Katrina’s Aftermath: The Gulf Coast Legal Community is the topic of this week’s Coast to Coast, the weekly legal news podcast cohosted by J. Craig Williams and me.

In the first half of the program, we hear first-hand accounts from Louisiana attorneys and blawgers Ernie Svenson and Raymond P.…

I came across this useful, two-part article addressing a range of employment-related issues facing employers in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. It covers military leave and emergency workers, family and medical leave, unemployment compensation, OSHA, wages and hours, employee benefits, NLRA issues, workers’ compensation and immigration. It is written by lawyers from the labor…

After Google bought Blogger, we thought we’d see this sooner, but today the company finally did what everyone expected — launch a blog search tool. It is available in the classic Google-style interface or in a Blogger-style interface.

In an admittedly quick and unscientific test, I performed several searches and…

I received a note from Srishti Jha, partner in a new legal research company Jurix Prudent. She wanted to let me know that her company would donate a limited amount of free legal research to lawyers displaced by Hurricane Katrina. The company is new and so it is limited in how many hours it…

The folks over at rethink(ip) aren’t just blogging about IP law, they’re doing something about it.

A few weeks ago, they created RSS feeds for all news items and notices released by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. There are five feeds:…

Via The E-LawLibrary Weblog comes a report that the U.S. Department of Labor last week published an updated version of its Employment Law Guide. The guide describes the laws and regulations administered by DOL that affect businesses and workers.…

Government compliance with the Freedom of Information Act appears to be deteriorating in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, according to a Society of Environmental Journalists report released today, A Flawed Tool – Environmental Reporters’ Experiences with the Freedom of Information Act.

The SEJ interviewed 55 reporters, finding that excessive…

A Web site launched Friday, Help Katrina Lawyers, aims to pull together volunteers and resources to help Gulf Coast law firms with issues relating to legal technology, practice management and disaster/data recovery. Spearheaded by Ross Kodner at Microlaw and Dale Tincher and his staff at Consultwebs, the site came about through the…

I wondered earlier this week how law firms are responding to Hurricane Katrina. Here is part of the answer.…

If you want to apply for disaster relief online through FEMA’s Web site, don’t try to use any browser other than Internet Explorer. As this page explains, only IE 6.0 or higher will work for FEMA’s online registration.

[Via The Register.]…

A conference today at Seton Hall University School of Law was to debate how quickly and to what extent court records should be made available over the Internet, according to a report in the Star-Ledger.…

A generous gesture from Kevin O’Keefe and company at LexBlog:

“In response to the natural disaster that has befallen the gulf coast region, LexBlog would like to help by making our services available for free to both those law firms impacted by the hurricane and the various groups and agencies lawyers are supporting through