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    Wisconsin Lawyer
    November 05, 2009

    WisBar Is Now a Legal Research Tool

    WisBar, the State Bar’s Web site, is becoming a more powerful legal research tool for you every week.

    Wisconsin LawyerWisconsin Lawyer
    Vol. 82, No. 11, November 2009

    by George C. Brown, executive director

    George BrownWhenever I speak to groups of lawyers, I try to remind them that with each passing week, there is more and more legal knowledge and information available to them on WisBar and that it is easier to retrieve than ever before.

    Let’s go back about a year to gain some perspective on these changes. In October 2008, you could search WisBar and find Wisconsin Supreme Court cases that are available on Caselaw Express, you could search every issue of the Wisconsin Lawyer going back to 1997 for substantive articles about the law, and you could search some section newsletters that contain substantive articles. The searches were apt to be slow and clunky.

    In November 2008, we installed a special piece of hardware – a Google search engine. The search engine on WisBar now uses exactly the same software that powers Google.com. That may not seem like a big deal, but if you had typed “dog bite” into the old search engine, you would have received no results. Nothing. Nada. After the Google search engine was installed, if you typed in “dog bite” you could get as many as 234 meaningful results. Yes. That is a big deal.

    Fastcase, the free member resource for statutory and case law from all 50 states, the federal system, and the bankruptcy courts, became available shortly after that. Fastcase can be searched on its own or in conjunction with a search of the entire WisBar Web site. New cases and statutory changes are routinely available within 48 hours of their release, so this information is always being refreshed.

    Then, the State Bar launched the new free newsletter, WisBar InsideTrack. This is not an electronic version of the old paper newsletter you received. It is much more. InsideTrack delivers right to your email inbox every two weeks case analysis of significant Wisconsin Supreme Court and other decisions and information on developments affecting your practice and profession. This content is searchable on WisBar. In October, InsideTrack earned an Excellence in Electronic Publications award from the National Association of Bar Executives Communications Section.

    In the weeks you do not receive InsideTrack, you can receive Rotunda Report, a biweekly update on developing legislation and supreme court petitions that is available to you for free after you sign up for it. This information also is searchable.

    Finally, you can now search all the seminars produced by State Bar CLE in the last couple of years. These are all available online because after we webcast them, we make them available for additional viewers. You can download the materials and watch and listen to the speakers. If you hold the Ultimate Pass, all this information and knowledge is available to you instantly for no additional charge. Otherwise, you must purchase the seminar.

    A lot has changed in the last 12 months to make WisBar a principal legal research tool. And most of it is included with your membership. Be sure to take advantage of it. 


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