The Law Offices of Moschetto & Koplin, lawyers in Bellevue, serving Seattle, Redmond, Kirkland, Renton, Woodinville, Newcastle, Duvall, North Bend, and Snoqualmie Areas.

LISTED BELOW ARE MANY LINKS TO LEGAL (AND SOME JAZZ) RELATED SUBJECTS. IF YOU KNOW OF OTHER LINKS THAT WOULD BE
OF INTEREST, PLEASE LET ME KNOW AT
joekoplin@mandk.net

Moschetto and Koplin thanks Mitsuru Kubota of
Osaka, Japan for checking these links for accuracy.

www.ssa.gov - Social Security Administartion home page. A very useful page for basic information about social security retirement and disability (but don't stop here. For informative social security disability websites which are independent of and not affiliated with the Social Security Administration, see, for example:

www.ssas.com (Social Security Advisory Service)
www.severe.net (a service of Daley, DeBofsky & Bryant, Attorneys)
www.law.cornell.edu/socsec Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute (LII) Social Security Library
www.ssa.gov/disability/professionals/bluebook/2003-version.pdf Disability Evaluation Under Social Security (The Blue Book)

www.biia.wa.gov - If you have a workers comp issue, check out this page. Even though Labor and Industries and the Board of Industrial Insuance Appeals are both state agencies, they are independent, and the Board reviews decisions of the Deaprtment. This is a useful page which explains appeals procedures and has links to the Board's significant decisions. Well worth visiting.

www.secstate.wa.gov - I mainly use this site to check for information about Washington corporations and out of state corporations registered to do business in Washington. Useful for finding out how long a company has been in business, who the registered agent for the company is, etc.

www.dol.wa.gov - I use this site in tandem with the Secretary of State's web page above. Useful, for example, in getting information regarding vehicle licensing, contractor information, especially insurance and contractor bond status.

www1.leg.wa.gov/legislature - portal to the Washington state legislature. Use it to track pending legislation, find out who your legislators are and what they're voting records are, and much more.

King County
www.metrokc.gov - useful as a portal to King County agencies. I use it to access Superior Court, the District Courts, find court forms, as well as visiting the King County Recorder's office at http://www.metrokc.gov/recelec/records/. The Recorder's office has an amazing online search capability. Want to know if anyone has filed a tax lien, judgment, lis pendens, or anything else against your property? Check it out here.

www.LegalWa.org - Free access to all Washington appellate decisions (Supreme Court and Courts of Appeal from 1854 to the present, Revised Code of Washington, Washington Administrative Code, Washington State County and Municipal Codes, links to many other legal resources. Limited search capabilities but a truly useful free resource nonetheless.

www.findlaw.com - access to free cases going back more than a few years. Search by federal or state, by circuit, by district, etc. Many substantive areas and links to attorneys practicing in any given area of interest, legal news, public resources, links to law schools, law reviews, and more.

www.versuslaw.com - a low cost way for attorneys to cover state and federal statutes and case law, and it includes the option to conduct research as a guest.

www.ilrg.com - Their description: A categorized index of more than 4000 select web sites in 238 nations, islands, and territories, as well as thousands of locally stored web pages, legal forms, and downloadable files, this site was established in 1995 to serve as a comprehensive resource of the information available on the Internet concerning law and the legal profession, with an emphasis on the United States of America. Designed for everyone, lay persons and legal scholars alike, it is quality controlled to include only the most substantive legal resources online.

www.nolo.com - this organization has been around for many years, translating all aspects of law into easily explainable and understood concepts. Their self help books are terrific, and at $20.00 a pop, more or less, they are well worth it. When I was doing bankruptcy work I purchased their guide to Credit Repair for non-lawyers and I referred to it often.

www.technolawyer.com Not strictly legal research but an information resource for attorneys interested in all the latest aspects of technology and the practice of law - the latest, coolest gadgets and toys, PDAs, laptops, wireless, digital cameras, scanners, software practice tools, and fun stuff like TiVo.

http://lib.law.washington.edu/ref/legalinfo.html - an unbelievable legal research guide published by the Law Library at the law school at the University of Washington. If you have a question about any aspect of Washington law, you're likely to find an entry point here.

http://library.albany.edu/internet/engines.htmll - Sure, I could spend hours listing out Google, Yahoo, Lycos, etc. etc. but why bother when sites like this have already done the work?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/ Run by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) and the National Libary of Medcine, this is the site to research the medical literature for any conceivable medical issues. Articles can be purchased online or researched at the UW School of Medicine libarary.

Our tort system is under attack as never before at both the state and federal level. Spearheaded by the Washington State Medical Association, the Liability Reform Coalition, big business, and the insurance industry, this movement plays on fears that greedy plaintiffs and their attorneys are driving up insurance rates, in turn driving physicians and hospitals out of business.

In fact, multiple causes drive the increase in insurance rates, including declines in insurance companies' stock market portfolios, setting rates too low in order to capture market share, and the fact that 5% of the doctors commit almost 50% of the malpractice. The plaintiffs' trial bar supports real tort reform, including improving patient safety, more vigorous investigation and discipline of the 5% of doctors who account for the majority of claims, and other steps to reduce claims. Get the facts at:

Jazz (my contention is that jazz and lawyering share a lot in common. Both require diligent training and practice, and you have to be able to improvise on the fly and think on your feet).

www.earshot.org - Earshot publishes a monthly news magazine, provides educational programs and special projects in jazz, and presents nearly 100 concerts annually, including Seattle's major jazz festival. Earshot has established an international reputation for the quality of its programming and services while becoming an integral part of Seattle's vibrant cultural scene.

www.tulas.com - THE local jazz hang for local jazz performers as well as periodic out of town guests. Voted one of the World's 100 best jazz clubs in Downbeat Magazine. This place has the atmosphere!

http://www.kplu.org/ - offers streaming jazz over the internet 24/7. Now in its 20th year of jazz, blues and news from NPR

http://www.wrti.org/ - The FM radio station from Temple University in Philadelphia. I include it here because I grew up in Philly listening to the jazz offerings from this radio station. It is now a split classical/jazz format with jazz from "sundown to sun-up", well worth tuning in. http://www.jazzafterhours.org/ - Jim Wilke is an icon to the Seattle Jazz community. In addition to his Jazz Northwest on KPLU every weekend, Jim produces a weekly jazz show, Jazz After Hours, distributed around the US thorugh PRI International. You can hear Jim every weekend "after hours" on KPLU FM.

And if you're in New York City ... I recently had the opportunity to spend a few days in the Big Apple sampling the local jazz offerings. From personal experience I recommend the food and the avant-garde jazz at the Cornelia Street Cafe (www.corneliastreetcafe.com) in Greenwich Village. If straight ahead jazz delivered by some of the top local talent is your preference, try Cleopatra's Needle ("Cleo's") (www.cleopatrasneedleny.com). For a complete listing of NYC jazz venues, see www.gothamjazz.com/venues/.