Online Resources: freeERISA.com, Federal Forms Catalog and myCorporateResource.com

Not endorsing any of the following, just providing them for informational purposes.

About freeERISA.com

FreeERISA.com is intended as a useful, website where visitors may view retirement and welfare benefit information on the group or groups of their choice as this data appears on Form 5500 for free.

Federal Forms Catalog for Citizens

Forms.gov provides citizens and businesses with a common access point to federal agency forms.

myCorporateResource.com--Empowering the Corporate Community - Home

myCorporateResource.com is designed to empower corporate professionals with the latest in legal and commercial information from the world’s top law firms and industry insiders. Every year the top 100 American law firms produce more than 10,000 Client Alerts addressing the key commercial and legal issues faced by their clients. We aggregate, review, sort and summarize this content -for free- to give you a really useful corporate resource.

For Those Wanting to Check Up on Their Business's Reputation

I have not tried this out but Iam intrigued enough to pass it along.. Channel Signal seems to collect online chatter about a company and presents the information to the business. This knowledge can be very useful.

Online Resource for Indiana Businesses

Indiana's Secretary of State's Business Services Division maintains a web page here that is actually a portal for all things busienss for the Secretary of State's office. Bookmark it.

New OSHA Law Blog

Big firm Jackson Lewis publishes OSHA Law Blog. For those employers/businesses dealing with federal OSHA issues, you should subscribe to this blog. It actually has a RSS feed!

Stupid Lawyers

Thanks to Google Alerts I got to read this forum exchange: drafting documents yourself. valid?. My subject line says what I took away from this short exchange.

I have written before on here about using online or computerized legal forms. They area fact of life that lawyers needs to start acknowledging and get our heads out of the sand.

Lat night, I ran across the Funded Founders Institute and its agreements page. I am still puzzling over this one, but for the lawyers reading this I think the point is their sophistication. Which might even cause more problems for consumers.

The general public will use online forms because they see a way of saving money. The general public needs educating that with these forms you get what you pay for. If you do not use them correctly, then you have a good shot at paying a whole lot more to get the problems corrected than what you spent to create the problem.

I have no problem if a client uses an online form as a draft that they want me to review and tweak. Here lies their true worth: they get the client thinking about the subject (cohabitation agreements, prenuptial agreements, power of attorney, etc.) and that can be the hardest part in any conversation about the subject (cohabitation agreements, prenuptial agreements, power of attorney, etc.).

So, people, use them but get a lawyer to review what you are doing. Yes, you will save money and maybe even more than you think.

The Public Library of Law

For lawyers (evne if it is not quite a solution to Lexis and Westlaw) and the general public, The Public Library of Law

Searching the Web is easy. Why should searching the law be any different? That's why Fastcase has created the Public Library of Law -- to make it easy to find the law online. PLoL is the largest free law library in the world, because we assemble law available for free scattered across many different sites -- all in one place. PLoL is the best starting place to find law on the Web.

What is available on PLoL?

* Cases from the U.S. Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals
* Cases from all 50 states back to 1997
* Federal statutory law and codes from all 50 states
* Regulations, court rules, constitutions, and more!

Knowledge Discovery Compilation

Another useful tool from LLRX.com - Knowledge Discovery Resources 2009: An Internet MiniGuide Annotated Link Compilation

This Internet MiniGuide Annotated Link Compilation is dedicated to the latest and most reliable resources for knowledge discovery available on the internet. With the addition of new and pertinent information added online continuously, it is very easy to experience information overload. The key is to be able to find the important knowledge discovery resources and sites both in the visible and invisible World Wide Web. The following selected knowledge discovery resources and sites offer a range of knowledge and information discovery sources to help you accomplish your research. Also, visit the Knowledge Discovery Subject Tracer Information Blog for updates. Other white papers and subject tracers by Marcus P. Zillman are available by clicking here.

Veterans and Employment Law

Something worth checking out from the federal Department of Justice -

Safeguarding the Rights of Servicemembers and Veterans Homepage

The Department of Justice, in partnership with other federal The Department of Justice, in partnership with other federal agencies, is committed to supporting you by enforcing the federal laws that protect your civil rights. The Civil Rights Division protects your civilian employment rights by enforcing the Uniformed
Services Emplovment and Reemployment Rights Act ("USERRA"), your voting rights by enforcing the Uniformed and Overseas Citizen Absentee Voting Act of 1986 ("UOCAVA"), and your financial security through the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act
("SCRA").

English Reports (1220-1873) and the World Legal Information Institute

All this has nothing to do with Indiana law except that our roots go back to England. I know how far a stretch that is. Actually, I thought it was pretty cool stuff that I could post till I get more substantial stuff ready to publish.

The English Reports (1220-1873) are here.

World Legal Information Institute

URL: http://www.worldlii.org/
Officially launched in November 2002, the World Legal Information Institute (WorldLII) is a "free, independent and non-profit global legal research facility" affiliated with several academic legal information institutes, among them Cornell's Legal Information Institute and others from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, South Africa, Britain and Ireland, and the University of the South Pacific School of Law. WorldLII provides a single search facility for over 270 databases from 48 jurisdictions in 20 countries. The user may select a resource area, among which are: legislation, case law, superior or high court decisions, journals, treaties, law reform, domain name decisions, and secondary materials. Alternatively, a jurisdiction or geographic region may be selected, with an emphasis on Pacific and Commonwealth countries (for the United States only Supreme Court decisions are included). The site can be translated into Chinese, Japanese, or Korean. Among recent additions to the website are World Trade Organization panel decisions, Tuvalu domain name decisions, and materials from the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. For searching advice, click on the Help link at the bottom of the home page; this produces a Quick (but superbly thorough) Guide in RTF, PDF or HTML versions which provides all the assistance the user will need. While the content of the WorldLII is fairly limited at this time, its ease of use is admirable.

Small Businesses - Tips for The Hard Times

For anyone who is not being affected by the current economic crisis, I commend your luck and good fortune. I have been seeing a decline in my business for the past two months. As a former partner of mine used to say, lawyers get paid with after tax dollars and that makes us sort like a canary in the coal mine when it comes to economics. Here are some blogs that give us some advice on dealing with these bad times.

Work at home blog has 5 Tips For Small Business During A Slow Economy:

Here are 5 tips any small business can use to survive during our current economic situation.

Start Cutting Costs- To keep your bottom line income up, look for ways you can cut costs. Cut out any spending that is not making money currently. Start to barter for products and services. I have always been a fan of bartering when possible and there is no better time to barter than now!

Start looking for additional streams of income- If your business has slowed down, take the opportunity to review other money making opportunities. You may find one opportunity is doing much better than another right now. The one good thing about my business is that I do have multiple streams of income. In the event I lose one source of income I still have several others I can rely on.

Keep an eye on your cash- Right now banks are not lending as much money as normal, so you need to make sure you have enough money to last through the rough times. If you have savings accounts or any additional extra money, invest this money into a short term IRA or other investment opportunity. Make sure if you do invest any money it is in a short term agreement, that way in the event you need it you will not be penalized.

Focus on your time- If your business is slow right now, take the opportunity to work on other aspects of your business that you would not normally spend as much time on. Start networking more or work on the promotion of your website. Start looking for free ways you can promote your business and work on those while you are slow with business. When the economy picks back up you will be prepared.

Keep your head up- Do not throw in the towel on your business. Things will get better. I am sure many small businesses are frustrated and ready to call it quits right now, which I can understand. Stay motivated at all costs. Read these 3 motivational tips and focus your time on productive activities that will help build your business back up when the economy is back to normal!

Business Pundit has 10 Money Saving Tools For Small Business:

The recent economical crisis forced many small businesses to tighten the belt. We keep hearing about massive firings or cost-cutting emergency plans. Not fun, to say the least. But the financial crash can also serve as an opportunity for improvement. A harsh need to lower expanses can prove to be very efficient, especially now that the web is serving us with awesome freebies.

It’s incredible how many quality products and services are available online, free of charge, and a small business that learns to master these opportunities can save a lot of money.

I’ve gathered 10 such services that I especially like. These sites can help any small business cut costs. They’re easy to use, highly efficient and can successfully integrate with the office work.

Business Pundit's list is too long and not easily summarized but worth taking a look at - even though some strike me as more appropriate for start ups (such as Wix - Create a Free Website for Your Business and Mint - They Care for Your Money and Free CRM - Smiling Customers).

Online resource for the Lawyers - Free Research Sites

Thanks to Robert Ambrogi's article, Tour the Legal Web's New Sites for the heads up on Quest and the review of Lexis Web. I had run into Lexis Web earlier. Here is the whole of Ambrogi's review:

LexisNexis has launched a beta version of its Web search tool, called Lexis Web.

Unlike general search sites such as Google, Lexis Web searches a more limited sphere of legal-oriented Web sites. The user guide says that the sites it searches have been selected and validated by the LexisNexis editorial staff, so that users "can trust that all content has met LexisNexis criteria for being authoritative and accurate."

This is similar in concept to the Law.com search tool, Quest, which searches an editorially selected sphere of Web content in addition to Law.com's own content. The goal is to produce search results that are more relevant and targeted to legal users.

In addition to search results, Lexis Web displays a selection of "LexisNexis Recommended Sources." These are sources and libraries within the subscription version of the LexisNexis Research System. If you have a subscription, you can click on any of these recommended sources to run the same search there.

Another feature of Lexis Web is clustering to help you narrow your search results. Clusters are topical folders and subfolders shown in a pane to the left of the search results. A search for "Antonin Scalia" resulted in top-level folders for "Legal Topics," "People" and "Keywords," among others. You can also use this to narrow results by subject or geography.

In the search results, when you click on a link, it opens a nearly full-sized preview of the linked page. Click one icon in the preview to go to the actual page or another to close the preview. Lexis Web is free, but the user guide includes this foreboding note: "During the beta offer -- all search activities will be available to you free of charge." Does this suggest Lexis plans to charge at some point? Charging for a Web search tool would make little sense, so let's hope not.

I admit to one problem with Lexis Web. Let me explain that I use Firefox and have not tried this in Internet Explorer (which I do have on the computer but just do not like using). The following is what the site looks like when you run a query:
Clicking on a link does not open that link in a new tab but instead opens a pop up which gives you a preview of the page:


Which I think is a bit unnecessary. On the other hand, I got a lot more pertinent results from Lexis Web than I did with Quest.
Which makes Lexis Web much more appealing to me. Charges seem silly as some of this information can be had via Google or using Google to search blogs:

New Blog I Will Be Keeping An Eye On

I ran across The Legal Infrastructure of Business on Monday. I find its title interesting. It is a concept that I have tried to get across to my clients and potential clients. I have not had time to do much more than skim but I like what I see so far - even if it is written by a University of Chicago professors.

More on Free Business Education Courses

Thanks again to BizzBangBuzz for the information on free online business courses whihc lead me to 7 Universities and Websites Offering Free Business Entrepreneurship Courses Online. Here you will find a list of sites providing free educational sources and their offerings.

Whether you have a start up or you have an operating business, this is stuff to check out. Business survival requires having an edge - even in the best of times and these days are anything but the best of times.

Start Up Resources: StudentBusinesses.com

Are you a student with a business idea? Then StudentBusinesses.com sounds like a site you need to check out. Here a description of the site:

The public launch - taking place on November 1, 2008 - comes at a time when university students are facing a rapidly changing hiring landscape, and more and more are turning to alternative career paths such as entrepreneurship. CEO Travis May says the following: “While most graduates of leading universities in recent years have gravitated towards jobs on Wall Street and in management consulting, the current climate has caused many students to reconsider their path. StudentBusinesses.com gives students the opportunity to explore an entrepreneurial career instead.”

***

The website also helps investors, law firms, and other service providers identify top startups. Steven Welch, a partner at DreamIt Ventures, used the StudentBusinesses.com beta version to find members for the first class of its incubator program. Welch says: “StudentBusinesses.com is an excellent tool for aspiring entrepreneurs. It provides a mechanism to network with top-caliber people of diverse backgrounds, along with valuable resources to help guide entrepreneurs through the rough waters of starting a business. It will help many aspiring entrepreneurs, now more than ever.”

What we have here is a site for student entrepreneurs to meet professional help and for the businesses and professionals meet entrepreneurs.

There is a preview of the site here. The site has a blog that gives a thumbnail sketch of businesses belonging to the site (and that is a bit different of a format for a blog).

Jureeka for Using Foxfire While Doing Legal Research

Ok, this is more a heads up than a review. I use Foxfire as my browser. I do almost all of legal research online now. So when I read of Jureeka, I thought I need to check this out. Well, it is on the desktop that sits now on the secretary's desk. Which means I have not had quite the time I to use the extension as I thought I would. Which also seems to epitomize my life and practice of late.

Still, I think more lawyers need to know about Jureeka, so here is a link to the extension: Jureeka! 1.2

I also learned the developers have a blog. Give it a look. I feel that this could be a very big thing for us lawyers.

Tools for Creating Legal Documents

This post collects a few odds and ends about either online or computerized programs for creating legal documents. I use HotDocs to run my practice - perhaps too much - but I have no personal experience of the programs discussed below. I have two points to make with this post - one for lawyers and one for non-lawyers.

For the lawyers: here is our future. I do not think this can be denied any longer.

For the non-lawyers: do not stake the outcome of whatever legal proceeding you are undertaking solely to any computer program. They are a start of a conversation with a lawyer and that is all.

Let us start with AdamsDrafting 's review of BaselineNDA—A Tool for Reviewing NDAs

BaselineNDA will knock provisions out of, or drop provisions into, a given draft, but it isn’t able to critique those provisions in the original that are retained. But BaselineNDA doesn’t intend to remove the reviewer from the process. Instead, the goal is to bring a document to an acceptable starting point by deleting objectionable standard provisions and adding those standard provisions that had been omitted but that the user wants in the document.

All told, what interests me most about BaselineNDA is the snapshot summary it produces and its ability to process an NDA using a customizable Playbook. I’m less interested in the built-in knowledge in the form of standard provisions and the Knowledgebase, as I have my own views on such matters.

Would I use BaselineNDA? That’s too theoretical a question. For one thing, I’m not a practicing lawyer. Even if I were, an answer would depend on my NDA workload and my willingness to either rely on the built-in knowledge or construct my own. I’d also want to know the price, which hasn’t yet been determined.

In any event, I think that BaselineNDA is certainly a worthy addition to the information-technology tools available to those who toil in the contract process; I encourage you to check it out. It’s a tough field, and a number of seemingly plausible entrants are fighting what appears to be a losing battle against inertia. I’ll be checking on the fortunes of BaselineNDA and the Baseline concept generally.

Mr. Adams makes this point: "but it isn’t able to critique those provisions." Therein lies the reason I say for non-lawyers that computer programs are a place to start a conversation with a lawyer.

I was asked this question a while ago: Is it safe to use ''Quicken's Will Creator'' to create a generic will to cover guardianship of my two children? My answer lead me to this article, Law and the Internet, Part 1: A Little Self-Help which makes the following points:

The benefits of these different document services lie in the eyes of the beholders. The major benefit is that consumers cut their legal bills -- usually by a significant margin. Also, they can complete the process more quickly than trying to find time on a busy lawyer's calendar.

There are some shortcomings. Many documents they offer address laws that are set at the state level, which can vary widely. As a result, there may be instances where the wording in a document does not mesh with local regulations. Also, the law constantly evolves, and there may be cases where documents become outdated.

Some legal professionals think online documents shortchange consumers. "At some point in the legal process, a consumer should consult with a lawyer," said Ryan Sabia, president of Interactive Technologies, which operates OnlineConsultant.com. "If you needed an operation, you would see a doctor, not perform it yourself," he told the E-Commerce Times.

More for any lawyers reading this post is RealDealDocs. The site has this to say about itself:

Over the past eight years, we built a proprietary, patented categorization engine which efficiently organizes huge libraries of professional documents, including deal agreements and litigation work product. We combined it with a blazing fast full text search engine and refined it by reviewing the results over millions of professional documents. Importantly, we have also presented this application in an easy to learn search interface so that users can figure out how to get to the information the first time they use it. So whether you’re trying to find an example of an employment agreement for a financial executive at a bank in North Carolina or an obscure pricing clause for a supply agreement out of Asia, you’re going to quickly be able to figure out how to find it.

Yes, a bit top end for those of us who are solo attorneys but ask yourslef what do you do to preserve and reuse your work product? Also think aobut how this levels the field for small firms.

Legal & Litigation Software Reviews from 3rd Party Sources

Legal & Litigation Software Reviews from 3rd Party Sources is probably more for the lawyers in the crowd but I offer it for your consideration anyway:

"Welcome to LitiReviews, the largest collection of free legal and litigation software reviews on the web. All reviews (100+) are full-text, and have been published in legal magazines, journals, websites and blogs. LitiReview links to copies of reviews available on the internet, or hosted by us at the author's request."

This from the "About" page:

LitiReviews is a free collection of recent third party reviews of litigation and other legal software of interest to lawyers, paralegals, litigation support professinals and consultants, IT professionals and consultants, and others involved in legal or litigation practice, or litigation support. These reivews are drawn from independent sources and do not include vendor white papers or other internal reports. LitiReviews is the largest collection of free 3rd party litigation and legal software reviews on the Internet. LitiReviews gathers summaries of and links to these reviews and organizes them into an easy to use searchable collection. We include the software reviewed, review title, review author, a summary of the findings or conclusions, the publication, and year published. LitiReviews is text-searchable to allow users to find articles by applicable keywords. Reviews are all available free in full-text.

The site has a newsletter and a RSS feed.

From what I have seen this is an impressive site. Reminds me how much I miss the late Law Office Computing magazine.

Online Resource for the Small Business: The National Association for the Self-Employed

NASE is the National Association for the Self-Employed. I make no recommendations for the the organization. I have a friend who belongs but I only wish to point out a resource that focuses on the small business.

"The NASE was founded in 1981 to provide day-to-day support, benefits and consolidated buying power that traditionally had been available only to large corporations. Today, the NASE represents hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs and micro-businesses, and is the largest nonprofit, nonpartisan association of its kind in the United States.

Since its start-up, the NASE has been an important partner in the explosion of micro-businesses in the United States, supporting the interests of the self-employed with benefits and advocacy initiatives aimed at leveling the playing field between these businesses and larger corporations."

Online Resource: Collaboration for Attorneys

I subscribe to Tom Mighell's Internet Legal Research Weekly (and I think any lawyer wanting to know what is going on out here on the Net needs to subscribe to this blog). This came in this week's e-mail update:

To celebrate my six-year blogiversary, I decided to start a *second* blog! Okay, it's not because of the anniversary -- Dennis Kennedy and I have launched a companion blog for our book, The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together (http://tinyurl.com/2ogv8m). The blog is located at www.lawyersguidetocollaboration.com, and we're talking about collaboration issues over there every week. The blog also has a Collaboration Tools Wiki (http://collaborationtools.pbwiki.com/), where we have posted a directory of the collaboration tools we mention in the book. We intend the wiki to be a work in progress -- we'll be adding more tools over time, and we hope to enable users to rate or comment on particular tools in the near future.
Give it a look!

I did give it a look and added its RSS feed to my bookmarks. For those of you who are lawyers, I suggest with all seriousness to check it out.

Online Resource: Data on Women Workers

I wanted to write about BLS Data on Women Workers to show what information is out there that the federal government maintains. How we use that information is up to us, but I suspect amny plaintiff's lawyer should give this a good look:

"The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provides extensive labor market data on women (and other worker groups) through its news releases, publications, and website. Users have access to data on women’s employment, unemployment, and earnings by industry, occupation, education, age, marital status, and other characteristics. Data are also available on how women use their time and on workplace injuries and illnesses experienced by women. All of these data are also available for men.