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ABA Legal Technology Resource Center
Helping Lawyers Solve the Technology Puzzle
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Back to School -- Online
Based on Personal Experience
Ring-Ading-Ding!
The Other Top Ten
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Back to School - Online!
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Feeling the time crunch while trying to get your MCLE credits in? Currently, 40 states require CLE credits, but some 34 states allow you to earn some or all of those credits online. Here are some resources to help you fit those MCLEs into your busy schedule. Remember, though, to check with your accrediting agency to ensure that you can use online credits for part or all of your MCLE!
- CLE Online
Currently targeted mostly to Texas and California, CLE Online
offers classes in topics ranging from "ADA: Is There Still
Life There?" to "Effective Negotiation and Mediation Advocacy"
to "Texas Intestate Succession Law: What Every Lawyer Needs
to Know." CLE Online boasts that its sessions are accepted
as participatory CLE, not self-study, in some states. Ranging
in price from $25 to $110, classes are offered in streaming
audio and video. Be sure to check to see if CLE Online classes
are good in your state!
- West Legal Ed Center
The West LegalEd Center offers classes for almost every state
that accepts online MCLE credits. Choose the "accredited in"
link from the left navigation bar to get a map of the United
States, and choose your state to find out current offerings.
Most offerings are in the form of live webcasts, so you'll
have to schedule them on your calendar. Prices range from
under $100 to just shy of $500, and go from 1 ½ hours to three
and half hours. One stop shopping for your MCLE needs here!
- Law.com CLE Center
Law.com CLE Center offers a link to CLE State Requirements
so that you can check to see if the offerings on the site
will fulfill your CLE requirement. Click on your state on
the map to find out whether online CLE credits are accepted,
and then click the list link to find out what is offered.
Law.com CLE Center offers bundled MCLE credits so that you
can fulfill all of your CLEs through the CLE Center at a base
rate. Or choose your offerings a la carte; most prices are
under $100 and go from 1 to three hours. Audio and video formats
are most common.
- Cognistar
Cognistar's multimedia online CLE programs can be taken at any
hour of the day, providing convenience for the hurried attorney.
Classes are usually $119 and can be from 1 to 3 credits. Cognistar
has formed a strategic partnership with LexisNexis and is the
sole provider of CLE classes for LexisNexis's Professional Development
Center.
Again, be sure to check your state's requirements for CLE. The ABA's Center for Continuing Legal Education is a good place to start! Try the Summary of MCLE State Requirements to check on your state!
Laura Ikens
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Based on Personal Experience
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Google News
Stop the Presses! Google News, the still-in-beta site that compiles news from over 4,500 outlets, primarily foreign and domestic newspapers in English, has added a personalization feature. Google News updates every 15 minutes and includes articles from the past 30 days. Although different from Google News in many ways, Yahoo! News has long provided personalization options, but requires users to login. Google News allows for on-the-fly adjustment and requires no login, relying on cookies to maintain preferences.
Personalization on Google News allows you to create your own news page by either mixing and matching existing standard sections from 22 regional editions or by creating your own custom sections based on search queries. Custom sections can be based on a keyword search, which you can alternatively label or use the keyword search as the default label. There are quite a few ways to get very specific results. For instance, choose to add an advanced custom section by searching for the keyword “pharming” only within the “Sci/tech” section. Or go to the Google news advanced search and construct and run a search. Copy and paste the syntax from the search bar (example: allintitle: "legal technology" -vendor location:usa ) into the custom section keywords, add a label, et voila. There are quite a few options, so read the FAQs and play around to get the results you want.
As with other sites that allow personalization on the web, users
can increase or decrease the amount of content displayed, add
and remove sections, and edit each section. You can have up
to 20 custom sections and share your customized page with others,
who can choose to “adopt” your customized page as their own.
Google asserts the personalization functions work in all major
browsers. With the breadth and depth of news coverage, News
Alerts, and now personalization, the Google News site is
making headlines.
Catherine Sanders Reach
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Ring-Ading-Ding!
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Southwest Airlines' Ding!
With winter showing no sign of retreat in the Northeast and
Midwest, this is an excellent time to plan a last-minute getaway
to a warmer climate. Unfortunately, last-minute trips are often
prohibitively expensive. Southwest Airlines' new Ding! service
flies in the face of that logic. Ding! is a easily downloaded
program that displays last-minute travel deals that are typically
cheaper than the prices found on Southwest's own website.
Southwest Airlines has long been the envy of the airline industry,
with soaring profits and excellent customer service. Not happy
with just a mere website, Southwest is out to conquer your desktop.
Ding! takes up less than 6MB of local storage and is free of
all spyware and adware. Provide Southwest with your preferred
airport and zip code, and you are ready for Ding! The downloading
process is quick and painless. Once the program is downloaded,
users will receive regular messages (accompanied by a dinging
noise) highlighting available flights. Users have a twelve to
twenty-four hour window to purchase these flights. Typically,
the flights are within three weeks of that day's date. Recent
Ding! deals one way flights from Chicago-Midway to Tampa for
$71.00 and Philadelphia to Seattle for $91.00.
There is one significant caveat regarding Ding! The system requirements are restrictive. Windows 98, ME, or XP are the only operating systems supported. Linux, Mac, and some Windows users are left out in the dark. Since Ding's deals are even lower than their "Click N Save" emails, nonPC users have no way to take advantage of these prices. Let's hope Southwest quickly remedies this problem and spreads the love to all computer users.
Molly Kilmer Flood
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The Other Top Ten
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Jux2
According to the folks at Jux2, on average only four of the
top ten search results from searches at Google, Yahoo and Ask
Jeeves overlap. This means that you need to do more searches
on more search engines to get the most comprehensive results
and find the most important information, right? Not with Jux2!
Install Jux2 on your links bar, and click on it when you need
to search. A little popup box asking for your search appears;
fill in your terms, hit ok and your search results are displayed.
The default search result format is the "What am I missing?"
search, displaying first the top 10 results from Yahoo! that
are not in Google, then the top 10 results in Ask Jeeves that
are not in either Yahoo! or Google, and finally, the remaining
top 10 results from Google with "nearly identical" links bundled
together to make your search more efficient. The "Jux2 search"
results are displayed by overlap: those results making all three
search engines' top ten lists are grouped together, then results
appearing in two search engines' top ten lists, and finally,
results appearing in only one of the top tens. Both display
schemes continue listing in increments of ten results from each
of the three search engines.You can also configure Jux2 to search
only two search engines instead of all three.
I was able to install the Jux2 search link in Internet Explorer, but unfortunately the Firefox download did not seem to work.
You can still use Jux2 in Firefox by going to http://www.jux2.com and using it as your search engine. If you're using IE, you should consider installing Jux2 to make the most of your internet searches!
Laura Ikens
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