Articles Posted in July, 2010

Site offers Better Access to Federal Rulemaking

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For any lawyer who follows or participates in federal rulemaking, the U.S. government’s launch a few years ago of Regulations.gov was a great leap forward. Finally, from a single site, you could find and track proposed rules from nearly 300 federal agencies and even submit formal comments.

But Regulations.gov is difficult to use for…

New Site Crowdsources the Legal Treatise

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Spindle Law describes itself as “a new kind of legal research and writing system.” Its goal is to make legal research “faster and smarter.” It seeks to do this in two ways: by structuring information more intuitively and by building on the knowledge of the lawyers who use it.

Spindle Law resembles a treatise…

Are You a ‘Lawyer’ or an ‘Attorney’?

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Somewhere along the line, I picked up the idea that a lawyer is always a “lawyer,” but should only be called an “attorney” in connection with representing a client. (“John went to law school and became a lawyer. He is now the attorney for an accused bank robber.)

At his blog You Don’t Say,…

The WSJ Reports on Bloomberg Law

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Last February, Law.com published my review of Bloomberg Law, in which I wrote, “Bloomberg’s biggest challenge may lie in convincing the legal market that it needs another high-end research service.” That is essentially the same conclusion reached by Wall Street Journal reporter Russell Adams, who writes about the service today in a piece titled,…

A New Research Service for Cases, Statutes

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Promising a comprehensive legal research tool at an affordable price, a new legal research site, eLaw, launched yesterday.  Although the service provides access to case law and statutes for all 50 states, it is available only to attorneys in New York and New Jersey.

My guess is that the geographic limitation is because eLaw…

The Legal Issues of Blogs, Fair Use and Attribution

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Bloggers rely heavily on maintstream news sources for topics. What obligation does a blogger have to give attribution to an original source? To what extent can a blogger use the content of a news story?

We explore these and related issues with New York Times sports reporter Alan Schwarz this week on the…