s home page to a free e-mail subscription service
for law journal abstracts, by topic.
g.
A limited, but very high quality collection of legal articles can be found at the Social Science Research Network
site, www.ssrn.com. Most are downloadable, and free. The intellectual property and cyberlaw areas are
particularly strong, as well as law and economics-related subjects.
h.
The Open Directory Project’s law section, at http://dmoz.org/Society/Law 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.
i.
Many law schools have online resources for particular subject areas, particularly cyberlaw, intellectual property
and technology law. The Berkman Center at Harvard Law School, http://cyber.law.harvard.edu, 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
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/institutes/bclt/.
j.
One law school site that deserves special recognition is Cornell’s Legal Information Institute site,
http://www.law.cornell.edu/, which provides not only extensive links, but short, authoritative surveys of
substantive areas of law.
k.
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:
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/law-lists.
l.
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: http://members.aol.com/ronin48th/hope.htm.
m. A simple means of accessing many basic state government or legal resources is found on the home page of
www.romingerlegal.com.
n.
Two sites that bring the training and perspective of skilled law librarians to the task of sorting through the
mountains of law-related materials that are available online are www.llrx.com and www.virtualchase.com. 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.
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B.
Internet Investigation: Information About Corporations, Persons and Expert Witnesses
a.
Research About Corporations
i. The most obvious place to start is at the site of the corporation itself. Company sites are very easy to
locate by searching on the 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 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.
ii. 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 LIVEDGAR, www.livedgar.com, make it far easier to navigate EDGAR database files.
iii. One search engine that has unique resources for business-related investigations is Northern Light,
www.northernlight.com.
iv. Proprietary databases of corporate information are plentiful, both industry specific and general.
Hoover’s, http://www.hoovers.com/, 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: http://eres.bus.umich.edu/docs/Business_Websites/assoc.html.
v. Investigation services are also available. One interesting “filter” service is Company Sleuth,
http://www.company.sleuth.com/index.cfm, 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 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
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provide general industry information that can be useful for understanding the context of legal issues at a
particular company.
vi. All traditional offline credit and research bureaus now have online services, such as Dun & Bradstreet’s
extensive range of products at http://www.dnb.com/.
b.
Information About Individuals
i. 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.
ii. 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.
iii. Telephone directories and reverse directories are also readily available from the people search pages of
search engines.
iv. 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, www.ussearch.com, offers for its $500 premium package; comparable searches are available
from other providers:
Due Diligence Search Results Include:
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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.
v. 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:
http://www.epic.org/privacy/consumer/legal.html.
c.
Finding Expert Witnesses
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i. 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.
ii. FindLaw provides both listings of experts who have sites, and sites that are themselves directories of
experts, from this page: http://www.findlaw.com/13experts/index.html. The “Experts” pages should not
be used alone, but with supplementary searches from the Directory pages that provide cross checking.
iii. The Open Directory Project has a well organized breakdown of expert sites and directories at
http://dmoz.org/Society/Law/Consultants/Expert_Witnesses/; the following topics are covered:
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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)
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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:
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Science: Science in Society: Forensic Science (160)
Society: Law: Consultants: Expert Witnesses: Expert Witness Directories
iv. 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,
www.atla.org, 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.
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v. On the defense side, the Defense Research Institute, www.DRI.org, 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.
vi. 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.”
vii. Experts may also be found for various topics at the “independent contractor marketplace” sites that have
proliferated. Examples are Elance, www.elance.com, and Guru, www.guru.com. These experts are not
necessarily experienced at testifying, but they may have skills and training that closely match the
requirements for a particular case.
viii. 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, www.NorthernLight.com, or at a site such as the Social Science Research Network,
www.ssrn.com, will also provide insights about leading authorities.
ix. 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
a.
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.
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b.
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.
c.
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.
d.
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 (threepage) site and six months’ hosting for $500. The IBM offering includes domain name registration and
registration with major search engines.
e.
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 www.drunkdrivingdefense.com, www.voiceoftheinjured.com and www.buglaw.com. The
creator of one such site, www.doglaw.com, 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.
f.
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.
g.
There are many online resources to assist attorneys as they develop an Internet marketing plan. Jerry Lawson’s
site, www.netlawtools.com, 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,
www.RedStreet.com.
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h.
The site for legal marketing professionals, marketing directors of both firms and consultants, is the Law
Marketing Portal, www.lfmi.com. The site contains a “pick of the posts” feature drawn from the very lively
listserv that is moderated by the website’s host.
i.
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
a.
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,
www.entrepreneur.com. The selected sites are broken down to these categories:
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Competitive Intelligence
Computer Rx
E-Commerce
Find It
b.
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Free For All
Go To The Pros
Hire Power
Money Talks
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News You Can Use
Reference Desk
Road Warriors
Shop 'Til You Drop
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Transmit It
Uncle Sam
Virus Watch
Web Tools
The Law Practice Management section of the American Bar Association has many useful articles and reference
resources at its site: http://www.abanet.org/lpm. The General Practice, Solo and Small Firm Section,
http://www.abanet.org/genpractice/home.html, 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,” www.abanet.org.
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c.
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:
http://www.massacademy.com/sites/mata10/links.html.
d.
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:
http://www.techshow.com/60_2000.html.
e.
WestWorks will be 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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