THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE BEST (AND THE WORST) LEGAL SITES ON THE WEB, by Robert J. Ambrogi, Esq. American Lawyer Media, New York, NY, Second edition, 2004, 417 pp. (Soft Cover). To order click here.
This is the second edition of a superb and wondrous book, an incredibly useful tool for lawyers, and to a large degree, for accountants and consultants as well. It is a monumental effort, produced by an outstanding editor.
The rapid growth of the web and the internet, and the ease with which web sites can be assembled and put online, have led to the growth in the number of a vast array of web sites offering to serve not only the legal profession, but virtually every other business extant. The first edition, in 2001, was half the size of this edition, which gives you a picture of the growth of the internet and its role in practice management. The result has been a conglomeration of sites that range from the genuinely useful, to the frankly commercial and promotional, to the time wasters and spam sites. This collection of the best sites circumvents the heaps of garbage and time wasters, and gets to those sites that lawyers – and many other professionals as well – will find genuinely helpful, thoughtful, and valuable. The aim, clearly, is to get the user directly to the information needed, quickly and efficiently. This the author does magnificently.
It’s a remarkable feat. One need only spend a few hours trying to get to even the smallest part of the information revealed by the book to understand how complex and difficult it is.
Ambrogi, a lawyer who is also well known as an editor of legal publications, has assembled a first class list of genuinely useful web sites for lawyers. The sites are sorted into 27 chapters, each of which covers a different category, and includes web blogs, which mostly didn't exist at the time of the first edition. Significant, and a measure of the quality of the sites chosen, are the criteria Ambrogi uses to make his selection. He judges each site in five categories – overall usefulness to lawyers; content; design and presentation; accessibility and ease of use; and innovation. Included as a chapter is a fine discussion of search sites and the techniques of searching -- a dynamic factor in using the internet.
Most of the chapters address specific aspects of the law -- bankruptcy, corporate law and corporate governance, criminal law and justice, environmental resources, estate planning, family law, intellectuals property, medical sites for trial lawyers and so forth. Then there is a chapter on managing the practice and marketing, and one on sites that may or not be related to the practice, but are nevertheless useful.
Each site listed includes the URL, of course, and is rated by usefulness and relevance to the needs of the professional. Each site has a brief but cogent description of its purpose and content.
The result is a much needed tool – a compendium of sites that make a truly useful contribution of the practice of law.
Only one slight oversight. Not included is The Marcus Letter on Professional Services Marketing, one of the oldest and most widely read (and quoted, and reprinted – including in many of the publisher’s publications and sites) newsletters and web sites of its kind on the internet. Its hard copy predecessor was one of the earliest of the newsletters on marketing for lawyers and accountants, and sprung from the book Competing For Clients, probably the first modern book on marketing for professionals.
THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE BEST (AND THE WORST) LEGAL SITES ON THE WEB is a service to the profession. Because it’s in paperback, you might want to buy two copies, because you’ll use it so often that it will quickly become dog-eared.