Recently in Google Category

This post was written by Randall Ryder: "Electronic discovery, while undergoing constant change, is still considered uncharted territory. What kinds of information is discoverable is still debated, along with methods for recovering that information. More and more businesses conduct electronic discovery, but examining hard drives is still very expensive. The amount of information available, however, is not in doubt. As this recent article notes, Google stores search data forever..."

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Source: Lawyerist.com, 14 March 2010. © 2007-2010 Lawyerist Media, LLC. Reproduced with permission of the site editor, Sam Glover.

This post was written by John Jantsch: "As a marketing tool the Twitterverse gets so much more useful when you can filter out all the noise and drill down to people and communities that might very much want to know what you've got to offer.

...In this week's post for AMEX OPENForum I explain 7 Insanely Useful Ways to Search Twitter that focus much more on who's saying it. For some this is a much more interesting way to look at doing business on Twitter..."

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Source: Duct Tape Marketing, 3 March 2010. © 2003-2010 Small Business Marketing Blog from Duct Tape Marketing, reproduced with permission of the author.

This post was written by Simon Fodden: "There may be stars in your eyes, soon. Google has introduced a search facility that lets you star certain search results, in effect marking them as "faves" the way that Google Reader does. Then those items will show up in a special box at the top of your searches -- whenever they're relevant, of course..."

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Source: Slaw, 8 March 2010. Reproduced with permission of the author.

This post was written by Tara Calisham: "I think I was about five years off. Several years ago I was thinking about the potential for location-based searching, and I thought it would be a big deal Real Soon Now. But it's only really taken off in the last couple of years, and it's only now that Google's overtly introducing it into the main Web search. Remind me not to try to time any stock purchases.

Anyway, Google announced Friday morning that there's now an option to refine your searches by location. But you'll have to make sure your "Show Options" nav is open, or you're gonna miss it..."

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Source: Research Buzz, 1 March 2010. © 2006-2010 ResearchBuzz, reproduced with permission of the author.  

This post was written by Tara Calisham: "Unless you've been living under a rock (or, okay, under a few feet of snow -- stay warm DC area!) you will have heard about the launch of Google Buzz. It actually launched a few days ago but has only within the last day or so been set up for all GMail accounts.

Do you use Twitter? Google Buzz is sort of Twitter for GMail. A new menu item is set up within your GMail, and when you click on it you'll see posts from people who you're following. (You can see a brief video demo and explanation of Google Buzz at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi50KlsCBio.) You can also see other content they're posting to other Web properties, depending on how they've set up their Google Profile...

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Source: ResearchBuzz, 11 February 2010. © 2006-2010 ResearchBuzz, reproduced with permission of the author.

This post was written by Tara Calisham: "Google has announced that Google Docs is set to become more than just a place to make presentations, spreadsheets, and documents. Over the next few weeks Google will be rolling out the ability to upload all file types to Google Docs. Individual files will have a limit of 250MB, but you'll have a total of 1GB of space to store your files. If you need more space than that it'll cost you .25 per GB per year.

(Remember when GMail first launched and it had 1GB of storage and everyone thought it was AAAAMAAAAZZING? Now it seems a little skimpy, doesn't it?)

Anyway, this feature is not available to everybody right this second; keep an eye out for a bubble notification when you sign on to Google Docs. While you're hanging around Google Documents waiting you might want to check on some features you might have missed, like the ability to share folders, or detecting and translating languages within spreadsheet cells. You can also check out the rules for uploading files."

Posted by Sabrina I. Pacifici: "New York Times: "Google on Tuesday introduced a new approach to presenting news online by topic, developed with The New York Times and The Washington Post, and said that if the experiment succeeded, it would be made available to all publishers. The announcement of the "living stories" project shows Google collaborating with newspapers at a time when some major publishers have characterized the company as a threat. Google has also taken steps recently to project an image of itself as a friend to the industry."

Google Living Stories

• "The Living Stories project is an experiment in presenting news, one designed specifically for the online environment. The project was developed by Google in collaboration with two of the country's leading newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post.
• All in one place: Complete coverage of an on-going story is gathered together and prioritized on one URL. You can now quickly navigate between news articles, opinion pieces and features without long waits for pages to load.
• Easy to explore: Each story has an evolving summary of current developments as a well as an interactive timeline of critical events. Stories can be explored by themes, significant participants or multimedia.
• Smarter reading: Updates to the story are highlighted each time you come back, and older news is summarized."

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Source: beSpacific - Accurate, focused law and technology news by Sabrina I. Pacifici. 8 December 2009 Copyright ©2002-2009. BeSpacific LLC. All Rights Reserved. Subscribe <http://www.bespacific.com/mt/subscribe.html>.

From the e-newsletter:

 ">>Access to Social Websites in The Legal Environment - Fall 2009 - Part 1: Survey of Law Librarians in Selected Firms, County/State Law Libraries and Law Schools.

http://www.llrx.com/features/accesssocialwebsiteslegalenvironmentpt1.htm

To ascertain the current use of social websites/media in law firms, a survey was conducted among Law Librarians entitled Computer Use in Your Organization. In addition to the responses from law firm Law Librarians, several Law Librarians from law schools and county/state government law libraries also responded as did an independent Law Librarian. The opinions of Law Librarians was sought since they are typically among the first professionals in the legal environment to explore, use and recommend new computer innovations and trends useful to attorneys, judges and legal scholars regarding information gathering, information sharing, electronic legal research and current awareness. Part 1 of the Survey details the responses of fifty-six Law Librarians regarding computer use in their organizations. Part 2 will review the responses and take a close look at the implications of the responses and what, if any, patterns can be predicted for 2010.

>>Strengthening Forensic Science: The Next Wave of Scholarship

http://www.llrx.com/features/forensicscience.htm

Ken Strutin's article focuses on threads of scholarly literature citing and commenting on the recent National Academy of Sciences report, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward, and highlights discussions where experts and practitioners rethink the merits of a wide range of forensic issues.

>>Bridging the DiGital Divide: A New Vendor in Town? Google Scholar Now Includes Case Law

http://www.llrx.com/featres/googlescholarcaselaw

The November 17, 2009 Google launch of free caselaw searching via Google Scholar is the focus of John J. DiGilio's timely content and resource review.

>>Support for the Research Process - An Academic Library Manifesto

http://www.llrx.com/features/researchprocesslibrarymanifesto.htm

This document by Chris Bourg, Ross Coleman, and Ricky Erway can serve as a pathfinder for those professionals seeking to focuses on roles that academic, law and special librarians could undertake in order to better support the research process.

>>Free Tools and Applications for More Efficient Online Interaction

http://www.llrx.com/features/onlineinteration.htm

Many lawyers understand the importance of networking, but running a law practice takes time and no one ever seems to have enough of it. This factor is one of the main reasons lawyers offer as an excuse to avoid online networking, but Nicole Black proposes how choosing even a few efficient applications from the range of free tools available can streamline and accelerate this marketing process.

>>LLRX Court Rules, Forms and Dockets - updated by law librarian Margaret Berkland

http://www.llrx.com/courtrules"

Source: Pacifici, Sabrina. "New on LLRX.com for November 2009." Copyright © LLRX TM, Law Library Resource Xchange, LLC. All rights reserved. Subscribe <http://www.llrx.com/subscribe.htm>.

From the site: "As we all know by now, Google Scholar is now home to legal documents. Here's the RS overview post from launch day. As we said then, It will be interesting to see how often the database is updated, if those updates are announced, and if Google will provide a directory/catalog/guide of what is available.

In this Above the Law post, Kashmir Hill, provides comments from Westlaw and LexisNexis.

The comments are what you would expect but are still worth a quick read.

Westlaw

We provide the breadth of information and technology tools to help quickly zero in on specific cases and the facts embedded within them. We provide the context, expert analysis from our attorney-editors and links to supporting materials to help users find the right answers, faster. And, Westlaw includes workflow tools so that our customers can use this information as part of their client workstream.

LexisNexis

They [LN Legal Customers] look to LexisNexis to find needles in the ever-growing information haystack, not the haystack itself. Not only do we provide the most complete portfolio of public and proprietary legal content, but LexisNexis enables legal professionals to conduct their research more efficiently, effectively, and with the assurance of accuracy.

Access the Complete Post and Comments

Source: Above the Law

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Posted by Robert Ambrogi: "In a post earlier today at Legal Blog Watch, The Google Gorilla Enters the Research Game, I wrote about Google's announcement yesterday that Google Scholar now allows users to search full-text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state appellate and trial courts. I wrote there about the implications of the announcement, but wanted to post here to add my initial thoughts about the search itself.

So far, I like what I see. As it is throughout Google's various offerings, the search interface is seamless and simple. Search for a case in the same way you'd search for anything on Google -- by name, words or a phrase. You can also search by citation, but be careful to put the citation in quotes. If you search 794 F.2d 915, the results will include cases that have "794," "F.2d" and "915." But if you search "794 F.2d 915" you get the cited case plus any others that cite it.

As you view a case, a tab on the top of your screen lets you switch to a second screen showing how it was cited. This shows a list of cases and articles that cite your case. It also includes a separate list of cites showing a quote extracted from the case at the point of the citation -- in other words, the proposition for which your case is cited. Click on any of those quotes and jump right to that point in the citing case.

I could not find within Google Scholar a description of the scope of the case law database. According to Tim Stanley of Justia, it includes U.S. Supreme Court opinions since 1 US 1 (pre - 1776), federal circuit opinions since 1 F 2d 1 (1924+), and many federal district court opinions. Opinions from all 50 state supreme courts are included since 1950. I was able to determine that intermediate appellate courts are included for some states, but I could not tell whether they are included to the same extent as state supreme courts.

The Advanced Scholar Search lets you choose to search just federal cases or just a single state's cases. You can search multiple states only by checking boxes for each state, so if you want to search all 50 states but not federal, you'll have a lot of checking to do.

There remain lots of questions about Google Scholar's case law search. Google offers no documentation so answers are hard to come by. Besides not knowing the precise parameters of the database, we also do not know how often new cases are added -- a key piece of missing information. We also do not know what kind of quality control Google has in place to ensure the cases are checked and error free.

Still, putting the power of Google search behind a comprehensive database of federal and state cases is more than just a good start. Google's engineers clearly put a lot of thought and effort into this and I expect there will be further refinements and enhancements to come."

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Source: Robert Ambrogi's LawSites, 18 November 2009