Good article about Internet research, specifically for paralegals:
"When it comes to sleuthing for information there are no hard and fast rules for paralegals, except maybe this one: Don’t ignore the Internet.
"The courts may notice if you do.
"Last year, an Indiana appeals court agreed to dismiss a lawsuit because the plaintiff took three years to find a postal address and serve notice of his complaint. In a footnote [fn 3, p 13] to that published opinion [PDF link in article], Judge Michael Barnes noticed there was no evidence the plaintiff had tried looking on the Internet to find defendant Joe Groce. And the court was Google-savvy.
"’In fact, we discovered, upon entering ‘Joe Groce Indiana’ into the Google search engine, an address for Groce that differed from either address used in this case, as well as an apparent obituary for Groce’s mother that listed numerous surviving relatives who might have known his whereabouts,’ Barnes pointed out.
"Mark Rosch likes to highlight cases like that when he leads seminars about online research for Internet for Lawyers, the Southern California consulting firm he and his wife, Carole Levitt, have run since 1999."