International Law

Friendfeed for lawyers

Posted on July 02, 2009
Some time ago I set up a Friendfeed account and plugged in a couple of my feeds. I did not pay it any further attention until recently I noticed a number of my band of followers were subscribing to my Friendfeed. So I checked out why. Via the Twitterverse I was pointed to this great post [...

Twitter - is the party over?

Posted on June 25, 2009
Has what looked like a great service, populated by eager early adopters with like motivations turned into a service polluted by egotists, marketeers and spam artists? Larry Bodine, questioning the value of Twitter as a marketing tool for lawyers, thinks so: I’ve learned that it is a shouting post for relentless self-promoters, a dumping ground for [...

Dead blogs

Posted on June 20, 2009
Scott Greenfield has advice for bloggers who have decided to call it a day: I ask you one thing.  Take it down.  Pull it.  Remove it, once and for all.  Do this for me.  More importantly, do this for you. For my purpose, you’re leaving your litter and cluttering up my blogosphere...

Light at the end of the tunnel

Posted on May 12, 2009
Asked whether he envisaged fees at his British papers such as … the Sun …, he replied: “We’re absolutely looking at that.“

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Rivers of ?

Posted on May 12, 2009
 Rest in Peace, RSS - flame bait from Steve Gillmor. It?s time to get completely off RSS and switch to Twitter. RSS just doesn?t cut it anymore. The River of News has become the East River of news, which means it?s not worth swimming in if you get my drift...

Internet Newsletter for Lawyers May/June issue

Posted on May 08, 2009
In this issue: Beyond collaboration by Jordan Furlong CaseCheck sans borders by Stephen Moore Why should lawyers blog? by Daniel Barnett Words fit for purpose by Joe Reevy Planning an email campaign by Sue Bramall Inksters innovations by Brian Inkster Sweet & Maxwell?s new web presence by Asomi Ithia Voice recognition in practice by James Couzens View the Newsletter...

CaseCheck crosses the border

Posted on April 23, 2009
CaseCheck, headed by Stephen Moore, has since late 2007 been delivering case summaries from the Scottish Courts and EAT in a Web 2.0 environment. Now, in a tie-up with Law Brief Publishing, CaseCheck has added 4,000 England and Wales and EU case summaries from Law Brief Update...

Blowing it

Posted on April 08, 2009
Plenty to ponder about the future not just of the established news industry but also of other old media players in this post from Jeff Jarvis and the numerous comments: You?ve had all that time to reinvent your products, services, and organizations for this new world, to take advantage of new opportunities and efficiencies, to retrain [...

Free Culture - the extended Remix

Posted on April 08, 2009
Remix: making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy (published in the UK by Bloomsbury Academic) is the latest in Lawrence Lessig’s series on regulation of cyberspace. Lessig is undeniably the leading thinker on copyright in the digital age and, though many label him a radical, his arguments derive from those of earlier leading [...

Martindale-Hubbell opens the doors - just a crack

Posted on April 03, 2009
For LexisNexis it’s simple: lawyers want a network developed by legal professionals, for legal professionals, and LexisNexis will provide it. From their recent press release on the launch of Martindale-Hubbell Connected: A survey conducted by Leader Networks in 2008 demonstrated the need for a private, online network for lawyers...

Moral panics

Posted on March 25, 2009
Last night in London the SCL welcomed William Patry - inter alia long-time author of 6,000 pages of Patry on Patents, past Copyright Counsel to the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary and currently Copyright Counsel to Google inc - to deliver its the annual lecture, “Crafting an effective Copyright Law”...

Not a problem

Posted on March 18, 2009
Clay Shirky eloquently states the problem facing the newspaper industry: People committed to saving newspapers [are] demanding to know ?If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?? To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke...

Internet Newsletter for Lawyers & Law 2.0 March/April issue

Posted on March 06, 2009

The future law book is not a book

Posted on March 03, 2009

Don?t you just love comment spam from those who should know better

Posted on February 26, 2009
Denver Personal Injury Lawyer | sharonsmith333@yahoo.com | osullivan-law-firm.com | IP: 72.70.201.98 wrote: I really enjoyed your post. I will have to come back again to read some more of them. Dear Sharon I’m so pleased you not only visited my blog but took the time and trouble to comment so incisively...

The end of print?

Posted on February 25, 2009
We’ve been here before and each time the answer is no. There’s too much in favour of print to bury it prematurely. However, we know that particular types of print are under severe threat. The continuing decline of newsprint in particular is well documented...

Chain Matrix 2

Posted on February 20, 2009
Neo and the rebel leaders estimate that they have 72 hours until 250,000 probes discover Zion and destroy it and its inhabitants. During this, Neo must decide how he can save Trinity from a dark fate in his dreams. - The Matrix Reloaded [aka 2] Back in the real world Land Registry is offering to support [...

Your blog is your brand

Posted on February 18, 2009
In two recent posts Kevin O’Keefe follow-ups on why a law blog does not belong inside your law firm website, on which I’ve already commented. He confirms his view, concerns about maintaining the law firm’s brand notwithstanding: A brand for a good lawyer is not about design, collars, logo’s and the like...

Twitter as a feed aggregator

Posted on February 12, 2009
A couple of months back OPSI set up a Twitter account for @legislation, feeding it with the OPSI new legislation feeds. That will reach out to a wider audience than the feeds themselves, but I wonder what that wider audience will make of it. Evidence is as yet scant (samples: “Wow, this is cool - [...

Valuing complexity

Posted on February 11, 2009
Thanks to Prism Legal for pointing to an analysis that gives the lie to the assertion that complex legal documents cannot be “packaged” (if not “commoditised”). KIIAC are specialists who “create standard templates with clause alternatives for high quality, rapid document drafting”: As part of our work to create document templates automatically, quantify differences among like documents, [...

Reformation

Posted on February 11, 2009
Deep thought (as ever) from Jordan Furlong at Law21 on the future of lawyers a la Susskind. He concludes: If we take another meaning of ?end? ­? an outcome worked toward or an objective for which effort is expended, rather than the more popular meaning of ?disappearance? ? then we could say that this is a [...

Brainstorm on web law at LawCampLeeds

Posted on February 05, 2009
Jane Lambert of NIPC (also NIPC Law and @nipclaw) is organising LawCampLeeds on 7 April, which will address practical solutions to legal problems presented by development and use of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 technologies. I’m sure all you IP/IT lawyers will benefit...

#legalitshow anyone?

Posted on February 04, 2009
Those like me who are experimenting with Twitter Search should find this post by Steven Feldman of interest. He describes how the hashtag #uksnow evolved from a simple hashtag to one which, with the addition of postcode and snowfall parameters (eg #uksnow SW14 2/10), provided a crowdsourced realtime report of snowfall throughout the UK, then [...

Pirates, criminals or would-be honest consumers?

Posted on February 02, 2009
The SCL has published 11 articles arising from its forum entitled ?Legislating for Web 2.0 ? Preparing for the Communications Act??. I was rather taken with Andrew Adams and Ian Brown’s presentation on the futility of seeking technological solutions to enforcing copyright, entitled Keep Looking: The Answer to the Machine is Elsewhere, from which: On keeping [...

The declining value of (legal) news

Posted on January 30, 2009
Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 is the guy when it comes to commenting on the new landscape for news publishing. Back in May last year he posted about The declining value of redundant news content on the web. I’ll illustrate his point with a UK legal news example...

What are lawyers worth?

Posted on January 29, 2009
I’m following with interest the increasingly prolific debate on alternative billing. Read three in particular: Jordan Furlong’s Billing thread on Law21 Toby Brown’s Alternative Billing thread on 3 Geeks and a Law Blog Ron Baker’s Value Billing thread on the VeraSage Institute Blog Moving to value billing from the comfort of the billable hour may not be easy, but [...

Pushing the boat out

Posted on January 28, 2009
There’s a lengthy discussion on Real Lawyers Have Blogs on Why a law blog does not belong inside your law firm website. For me it boils down to this. Effective blogging is you - or a group including you - (as Kevin says) “providing valuable information, insight, and commentary to your target audience”, so don’t hide [...

Who Dares wins

Posted on January 19, 2009
You’d think that a Big Law associate on £150K p.a. would be bright enough to figure that she should use a pseudonym when publishing her raunchy novel on the web. Not so Deidre Dare, Senior Associate at Allen & Overy, Russia. But could it be she didn’t see her future at A & O and figured that [...

Internet Newsletter for Lawyers & Law 2.0 January/February issue

Posted on January 07, 2009
In this issue: Law publishing at the crossroads by Nick Holmes E-marketing for barristers ? Part 1 by Gerald Newman Open access Scottish law reports by Anthony Kinahan New HIP Regulations ? where we are now by Rob Hailstone Introducing an intranet by Helen Dewar New online ventures for OUP by Alison Bowker Enhancing profile with a free information service by Jonathan [...

2009

Posted on December 31, 2008
I usually leave it until the last minute to frame my “binary law” predictions for the year ahead. After all, a lot can happen in a month and it’s of course helpful to have the benefit of everyone else’s predictions first! In the SCL IT & law predictions for 2009 (batch 1, batch 2, batch 3) [...

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