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MEDIA REVIEWS
Westlaw
Practitioner
Thomson-Reuters
1-800-344-5009
www.westlaw.com
Reviewed by
Al Harrison
The Westlaw® Practitioner Series affords attorneys a novel and effective approach for achieving the seemingly impossible opportunity to have access to a mentor 24/7.
Thomson-Reuters compiled Westlaw® "Practitioner" by acquiring first-hand guidance and insight from knowledgeable and experienced attorneys in each relevant practice concentration, and conjoining a treasure trove of resources into a readily-accessible knowledgebase. This knowledgebase corresponds to a virtual library tightly integrated with a plethora of Westlaw® online databases. Through this novel approach to achieving lawyering excellence, Practitioner has established a new genre of law practice support that behaves as if it were a "virtual mentor."
Practice Concentrations
Practitioner features 20 law practice concentrations: Bankruptcy Litigation, Business Bankruptcy, Business, Construction, DUI, Elder, Employment, Environmental, Estate Planning, Family, Immigration, Insurance Defense, Municipal, Patent Litigation, Patent Prosecution, Real Property, Securities, and Workers' Compensation. From the vantage point of an attorney about to stand in the shoes of a virtual protégé, the protocol for a specific practice concentration invoked via Westlaw® Practitioner is as follows: the appropriate practice-specific homepage is displayed within an Internet browser. Regardless of the particular concentration, the Practitioner homepage is essentially organized into a series of groupings: (1) Current Awareness Section tracking current events and concomitant current legal developments; (2) Court documents including briefs, trial findings, expert witness filings, jury instructions, court orders, docket sheets; (3) Statutes and Regulations; (4) Forms, Checklists and Clauses; (5) Court Rules; and (6) Practice-Specific Miscellany. Each of these sources may be invoked by simply clicking a live link from the Practitioner homepage.
Considering my practice area, I found the Patents Practitioner particularly useful. As is the rule throughout the Practitioner Series, invoking Patent Practitioner is advantageous to both incipient and experienced patent attorneys because of presentation of and immediate access to a closely-tailored, comprehensive treasure trove of patent-specific resources. Notwithstanding, Patent Practitioner is also profoundly informative for corporate counsel and the like who seek to stay abreast of patent-related developments that may impact company business. Thomson-Reuters' NewsRoom provides newsworthy information excerpted from articles, columns, letters, or other section of text that pertain to patent-related matters at-large. Broad subject matter is covered in both a technical context and an industry context.
Forms, Checklists & Clauses enable an attorney to instantaneously access a wide range of patent-related forms, clauses and checklists from the collection of practice guides and statutes. Topics addressed encompass patent prosecution logistics and technology licensing, and both routine and extraordinary post-patent-grant matters. Potentially applicable forms may be expeditiously obtained from either the official forms provided by the U.S. Patent Trademark Office, or from Forms Patent Law Practice or Forms Model Documents—IP. Protégé attorneys have access to model documents, in the form of contracts and agreements, commonly associated with a variety of intellectual property transactions.
For patent attorneys, Thomson-Reuter's integrated patents functions afford convenient and efficient protocols for analyzing the state of the art relevant to particular inventions, and for evaluating potential infringement scenarios. These patents-related resources include: U.S. Patent File Histories, Markman Orders and Related Filings, Claims Versions Comparator (showing red-lined comparisons of patent-claim versions), Graphical Patent Families (depicting how multiple patents are interconnected), and Graphical Patent Claims (affording an overview of evolving patent claims linked to predecessor versions). For attorneys contemplating the feasibility of filing patent appeals and preparing appellate briefs, selected briefs may be retrieved from the collection of briefs that have been filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, and other courts of appeals that have heard cases relating to patent matters.
Virtual Mentoring
The Practitioner Series affords attorneys who engage in virtual law practice, in any of its current incarnations, an ideal treasure trove of Westlaw®-enabled resources which may be readily invoked 24/7, so long as Internet access is available. This virtual mentoring capability has proven itself a quintessential asset for a lawyer's virtual office.
Al Harrison is a member of The Houston Lawyer Editorial Board. He is a patent attorney and intellectual property lawyer practicing with the firm of Harrison Law Office, P.C. Harrison frequently speaks at Bar seminars and institutes about intellectual property issues and law practice management techniques.
Asset
Forfeiture
Law in
the United States
By Stefan D. Cassella
JurisNet, LLC 2007
$165.00 (including 2010 paperback supplement)
Reviewed by
Don Rogers
Asset forfeiture has become an integral part of federal and state criminal law enforcement in the United States. Asset Forfeiture Law in the United States is a comprehensive treatise addressing the historical development of and
current laws affecting federal administrative, civil, and criminal asset forfeiture proceedings.
The book is organized into five parts and 28 chapters. Part I, entitled "Overview and History," consists of Chapters One and Two, and provides an overview and history of federal asset forfeiture laws, including discussion of the reasons supporting asset forfeiture in criminal cases; the differences between administrative, civil, and criminal asset forfeiture proceedings; and relevant factors affecting the government's decision as to which of those types of forfeiture proceedings it will pursue in any given situation. Part II, entitled "Administrative and Civil Forfeitures," consists of Chapters Three through Fourteen, and discusses federal administrative and civil in rem asset forfeiture proceedings from seizure of forfeitable property through trial and post-trial procedures, including standing, the innocent owner defense, and parallel civil and criminal proceedings. Part III, entitled "Criminal Forfeiture Procedure," consists of Chapters Fifteen through Twenty-Four, and addresses in personam asset forfeiture procedures in federal criminal cases from the indictment through trial, ancillary proceedings, and appeal. Part IV, entitled "What is Forfeitable?," consists of Chapters Twenty-Five through Twenty-Seven, and points out the types of assets subject to forfeiture, including the proceeds of criminal activity, instrumentalities of a crime, property facilitating commission of crime, and property involved in money laundering. Part V, entitled "Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment," consists only of Chapter Twenty-Eight, which points out that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against excessive fines can apply to criminal and civil asset forfeitures that are determined to be grossly disproportional to the gravity of the offense. The chapter also addresses standing to raise Eighth Amendment excessive fines claims in asset forfeiture proceedings, procedures courts employ to resolve those claims, and constitutionally-required mitigation of some asset forfeitures to the extent necessary to avoid violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against excessive fines.
The book contains extensive footnotes referencing relevant federal statutes, rules, and cases, and comes with a CD-ROM disc providing a chart matching each federal criminal offense with corresponding federal forfeiture statutes. Lawyers handling federal criminal cases and others in any way involved with federal administrative, civil, or criminal asset forfeiture cases should find the book a highly useful, if not essential, resource.
Al Harrison is a member of The Houston Lawyer Editorial Board. He is a patent attorney and intellectual property lawyer practicing with the firm of Harrison Law Office, P.C. Harrison frequently speaks at Bar seminars and institutes about intellectual property issues and law practice management techniques.
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