Month: August 2004

Here’s an interesting story from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette entitled, Court Web Site Easy Pickings for ID Thieves, about the inclusion of sensitive personal data in publicly available court documents available on the Internet. Here’s a bit from the article: For nearly a year, the Allegheny County prothonotary’s office has been electronically scanning court documents in …

USPTO has just introduced a new database called PAIR (Patent Application Information Retrieval) which tracks the status of a public patent application. Here’s a blurb from the USPTO’s press release: For the first time, anyone with Internet access anywhere in the world can use USPTO’s Web site (www.uspto.gov) to track the status of a public …

This afternoon I was tickled to receive a message from Wisconsin Court of Appeals Presiding Judge Daniel P. Anderson, who let me know that he had just discovered WisBlawg and that he will be a regular reader. And he actually took the time to tell me so. What a cool guy!

Interesting press release from LexisNexis: Growing List of Prisons Installing Legal Research Kiosks for Inmates DAYTON, OH, August 02, 2004 – LexisNexis U.S. and Touch Sonic Technologies® today announced that prisons in Ventura County, California are the latest corrections facilities to select the companies’ new legal information kiosks to provide inmates with access to the …

Update: Seems there is some confusion on this one – yes, I know it’s not true! Come on now – I’m not that gullible. Just passing on a post from another blog, Inter Alia, about this story in The Onion that I thought was timely considering the big media coverage about blogs since DNC and …

The Wisconsin State Law Library is offering a wonderful slate of both free and fee-based workshops this fall. Schedule appears below: WSLL Web Tour (CLASS IS FULL) Wednesday August 4, 2004 8:30-9:30 a.m. Take a guided tour of the information-packed WSLL website. Explore Wisconsin & Federal legal resources, travel around the Legal Topics page, and …

The August 2004 edition of the Wisconsin State Law Library’s newsletter, WSLL @ Your Service, is now available. Highlights include resources on maritime law, a tech tip on what to do when you’ve spilled coffee on your computer keyboard, and a schedule of upcoming workshops.

It’s not big news that more and more people, including legal practitioners are turning to Google for research. But I was pleased to see the following quote in the East Bay Business Times article entitled Google’s Domain Even Takes in Law Offices : “They may help you focus what you’re looking for, but it all …

We librarians have been monitoring this one. About a week ago, the Department of Justice asked the Superintendent of Documents to instruct depository libraries to destroy all copies of several DOJ publications, mostly dealing with asset forfeiture. DOJ claimed that the documents were “training materials and other materials that the DOJ staff did not feel …

Findlaw has released a new lawyer / law firm directory called Thomson Legal Record. A unique feature of the directory is that it not only offers attorney profiles, but it also gives citations to select federal and state cases the attorney litigated. Search by legal issue and/or jurisdiction (you can specify circuit, court, and judge). …