Avoiding Communication Overload
We are inundated with various means of technology to help us keep track of our daily activities, meetings and research. Cell phones, Blackberries, fax machines, wireless connections all enable the office to be always near at hand. With these new opportunities for receiving a flood of information there is often no relief. An overwhelming amount of data is created every day and you are expected to keep up with the latest and best of that information.
So, where do you turn to gain some help in filtering the amount of new cases, legal articles and new statutes? Hopefully your firm is large enough to have your own librarian. If that is true, you can lean on him or her to connect you to the resources that break the hot topics down into bite-size pieces.
In many cases, firm librarians help to create legal resource pages on an intranet or Web portal to put you in touch with every type of legal resource to support your practice. If you are unsure of what your librarians are doing for your firm, give them a call and I am sure they will share the many services they provide.
If you are not in a large firm or are a solo practitioner, the staff at KCLL can serve as your librarian. You can reach us through the use of the technologies mentioned above so we can connect you to the right resource. In keeping with this goal, our Web links this month describe how to find more information on communications law and related topics.
Training Classes. The following classes will be held in June in the Seattle Legal Research Training Center:
1. Basic Lexis & Westlaw - June 11, noon–1:30 p.m.
2. Advanced Lexis & Westlaw - June 18, noon–1:30 p.m. Contact us at 206-296-0940 to sign up as the classes fill up quickly. No classes will be held in July.
Web Links for Communications Law
By Kim Ositis
For this month’s topic, I found the Communications Law research guide from the Georgetown Law Library to be an excellent resource. It is available online at http:// www.ll.georgetown.edu/guides/communications.cfm. Here are several free Web sites from the guide I found particularly useful.
The Federal Communications Commission has a number of excellent Web sites:
Check out this current awareness blog written by a Seattle Attorney:
- Telecom Law Blog is published by the Telecom lawyers group at Davis Wright Tremaine: http://www.telecomlawblog.com/
- A really good glossary can be found here: ATIS Telecom Glossary contains thousands of definitions for common, and not-so-common, telecom terms, abbreviations and acronyms: http://www.atis.org/tg2k
- A good government agency site: National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce charged with advising the president on domestic and international telecommunications and information technology issues: http://www.ntia.doc.gov
- A few good non-profit Web sites: Telecommunications Industry Association is a non-profit trade association serving the U.S. communications and information technology industry: http://www.tiaonline.org
- Telecommunications Research & Action Center (TRAC) advocates for the interests of residential telecommunications customers: http://www.trac.org
- Telecommunications Policy Research Conference (TPRC)?is a non-profit organization that hosts an annual forum for scholars engaged in research on telecommunications and information issues, and for public- and private-sector decision makers engaged in telecommunications and information policy: http://www.tprc.org
