Law firm Web sites have come a long way in what they tell you about a firm’s lawyers and practice areas. But many still tell you absolutely nothing about the firm’s business and support staff. Why is this?

Say you want to find the name of a firm’s administrator or chief operating officer. Very few…

Thanks to The Scout Report for pointing out the Corporate Crime Reporter, a legal newsletter that highlights recent news items about ongoing corporate crime prosecutions. The site includes full transcripts of interviews with prominent lawyers and full-text documents from cases in the news.…

The National Law Journal reports that, after six years of work, the California court system has rewritten more than 800 civil jury instructions in plain English. Their use will be allowed as of Sept. 1. Criminal jury instructions are being rewritten as well and are expected to be ready by September 2005. The court’s…

The Harvard Law School Library has launched Nuremberg Trials Project: A Digital Document Collection, a Web site devoted to analysis and digitization of documents relating to the Nuremberg Trials. The project is devoted to preserving and expanding access to the library’s 1 million pages of documents relating to the trials of Nazi Germany’s military…

The nation’s 100 best-paid chief legal officers saw their incomes increase an average of 9 percent in 2002, with the average combined salary and bonus surpassing $1 million, according to The 2003 GC Compensation Survey conducted by Corporate Counsel magazine.…

Law.com has an interesting article today from Philadelphia’s Legal Intelligencer,

Attorney Clears Hurdle in Defamation Action Against ABA. It reports that Philadelphia attorney Richard A. Sprague “has cleared another significant hurdle in his defamation lawsuit against the American Bar Association and its monthly magazine, the ABA Journal, now that a federal…

Somewhat off topic for this blog, but Influence today published a story I wrote, The Hub of Lobbying, which describes how Massachusetts—13th among the states in population—ranks third in spending on lobbyists, behind California and New York. Total lobbying-related spending in Massachusetts in 2002 was almost $54 million. Of that, $34.6 million went…

The Stanford Copyright & Fair Use Web site today announced a complete redesign and update, overseen by Timothy Stanley, who earlier this year left FindLaw, the company he co-founded. The redesign adds new content, including fair-use overview materials from Nolo, and a new site search powered by Google.

Stanley has now…

The spring 2003 Journal of Appellate Practice and Process has published an informative overview of legal Web logs, Legal and Appellate Weblogs: What They Are, Why You Should Read Them, and Why You Should Consider Starting Your Own. The piece was written by two well-known bloggers, Gary O’Connor of Statutory Construction Zone…

Searchday reports today on the new Lycos “second opinion” search utility that automatically displays Lycos search results in a side panel next to search results from Google, Yahoo or most of the other major services. Called Sidesearch, it is a browser plug in for Internet Explorer that runs whenever you…

Houston lawyer Jeanne Pi recently launched Jeanne Pi’s Texas Elder Law Blawg. She created it to serve as a portal to federal, state and local Web information, resources and services related to Texas elder law. She hopes it will serve as a forum for lawyers and other professionals involved in serving elderly Texans to…

In the six years that Vault.com has surveyed the nation’s most prestigious law firms, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz has been the perennial also-ran, ranking second each year to first-place finisher Cravath, Swaine & Moore. This year, that changed, with Wachtell nudging Cravath out of first place.

Based on a survey of…