Did I miss something? From what I can see, the Appellate Division, First Department recently added a feature similar to the Second Department. The Court website now offers its Decisions and Orders in .pdf or HTML format.
Hopefully the Court will follow the Second Department's lead and offer access to the appellate briefs. Let's keep our fingers crossed.
Alltop Law is reminiscent of the aggregators that attracted me to weblogs and blawgs years ago. popurls, another one of my favorites, inspired the creators of Alltop Law. I'm hooked already.
While giving a presentation on legal research on the Web earlier this week, one of the presenters showed me this new legal search engine -- PreCYdent. It contains free access to federal and state case law and continues to accumulate older case law. The webpage explains:
PreCYdent search technology ranks results by 'authority', using mathematical techniques, such as eigenvector centrality, similar to those used by advanced Web search engines, as well as proprietary techniques we have developed that are specialized to the legal domain. PreCYdent search technology is able to mine the information latent in the 'Web of Law', the network of citations among legal authorities. This means it is also able to retrieve legally relevant authorities, even if the search terms do not actually occur or occur frequently in the retrieved document."
Here is an interview with one of its developers at Law Librarian Blog. Here is Robert Ambrogi's post about it on his Robert Ambrogi's LawSites.
At least two webpages exposed me to Google's New Feature for Gmail entitled Gmail Custom Time.
The feature allows you backdate current email to make it show up in the recipient's email inbox as if it were received on that specified earlier date. You can even choose to have email appear as read or unread in the recipient's inbox.
The deadline-oriented lawyer in all of us can see the dangers if this feature were real. For those who have missed deadlines (and have little regard for ethics), this feature is sadly Google's April Fools' Joke for 2008.
A bit off topic, but wanted to call your attention to this interesting news piece.
For the first time ever, NASA will beam a song -- The Beatles' "Across the Universe" -- directly into deep space at 7 p.m. EST on Feb. 4. Listen to the song here and read press release here.
The transmission over NASA's Deep Space Network will commemorate the 40th anniversary of the day The Beatles recorded the song, as well as the 50th anniversary of NASA's founding and the group's beginnings.
As part of the celebration, the public around the world has been invited to participate in the event by simultaneously playing the song at the same time it is transmitted by NASA, so get your "Let It Be" album out tomorrow night and play along.
Through the efforts of the New York State Bar Association's Electronic Communications Task Force, the State Bar will be webcasting the Presidential Summit on January 30th at 2 PM. Here is the agenda (Download presidential_summit_agenda.pdf).
If you can't be at the NYSBA Annual Meeting, you can catch part, the webcast. Just go to the http://www.webcatter.com/live/nysbar/ to view the summit live over the Internet.
Unfortunately no CLE credit is available for viewing the webcast.
I thought this press release would be of interest to some of NYCL's readers: TECHNOLOGY FOR LAW FIRMS: ELECTRONIC DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SEMINAR SCHEDULED FOR MAY 17, 2007 Converting Your Office From Piles (Of Paper) To Files (Of Easily Managed Documents): a Technology Roundtable Hosted by Washington D.C. Law Firm, Tobin, O'Connor, Ewing & Richard in conjunction with IT Managed Services Provider, Alteritech WASHINGTON, D.C., May 2, 2007 - Tobin, O'Connor, Ewing & Richard, a Washington D.C. law firm and Alteritech, an IT consulting and managed services firm, announced today they will host a Law Firm Technology Seminar on May 17, 2007 from 6 pm 8 pm. The seminar will be led by Eric Nelson, who has served in executive IT management roles at MegaPath Networks, Netifice Communications, e.spire Communications and is currently a Director at Alteritech. The seminar offers free admission to lawyers who have passed the Bar Exam in the DC area or in another state. Boxes of paperwork in the hallways, in the conference room, in storage can be costing you thousands in real estate dollars and countless hours in efforts to locate past information. Any law firm can testify that paper is an essential asset to its office. But, what if you could get rid of the piles of paper by converting to a paperless office? Tobin, O'Connor, Ewing & Richard will host a seminar and peer-to-peer discussion on the topic of how to convert your office from piles of boxed paper to easily found and indexed files of version controlled documents. IT expert, Eric Nelson, will present the "Do's and Don'ts for Going Electronic" and lead a discussion among your peers to determine what has worked most effectively at other law firms. Eric has held Senior Vice President and CIO positions at next-generation service providers MegaPath Networks and Netifice Communications and currently serves as Director at Alteritech, a leading provider of managed IT services for law firms and other mid-sized businesses. WHEN: Thursday, May 17, 2007 6:00 pm 8:00pm WHERE: Maggiano's Little Italy (conveniently located at the Friendship Heights metro stop) 5333 Wisconsin Avenue N.W. Washington, DC 20015 FREE ADMISSION: To attorneys who have passed the Bar Exam in the DC area or another state. PLEASE RSVP by May 7, 2007, if possible to: RSVP@alteritech.com
JurisPro is a free database of expert witnesses. The database goes well beyond just listing an expert's contact information. Some profiles include photographs, the respective expert's webpage, references, CV, and contact information. A search of more common areas of expertise resulted with a list of experts in the New York area. As I searched for more obscure areas, the geographical search expanded beyond New York, even if I limited the search to New York.
The webpage also provides a free e-newsletter entitled "The Pro." For a free service, this database goes well beyond what I have seen floating out there on Web.
If you're like me, you travel a lot in different cities. Even though I grew up going to New York City every other weekend, I still don't know the most efficient way between two points. A good solution to this issue is the site HopStop: sort of a Mapquest of Google Maps for commuters. You type in your current location and your destination in New York City (or several other cities) and HopStop provides the most efficient way to take the subway (including walking directions).
