Our website of the week is Refdesk.com. This is certainly a classic site in that it has been on the WWW for ten years. But you still will not find a site that has more easily-located links to factual information. Whether you need to find a list of all the newspaper web sites in a particular state or country, an 800 number directory, your favorite columnist, an international ZIP Code finder, a list of online encyclopedias or dictionaries or any other collection of factual information, Refdesk should be your first stop online.

Today "Twelve Ways Technology Can Make You a Better Trial Lawyer" was posted to Notes from the Legal Underground by David Swanner. It is, in my judgment, a "must read" for all lawyers, even those who never see the inside of a courtroom. Read it once. Read it twice. Add it to your favorites and then send the link to some lawyers in your firm and other lawyers you think may need this advice. It has great links to a number of products and resources.

We’ve extended the early bird registration for ABA TECHSHOW until March 4, 2005. Registering before that date saves you $100. As many of you know, I’m the Chair of ABA TECHSHOW this year. We had a TECHSHOW Board conference call yesterday. We’re so excited about this year’s TECHSHOW. There are so many hot tech issues this year from electronic discovery to computer security to what a trial lawyer should have on his/her laptop. Check out all the sessions on the TECHSHOW website and come join us. You won’t find more legal technology experts gathered together in one location anywhere.

"What do you like best about being a lawyer?" was a short post on the The (Legal) Underground blog. But the dozens of thoughtful, insightful and totally pointless comments posted by lawyers and law students have made it an entertaining, if almost booklet-length, read. Go add your own comment. (Makes me wish I had allowed comments here…. well, no, not really.)

Not knowing much about a topic never stopped me from briefing it, so why shouldn’t I write about Macs in the law office? In the February 12, 2005, Oklahoma  Bar Journal my article "Macs Become a Familiar Sight in Law Offices" appears, along with a sidebar about my new favorite gadget, "The iPod: A Gadget You Can Truly Love."  Note to the Mac lawyers: Don’t get too excited before you click, this is more an acknowledgement than real analysis.

I remember when Maryland Lawyer Terry Berger decided to build this site quite some time ago. He decided to compile a list of how you locate service agents in the various states. Many did not have online access back then. Using the resources of the listserv Solosez, he worked until he had a complete list, including the states that charged for this public information. The number of states charging eroded over the years, maybe because of Terry’s site. My website of the Week is Terry Berger’s ResidentAgentInfo.com.

According to this story in the Virginia Lawyers Weekly, the Department of Labor has issued an opinion letter on January 7 stating that even a paralegal with a four year degree and a paralegal certificate does not qualify for an exemption to overtime pay requirements. I couldn’t easily find the opinion letter on the website. If someone wants to send me the link, I’ll update this post.

Oklahoma City attorney Bill Wells has generously allowed me to post his informative paper entitled "The New Overtime Regulations: Information for Attorney Employers and Employment Attorneys" that was presented at our OBA Annual Meeting last November. As with any CLE paper, this is informational and should not be considered as legal advice. It is 25 pages in PDF format.

Al Nye the Lawyer Guy just posted a positive review of Anagram. I’m sure many of your Outlooks contacts look like mine, with just a name and an e-mail address. You can right click on the sender’s name in an e-mail and add it to your Contacts, but you have to type (or copy and paste) the address, phone, fax and other fields in the Contact fields individually. We should do that, but often don’t. Sometimes I paste a whole signature block into the big space at the botton of a Contact. Al says Anagram does a great job of streamlining this by capturing highlighted text and inserting it in all the right fields automatically. With a 45 day free trial and a price tag of $19.95, this may be a great tool to power up your Contacts (or Palm.)

I know lots of people check their e-mail remotely when out of town. They use cybercafes, hotel business centers, convention sponsored Internet access points and a variety of other venues.

If you ever check your e-mail, bank account, airline reservations, OBA-NET or any meaningful password protected site via any computer you do not own, you should be aware that the next user may be able to use the browser’s back button or History to get into your e-mail or other service just as if they logged in with your password.

Here’s a simple process to use every time. If it is a kiosk or other hotel system used by many, just click Tools, Internet Options, and Clear History. Then close all browser windows. If you used someone else’s computer who might not appreciate having their whole history cleared, try this. Click on History, and then look at the Today’s History panel to locate the domains you logged into. Right click on each of them and delete the individual domains from the history. Then close all browser windows.