New Turf to Surf: A Roundup of Useful Legal Web Sites

A wealth of Web sites of interest to legal professionals who advise e-commerce ventures awaits digging into on the Internet. A list of a few that are worth a look follows.

Decisions in domain-name disputes are supposed to be available on the Internet, but they can be difficult to track down. The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy Database (UPRP-DB) offers a solution. It provides free access to decisions issued in accordance with the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which can be found at icann.org.

As of early this year, the UDRP-DB ' available at a variety of sites, including http://udrp.law.cornell.edu/udrp/index.php ' included 6957 decisions involving more than 11,500 domain names. The developers planned to include all decisions. One novel feature of the tool is that it searches for names based on how they sound, rather than by their precise spelling. The UDRP-DB was developed by the University of Massachusetts Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution, the Markle Foundation, Cornell University's Legal Information Institute and The Online Public Disputes Project.

Professionals Helping Guide the Profession

In his day job, William Freivogel is senior vice president, loss prevention, at Aon Risk Services, Chicago. In his spare time, he publishes two useful online guides to legal ethics and conflicts of interest. Roughly once a month, Freivogel, along with Memphis lawyer Lucian Pera, publishes a newsletter, Ethics and Lawyering Today (view information at ethicsandlawyering.com). The site highlights important new cases, ethics opinions and other developments, often with links to full-text documents.

Freivogel also maintains a second related site, Freivogel on Conflicts (freivogelonconflicts.com), which he terms “a practical online guide to conflicts of interest for lawyers with sophisticated business and litigation practices.” This source is an online treatise discussing conflicts of interest in a range of scenarios and tracking current case law on the topic. It is a useful and informative Web destination that is well worth exploring.

Some Organizational Net Help for e-Commerce

The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, (http://nccusl.org/nccusl/DesktopDefault.aspx), is single-minded in its purpose: studying and reviewing state law to determine which areas of law should be uniform; once a topic is targeted, the conference drafts and proposes specific statutes. The conference can only propose, of course ' no uniform law is effective until a state legislature adopts it. The conference's Web site is the repository of this law-making, containing all in-process drafts and final acts. Legislation can be searched by act title, state or committee. It can be read online or downloaded in a variety of word-processing or plain-text formats.

Drafts of uniform and model acts can also be seen at a second NCCUSL site, www.law.upenn.edu/bll/ulc/ulc_frame.htm, cosponsored by the University of Pennsylvania. Laws being developed are indexed by title, and include all draft versions, from the first to the most recent.

Calling it “the e-business legal portal,” the European Commission's Enterprise Directorate General recently launched eBusiness Lex, ebusinesslex.net, a 12-language Web portal containing information on legal aspects of e-business, aimed specifically at small and midsize European companies. The site contains information and resources on a range of issues, including contracts, online payments, privacy and data protection, and intellectual property rights. There's also a section on European and national legislation relating to e-business. Law texts are shown in their original language, but abstracts are written in the language of the person viewing the site.

The Birmingham, England-based, International Compliance Association (find its resource on the Web at www.int-comp.org) is a nonprofit professional outfit dedicated to improving compliance and anti-money-laundering practices in the financial-services sector. The group launched a Web site last year. Although access to much of the site is restricted to members, anyone can browse its useful collection of links to international regulators, law enforcement and financial-intelligence units, financial-oversight organizations, and other compliance-related sites.

Attorneys Doing Diligence for Small Law Firms

A Web site one Washington, DC, lawyer maintains is a good example of a resource that a practitioner operates for solo and small-firm lawyers. Carolyn Elefant wants her My Shingle (myshingle.com) to be a resource for these lawyers to exchange advice, seek guidance or find local counsel in other jurisdictions. The site is primarily a Web log, but it includes a variety of useful content, such as Elefant's “On-Line Guide to Creating a Law Practice,” containing hundreds of links to manuals, articles, forms, sample agreements and books. Elefant recently added her interview with Jay Foonberg, author of the popular ABA book How to Start and Build a Law Practice.

Law-related Web logs ' or blawgs, as they are often called ' were established last year as legitimate sources of legal news and information. But tracking topics they cover remains cumbersome. Users must either follow them religiously or take their chances with a general search engine such as Google.

Making Web Searches Easier

A new search tool addresses difficulties in finding resources by zeroing in exclusively on law-related Web logs. Blawg Search (http:// blawgs.detod.com) allows users to search across the full text of a variety of blawgs. Users can also use it to view all postings for a selected blawg. The front page aggregates the latest blawg headlines. Detod Communications Inc., a company that has built online communities for the Oklahoma Bar Association and the National Association of Bar Executives, developed it.

Daily Whirl (dailywhirl.com) provides a quick review of daily headlines from law-related news and information sites. It snags headlines from more than 100 legal Web logs and news sources, and displays them on a single page. The configuration can be tailored to specific needs by selecting particular blogs for display and in preferred font size, background color and number of columns. The site comes from the same folks in St. Louis who offer Daily Rotation (dailyrotation.com), a similar site with headlines from more than 250 tech Web sites.

A wealth of Web sites of interest to legal professionals who advise e-commerce ventures awaits digging into on the Internet. A list of a few that are worth a look follows.

Decisions in domain-name disputes are supposed to be available on the Internet, but they can be difficult to track down. The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy Database (UPRP-DB) offers a solution. It provides free access to decisions issued in accordance with the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which can be found at icann.org.

As of early this year, the UDRP-DB ' available at a variety of sites, including http://udrp.law.cornell.edu/udrp/index.php ' included 6957 decisions involving more than 11,500 domain names. The developers planned to include all decisions. One novel feature of the tool is that it searches for names based on how they sound, rather than by their precise spelling. The UDRP-DB was developed by the University of Massachusetts Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution, the Markle Foundation, Cornell University's Legal Information Institute and The Online Public Disputes Project.

Professionals Helping Guide the Profession

In his day job, William Freivogel is senior vice president, loss prevention, at Aon Risk Services, Chicago. In his spare time, he publishes two useful online guides to legal ethics and conflicts of interest. Roughly once a month, Freivogel, along with Memphis lawyer Lucian Pera, publishes a newsletter, Ethics and Lawyering Today (view information at ethicsandlawyering.com). The site highlights important new cases, ethics opinions and other developments, often with links to full-text documents.

Freivogel also maintains a second related site, Freivogel on Conflicts (freivogelonconflicts.com), which he terms “a practical online guide to conflicts of interest for lawyers with sophisticated business and litigation practices.” This source is an online treatise discussing conflicts of interest in a range of scenarios and tracking current case law on the topic. It is a useful and informative Web destination that is well worth exploring.

Some Organizational Net Help for e-Commerce

The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, (http://nccusl.org/nccusl/DesktopDefault.aspx), is single-minded in its purpose: studying and reviewing state law to determine which areas of law should be uniform; once a topic is targeted, the conference drafts and proposes specific statutes. The conference can only propose, of course ' no uniform law is effective until a state legislature adopts it. The conference's Web site is the repository of this law-making, containing all in-process drafts and final acts. Legislation can be searched by act title, state or committee. It can be read online or downloaded in a variety of word-processing or plain-text formats.

Drafts of uniform and model acts can also be seen at a second NCCUSL site, www.law.upenn.edu/bll/ulc/ulc_frame.htm, cosponsored by the University of Pennsylvania. Laws being developed are indexed by title, and include all draft versions, from the first to the most recent.

Calling it “the e-business legal portal,” the European Commission's Enterprise Directorate General recently launched eBusiness Lex, ebusinesslex.net, a 12-language Web portal containing information on legal aspects of e-business, aimed specifically at small and midsize European companies. The site contains information and resources on a range of issues, including contracts, online payments, privacy and data protection, and intellectual property rights. There's also a section on European and national legislation relating to e-business. Law texts are shown in their original language, but abstracts are written in the language of the person viewing the site.

The Birmingham, England-based, International Compliance Association (find its resource on the Web at www.int-comp.org) is a nonprofit professional outfit dedicated to improving compliance and anti-money-laundering practices in the financial-services sector. The group launched a Web site last year. Although access to much of the site is restricted to members, anyone can browse its useful collection of links to international regulators, law enforcement and financial-intelligence units, financial-oversight organizations, and other compliance-related sites.

Attorneys Doing Diligence for Small Law Firms

A Web site one Washington, DC, lawyer maintains is a good example of a resource that a practitioner operates for solo and small-firm lawyers. Carolyn Elefant wants her My Shingle (myshingle.com) to be a resource for these lawyers to exchange advice, seek guidance or find local counsel in other jurisdictions. The site is primarily a Web log, but it includes a variety of useful content, such as Elefant's “On-Line Guide to Creating a Law Practice,” containing hundreds of links to manuals, articles, forms, sample agreements and books. Elefant recently added her interview with Jay Foonberg, author of the popular ABA book How to Start and Build a Law Practice.

Law-related Web logs ' or blawgs, as they are often called ' were established last year as legitimate sources of legal news and information. But tracking topics they cover remains cumbersome. Users must either follow them religiously or take their chances with a general search engine such as Google.

Making Web Searches Easier

A new search tool addresses difficulties in finding resources by zeroing in exclusively on law-related Web logs. Blawg Search (http:// blawgs.detod.com) allows users to search across the full text of a variety of blawgs. Users can also use it to view all postings for a selected blawg. The front page aggregates the latest blawg headlines. Detod Communications Inc., a company that has built online communities for the Oklahoma Bar Association and the National Association of Bar Executives, developed it.

Daily Whirl (dailywhirl.com) provides a quick review of daily headlines from law-related news and information sites. It snags headlines from more than 100 legal Web logs and news sources, and displays them on a single page. The configuration can be tailored to specific needs by selecting particular blogs for display and in preferred font size, background color and number of columns. The site comes from the same folks in St. Louis who offer Daily Rotation (dailyrotation.com), a similar site with headlines from more than 250 tech Web sites.