"Massive new searchable database of federal court opinions, including ones that haven’t been formally published"

"Massive new searchable database of federal court opinions, including ones that haven’t been formally published" The database is maintained by Free Law Project and is available here. Eugene Volokh explains here.

Volokh: "Judgment" predominates over "Judgement" in American English

Volokh: "Judgment" predominates over "Judgement" in American English. He uses Google Ngrams to demonstrate. Also, the reverse continues to be true, but less so, in British English, "judgment" predominated in British English until the 1800s, and American legal writers use "judgment" over "judgement" even more than other American writers.

Maine labor dispute decided by the Oxford comma

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit handed down an opinion that interpreted the phrase “The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution” to group “packing for shipment or distribution” together rather than as the last two items in the list.

Why I use UberConference (and FreeConferenceCall.com)

I've tried a couple free conference-call services. Here's why I like UberConference:

• The host can share her computer screen with participants who log in by computer.
• I don’t have to schedule a call. If I do, I can get reminders, notifications when others join, etc.
• Registered users don’t have to enter a code to join calls.
• Participants can call in or use the audio equipment on their computers.
• Participants can log in to see who’s talking at any point during the call.
• Participants who use the online login (no registration needed) can edit others’ phone number to show their names.
• It can connect with LinkedIn, Twitter, and other social media to show profile pictures and some other shared information.
• It sends a summary of the call, with a list of participants and how long each talked, after the call. Settings can also be set to send the summary to participants.
• Host can record the call.
• Host can pick hold music!

Capitalize "Government"?

A colleague recently asked me about whether government should be capitalized for an article targeted to a legally literate audience in a sentence like this: “The Government argued that failure to protect wolves would negatively affect economic activity.” We often see Government and similar terms capitalized in articles describing litigation. But why? Is it correct usage?

Base your Outlook rules on message headers for fewer rules

I use a lot of rules in Outlook to categorize messages I receive. Some rules are based on the sender's address, others based on words in the sender description, and others based on words in the subject. When I want messages based on all three to be marked the same category, I’ve been using three different rules. But I just discovered that “with specific words in the message header” is a broader category that includes a whole lot of information, including all those criteria I was using to organize mail. I was looking for a way to include messages sent “on behalf of” someone, mainly to catch messages sent on behalf of the same entity but using a different mass-mail e-mail address with each message. 

Make selected file path a hyperlink

Office programs convert URLs into hyperlinks very easily, like with a space after the address. But they don't do this if the address is to a file path. I send file paths to colleagues in e-mails, Word documents, and Excel files frequently, so I wanted to make it easy to convert the text of a file path into a hyperlink to the file or folder. The quickest built-in way to do this is select the file path and use the keyboard shortcuts Ctrl + C, Ctrl + K, Ctrl +V, Enter. But now I've created a macro, so it's a click (or a single keyboard shortcut, if you like) away.