Technology & The Trial Lawyer

Diving Deeper

by Susan J. Silvernail

Let's agree on this much: easy access to the Internet is changing the way we practice law. For trial lawyers, in particular, the Internet has opened up seemingly endless possibilities for research. If you are headed t a doctor's deposition, and want to know more about your client's injuries, and treatment for those injuries, you can find out for yourself by searching the National Library of Medicine for medical and medical- related literature at http://www.nlm.nih.gov. Or, in a potential products liability action, if you want to know whether a vehicle has been subject to a recall or consumer complaints, you are no longer at the mercy of the defendant manufacturer. You simply plug in http://www.nhtsa.gov and find out for yourself. There are plenty of examples of web searches that have yielded helpful results for trial lawyers. Recently, I even read about a trial lawyer who has made his shopping habit work for him. He frequents http://www.ebay.com, the auction site, for physical evidence and old literature that helps him win toxic tort cases.

So, if your're reading this column, and thinking to yourself that you have pretty good handle on the basics of searching the web-after all, you can do a Yahoo! Or Google search with the best of them-then prepare yourself for some bad news. As much information as you are reaching with the general search engines such as Google, Alta Vista or Yahoo!, there is more-much more -information out there that these search engines will never reach. Google, the preeminent web search engine, claims a size of around 560 million pages. By contrast, a recent study by an Internet company, BrightPlanet, suggests that the web really contains about 550 billion individual pages, when you include all those pages that are not indexable, or reachable by general search engines. Think you might be missing some information?

What you see in the way of results from general search engines (and most subject directories) is called the "visible" or "surface" web. The information that is locked away in databases that will not turn up in the course of routine searching is referred to as the "invisible" or "deep" web.

Why is so much information beyond the reach of the search engines that we tend to use most? The answer is part technical and part human. Technically speaking, many web pages have barriers that keep the general search engines from indexing them. If the search engine can't index a web page, it can't "see" it. And then, search engines may choose not to include some web pages-not for technical reasons, but as a matter of policy.

At the risk of oversimplifying things, it seems fair to describe the contents of the invisible or deep web at less popular and commercial or more academic than that found on the visible or surface web. Think databases. Think specialized databases.

So, how do you "see" what cannot be seen? In the past, deep web content has been accessible only to those who knew the correct URL for the web site. Now, there are a growing number of sites and services that let you search this invisible web or deep web. Try your hand at these:

INVISIBLE WEB CATALOG

www.invisibleweb.com

This is a directory of over 10,000 databases, archives, and search engines that contain information traditional search engines that contain information traditional search engines have been unable to access. It can be searched or browsed by category, just like the larger Yahoo! Directory.

DIRECTSEARCH

www.invisible-web.net

This is a directory of resources not visible to general purpose search engines. They emphasize free sites, but do include some fee-based content.

LYCOS INVISIBLE WEB CATALOG

http://dir.lycos.com/Reference/Searchable_Databases/

This search engine gives you access to all sorts of online databases.

LEXIBOT

http://lexibot.com/index.asp

Specialized software tool developed by Brightplanet to let you retrieve information from "invisible" or "deep" web resources. Claims to search among more than 4,300 deep web databases and search engines.

WEBDATA

http://www.webdata.com

Another comprehensive guide to searchable databases.

The bottom line here is that when you are searching the Web, you must often go beyond the typical search engines to find the information you need for your case.

Dive deeper!

This article first appeared in the Alabama Trial Lawyers Journal, Winter 2003, Volume 23, Number 1 issue.