FAMILY LAW DIVORCE AND THE INTERNET

by KENNETH G. RAGGIO

I. SEARCH ENGINES

The following gives an idea of how the different search engines operate.

The search was made for “Raggio” in the various search engines. For instance, AltaVista found the fourth site with Louise B. Raggio receiving the Trailblazer Award and the 16th record of her being a pioneer in Family Law. Yahoo had only two sites but none of the same. Excite had 2,529 documents, with the 20th document being about establishing the Louise B. Raggio Award. Magellan had the No. 1 as Ken Raggio, Attorney at Law. Infoseek had the Trailblazer article about Louise B. Raggio as the first article, Kenneth G. Raggio, Attorney at Law, as the fourth cite, and a newspaper article about Louise B.Raggio receiving the Margaret Brent Award as No.6.

In summary,

www.Altavista.digital.com – LBR #4, 6, 16

www.Lycos.com – LBR #6

www.Yahoo.com – None

www.Excite.com – LBR #20 of 2,529 documents

www.Magellan.com – KGR #1, #2

www.Infoseek.com – LBR #2, #6; KGR #4

The lesson to be learned from this is that each of the search engines have their own way of responding to your request. (Software is now available that will search all web searches for your search, and report back to you.) Note: Since the Raggiolaw Home Page has been up, the current results from search engines may be far different as the engines have picked up the new content of the site.

Surprise! The results now will now have http://www.google.com/ , http://www.yahoo.com/ , http://www.bing.com/ and others at the top. The concept is the same, just fast forwarded several years.

II. JUMPSITES

A. The emerging national jumpsite is ABA Family Law Section site at www.ABAnet.org/Family. For instance, draft standards for lawyers representing children in abuse and neglect cases and principles governing appointment of lawyers and guardian ad litems for children–many times called Amicus Attorneys– are available for dissemination. Section members also can get on listserves.

The ABA Family Law Section homepage is becoming a leading national jumpsite. It has useful information (precis of current Family Law Quarterly articles, Family Advocate articles, and other current developments, plus CLE publications information, plus, proprietary areas for section members). The ABA in the section have committed sufficient resources to make this site a “first stop” in Family Law.

B. http://www.divorcenet.com/ – This site is aspiring to be a national clearing house for Family Law.

C. www.Legal.net

D. www.Raggiolaw.com – General divorce information for the public plus information about pure form mediation, plus jumpsites.

III. RESEARCH SITES

A. www.Law.utexas.edu

B. http://www.ssa.gov/ – Social Security for divorcees, §311, 322

C. www.pbgc.gov/divorce3/htm – How to get QDROs done

D. Crouch Law Firm. International Family Law.

http://adams.patriot.net/~crouch/fln.html

E. www.law.cornell.edu/topics/topic2.htm/# family law

http://www.rosen.com–NC lawyer who remains on the leading edge of web based legal info in family law.

Reggie Hirsch of Houston has made a list of research sites in his recent South Texas article that is posted at his Website (www.yob.com) that has the jumpsites embedded in the article as published.

IV. CAVEAT

The Web has useful sites for the Family Law practitioner; however, the practitioner should remain aware that fast, pointed searches with for fee services (DBT Online, CompuServe, and even Lexis and Westlaw) may be more cost effective for clients, as it may take less time to find the pointed answers than doing Web searches. See this list presented to the Advanced family Law Course.

RAGGIO & RAGGIO, P.L.L.C.

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Raggio & Raggio, PLLC is based in Dallas, Texas. We represent clients throughout North Texas, in the cities of Dallas, Plano, Frisco, McKinney, Allen, Richardson, Irving, Highland Park, University Park, Park Cities, Garland, Mesquite, Rockwall, Fort Worth and Denton, as well as Dallas County, Denton County, Tarrant County and Rockwall County.