ATLA NET: your link to the world.

This is the final column in the ATLA NET series, and, by now, I hope I have convinced you to subscribe to this exciting new online service for ATLA members.(1) If you are still hesitating, read on. Subscribing to ATLA NET is one of the best ways to get connected to the wealth of legal resources available on the Internet. The ATLA NET Web site contains a number of "hot links," which provide instant access to other Web sites. Other resources can be reached by directing your Web browser--sofware that allows you to navigate the Web--to a site's uniform resource locator (URL) address. For example, if you were using the Netscape browser (highlighted in last month's column), you would: * Click on the "File" pull-down menu, * Select "Open Location," * Type the URL address in the box that appears on the screen (all characters should be lower case), and * Click on "Open." You would then be sent to the home page of the destination you have chosen. The following is a list of some of the myriad online sites that can be useful to the trial lawyer. Supreme Court Decissions. U.S. Supreme Court decisions dating back to 1990 can be found at http://www.law.cornell. edu/supct/supct.table.html. Thomas. The Library of Congress's service for legislative information is at http://thomas.loc.gov/. U.S. Code. The official version is located at http://www.pls.com:8001/his/ usc.html. Code of Federal Regulations. Any federal regulation you need to see can be found at http://www.pls.com:8001/ his/cfr.html. Paul Bernstein is a CPA, practicin0 attorney, and law office automation consultant in Chica,go. He can be reached on the Internet at [e-mail]. U.S. House of Representatives. This site provides access to pending legislation; information about debates and votes; schedules for legislative activity; and information about members, committees, and departments of the House and U.S. government agencies. http://www. house.gov/. Fed World. This service provides links to federal agency sites and lots of government information, including software and technical files that can be down loaded to your computer, recent U.S. government reports from all agencies, and access to the more than 10,000 FedWorld File Libraries. These libraries contain information on business, health and safety, and the environment. You can also order free catalogs that list hundreds of government documents. http://www. fedworld.gov/. American Bar Association. The association's home page provides access to ABA publications and information about the association's history, sections, and committees. It also has links to other Web sites of interest to lawyers. The page can be found at http://www.abanet. org/. Legal Sights. A list of Internet locations collected from the Net-Lawyers mailing list can be accessed at http://www.rbvdnr.com/legals.htm. Net-Lawyers is a "listserv," a resource on the Internet that is accessed by subscription only. Subscribers can send messages to a "host," who automatically forwards it to all subscribers. Anyone who reads the message can then respond. The messages are organized by subject, so subscribers can read only those messages on topics that interest them. FDA. The federal Food and Drug Administration's home page includes a working draft of the current Good Manufacturing Practice Final Rule and FDA safety alerts. http://www.fda.gov/fdahomepage.html. Federal Courts. This page is maintained by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on behalf of the U.S. Courts. The site functions as a clearinghouse for the judicial branch of the U.S. government. It includes a description of how the federal courts operate, a monthly newsletter about the federal courts, recent press releases, and access to court records. http://www.uscourts.gov/. Essential Information. Founded in 1982 by Ralph Nader, Essential Information is a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization that provides information of interest to consumers. It publishes a monthly magazine, books and reports, and provides financial support for consumer-related investigations. http:// www.essential.org/ei.html. Cornell Law School. This Web server integrates both the Gopher-based(2) and the Web-based offerings ofthe Legal Information Institute (LII) at Cornell Law School. The electronic versions of LII publications can be found here, and they provide links to other relevant legal materials on the LII's Gopher server and elsewhere on the Internet. This server offers access to recent Supreme Court decisions (which are distributed on the day of decision under project Hermes),(3) recent decisions of the New York Court of Appeals, the LII's version of the U.S. Code, and many other important legal documents. The Cornell Law School site offers LII's e-mail address directory of faculty and staff at U.S. law schools and is host to the online version of the CorneU Law Review. It also provides information about Cello, the LII's Internet browser, and LII law materials on CD-ROM. Information about Cornell Law School and the Cornell Law Library is also available here. http://www.law.cornell. edu:80/. Netscape. Netscape's home page includes "search engines" to help you flnd whatever you are looking for on the Internet. Just click on one of the search engines, and type in a few key words. In just a few seconds, you will be given a list of sites that match the key words. http://home .netscape.com/home/ internet-search.html. Consumner Product Safety Commission. One of my favorite locations is the CPSC site. This is a Gopher server, and items listed on the main menu include CPSC publications, Federal Register notices, CPSC hotline information, and details about how to get on the agency's mailing list. I accessed the information about how to get on the mailing list, and now I get the agency's alerts automatically by electronic mail. If you type in gopher:// cpsc.gov:70/00/infoser2.txt, you get detailed information about the agency, including telephone and fax numbers and office hours and how to get news releases and other information electronically. gopher://cpsc.gov/. Federal Web Locator. This is a service provided by the Villanova Center for Information Law and Policy. It provides a list of U.S. government Web sites, including those put up by the Department of Agriculture, the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Justice. http://www.law.vill.edu/fed-agency/ fedwebloc.html. Commercial sites of interest. Most major corporations have home pages that offer free and valuable information. Four corporations, URLs that you should know are * http://www.novell.com/ (Novell Corp.) * http://www.ibm.com/ (IBM Corp.) * http://www.lotus.com/ (Lotus Corp.) * http://www.microsoft.com/ (Microsoft Corp.) You can visit these sites to learn about the state of the art of law office automation and technology. This list is a small sampling of the sources of invaluable information on the Internet. One of the best ways to begin exploring these resources is to become an ATLA NET subscriber. Once you do subscribe, remember to help fellow members by telling them in ATLA NET's forums and conferences about resources that you discover. Information sharing has long been one of the strengths of our profession. It helps us better serve ourselves, our profession, our clients, and our country. Notes (1) To subscribe to ATLA NET, contact Law Journal EXTRA! at (800) 90EXTRA, or write to the company c/o The New York Law Publishing Co., 345 Park Ave. South, New York, NY 10010. (2) A Gopher server is text-based software that allows rapid access to material that is listed in menus. (3) Project Hermes was created by the U.S. Supreme Court to publish the Court's decisions online on the same day that they have been issued.