Overlawyered.com:
A Sharp Eye for the Ludicrous

Of the two sites reviewed this week, overlawyered.com is certainly the more provocative -- and that's both a strength and a weakness.

What overlawyered.com is very good at is illustrating ludicrous litigation. Consider these onsite examples:

• A beat cop who, after a commission ruling, kept his day job while spending nights in a jail cell just across the state line.

• A hiring discrimination suit filed by an applicant rejected on medical grounds after he told his prospective employer, "I have a microchip embedded in one of my molars that speaks to me and others." (Said a spokesperson for the human rights agency that investigated the complaint: "You have to remember what's crazy to you might not be crazy to someone else.")

Overlawyered.com also has some original, often well-written opinion pieces. Many of the best are by Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow and site founder Walter Olson, who "Investor's Business Daily" dubbed "perhaps America's leading authority on over-litigation."

What overlawyered.com doesn't do so well is provide practical advice on proactively dealing with workplace issues. The site does have an "at the workplace" click-off; it takes you to brief reviews of recent lawsuits, most linked to the sources that first reported them. That's useful, but . . .

Workplacelaw.net: A Sharp Eye for Practical Advice

Workplacelaw.net, on the other hand, is much more focused on advice. That's likely far more up the alley of most "SiteNet Dispatch" readers. After all, the mere perception of workplace impropriety, even for a clearly innocent company, can be a killer for recruitment, retention and productivity - the same things that most savvy real estate functions are striving to promote. Provided by Asset Information Ltd., a Cambridge, England-based publisher and conference organizer, Workplacelaw.net is focused on workplace laws in the UK, long a favored locale for corporate location.

The site usefully breaks its content into three sections: "premises," "health and safety," and "employment." What will you find here? Here are two recent content examples:

• A recent "premises" installment noted a UK construction-regulation amendment that resolves an ambiguity by establishing "anyone who does (or whose employees do) actual design work will be responsible for that design."

• A recent "employment" installment on fuel crisis-related employment issues - particularly whether employers can lay off workers who say the UK's shortage prevents them from getting to work.

Free Site, Fortnightly 'E-Bulletin'

Users who register can search the site's archives. In addition, they can receive fortnightly "e-bulletin" updates on new and changing UK workplace legislation.

Workplacelaw.net is free, but its largess is enlightened. Yes, you will get the occasional, relatively subtle sales pitch from Asset Information (which publishes "Facilities Management Legal Update"). But that, after all, is the price we pay for the Internet's gold mine of free information. Hopefully, the raging popularity of the Net's free gold mine will impel far more legal eagles to get online with workplace advice and counsel. These two sites, however divergent, demonstrate that there's definitely a market here.

A suggestion, if we may, for one cyber-address with big-time potential: How about one site that provides globalizing companies with the complete, global nitty-gritty about the world's multi-faceted variations in workplace laws and customs?

If that happens, perhaps we should retire at least one trusty lawyer joke: "How was copper wire invented? Two lawyers fighting over a penny."

Perhaps.