Just in case anyone else has tuned out of work-week-mode and is busy looking busy on a Friday afternoon, here’s a quick legal research tip that is at leastsomewhat work related…

Try out Lawcite (available on the AustLII website) next time you need to check the judicial treatment of a case. Lawcite is a completely automatically-generated case citator, so it includes all referrences to a case in subsequent cases (even if they’re only brief mentions). The lists of “cases referring to this case” can be rather long for those cases that have attracted a lot of judical discussion, but are great when you need to know you’ve reviewed every reference to a case.

In addition to comprehensive coverage of Australian jurisdictions, Lawcite includes “cases cited” and “cases referring to this case” from other jurisdictions covered by LII sites (UK, NZ, South Africa etc) and will link through to the full text of the unreported version of a case if it is available on either AustLII or one of the LII sites.

One down side to the automated process of compiling this database is that there are no catchwords or headnotes to search across, nor are the cases categorised into particular subject areas (unlike its subscription-based counterparts like CaseBase and FirstPoint). Like any case citator, Lawcite is great for locating cases, not for conducting in-depth research on a concept, phrase or topic. Which reminds me…

Remember, like all case citators, you are not searching across the full text of a case when running a search here – just the text contained in those citator (or summary) documents (party names, dates, judges, court, citations, cases referring to the case and cases it refers to etc). This applies to CaseBase and FirstPoint too – see my earlier article on case citators v full text databases if this is news to you! It’s a common mistake…

Feel free to post a comment or question if you have one!

Happy Friday!

There doesn’t seem to be any doubt that in some way or another, the global financial crisis has affected law firms in the same way it has affected many other businesses – work might be a little quieter, jobs a little less secure and clients a little harder to attract or retain.

Believe it or not, there might be some good to come out of all this doom and gloom. If you find yourself with a little extra time on your hands, resist the temptation to steal files off colleagues’ desks and instead use this time to develop your current awareness strategies – know you clients, their industries and the legal developments that affect them.

Relax! Keeping up to date is easy!

Investing a little time and effort in setting up strategies to remain up-to-date on client, legal and industry developments now will make you that much more valuable to your firm and clients – which is important now, when times are tough, and even more so when work does pick back up again. You will be the one with the impressive list of articles and papers to your name, a solid understanding of current industry and legal issues and strong client relationships.

There are some amazing free resources out there, many of them as good or better than the services made available by commercial providers. However, for the sake of brevity (I know, it’s not that brief an article at all!) I’m focussing on one or two specific alert services within a few commonly used paid/subscription legal research services. The other focus for this article (and the one to follow on free services) is on resources that can be used to monitor specific areas of the law or industries and not simply general “news” resources (these are of course useful, but most readers would already be familiar with them).

Read about legal developments before anyone else

Alert services provided by commercial suppliers are valuable tools for monitoring developments in specific areas of law. The ones I find most useful (because of their ability to be customised and/or the targeted ares of law they cover) are:

Lawlex’s legislative alerts – the ability to set up alerts for changes to legislation based on targeted areas of law, or specific Acts and Regulations, or a combination of both (selecting certain pieces of legislation that have already been identified as falling within a particular category) is really useful. The lists of legislation under each category are almost as exhaustive as you can get and a great way to make sure you’re keeping up to date with all of the relevant legislation, not just the one or two obvious Acts. The summaries provided by Lawlex when a piece of legislation is introduced or amended are also valuable as brief, plain-english descriptions of the effects of the amendments.

Lawlex’s regulatory newsfeeds – Rather detailed summaries of regulatory, legal, legislative and news developments in certain areas of law such as Environment, OH&S , Building & Construction and Financial Services. The Corporate Law newsfeed is one of the more valuable alert services available.

LexisNexis’ case law alerts – These are my favourite alerts for monitoring Australian cases when you are only interested in monitoring a relatively specific aspect of new cases. Once you have set up a personal profile within LNAU, simply run a case law search from the red “Cases” tab (using as many of the available search fields as you wish) and save the results as an alert. I use this one to monitor how certain judges treat particular issues, to see whenever a client or their competitors are involved in litigation and for monitoring many other issues, words/phrases and topics. Be sure to set your initial search to “last week” or some relatively short period as the alert has the effect of running that same search every morning (or whatever other time of day you set) and sending you the results list. Thus, if there is a new case in an area of interest, it gets sent to me each morning for a week. Kinda annoying (any longer than a week and it would be unbearable), but worth it for the level of personalisation afforded.

Thomson’s Alert 24 – This is another combined alert, providing details of legislative, case law, regulatory, policy and news developments for particular areas of law. I find the coverage really comprehensive and commercially focussed, which is what most of us are after. Once you’re within the “Current Awareness” > “Alert 24″ section and have had a look at the type of information covered under each of the subject areas, jump into “preferences” to set up your email alert. I find “Court Practice and Litigation” the one I get the most out of – good general updates on procedural issues. I know that the Bankruptcy and FSR alerts are both also popular with people I work with. Of course, the relevancy of the topics will be based on your prractice.

Know your clients and their industry

When it comes to monitoring clients and their industries, the free services (such as Google News and web alerts, Business Spectator and others) are some of the best services out there. Some of the subscription based alert services that I find useful include:

Dataanalysis - The Datanalysis alert service is a nightmare to navigate, but once you get through the set up process, the result can be very useful. Use this tool to receive an alert any time an announcement (or a particular type of announcement) is made by a publicly listed company (ASX only). Monitor clients, their subsidiary or parent companies, and other companies operating in the same spheres.

Merger Market – This isn’t one that I use regularly, but I have colleagues that swear by it. News about potential and definite mergers, takeovers and deals is provided and categorised based upon how reliable the source is. While they are admittedly very fast to market with validated information, it’s the “rumoured deals” that set this product apart.

These services are just the tip of the iceberg – the free resources you can use for keeping up to date with legal developments and industry news will blow you away – but I have to leave something for next time, don’t I?! If you’re interested in free tools you can use to monitor these kinds of developments, come back in a week or 2!

CL got a letter from a law firm in Houston threatening a warrant if she didn't pay a fine for a stop sign violation in San Marcos in 1998. CL says she paid it, but has no proof since it's so old. I think her payment is irrelevant since the statute of limitations is 2 years. Any advice? I have called the law firm on the letter but can't seem to talk to an actual lawyer.

Two year limit on prosecution. When you posted a 'fine' that means it has been adjudicated, If it was not filed it is too late.

Had same issue arise recently from a 2001 City of Hitchcock speeding ticket and failure to appear. Spoke with court clerk who said firm (Linebarger Goggan Blair & Sampson) is a collection agency for them, and warrants have already been issued. To fight the 14-year old ticket, we'd have to post an appearance bond in the same amount as the collections.

The client with a felony record.Karma: As

Karma: As I was packing for tomorrow's move to semi-retirement I get a call from the mom one of my worst recent court experiences. The client with a felony record, 

was out on bond for 3 Class As when he picked up 3 more (Drugs, Assault). We let him sit 30 days and at the bond reduction hearing when i question him about whether he has kicked his habit, he goes off on me "Whose side are you on? The judge has to give me a bond anyway and you're not helping!" The judge, probably feeling sorry for me, gave him $3000 PR total on all charges. Client then told me he could do better himself. Now a few weeks later,

 his mom calls to say he picked up another Drug and another Assault. "Would you represent Joseph again?" I quickly thought back of 30 years of murder and felony cases and wondered if any of my clients were ever this obnoxious. My answer to mom was "No" ( he can do better himself).