Information wants to be free (well, sort of ...).

• Author: Abramovitz, Louis C.
• Position: Website list

Let's face it. We're all in a hurry. There's so much to do, too little time. So the last thing you need is to spend hours fruitlessly searching the Web. Because time is money in the law firm environment, there is a tendency to automatically look to fee-based resources for a solution to one's information needs. Thomson Reuters, LexisNexis and other vendors have first-rate products, and firms tend to have flat-rate agreements in place that help control costs.

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At the same time, given the current state of the economy and its ripple effect on the legal services industry, it's important to be aware of at least some of the many excellent free or low-cost Web resources that are available. Think of these resources as part of your professional toolkit, one that both complements the fee-based services and helps you stay organized.

With this in mind, here are several very cool Web sites that can be a tremendous help in managing your business development and legal marketing activities.

Search Engines

LexisWeb: http://www.lexisweb.com

This legal content search engine (currently in Beta) features both free results from the open Web and paid results available on LexisNexis. What makes it so special is that the free content consists entirely of sites that have been selected and verified for accuracy by LexisNexis editors.

Hakia: http://www.hakia.com

Hakia is a "semantic search" engine. This means it tries to understand what you're looking for and return fewer but more relevant results from Web sites vetted by librarians. This is particularly useful given the anonymous nature of the Internet, where anybody can claim they're an expert. It brings to mind the classic "New Yorker" cartoon depicting two dogs, one seated at a computer telling the other: "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog."

Jux2: http://jux2.com

Results differ across major search engines. Jux2 runs a simultaneous search across the major engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN) and returns the top results from each, including where these rank in a particular engine's results.

Blawgsearch: http://blawgsearch.justia.com

This free site searches for results across thousands of legal blogs on the Web. It also features a categorical listing of blogs on a wide range of legal topics--everything from intellectual property to animal and dog law. Once you find a blog you're interested in, you can preview posts and subscribe to RSS feeds.

People and Business Finders

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