This page links to legal specialty indexes and databases, and to those private practice websites which appear to have the most useful links for their practice areas, and to other legal specialty websites:

NB: The section called other legal specialty websites is in no way intended to provide an alternative to the comprehensive and well organized specialty indexes linked just below.  Rather, these are sites rather randomly discovered, which may be particularly interesting or useful to practitioners in the following specialties: 

| internet and intellectual property | litigation | class action | bankruptcy | medicine | international | criminal | business | elder | employment | environment | family | immigration | taxes and trusts | 

Specialty Indexes

The Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School has an alphabetical list of legal topics. Also a topical index to State Statutes on the internet.

FindLaw is a good general index and specialized search engine. It has a subject index of practice areas.

Georgia State University has a useful legal search site.  So does Indiana University.  

LawGuru has a Legal Research page from which more than 160 legal databases can be searched.

Hieros Gamos says it has 70,000+ links relating to 200+ practice areas, 6000+ organizations, 300+ discussion groups and more. Lots of good stuff, but comprehensiveness and selectivity are natural enemies.

CataLaw is a general legal catalog. It is well-planned, easily navigated, and has a good topical index. The branches are great and the twigs show promise.

The University Law Review Project contains a useful search engine, as well as links to law journals by topic.

The Yahoo search engine has links from all sorts of law-related topics to all sorts of websites, including primary sources, organizations and usenet newsgroups.

Private Practice Websites

The only criterion for inclusion here is content. Beauty doesn't count.

Advertising - Arent, Fox / Appellate Procedure - Calvin House / Arizona Taxation - Michael Galloway / Aviation Law - Phillip Kolczynski / Bankruptcy - Warren Agin /  Communications - Pepper & Corazzini / Computer and Internet Law - Mark Grossman / Debt Collection - Collier & Assoc. /  Dog Law  - Joel Zand / E-Commerce Law - Dennis Kennedy / Employment and Labor Law - Littler Mendelson / Careful here.  The following link has been designed to keep you from exiting.  It is a good site, and I think Peter should not have done that.  Bookmark this page before following that link:  Environmental Law - Peter Krakaur (emphasis on California) /  Health Care Law - William Manning / Immigration and Nationality - Siskind, Susser / For Immigration, see also Carl Shusterman / Intellectual Property - Finnegan, Henderson /  Internet - Phillips Nizer / Internet and Electronic Commerce and Internet Case Law - Perkins, Coie / Internet Litigation - Sugarman, Rogers / Internet meta-index - Stephen Imparl / Multi-state practice of law - George Riemer / Money Laundering Compliance - Nigel Morris-Cotterill / Patents - Oppedahl & Larson / Public Key Infrastructure - Charles Merrill / Personal Injury - Ashcroft & Gerel / Rehabilitation - Oakes & Oakes / Sexual Harassment - Eslamboly & Barlavi / Tax Law (federal) - Robert Sommers / Technology - Jeffrey Kuester / U.S. Trademarks - Carl Melito / Trade Secrets - R. Mark Halligan / Workers' Comp & Disability - Eslamboly & Barlavi / 

Mark Goodman has an excellent Arizona law firm site, with useful links, with an especially useful index of forms. 

Richard Keyt, a Phoenix lawyer, has a very useful and interesting site, with special attention to internet legal issues.

Other Legal Specialty Websites

The Virtual Chase has particularly good coverage of Internet Law and intellectual Property links.  One of them is UCLA's Online Institute for Cyberspace Law and Policy.

The Internet Case Law Digest is a compilation of summary information on case law relating to Internet issues.

The Intellectual Property business is well served by private practice websites. In addition to Anne Rendall, Mark Halligan, Oppedahl & Larson, et al., above, Ogram & Teplitz and Larson & Taylor should be mentioned. Also Glenn Bacal. Also Daniel Tysver, specializing in computer software and internet issues. 

The Library of Congress has a new search page for copyrights.  Also recommended is a clever and informative tutorial called a crash course on copyright.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has information and a greatly improved search site.  Here is a tutorial for patent searching.  The Delphion Intellectual Property Network provides for patent searches worldwide.  I find it much simpler to search on inventor name, for example, from Delphion than from the USPTO site.  

Federal and state law governing the recording of telephone conversations can be found here and here.

A domain name can be registered or searched from the interNIC website.

Here is a Cyberspace Law Bibliography from UCLA.  See also the Cyberspace Law Institute. 

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office - USPTO - provides a searchable site. So does the IBM Patent Searcher. The two sites provide different search patterns and should be used in conjunction. They used to be monstrously hard to use, but, when noone was looking they recently made it a lot easier. Here are links to other nations' patent sites. The USPTO just made filing a trademark application online idiot-proof. I did one. So can your client. Goodbye easy money.

There is a website for "Source Translation & Optimization's (STO) Internet Patent Search System, a way for people around the world to perform patent searches, and access information on the patenting process. " 

There is an excellent LLRX article on "Researching Intellectual Property Law in an International Context".

All kinds of litigation support is linked from LitNet - ". . . listing over 15,000 service providers, including arbitrators and mediators, bail bondsmen, court reporters, legal form vendors, paralegals, private investigators, polygraph operators, process servers, and word processing and temporary services." The Litigation Guide is a must.  Attention litigators: Want to save some time prepping a witness for a deposition? Have him read The Deposition Guide.  Here is a text on the care and feeding of interrogatories.

Here is a directory of process servers.

Here is a primer on Class Actions. And here a current listing. There is also an internet Class Action Clearing House for those who would like to join in an action in process, or have information to contribute.

The Securities Class Action Clearing House at Stanford will fuel the debate: Are class action lawsuits stifling the economy or protecting the small investor? Here you can find facts to support either side assembled in one place, with the blessing of the SEC. You can also track the progress of particular suits, and read complaints, summaries, briefs and settlements. See also this guide to securities law.

Believe it or not, "The Premier site for bankruptcy information." is not as good as this one.  For someone actually filing for bankruptcy, bankruptcy.com provides guidelines and a directory of lawyers in that specialty.

Official Bankruptcy Forms require the Adobe Acrobat reader.

Here is a tutorial for lawyers doing internet research on medical matters, using some of the following links, among others.  Grateful Med and PubMed may be useful. The Hardin Meta Directory of Internet Health Sources is a very handy jump station. For researching medical data see Martindale's Virtual Medical Center. A doctor's board certification can be checked here.

Genie Tyburski's presentation, Internet Research for Health Lawyers, is outstanding (like everything else she does).  Especially interesting is her approach to sample research questions, in this case "Does marijuana have medicinal value?".

Healthfinder focuses on "...the best and latest information for our primary audience, which is consumers." But it's a good place for lawyers to start (even healthy ones). The National Library of Medicine is authoritative and has good links.

Here is an extremely useful general index and guide to research on International Law. See also Treaties and International Law in the Internet Law Library. Yale has a well organized International Law Page with links to foreign governments, treaties, topical law and organizations. NYU has a Guide to Foreign and International Legal Databases. See also The Guide To European Legal Databases.

Here are links to national government sites, worldwide, and to international institutions by category.

The Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law at Heidelberg provides a Virtual Institute with links to many full text documents and to other international law destinations on the web.

"The Fletcher School Multilaterals Project, begun in 1992, is an ongoing project designed to make available the texts of international multilateral conventions and other instruments."

There is a search tool on the International Trade Law Monitor. See also the Guide to International Trade Law Sources on the Internet.  Here is an article on WTO and GATT research.

The State Department has a "judicial assistance" page with links to assist with civil matters in foreign countries, such as service of process and depositions.

The Library of Congress hosts the database of the Global Legal Information Network, with primary source materials from other nations.  Here is another selective source of foreign primary law.

Probably the best place on the web for Criminal Justice links, from Florida State University. With everything on one page it takes forever to load. Criminal justice statistics - lots of them - are available from the Bureau of Justice Sourcebook. See also the criminal Justice Information Center and the U.S. Sentencing Commission site.  Here is a "toolbox" for Capital Defenders.  Here is an article on how to research criminal records.

Overview:  How to do Business Research.

LII provides an overview on antitrust. The Antitrust Policy page covers the topic in depth. Here is a comprehensive set of antitrust links.  The Qui Tam Information Center is for whistleblowers and their lawyers and their targets. 

Here is a summary of state collection laws.  See also American Collectors Association (ACA).  Here is an analysis of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA).  Here is a site for Statute of Limitations on debts and judgments, with other credit and collection links.

LawResearch has a very useful collection of Insurance Law links.

There is a Senior Law Home Page.  Also New Cases and Materials. The National Organization of Social Security Claimants' Representatives - NOSSCR - has an excellent collection of links. See also Social Security Online / Social Security Handbook / Social Security Rulings.  All about medicare.

The feds now provide seniors.gov, which is designed to be one stop shopping for federal government information of interest to seniors.  The AARP has a useful website for researching senior issues.  Of interest to those who have it made:  estate planning.

Here is a valuable tutorial for researching elder law.

Employee Benefits. ESOP, ERISA, and stuff like that. And here are hundreds of links to all aspects of employment policy. Here's how to get a Personal Earnings and Benefit Estimate Statement (PEBES) from the Social Security Administration.  And here are links to state law on Workers Comp.

The USGS has provided a very handy Guide to Federal Environmental Laws and Regulations. See also The Environmental Professional's Homepage.  The Virtual Chase has annotated links.  

DivorceNet is a good source of information. Contributions are solicited from family law lawyers. The contributions are clearly labeled as advertising under the laws of any state. There is also a website for divorce mediation.

Here is a searchable page devoted to Landlord - Tenant issues, by state, with some foreign materials linked as well.

Here is an article to assist in researching immigration law.

Personal Injury lawyers will want to look at government pages linked on page five, and also Standards and Specifications / other safety related internet resources / Central Notice, featuring class actions, product recalls and more. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety - IIHS - has good personal injury links. So does Goodyear Tire.  Toxic tort litigators will probably want to bookmark Toxlaw and its links. There is a Coast Guard Boating Accident Report database online.

Probably the most comprehensive source on the net for federal and state Income Tax information. See also the Ernst & Young tax links, the and Discoveries in Taxation. Here is the best place on the net, maybe, for trusts and trustees, international.