Website reviews

Reviews of legal sites crossing international frontiers

The Journal, June 2006, page 44

Law.com

www.law.com

As with much of the internet, when you see “international” you can read “American”. This site – with the best legal address on the world wide web – is principally concerned with the US legal market, but has much to interest the lawyer from any jurisdiction.

The site is absolutely huge and stuffed with features. Some are labelled premium features (i.e. they’ll cost you, so I haven’t reviewed these), but most of the site is free to access.

One feature that has to be worth a look is the Legal Technology section which includes a vast array of downloadable programs of use to the legal office – organised into no fewer than 77 categories including case management, document management, time and billing, and many more. Not all of them are specifically legal either, for example presentation tools, pop-up blockers, HTML editors and uninstallers. Inevitably, you are expected to pay for the software, but there are some free demos available and some of the software is free or at low cost.

At the law.com CLE Center (clecenter.com), you can do your CLE (or CPD as we know it) online and there are some topics which might make the transition to our own system well enough (such as career, elimination of bias, legal writing and trial skills). If you are looking for a US court judgment, you could try the VerdictSearch mini-site (www.verdictsearch.com) – again it is a pay-for-content site, but you can buy by the case and you can sign up for a free trial or free email alerts, and access case summaries free.

The rest of the site concentrates on legal news and articles, together with some very interesting surveys. All the technological bells and whistles are there, including the option to get the news direct to your RSS reader and an overview of the best legal blogs. That may sound rather technical, but each of the blogs I visited on the recommendation of law.com was an interesting read – especially for those working in related fields. Many of them were written by insiders in large legal firms in the US – often at partner level. Most also had options to subscribe to the latest updates through an RSS feed or other equivalents. Whether you choose to subscribe in this way or simply bookmark the blog for repeat visits, it is a quick and easy way to keep up to date with developments Stateside. If only this phenomenon were more common here in the UK.

There used to be a facility to get your own free law.com email address, indeed I used to have one, but the site (www.mail-at-law.com) seems to have disappeared – whether temporarily or for good, I do not know.

Hieros Gamos

www.hg.org

Setting aside the slightly eccentric allusion (in the Greek title) to man/god “coupling” rituals (cf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hieros_ gamos), here is a site which can truly lay claim to the tag “international”. Not for nothing is its subtitle “Worldwide Legal Directories”. HG is essentially just a really big portal site, i.e. a collection of links to other websites. The principal three categories are law firms and lawyers; expert witnesses; and court reporters, process servers and investigators. These can be found in any of the 230 countries listed, including Scotland. The listings for Scotland are admittedly sparse (e.g. it lists only 13 firms in Glasgow, and no investigators, court reporters or process servers anywhere in the country). However, the website allows you to add your own details, so that can be easily altered. The site is certainly a popular one and this is free global publicity up for grabs, so what are you waiting for?

Also worth looking at are the links, organised into 70 practice areas from aboriginal peoples to utilities (public) – to give an international perspective on any legal specialism.

Beyond that, there is a useful selection of external links cleverly packaged into a guide to starting your own (legal) business under the heading Hieros Gamos Legal Business Center. Some of the links require registration to read but others are free, and easy to access. The articles available free are worth checking out, especially those on dispute resolution and e-commerce.

All in all a very useful site, especially for those with international law firms to look after.