disLEXia

Saturday, 25. January 2003

Announcing PDF for Lawyers

- it is with great hope and little fanfare that I announce my new project:  PDF for Lawyers.  Right before the blog affliction took me I had been planning to write a book for lawyers on using PDF files.  I never was able to write the book (too much blogging no doubt).  Well, now that I understand how to use Radio better I have figured out how to host this at a different site and use Radio to post to it.  So, that's it.  If you are a lawyer interested in using Acrobat to make your office less paperful (going paperless is a dream) then tune in, drop comments, send me emails with tips and let's all learn more about using Adobe Acrobat.  Oh, and of course it has an XML/RSS feed. [Ernie the Attorney]
09:27 | permanent link | mail this

Thursday, 23. January 2003

Lenz Blog

Just found the blawg of Prof. Karl-Friedrich Lenz who is teaching German and European law at the Aoyama Gakuin university, Tokio.

Mr. Lenz has done some very interesting publications like an Article "Criminal Law and the Internet" and a creative commons licensed book "Limits of the patent system - concrte measures against patent inflation" (both in german).
01:29 | permanent link | mail this

Friday, 22. November 2002

Law and Blogs

Law and Blogs: Panelists Denise Howell (Bag and Baggage) Jenny Levine (Shifted Librarian) Seth Schoen (Consensus at Lawyerpoint) Donna Wentworth (Copyfight and Greplaw) explored how blogs are changing the way legal information is delivered and distributed. Jenny Levine touched on the pivotal role of trust -- how RSS allows us to select information sources ourselves, and the role of librarians to act as connectors, to help us find the tipping point. Blogs have shifted information, by allowing experts to focus on the content, and allowing librarians to be better information shifters and gatherers. Denise Howell touched upon the marketing power of blogs for lawyers -- they're not e-mail, and not contributing to inbox glut. The very nature of weblogs reinforce the elements of trust, frequently updated, honest voice, etc., (citing Goldstein Howe's SCOTUSblog as a highly effective example of a weblog that delivers quality information AND markets the firm). Donna Wentworth framed the question: why blogs matter? (in the education context.) (1) Provides "natural fuel" that is self-replenishing (2) Blog's higher calling: Whistleblowing. Seth Schoen, a programmer, emphasized the clarity that a blog can provide on an obscure complex technical issue, which has parallel applicability to the law.

[Rory Perry's Weblog]
20:07 | permanent link | mail this

Wednesday, 20. November 2002

Exploring better ways to announce court decisions

A post earlier this month by Aaron Swartz raises legitimate questions about how citizens can best be informed when courts announce decisions. Swartz pointed to Cornell University's e-mail syllabus announcement service, which is a good resource, but limited to the US Supreme Court. I run a similar e-mail opinion summary service here at the WV Supreme Court, which is very popular among citizens and lawyers alike. And we have the RSS feeds (1, 2, 3, 4) and official court weblogs (1, 2, 3, 4) where new decisions are announced.

But most courts don't have RSS feeds, so citizens have to simply watch news reports, know which web page to check (either a court site or a specialized appellate litigation site like How Appealing), or which clerk's office to call. All of which seems inefficient.

How can we do it better? I have two ideas. First, courts can agree with Jon Udell, that is, begin to act like XML is for the rest of us, and publish XML opinions directly to the web using a standard definition of elements for court documents. Within that XML document, courts could incorporate standard topical information, such as the codes used by the State Supreme Court Data Project, to categorize the topical information in court decisions. This topical markup would allow machine processing and discovery of court decisions relating to a specific topic.

Second, I wonder if the capabilities of RSS aggregation could be exploited at the case information level. For example, I could modify our case management system to output an RSS file each day that contains item-level data corresponding to each item on the docket sheets commonly used by court clerks to describe the progress of a court case. (e.g., here's the US Supreme Court's docket sheet for Eldred.) Citizens and lawyers could subscribe to that case's RSS feed to be informed about important filings or actions by the court. If the feed contained some top-level topical information, it may also be possible to implement auto-discovery. (e.g. run a search for pending cases related to free speech.)

I've seen the tangible benefits courts can reap from using self-publishing technology, including RSS, and I hope these benefits can continue. Perhaps the real technologists out there (I'm only a lawyer, after all) could let me know if I'm on the right track.

[Rory Perry's Weblog]
22:48 | permanent link | mail this

Friday, 15. November 2002

Redacting electronic Documents

Beware of MS Word documents! [law.com via Ernie the Attorney]
11:55 | permanent link | mail this

Wednesday, 13. November 2002

Last week BigLaw announced the names of those few ...

Last week BigLaw announced the names of those few associates who were promoted to partner (the derivation of the phrase &147;made partner&148; has always eluded me). Each of these associates has spent seven to eight years grinding out routine legal work and racking up billable hours. Their upward career mobility revolves around a long probationary period resulting in an "up-or-out" promotional system which professors Marc Galanter and Thomas Palay call a "tournament" of lawyers. For the rules of the "promotion-to-partner tournament" see Galanter and Palay's more recent 1999 article entitled Large Law Firm Misery: It's the Tournament, Not the Money (from the symposium Attorney Well-Being in Large Firms: Choices Facing Young Lawyers).

When I read the firm-wide e-mail announcing the names of the eight partners-elect, I wondered and worried about those many senior level associates who would not be inducted into the upper echelons at BigLaw. Can it be that those who were passed over really are just a bunch of shlubs for whom law school was a big mistake in the first place? I don&146;t think so. But these highly competent and productive associates now face the difficult question of whether or not there is a place for them within the firm.

In Human Resource Strategy and Career Mobility in Professional Service Firms: A Test of an Options-based Model, Stanley B. Malos, Professor of Management/HRM at San Jose State University&146;s College of Business and Michael A. Campion, Professor of Management at Purdue&146;s Krannert Graduate School of Management, suggest that there is a place for non-promoted associates— in "project-based" firms:

"Project-based firms (i.e., firms that promote fewer associates and thereby maintain higher associate-to-partner ratios) may be willing to utilize less strict up-and-out practices, and to retain a number of non-promoted associates. These firms are interested primarily in associates&146; billable work product, and might well allow them to remain with the firm indefinitely even if they do not make partner. Particularly where associates do routine or specialized work and do not interact much with clients, the knowledge and experience of 'permanent' associates may be useful for the firm, but not useful enough to justify promotion. Associates in firms with less strict up-and-out rules thus may receive higher salaries, perhaps due to their greater experience and lesser need for supervision, or perhaps of necessity because extra compensation is not deferred pending possible promotion."

On the other hand, "options-based" firms tend to maintain a lower associate-to-partner ratio and tend to promote more associates to partners.

By studying 117 of the largest, highest grossing U.S. law firms, Malos and Campion categorize the firms as options-based or projects-based according to the relationships that exist among key human resources indicators and promotion to partnership. The authors conclude that although most U.S. law firms are "probably hybrids that appear somewhere along an options/projects continuum," the lower leveraged, options-based law firms tend to invest in their associates' futures, offering them more mentoring, training, development and overall support. The options-based firms utilize these HR developmental practices to establish associate bonding and loyalty to the firm.

Read these other articles for more about the "up-or-out" promotional rules in law firms:

(1) Up-or-Out Rules in the Market for Lawyers by Brendan O'Flaherty and Aloysius Siow

(2) The Economics of Law Firms: a Study in the Legal Organization of the Firm by Jack Carr and Frank Matthewson

(3) Coming Of Age in a Corporate Law Firm: the Economics of Associate Career Patterns by Ronald J. Gilson and Robert H. Mnookin, 41 Stanford Law Review 567 (1989) [excited utterances]
09:14 | permanent link | mail this

Friday, 01. November 2002

Judge amends decision after reading correction on blog

A former law clerk noted an error in a Fifth Circuit decision on his blog. The judge who wrote the decision turns out to be a regular reader of said blog, and he immediately amended the decision and wrote to the blogger with the news. Judges read blogs. Judges correct Federal court rulings based on blogs. Wow. Link [Boing Boing Blog]
17:47 | permanent link | mail this

Thursday, 24. October 2002

More Law Blogs

So say more and more members of the legal field. In fact, we're looking at dense blawg warnings in all regions (and the first to call this a dense blawg gets it). Tough to keep up, but here's my latest feeble attempt at chronicling the blooms:

I can't believe Ernie, Rick, the Law/Net Marketing Blog and I haven't jumped on this earlier: Goldstein & Howe's SCOTUSblog, the self-proclaimed blogchild of Howard Bashman. Tom, Stephanie, Amy and Erik deliver comprehensive Supreme Court coverage, their first names and their own voices. Color me impressed and happy to see them. [via JURIST and Howard]

Lane McFadden, law clerk to Judge Kleinfeld, blogs from Alaska. [via Howard]

The boy named Soo, a San Diegan, formerly was with this firm, and now ? [via Howard]

Kim Weatherall is an intellectual property/information technology/Internet law lecturer with the University of Sydney. (More here.) [via JURIST]

Christine is a law student at Notre Dame and her blog was IBGR (Inspired By Glenn Reynolds). [via JURIST]

Manhattan 1L Superhyperdemonchild: Code at the speed of light she does not. But code she does; lovely site. [via the Blawg Ring]

Elizabeth ("Janeway Speaks") is a Star Trek fan (naah, I'm not getting sucked into that whole "Trekker"/"Trekkie" imbroglio), and 1L. [via the Blawg Ring]

Nathan Newman is an author, lawyer and progressive. More here and here. [via the Blawg Ring]

Inns Of Court is by an Australian law grad seeking gainful employment. [via the Blawg Ring]

ZaftigGirl is a 1L at McGeorge with a way with words: "call me the abominable snowchick. and then make me melt." [via the Blawg Ring]

Cyberspaces.org has a group weblog on law and technology issues. [via the Blawg Ring]

Echos from the Void (aka Leareth) is written by an Australian Law/Arts student who wonders "if the day will ever come when judges can use more commas and full-stops." [via the Blawg Ring]

I'm guessing the mind behind LegalMind.org is in-house counsel. Somewhere. Emphasis on Internet and securities law. [via the Blawg Ring]

Who'm I missing, hmm? [Bag and Baggage]
11:07 | permanent link | mail this

Tuesday, 15. October 2002

Internet Again

10 Minutes ago the "SYNC" LED on our ADSL modem switchd from red to green. So we are on the net again. Theoretically we where before connected via an Apple Airport with Modem but some confusing Interactions between the ISDN-to-analog converter in our PBX and the Airport resulted in a transferrate of ca. 800 b/s and RTT latency of up to 22000 ms (22 seconds!). So basically Internet was unusable.
11:10 | permanent link | mail this

Friday, 04. October 2002

Stop, in the Name of Bots

FOXNews.com - Stop, in the Name of 'Bots.

Nowadays, it seems as if more and more law enforcement is being done by machines. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be up to the job. And the humans don't want to take responsibility, either.

[ ... ]

Much like the operators of rigged traffic cameras, they're relying on their own institutional power -- and the hassle of opposing them -- to let them get away with near-criminal sloppiness. It's bad enough that you might lose your Internet connection because of such carelessness -- but you could wind up in even worse trouble.

[ ... ]

At the bail hearing for Johnston, Tinney and three other defendants in Houston, the "FBI'"s Kristen Sheldon ... testified that an IP address is, "in very simple terms, a Social Security number. Only one person at one specific time can have that number." In fact, an IP address identifies a computer, rather than a person, and may not even consistently map to a particular machine in networks that use dynamic IP addressing. Midway through the hearing, the presiding U.S. magistrate asked, "What are GIF files?" (Emphasis added.)

This combination of cluelessness and irresponsibility is, unfortunately, not unusual. It also isn't challenged enough. As David Carr writes, who's going to stand up and complain when, if you do, some idiot will probably accuse you of being soft on child pornographers? But those idiots are, well, idiots. When the power to enforce the law is delegated to software employed by people who don't -- or can't be bothered to -- understand it, no one is safe. When you hear that people are using machines to enforce the law, remember the old computer-geek saying: "Garbage In, Garbage Out."

Ask why -- at a time when ordinary people are being asked by politicians and corporations to take more personal responsibility for their actions -- the people who claim to be enforcing the law aren't willing to take responsibility for what they do with their machines. And ours.

[Privacy Digest]
07:59 | permanent link | mail this

Wednesday, 02. October 2002

Court will welcome e-mailed explanations of traffic tickets

Tell it to the judge - or better yet, e-mail it to the judge. County officials are setting up a program under which people who get traffic tickets can e-mail their excuses and explanations to a judge. Until now, they'd have to sit for hours in court, waiting for a hearing. So far this year in the county, there have been more than 1,200 people who want to explain to a judge the circumstances surrounding their traffic tickets. After reading the e-mails, the judges will send their reply - either by e-mail, or an old-fashioned postcard. http://www.nandotimes.com/technology/story/555311p-4377123c.html

[Mike Hogsett asked, "How long until someone writes the automated excuse generator? And starts collecting stats for them so that only the successful ones are used?"] [Dave Stringer-Calvert <dave_sc@csl.sri.com> via risks-digest Volume 22, Issue 28]
18:01 | permanent link | mail this

Monday, 30. September 2002

Radio Category

I have added a category to document my Radio hacks. See http://md.hudora.de/blog/categories/radioNights for further enlightenment.
10:17 | permanent link | mail this

Back blogging!

As you might have noticed this Weblog was broken in various ways in the last few days. Seems all showstopper bugs are ironed out and I can go on blogging. Nice.

You can find some explanation of my problems at http://md.hudora.de/blog/categories/niftyHacks/2002/30/
01:25 | permanent link | mail this