[NEW PRODUCTS]

New Products and Services


West Group launches Internet store

At the recent 1997 NetUsers Conference in New York City, West Group announced plans to launch a comprehensive online store which will be available by the end of the year. The site, www.westgroup.com, will begin as a storefront featuring an online catalog of nearly 4,000 products from West Group. It will allow legal professionals and consumers to view product descriptions and pricing information and make purchases over the Web 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The site will have an easy-to-use search feature enabling users to locate information by topic, jurisdiction, key words or title. In addition, the site will link to other West Group sites such as WESTLAW (www.westlawpro.com), The West Education Network (www.twen.com), KnowX (www.knowx.com), West’s Legal Directory (www.wld.com), and KeyCite (www.keycite.com).

Consumers can purchase products online using a credit card or their existing West Group account number. The site is secure and uses Open Market’s OM-Transact software for transaction processing and PaylinX software for credit card authorization. For more information, visit the West Group home page at www.westgroup.com.

California Law & Motion software released

Attorney’s Briefcase Inc., publishers of legal research software, has released California Law & Motion. The Windows-based program combines civil law and motion topics, related case briefs, and statutory materials into a well-organized research source. Its "intelligent indexing" and hypertext search features help users locate even the most obscure rules, statutes, related cases, exceptions and analyses in seconds.

California Law & Motion also contains an exhaustive treatment of Summary Judgment and Summary Adjudication issues, including full treatment of all the newly enacted court rules. In addition, it features Defaults, Demurrers, Judgment on the Pleadings, Judicial Arbitration, Jurisdiction and Venue, Motions to Strike, Pleading and Service.

Organized and edited by Presiding Justice Paul Turner, Second District, Division 5, California Court of Appeal, and author of several leading opinions on summary judgment law, the program quickly installs on the user’s hard disk.

The introductory price is $129 with semi-annual updates for $99 per year. For additional information, contact Garrett Dailey at 510/836-2743.

Software program to terminate living trusts

Cowles Legal Systems has released TrusTerminator, a one-time entry system that handles every letter of correspondence, document, asset transfer and accounting procedure necessary to terminate a living trust when the grantor is deceased.

The program features a tax correspondence area for individual income, estate and fiduciary tax, including cover letters to IRS and state tax authorities for filing of tax returns, as well as letters to beneficiaries explaining the use of the K-1 form showing their share of taxable income on their individual tax returns. The program also includes letters to the accountant requesting completion of tax returns and notification to the IRS that trust termination is complete.

The system will also create disclaimer documents where a surviving spouse is disclaiming assets, and allows "point-and-click" for selection of assets to be listed on the disclaimer. In addition, it can prepare a Waiver of Disclaimer for use if the spouse opts not to disclaim to protect the law office from potential liability if the potential disclaimant later wishes a disclaimer had been made.

TrusTerminator runs on Windows 95 and is available by calling Jahn Cowles at 1-800/366-1730.

Litigation support software helps organize a case

Gravity Inc. announced the release of SeQuel, the first true 32-bit computerized trial notebook and litigation support software designed to assist in the organization of a case. SeQuel provides evidence tracking features such as case outlines, global notes and outboxes that can be fully edited.

SeQuel users can move fact and expert witness lists, as well as attorneys, defendants and plaintiffs onto their online trial notebook. The software utilizes desktop and laptop commanding features of full text and filter searches, user defined databases and integrated image manager. For more information, call Robin Rawls at 1-800/324-5787.

Compensation survey for in-house lawyers

A recent study conducted by the management consulting firm Altman Weil Pensa and published by the American Corporate Counsel Association reports a nearly 5 percent decline in compensation paid to chief legal officers and more than a 10 percent reduction in compensation paid to recent law school graduates, the latter being traditionally the lowest paid corporate lawyers.

In an effort to make the nearly 300 pages of survey data most useful to corporate managers, AWP has segmented the current survey report differently from previous compensation studies. An introductory "methodology" section is followed by a "departments" section which presents demographic information on participating law departments. The heart of the survey is the next three sections, "salary," "bonus," and "total cash compensation." These are followed by appendices and the survey questionnaire.

The three compensation-specific sections are heavily segmented to provide breakouts of the compensation benchmarking data by geographic region, size of law department, size of company, type of organization, type of ownership, type of salary administration plan, industry, areas of legal specialization, maturity, and years in position. Special consideration is given to single law department data and the profile of new hires.

The complete survey report is available from Altman Weil Pensa for $495. To order, call AWP Publications Department at 610/359-9900.

Asset forfeiture expertise is available on the net

The Asset Forfeiture Network (AFN), which provides asset forfeiture expertise to criminal defense attorneys and corporate/banking counsel, now has a site on the World Wide Web located at http://www.afnlaw.com.

AFN publishes the AFN Library of Briefs, a three-volume library of sophisticated, standardized briefs on a range of forfeiture and related issues. The company was founded by Mark A. Feldman, a former federal prosecutor who specialized in forfeiture prosecutions. AFN also offers extensive case-specific consulting assistance to attorneys.

For more information, call Feldman at 1-800/874-7542.

1998 U.S. Federal Register monthly on CD-ROM

A monthly subscription to the 1998 U.S. Federal Register (Volume 63) on CD-ROM is now available from SOLUTIONS Software Corp. The subscription contains the complete text, tables and graphics of the U.S. Federal Register as published by the U.S. Government Printing Office. SOLUTIONS’ version is fully indexed, and includes Adobe Acrobat software for instant search and retrieval. The Acrobat format provides an accurate reproduction of the publication as it originally appeared in the daily paper editions.

Each day’s Federal Register publication is prepared as a single file that corresponds with the official Volume 63 number "nnn" documents. Subscribers receive one cumulative CD-ROM each month.

The U.S. Federal Register makes available to the public rules and regulations, proposed rules, and notices issued by federal agencies. These include presidential proclamations and executive orders, federal agency documents and updated regulatory news and government grant opportunities for educational institutions and industry.

The company offers the subscription plus monthly Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) updates and an annual subscription to the "All 50 U.S. Code of Federal Regulations (CFRs) on CD-ROM," all for $550 per year. Inquiries may be directed via e-mail to: solution@env-sol.com, or by fax: 407/321-3098.

Panasonic unveils new global Internet faxing

Panasonic Office Products Co. has unveiled a new Internet fax machine, The Panafax UF-770i, designed to reduce phone charges for organizations that send frequent global and long distance faxes. Instead of entering a telephone number, the user dials an e-mail address to send documents, pictures, photos, hand-written messages and e-mail over the Internet.

"Typically, a good portion of a firm’s phone costs relate to faxing," said Gary Winkler, general manager, POPC Facsimile Division. "By sending Internet faxes, an organization saves significantly on its phone bill because long distance telephone charges are virtually eliminated. The user pays only for local Internet or network access, which is usually a fixed cost."

For more information on The Panafax UF-770i, call 1-800/742-8086.

Code of Federal Regulations on Internet

LOIS Inc. has made available the complete and updated full text of all 50 titles of Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) on the LOIS Internet Law Library located at http://www.pita.com.

The company updates the CFR within 48 hours of receipt of official changes published by the Office of the Federal Register. To receive a free one-day pass to the LOIS Internet site, call 1-800/364-2512, ext. 152. For additional information, contact Clark Wigley at 1-800/364-2512, ext. 311.

[CALBAR JOURNAL]