Beyond E-Mail:

Using The Internet For Your Law Practice

Internet Research Sites for ‘practise’ in the new millenium

Extreme Family Law Makeover!

The Bright Shawl

San Antonio, Texas

March 4, 2005

Mark I. Unger, Esq.

JAE, Inc.

10010 San Pedro, Ste. 660

San Antonio, Tx. 78216

T: 210.366.9676

F: 210.366.0412

EM: miunger@gmail.com

www.texaslawyers.com/unger

*To request a downloadable version of this document with ‘live’ links, please email the author at the above listed email address.

“Isn’t it strange

That Princes & Kings and Clowns

Who scamper in sawdust rings

And common people like you and me,

Are builders for eternity

For to each is given a sack of tools,

A shapeless mass & a book of rules

And he must make,

Ere life has flown,

A stumbling block or a stepping stone.”

Anon (quote courtesy of Stewart Gagnon)

I. Introduction

II. Search Engines/All topics

III. People

a. Phone/Address Finders

b. Data Searches on People

IV. Property Searches

a. Real Property

b. Corporation Tax Search

c. Bexar County Practice

d. Personal Property and Corporate Filings

V. Texas Government Sites

VI. Texas Legislature

VII. Texas Courts

VIII. Legal Research Sites

a. Texas Statutes Online: Texas Rules and Codes

b. Texas Constitution

c. Texas Rules of Evidence

d. Texas Rules of Civil Procedure (revisions):

e. Texas Rules of Criminal Procedure

f. Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure

g. Texas Codes

h. Texas Case law

i. Private Legal Sites for Texas Attorneys

IX. Issue Specific/Practice Area Specific Websites

X. Miscellaneous

I. Introduction

ex·treme ( P ) Pronunciation Key (k-strm)
adj.

Most remote in any direction; outermost or farthest: the extreme edge of the field.
Being in or attaining the greatest or highest degree; very intense: extreme pleasure; extreme pain.
Extending far beyond the norm: an extreme conservative. See Synonyms at excessive.
Of the greatest severity; drastic: took extreme measures to conserve fuel.
Sports.

Very dangerous or difficult: extreme rafting.
Participating or tending to participate in a very dangerous or difficult sport: an extreme skier.

Archaic. Final; last.

di·vorce ( P ) Pronunciation Key (d-vôrs, -vrs)
n.

The legal dissolution of a marriage.
A complete or radical severance of closely connected things.

v. di·vorced, di·vorc·ing, di·vorc·es
v. tr.

To dissolve the marriage bond between.
To end marriage with (one's spouse) by way of legal divorce.
To cut off; separate or disunite: an idea that was completely divorced from reality. See Synonyms at separate.

v. intr.

To obtain a divorce.

www.dictionary.com

As lawyers practicing family law, we are often called upon to take situations, which are extreme (at least to our clients) and act accordingly. As the definition of ‘accordingly’ will vary from case to case and lawyer to lawyer, what will vary less is how we might perceive what ‘Extreme Divorce’ might mean to our actions. Dictionary.com defines the two terms above and, by this writer’s interpretation, might be combined as follows:

Extreme Divorce = Being in or attaining the greatest or highest degree in a complete or radical severance of closely connected things.

In other words, our job, should we choose to accept it, and try and do it well is that of performing at the highest level in the complete division of persons and things. Not exactly appealing to the empathetic, it’s process is dictated by the ability to acquire information and use it to save or protect our client from the other side. In that vein, all tools at our disposal that helps us do that at some point will become expected. The Internet, in its current form is a tool that can do one of two things—it can either level the playing field or it can provide an advantage to one side. It’s use will become ever more of an integral extension of our practice. It’s key is our ability to embrace it and make it an automatic part of our mental process in preparing for the extreme, or not so extreme divorce.

This paper is a basic introduction to conducting research on the internet, primarily focusing on some of the most basic and widely used websites for locating people, places, and things, as well as pursuing legal research and information. Most of these sites are free and easily accessible to the public, however some have been restricted and are intended to conform to recent movements in privacy law and the legitimate purposes for such research. Many of the search engines and websites listed herein contain a certain amount of crossover or overlapping of topics or information. Although I have tried to limit the number of sites in this paper, only trying them out will result in which one best suits your practice and personal taste.

II. Search Engines/All topics

These sites are generically based and are intended to search for keywords that are registered as “metatags” with the particular search engine/website, returning a list of sites that match as closely as possible the words for which you searched.

A. Google: www.google.com

--my personal favorite; download the toolbar directly to your computer for 24/7 searching capability without having to go to the website; toolbar also includes automatic ‘popup’ blocker; expanded to include map searching for local restaurants or businesses, shopping (called “froogle”) and image searching (that’s picture searching via the internet), and currently in beta testing for email service.

B. Dogpile: www.dogpile.com

C. AltaVista: www.altavista.com

D. Excite: www.excite.com

E. Yahoo: www.yahoo.com

F. www.searchengines.com -- Outstanding resource site listing all major search engines, and listings for search engines by topic (including legal), area of interest or region

G. Craig Ball’s Meta-Search Engine: http://www.craigball.com/searchcentral.html

III. People:

A. Phone/Address Finders:

1. State Bar of Texas Attorney Search

(includes disciplinary records):

http://www.texasbar.com/

This site, further updated in functionality also allows for online-video CLE, checking your CLE requirements,

2. Martindale-Hubbell:

http://www.martindale.com/xp/Martindale/home.xml

3. Anywho: http://www.anywho.com/

Finds businesses or people by name, Yellow Pages, White Pages, Reverse Lookup, Toll-free numbers, and International pages; in conjunction with AT&T.

4. Smart Pages: http://www.smartpages.com/

SBC/Ameritech’s comprehensive version of nationwide searches for businesses and a whole lot more; consumer oriented.

5. US Search: http://www.ussearch.com/wlcs/index.jsp

Search backgrounds of people, criminal histories, identity theft and various court records, for a fee.

4. Switchboard.com: www.switchboard.com

Outstanding and comprehensive free way to find a lot of people.

5. Area Code Listings

Searchable Database, which lists cities, and State covered

www.areacodes.org

6. ATT reverse phone lookup

http://www.att.com/directory/

7. Yahoo People Search: http://people.yahoo.com/

This pay site, merely repackages and utilizes USSearch.com but offers three different packages depending on how much information you want on the person.

B. Data Searches on People

1. Birthdays: http://anybirthday.com/search.htm

2. Search Systems: http://www.searchsystems.net/

Public Records locator by State; some for free, some for fee.

3. Virtual Gumshoe: http://www.virtualgumshoe.com/

Great list of investigative tools, extremely comprehensive portal for investigators and investigation.

4. PublicData.com: www.publicdata.com

Outstanding portal for locating driver’s license and criminal records; fee-based, but not that expensive. Not as up to date as some others, this site is very user friendly, as reprinted below—

Criminal
Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Florida Georgia Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Maine Maryland Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina Tennessee Texas Utah Virginia Wisconsin DOB

Sex Offenders
Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Pennsylvania South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming DOB ZIP code

Driver's License
Florida Idaho Iowa Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Ohio Texas Wisconsin DOB DL Number

DMV - License Plate
Colorado Florida Idaho Maine Minnesota Mississippi Missouri North Carolina Ohio Oregon South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Wisconsin

DMV - Vehicle Id (VIN)
Colorado Florida Idaho Iowa Kentucky Maine Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Nebraska North Carolina Ohio Oregon Tennessee Texas Utah Wisconsin Wyoming

Civil Court
Alaska California Pennsylvania Rhode Island TX Dallas Cnty Civil TX Dallas Cnty Eviction

Voter
North Carolina Ohio Texas TX Dallas Cnty TX Harris Cnty DOB

Member Services

· Terms and Conditions

· Earn More Free Look-ups

· Renew My Subscription

Professional
TX Alcoholic Bev TX Med Examiner TX Misc TX Real Estate DOB License

FAA
Airmen Civil Aircraft Dealer Reserved N Serial No Air Model Engine Model N number N changes

Federal
Fed. Elections Committee Firearms SSA Deaths by Name SSN

5. Accurint: www.accurint.com

Boasting the lowly price of 25 cents per search, this is my favorite for locating people and information about them. Other search examples include Banking, Insurance, child support agencies, collections, landlord/management companies, and media; now includes batch processing with partner ‘SmartJury,’ allowing for mass searching for potential juror information.

6. KnowX.com: www.knowx.com

Slightly more expensive, but all searches can be ordered in a self-contained format on a pay-as-you-go way (app. 6.95 per search).

8. Intelius.com: www.intelius.com

With pricing similar to KnowX, this site seems to offer an incredible amount of available information. Reached this site while searching through Yahoo’s people search.

7. Web Detective: http://www.web-detective.com/

$29.95 initial membership fee to join; claims as comprehensive as anyone’s

IV. Property Searches:

A. Real Property:

1. Craig Ball’s County Property Links

http://www.craigball.com/appraisal.html

Thanks to council member Craig Ball, who along with Howard Nations has arguably the two best private research sites for attorneys in Texas, this page boasts a compilation of all the County Appraisal Districts online.

2. Texas County Data Website: Billed as the Texas’ largest online property records database; Searchable by name, address or property ID number.

http://www.txcountydata.com/

B. Corporation Tax Search:

http://ecpa.cpa.state.tx.us/coa/Index.html

C. Bexar County Practice: I would be remiss in not providing some of the sites that provide attorneys in and around Bexar County, Texas and the information that is available if you ever practice in this area.

1. Bexar County Appraisal District: www.bcad.org

2. Bexar County District Clerk:

http://www.co.bexar.tx.us/dclerk/

Lists information and postings on a full range of practice issues in the Bexar County Courts, including: Fax Filing, E-Filing, Fees, Civil and Criminal Courts, Local Rules, Passports, Attorney Vacation submissions and Tax Suits.

3. Bexar County District Court Litigant Search:

http://www.co.bexar.tx.us/webapps/html/dklitinq01.asp

Searchable by party name, it’s finally here. What used to be via HyperTerminal access, it’s now web-based and will be one of the most valuable assets to your office-based practice.

4. Bexar County Clerk: http://www.co.bexar.tx.us/cclerk/

Searchable database of Assumed Names, Commissioners Court Records, Deed Records, Marriage Licenses, and UCC filings and Foreclosure Notices, with more on the way.

5. San Antonio Municipal Court – pay or lookup pending traffic tickets/records:

1. Home Page:

http://www.sanantonio.gov/court/

2. Lookup: https://epay.sanantonio.gov/ecommerce/court/?res=1024&ver=true

6. San Antonio Police Reports

http://www.ci.sat.tx.us/sapd/Reports.asp

D. Personal Property and Corporate Filings:

Secretary of State (SOS):

If you do not want to pay for the same service on Lexis, you can

Search the SOS site, and even file other business documents and articles, for a small fee.

http://www.sos.state.tx.us/corp/sosda/index.shtml

V. Texas Government Sites:

1. Office of the Attorney General, Child Support database; with client information, you can look up recent payments by Non-Custodial Parents.

http://www.oag.state.tx.us/child/index.shtml

2. Texas Online, E-Government Services; Texas Government site and partner for Electronic Filing of Court Documents (now available in Bexar County). Also available are Texas Driver’s License services, vehicle renewal, and Driver’s Record requests, among a litany of other e-services.

http://www.TexasOnline.com

3. Texas Department of Public Safety:

http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/onserv.htm

Search Tx.DPS for any of the following (some with slight fee)

Driver License Renewal

A full range of forms provided by Tx.DPS.

4. First Gov – US Government Portal/gateway to US Government web pages: http://www.1stgov.com/

5. Comprehensive State Government Links; Links to virtually all state agencies, as well as statutes provided by one Dallas firm: http://www.texasatty.com/texgov.html

6. Comprehensive Federal Government Links from the same firm:
http://www.texasatty.com/fedgov.html

VI. Texas Legislature: search for past and pending legislation, as well as comments and legislative history.

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us

VII. Texas Courts:

A. Search for opinions, as well as general Court information for all Texas Courts. (Includes Supreme Court of Texas, all Appellate Courts and all Trial Courts).

http://www.courts.state.tx.us

B. Search for Local Rules for Texas County and District Courts, many from Austin to Williamson, including Bankruptcy Court rules

http://www.texaslocalrules.com/

C. Texas Municipal Courts Website – Links page to vast majority of Municipal Courts in the State of Texas, including contact information and fine schedules in some jurisdictions. http://www.tmcec.com/courts.html

VIII. Legal Research Sites:

A. Texas Statutes Online: Texas Rules and Codes

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/statutes/statutes.html

B. Texas Constitution:

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/txconst/toc.html

C. Texas Rules of Evidence:

http://www.courts.state.tx.us/publicinfo/TRE/Toc.htm

D. Texas Rules of Civil Procedure (revisions):

http://www.supreme.courts.state.tx.us/rules/TRCP/

E. Texas Rules of Criminal Procedure:

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/statutes/cptoc.html

F. Texas Rules of Appellate Procedure

http://www.courts.state.tx.us/publicinfo/Trap/index.asp

G. Texas Codes (some of the many specific codes listed on the Texas Statutes web page)

1. Texas Family Code:

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/statutes/fatoc.html

2. Texas Penal Code:

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/statutes/petoc.html

3. Texas Probate Code:

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/statutes/pbtoc.html

4. Texas Property Code:

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/statutes/pptoc.html

5. Vernon’s Civil Statutes (all others not listed on Texas Statutes page)

http://www.capitol.state.tx.us/statutes/vntoc.html

H. Texas Case law:

1. My Texas Bar: Utilizes internal ‘deep’ linking with Findlaw (requires signup as bar member and password, free for bar members):

http://www.mytexasbar.com/

Free to Texas Attorneys, this ‘portal’ is the pre-eminent gateway to practice management in Texas. A comprehensive and customizable site (to each attorney via password sign-in, that includes calendaring function, free legal research, case updates, links to recent Supreme Court decisions, links to all State Bar sections, and links to State Bar resources, among multiple other functions.

2. Findlaw: www.findlaw.com

3. Cornell Law School: Incomparable legal portal, very user friendly for all States laws and other legal research. http://www.law.cornell.edu/

4. Lexis: www.lexis.com

Full service legal research site; various plans available.

5. LexisOne: www.lexisone.com

Limited search capabilities for registered users; free service, includes some recent case law, forms, bookstore, news and site search capability; Marketed towards small firms.

6. Westlaw: www.westlaw.com

Same as Lexis, only different; the two major players in the legal research game, West has aggressively marketed it’s website service (for a substantial fee) to tie into other major search engines and gain a web presence and potential client’s for it’s member firms; takes a three-tiered approach for various entry levels for firms.

I. Private Legal Sites for Texas Attorneys

1. Craig Ball, Esq:

A phenomenal site that can point you in any direction you want to go, a member of the State Bar of Texas Computer Council and self proclaimed ‘technologist,’ Craig’s site is very user friendly and accessible.

http://www.craigball.com

2. Howard Nations, Esq.: Links for Texas Lawyers

http://www.howardnations.com/states/texas/texas-index.html

I. Bar Associations:

A. San Antonio Bar Association: http://www.sanantoniobar.org/

B. Travis County Bar Association: http://www.travisbar.com/

C. Dallas County Bar Association: http://www.dallasbar.org/

D. Houston Bar Association: http://www.hba.org/

E. Texas Access To Justice Commission (TAJC) and Texas Equal Access to Justice Foundation (TEAJF) website. www.TexasLawHelp.org

F. My Texas Bar, free to Texas Lawyers from the State Bar of Texas: www.mytexasbar.com

G. Check your MCLE compliance (from main page: www.texasbarcle.com)

http://www.texasbar.com/Template.cfm?Section=Login&Template=/Security/Login.cfm

H. Texas Bar CLE
Fee-based searchable archive of State Bar CLE articles from 1998 to present: http://www.texasbarcle.com/publications/articles.asp

I. American Bar Association CLE Programs, online, telephone, live and webcast availability

http://www.abanet.org/cle/home.html

J. Online Continuing Legal Education
www.digilearnonline.com

K. West’s online, on-demand center for CLE

www.westlegaledcenter.com

L. Process Servers Anywhere:

http://www.unitedstatesprocessserving.com/

IX. Issue Specific/Practice Area Specific Websites:

a. Daubert and it’s progeny- Everything you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask…

http://www.daubertontheweb.com/

b. Practice Management:

i. Communication – Cell phone and Text Paging sites; communicate with anyone with a cell phone via web messaging, just be sure to advise your attorney “Communicee” to switch ringer in Court.

1. AT&T:
http://www.mymmode.com/messagecenter/init

2. Verizon:
http://www.vtext.com/customer_site/jsp/messaging_lo.jsp

3. Cingular:
http://www.cingular.com/sendamessage

4. TMobile:
http://www.t-mobile.com/messaging/default.asp?nav=hm

5. Sprint:
http://messaging.sprintpcs.com/sml/guestCompose.do

6. NextTel

www.nextel.com (see middle right of page) or directly from http://messaging.nextel.com/cgi/iPageExt.dll?cmd=buildIndAddressPage

c. Family Law Links:

1. Online organization providing resources with the intent of promoting the best interests of children in the divorce/courts’ process

http://www.puttingkidsfirst.org

2. Online subscription website designed to facilitate the communication, planning and scheduling between parents and children in multiple jurisdictions; includes scheduling function for visitation, posting of school grades and messaging in order to further cooperation among parents.

http://www.ourfamilywizard.com

3. State Bar of Texas Family Law Section/Links:

http://www.sbotfam.org/links.html

including the 2004 Child Support Tax Charts

a. Employed Persons:

http://www.sbotfam.org/employedtax2004.pdf

b. Self-Employed Persons:

http://www.sbotfam.org/selftax2004.pdf

d. Probate Law- Barnes & Karisch’s Probate Website

http://www.texasprobate.com/

X. Miscellaneous: Some various consumer sites that I consider the very good for the day-to-day business of living, attorney or not.

A. Travel:

1. Southwest Airlines: www.iflyswa.com

2. Expedia: www.expedia.com

3. Travelocity: www.travelocity.com

4. TravelZoo: www.travelzoo.com

5. Orbitz: www.orbitz.com

6. Enterprise Car Rental: http://www.enterprise.com/car_rental/home.do

7. Dollar Car Rental: http://www.dollar.com/

8. Hertz Car Rental: http://www.hertz.com/

B. Currency Exchange websites:

1. www.oanda.com

2. www.fxtop.com

3. www.exchangerate.com

4. www.x-rates.com

5. www.xe.com

C. Mail/Delivery

i. UPS: www.ups.com

ii. United States Postal Service: http://www.usps.com/

iii. Federal Express: http://www.fedex.com/us/

iv. Stamps.com: www.stamps.com

D. Dictionaries:

i. Dictionary online: http://www.dictionary.com/

ii. Legal Dictionary online: http://dictionary.law.com/

iii. Language translation site-- Altavista search engine partnership with Babelfish translation engine; capable of translating documents, articles or phrases almost instantaneously in most major languages. www.altavista.com/babelfish

iv. Google’s version of asp-based language translation engine

http://www.translate.google.com/translate_t

E. Privacy Issues:

1. Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act

www.ftc.gov/privacy/glbact/index.html

2. SBC Communications’ website initiative to help educate consumers about Internet safety, privacy and security. www.sbc.com/safety

F. Maps/Directions:

a. Mapquest: www.mapquest.com

b. Expedia: www.expedia.com

G. Computer Downloads:CNET--

http://www.cnet.com/

v. ZDNet--