Dear Joyce: As an underpaid lawyer in practice for 18 months, I've learned enough to move up to my next job in about six months. One of the ways I'll search is online. Which job board do you recommend for lawyers? -- K.B.

Dear K.B.: I'll tell you a new way to find them, and then you tell me which is best.

A free directory of 3,000-plus job boards -- the biggest collection the wired world has yet seen -- has just gone online as a service of AIRS, a training company that teaches online recruiters how to buff their performance. The AIRS Job Boards Directory is a technology sonnet to niche job boards with links that make access easier and faster.

Niche job boards are career sites that specialize in job seekers with specific profiles -- lawyers, accountants, financial planners, for instance.

By contrast, the big national boards handle all types of workers. And they are flooded with résumés. www.Monster.com, for instance, announced it had collected its 10 millionth résumé. That kind of heavy volume is one reason recruiters and job seekers are turning their attention to specialty boutiques rather than big-box marketplaces.

Writing for AIRS, T.J. Ripley explains: "The candidate who takes the time to post his résumé on a job board actually wants to be found by recruiters and hiring managers; he does not want to be lost in a sea of millions of competitors."

It's been hard to find all the niche boards in a single directory until now. The AIRS effort, for instance, lists 29 sites where you can look for a law job.

You can search by keyword or phrase that matches the skill or profession you're in, or drill down through a Yahoo!-style directory of industries, functions, skills and specialty areas like diversity, college and executive search. You can also search and sort by country, region, state and metro areas.

The AIRS Directory is bound to become a favorite finder site for job seekers, as well as recruiters. But it's nowhere near as qualitative as the print guide produced by Gerry Crispin and Mark Mehler "Careerxroads 2001: The Directory to Job Résumé and Career Management Sites on the Web," found at www.CareerXRoads.com.

Unlike the AIRS product, "Careerxroads" evaluates each of its 500 sites, groups them by many specialties, provides complete contact information, includes a more specific index, sends out monthly updates and answers e-mail questions for free.

The serious job seeker will use both resources, as well as newspaper job ads and networking.

Dear Joyce: I was terminated from a company branch office in one state. The company home office is in another. Can you advise me on the procedure for acquiring a copy of my personnel file? -- D.A.M.

Dear D.A.M.: You can ask the state department of labor in both states; one may be more accommodating than the other, suggests Alisa B. Arnoff, a management (defendant's) workplace lawyer in Chicago.

The Internet is another place to prospect for workplace law questions of all kinds. Most of the data is free. Here's a list of some of my favorite resources: