Disability Law Blog

WordPerfect Still Alive at the Department of Justice

It's good to see that the best word processing program around still has a home at the DOJ. And with WP 12's ability to save files in Word format, save files to PDF and seamlessly convert Word files to WP format, it deserves a place at the table:

Corel officials announced today that Justice officials will extend an existing contract for WordPerfect Office and license more than 50,000 seats, one of the biggest deployments of the No. 2 word processor. Since DOJ bought 35,000 WordPerfect seats in 1999, the department's Bureau of Prisons and U.S. Attorneys hired more employees, requiring the contract's expansion.

Although much of DOJ uses Word, officials say that many members of the legal community still use WordPerfect for the reveal codes function and its ability to display a variety of legal tools and footnotes at the bottom of a page rather than at the end of a long document.

"We have a lot of expertise in WordPerfect," said Mary Aileen O'Donovan, a program manager in DOJ's enterprise solutions staff. "Kids come out of [law] school pretty good users,…and they don't want to switch."

U.S. courts also require all case filings to be in WordPerfect.

Jim Calloway has more about the renaissance (?) of Wordperfect on his Law Practice Tips blog.

American Census Bureau's FactFinder

Robert Ambrogi's Lawsites ("Tracking new and intriguing Web sites for the legal profession") links to Amercian Fact Finder, a U.S. Census Bureau site filled with interesting (and perhaps useful) information:

American Fact Finder is designed to simplify census research. It makes it easy to find social, economic or housing characteristics for any location. Tools help you create various tables—either from predefined templates or using your own preferences—and generate maps illustrating data and statistics. Other sections allow you to research industry and business facts and economic census data. American FactFinder allows you to access data using a variety of methods. Items labeled “quick” help you locate data or generate reports with only a couple of mouse clicks. Other methods help you perform more detailed research or construct more complicated queries.

Vital Records Resource

From Lawsites:

Vital Records Information tells where to obtain vital records — birth, death and marriage certificates and divorce decrees — from anywhere in the United States. It lists sources for each state, territory and county, and most cities and towns, along with contact, fee and ordering information. For records outside the U.S., the site lists links to foreign vital records sites. This straightforward site is designed with a nod towards genealogy, but it is one many lawyers are sure to find useful.

A Plea for a Uniform Convention Regarding URLs for Judicial Opinions

DaubertontheWeb links to lots of appellate decisions and suggests some changes to make it easier to find and retrieve them:

It would be awfully nice, for example, if a uniform format were adopted by the federal courts permitting users to infer the proper URL so long as they knew the court, case number, and (perhaps) date of the opinion, without having to know each circuit's idiosyncracies. It would be even nicer if all opinions, from all circuits (or district courts, as more progress is made on posting their opinions on the web) were collected and made publicly accessible in a common format through some single site or interface -- building, perhaps, on Pacer. Lexis and Westlaw used to be the only people offering that functionality. Given what is now technologically possible, it's reasonable to propose that it be provided freely for all, by the judicial branch itself.

I second his emotion.

Locating Federal Government Information on the Internet

Via FedLawyerGuy:  If you do Social Security disability work, or you just like to read reams of information about the federal government, then this link is for you. Sherry DeDecker, the Head of the Government Information Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and Patricia Cruse, the Director of the Digital Preservation Program at UCSB, have put together an organization chart for the Federal Government with hyperlinks, provided links to statistics and demographics, and offer advice about use of search engines. And there's a lot more. A great resource.

Digital Rot And Longevity of Digital Storage Media

A story in today's USAToday talks about the longevity of digital media and the uncertainty surrounding the future of digital formats (JPEG, Word files, etc.) This has implications for Social Security's Ae-Dib (a/ka/ aeDib, EDib, edib, e-dib and so on) program, the new initiative which intends to store all data related to a disability case electronically. The key paragraphs:

. . . discs are affected by humidity, scratches and the ketchup your kid spills on them. Disc type (rewriteable or otherwise) is also a factor. But CDs have built-in error correction, and . . . discs are formidable, if not immortal. . . .

The Library of Congress and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are running "accelerated aging" tests on CDs and DVDs after Congress in 2000 appropriated $100 million for preservation efforts.

Though results are premature, Michele Youket, a preservation specialist at the Library of Congress, says the poorest-quality CDs may last only four or five years; the best, more than 100.

(For those interested in the topic, NIST has a PDF document on its website entitled The Care and Handling of CDs and DVDs--a Guide for Librarians and Archivists. You can also read more about it in this article in Rolling Stone.)

A WordPerfect Macro Manual for the Few Attorneys Still Using WP

From Carolyn Elefant at myshingle.com comes this link to a free, downloadable manual on WordPerfect macros by Doug Loudenback. I haven't reviewed the manual (I bought Gordon McComb's manual years ago), but if you're using WP and are just getting into macros, this may be a great place to start.

Neat Google Numbers Searches

Tom Mighell over at Inter Alia reports that Google has added more snazzy number searches:

-- Area code -- enter an area code (214) and the first link is a map of the area.

-- VIN -- just enter a Vehicle Identification Number, and you'll get a link to CarFax vehicle history reports.

-- Flight Tracking -- all you need is an airline and a flight number, and you'll get links that allow you to track the flight.

-- UPC number -- entering the universal product code found on any bar code will take you to a link describing the product. Interestingly, when I entered the UPC number on a package on my desk, I got not only the UPC link, but also a link to track a Fedex package......

Proper Legal Citation of URLs

Via LawPundit:   There may be other ways to skin a cat but this approach makes sense:   In RIAA v. Verizon, __ F.3d __, No. 03-7015, (D.C. Cir. Dec. 19, 2003) a URL is cited as follows:

See John Borland, File Swapping Shifts Up a Gear (May 27, 2003), available at http://news.com.com/2100–1026–1009742.html, (last visited December 2, 2003).

(Interestingly enough, following the particular link cited leads to a 404 page error. It can't help when your authority just left the building.)

Update (Jan. 12, 2004):   Andis Kaulins at Lawpundit wrote to say that the URL in the quote above does not work because it includes long hyphens. Only short hyphens work in URLs. The corrected URL works fine:   http://news.com.com/2100-1026-1009742.html

Thanks, Andis!

W.bloggar Test Post (and Happy Holidays!)

Just downloaded a copy of w.bloggar based on Rick Klau's post about the program. It's a windows-based posting interface and seems to work fine, except that a bug prevents editting existing posts. Maybe a maintenance release will correct the problem.

A brief hiatus from blogging begins today.

Happy Holidays!