Copyright Law

The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies

Posted on March 03, 2008
The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, the new book from Between Lawyers' own Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell is now now available for preorder at the ABA Web Store. There's a 15% discount if you preorder now...

Calling All Legal Tech MacGyvers - A Mini-contest

Posted on September 18, 2007
I'm planning to write an article about what I'm calling "MacGyver" technology tricks. I'm assuming that you are familiar with the MacGyver concept (or you can wikipedia it). As an example, consider using a digital camera or cameraphone as a document scanner in a pinch (or sending a document as a fax to a nearby fax machine when you aren't able to print it any other way)...

If It's All About Respect, Why Do They Look So Foolish?

Posted on August 25, 2007
So — what should Nixon Peabody have done when its embarrassing firm non-theme song made its inevitable way onto the Web? (And into the atmosphere of countless homes and offices, as its hapless victims hum and mutter it against their will and better judgment?) If they'd have asked me (or perhaps 95% of the over 1,000 people who have voted in the Volokh Conspiracy poll), I'd have told them the last thing they should be doing is invoking the DMCA...

Facebook for Lawyers?

Posted on August 19, 2007
Tom Mighell and Dennis Kennedy have posted a new episode of their podcast, The Kennedy-Mighell Report (RSS feed here). In this episode, Dennis and Tom discuss the use (or potential use) of Facebook by lawyers, giving some potential benefits and risks, practical tips, and observations about their experiments in using Facebook...

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BlawgWorld 2007: An Introduction to the World of Blawgs

Posted on July 30, 2007
TechnoLawyer's new free eBook, BlawgWorld 2007, features a selected post from 77 different law-related blogs. It's a good introduction to the current state of blogging for everyone, no matter what your familiarity, or lack of familiarity, with blawgs...

Copyright thought balloon: YouTube vs. RSS

Posted on July 26, 2007
Consider and discuss the technical, legal, and/or policy differences, if any, between this and this.

Legal Issues Of Law And Commerce

Posted on July 26, 2007
I'll be on a panel at BlogHer this weekend called Professional Blogging: Art and Commerce — The other side of the professional blogging coin is looking at the business ramification of making money with your blogging. This session will cover the things to consider and that you may regret if you wait to long to address: copyright protection, tax ramifications, managing personal vs...

Announcing the New Between Lawyers Facebook Group

Posted on July 18, 2007
The untold story of this blog is that the Between Lawyers authors spend more time gabbing with each other via email than posting to the blog. During one of our recent quite extended email conversations, we decided experiment with and open up those discussions in a Facebook group so that friends/readers can also play along...

George Lenard On Facebooking Employment Candidates

Posted on July 13, 2007
Here are George Lenard's posts on the subject: Employers Using Facebook for Background Checking: Is It Legal? More on using facebook et al. in recruiting and hiring (Part II) Employers Using Facebook for Background Checking, Part III This might be better suited to Overlawyered than Between Lawyers, but I'm posting it here anyway because it's a great series of posts...

Using Photos and Videos and the Role of the Creative Commons Licenses

Posted on July 10, 2007
Denise Howell raises some questions for bloggers and others who embed YouTube and other videos into their blog posts. Even better, she offers some answers to the questions in her post "Embedding a Headache." Shelley Powers does a great job of summing up some of the key issues and unanswered questions about the Creative Commons licenses in her post "Virgin Bites Creative Commons on the Butt...

Agreeing To The Cloud

Posted on June 28, 2007
As more and better communication and collaboration functions move to the Web (under non-negotiated, vendor-centric terms of use), what are our obligations as both tech- and ethics-savvy lawyers? I for one am not about to give up Gmail. So, what's the best practice? Shun Web services, you simply can't control the data? Use Web services only when you have specific, confidentiality and reliability guaranteeing service level agreements? Use Web services liberally, but acquaint yourself with the applicable terms of use and make sure clients are amenable? I lean toward #3...

Microsoft Provides a Good Illustration of the Metadata Exposure Problem

Posted on June 13, 2007
Ed Botts offers up a great example of how tricky the hidden data, or metadata, issue can be in Microsoft Office. The victim this time is Microsoft. Irony aside, it's important to understand the example and be attuned to the potential problems. Ed's recent post "What's Hidden in Your Word Documents?" also is an eye-opener on the topic for those who are not familiar with the workings of the default settings in Office 2007 (that may include some bar regulators in the US)...

Yet Another Use For Social Media: Narrowing The Defendant List

Posted on May 21, 2007
Blogger co-founder Evan Williams Twitters: "Dear person from law firm who wants to find the right person to threaten to sue at Blogger.com: Nope, not me."

Flashback To Cramming For The Bar

Posted on May 16, 2007
Dennis pointed us to this in email: The (Ultimate) Cheat Sheet to Law and Jurisprudence. Which reminds me: My dad says A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar is excellent.

SLAW on Virtual Law Offices

Posted on May 02, 2007
Steven Mathews, on the excellent SLAW group blog, neatly summarizes some discussion on virtual law offices. Money quote: I could see a metropolis-hinterland kind of effect, where firms put the rainmaker partners in downtown offices, and farm 'the work' out to less expensive premises...

Headline Of The Day

Posted on April 26, 2007
Courtesy of Marc Fisher at the Washington Post, Lawyer's Price For Missing Pants: $65 Million.