Legal Research

Blawg of the Day -- Excess Copyright

Posted on March 18, 2008
Here's an interesting niche for our Canadian law blog of the week. Excess Copyright deals with the idea that excess copyright enforcement is not good, and that all of the parties in the copyright construct must avoid excess in order for the copyright to be viable and sustainable. It's authored by Howard Knopf, an IP lawyer with Macera & Jarzyna in Ottawa.

Blawg of the Day -- Real Estate Space

Posted on March 17, 2008
Doug Cornelius is a senior attorney at Goodwin Proctor in Boston, practicing primarily in real estate law. He publishes Real Estate Space, a commercial real estate finance law blog, with notes on real estate law and the real estate business from his perspective.

Getting tangled up in a new forum tool

Posted on March 17, 2008
In our book on collaboration tools and technologies, Dennis Kennedy and I discuss alternatives to email as a collaboration tool. Sometimes you need a place to discuss a particular matter, but you want to keep all the messages in one place, rather than separate in each team member's Inbox. With a tool like Tangler, you can do just that. Tangler allows you to create your own discussion forum in seconds, and it's free. You can make the forum public or private, and you can even take code from Tangler and embed the forum on your own website or blog.

Links for 2008-03-13 [del.icio.us]

Posted on March 14, 2008
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ABA TECHSHOW Buzz is Live!

Posted on March 11, 2008
This is a cross-post from the TECHSHOW blog: A few weeks ago I mentioned that ABA TECHSHOW 2008 is experimenting with several new tools that make it easier for our attendees (as well as those who couldn't make it) keep up with what's going on at the conference. Well, this afternoon we launched the ABA TECHSHOW Buzz at www.techshow.com/buzz -- it's the place where all the action will occur once the conference gets started! Here's what you'll see there: -- An aggregated feed of blog posts authored by our ABA TECHSHOW attendees, faculty, and even exhibitors. -- A stream of photos taken at ABA TECHSHOW -- A Twitter stream, with conference updates as well as personal messages from our attendees and others -- A Del.icio.us feed, where you can find links to some of the great sites that are mentioned during ABA TECHSHOW You can see everything on the Buzz page, but if you want it to come to you, we've created RSS feeds you can easily add to your favorite newreader...

Another simple way to share your screen

Posted on March 11, 2008
Here's another free way to share your screen with others -- and it's from Microsoft! SharedView is a program you download to your computer, and you can invite up to 15 people to view your screen. I don't like it as much as Adobe Connect, because it requires the other meeting participants to download software too -- on the other hand, while Adobe Connect doesn't require a download, it's not free. Once you share your screen, you can give up control to others, and that person gets their own personal mouse pointer so you can see what they're referring to when they are talking. There's also a chat module so that you can chat onscreen. It seems that these screen sharing tools are rapidly proliferating -- are you sensing a theme here? Now Available: The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell.

Blawg of the Day -- BankruptcyCanada.com

Posted on March 11, 2008
This week's Canadian law blog is BankruptcyCanada.com. It's published by Earl Sands, a trustee in bankruptcy who is now contributing to the personal bankruptcy training course material that is studied by would-be trustees in bankruptcies. His blog is "helping people and businesses get a fresh financial start."

Blawg of the Day -- Northwest Condo & HOA Law Blog

Posted on March 10, 2008
The Northwest Condo & HOA Law Blog is published by the Washington/Oregon firm of Barker Martin. They are discussing condominium and homeowner association law in both of those states.

Yakkle: Chat and Share Your Screen, All at Once

Posted on March 10, 2008
Yakkle is an interesting new tool. At its heart it's pretty much an instant messaging and chat program -- in fact, you can log in to Yakkle with your Gmail or Google Talk account settings. What sets Yakkle apart is its ability to share your desktop with others during the chat session. Skype, Google Talk, and the other IM programs sure don't do this right now. It's a small download, and uses Java. This is another great example of the new tools that allow us to easily collaborate with each other over the Internet. Now Available: The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell.

Free Ways to Take Advantage of ABA TECHSHOW 2008

Posted on March 07, 2008
If you're in the Chicago and you haven't already registered for ABA TECHSHOW 2008, there are two great free ways to get involved. First, if you're a law student (whether you're in the Chicago area or not), did you know that you can attend the entire conference for free? That's 3 days of great legal technology education, all free of charge. There's no better show than ABA TECHSHOW for those who want to learn more about the technology that's available to lawyers, how to better use the technology you already have, and what to expect in the world of legal technology once you graduate from law school. (The only caveat is that the freebies we give out to our attendees are subject to availability -- they go to paid attendees first). The other great way to experience ABA TECHSHOW 2008 is through our free Expo Hall pass...

Blawg of the Day -- Martindale-Hubbell Blog

Posted on March 07, 2008
Did you know that Martindale-Hubbell had a blog? They debuted it at LegalTech New York, and used it to report on goings-on at the conference. Most of their posts there were more in the nature of product announcements, but since then they have broken out and discussed other topics like law digests, whether blogs cause information overload, and the next big thing in social networking. I hope that the folks at M-H can resist the temptation to make this primarily a blog of product announcements.

Blawg of the Day -- opencontentlawyer

Posted on March 06, 2008
Well, I chose to feature this blog one day too late -- it seems the opencontentlawyer is on a posting hiatus for about a month, due to personal and professional commitments. When he gets back, he'll continue to talk about the idea of copyright and open content.

Blawg of the Day -- Women Lawyers -- Back on Track

Posted on March 05, 2008
As if Nicole Black didn't have enough to do, she now has her third blog. In addition to Sui Generis and Legal Antics, she's now also blogging at Women Lawyers -- Back on Track. The blog is aimed at women attorneys seeking success and happiness in the legal profession. She's discussing such topics as Gen X & Y, the Mommy Track, discrimination, the other half, and more.

Blawg of the Day -- Death Care Compliance Law

Posted on March 05, 2008
Here's an interesting niche blog: Death Care Compliance Law addresses issues in the death care industry, including banks, funeral homes, crematories, cemeteries and individuals. The blog is maintained by William Stalter of Stalter Legal Services in Overland Park, Kansas.

An easy way to get the text out of PDF documents

Posted on March 05, 2008
Cutting and pasting out of PDF documents can be a royal pain. If you're got a copy of Adobe Acrobat, you can export a PDF file to a Word document or even a plain text file, to make extraction of text less of a hassle. But if you don't have Acrobat, check out PDFTextOnline. This site will nearly instantly convert your PDF to plain text, which you can then copy and paste into other applications. A nifty, free way to work with the text in your PDF files.

Blogging at ABA TECHSHOW? Lemme Know

Posted on March 04, 2008
I'm cross-posting this from the ABA TECHSHOW Blog -- if you are planning on live-blogging, or just plain blogging, from ABA TECHSHOW 2008 next week, let me know. We're putting together a master RSS feed that will stream all of the conference blogging in one place. Drop me a line at tmighell(at)cowlesthompson(dot)com, and I'll get you set up. If you don't want to be a part of the main feed, just make sure you use the words "ABA TECHSHOW" in your posts, and we'll try to pick you up.

Two New Features for Your Google Spreadsheets

Posted on March 04, 2008
Back on a Google Docs kick this week, with two new features you might not know about. Well, not exactly new; they've been around for about a month. But new to me, anyway. The first is the ability to create forms in Google Spreadsheets. Instead of creating a spreadsheet that other users must register with Google Docs to see and edit, you can invite people to fill out your form -- these forms can be used for sign-up sheets, surveys, or anything else you can think up. When you create a spreadsheet, instead of inviting people to a document as collaborators or viewers, simply invite them "to fill out a form." That's all there is to it. The second feature is less revolutionary, but perhaps more helpful to those of you who use Google Spreadsheets a lot...

Blawg of the Day -- BC Business Law Blog

Posted on March 04, 2008
Our Canadian law blog this week is the BC Business Law Blog is brought to you by Meldon Ellis of Ellis Business Lawyers in Vancouver. He's commenting on recent legal developments of interest to British Columbia's small and mid-sized business community.

Blawg of the Day -- Texas Injury Law Blog

Posted on March 03, 2008
The Fears | Nachawati firm has offices throughout Texas, and they represent plaintiffs in wrongful death and serious personal injury cases. Their Texas Injury Law Blog discusses those general topics, including auto accidents, dangerous drugs, drunk driving, motorcycle accidents, trucking accidents, and more.

Publishing to the Web -- Literally

Posted on March 03, 2008
There has been a lot of buzz lately about some new sites that allow you to upload documents online, and then embed them to websites for easy viewing. One site that everyone has been talking about is Scribd, where you can upload just about any type of document format and then embed them to your site, or post them to other sites. I took a presentation I gave to some paralegals last year on Internet legal research, and here's how it looks in Scribd: document.write(''); Read this doc on Scribd: Beyond Google and Yahoo -- Internet Legal Research var scribd_doc = new scribd.Document(2198891, 'key-1ynhawq2o2716kr133gs'); scribd_doc.write('embedded_flash_2198891_ihipk'); Then I took the same document and uploaded to a new site, Issuu...

The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies -- Now Online!

Posted on February 29, 2008
I was excited to find this morning that the book Dennis Kennedy and I wrote, The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, is now online! The book itself won't be available for a few more weeks, but you can pre-order now for a 15% discount. If you're going to ABA TECHSHOW, it should be available there -- they are planning on giving away several free copies of the book in some of the sessions as well. Dennis and I are really pleased about how the book turned out -- we hope you like it, too.

Pumping Up Your Practice with a Blog

Posted on February 29, 2008
I'm very pleased to be presenting Pumping Up Your Online Presence with a Blog in a teleconference for the ABA's GP|Solo Division -- it scheduled for next Thursday, March 6, beginning at 1:00 p.m. EST. I'll be presenting with my good friend Jim Calloway, with whom I have spoken about blogs at several seminars. We'll be talking about why blogs are important to a law practice, the best ways to get started with your own blog, and we'll even toss in some discussion about using RSS as a research tool. Hope to see you next Thursday!

Blawg of the Day -- Work it Out

Posted on February 29, 2008
Today's feature isn't technically a "blawg," although it's certainly a law-related blog. Work it Out is "a solution-focused approach to goal attainment," and it's published by Allan Revich of Toronto, Canada. He's active in the Toronto ADR community, and he's discussing conflict management and negotiation on his blog, with an emphasis on workplace issues.

Serve Up Your Google Docs at the Bar

Posted on February 27, 2008
I'm on a roll this week discussing Google Docs and some of the tools that make using it easier than ever. Today, let's talk about the gDocs Bar, a Firefox extension that adds an easy-to-use sidebar displaying all of your Google Docs. Once it's installed, you can view your documents in several different ways -- by document type, according to which folder they are in, or you can search for a document using keywords. If you spend a lot of time using Google Docs, this can be a really useful tool.

Blawg of the Day -- Law of the Land

Posted on February 27, 2008
Our next stop in our periodic tour of Canadian law blogs is Law of the Land -- Canadian Commercial Real Estate Law Blog. It's brought to you by the Real Estate Industry practice group at Lang Michener, and they're talking about such topics as condominiums, financing, leasing, title insurance, environmental issues, and more.

The Digital Edge on ABA TECHSHOW

Posted on February 26, 2008
If you're not already listening to The Digital Edge podcast, you should be. Each month Jim Calloway and Sharon Nelson bring you a fresh batch of great legal technology information -- it's informative and always entertaining. Last month, Sharon and Jim had me on the show to talk about ABA TECHSHOW -- it was great fun, and the podcast ABA TECHSHOW 2008 -- Preview Edition is up for you to download or listen to online. And don't just listen to this episode -- subscribe to the podcast for future episodes.

Another Google Docs Tip

Posted on February 26, 2008
The best part about using Google Docs is the ability to share documents with others, so you can all work on the same document at the same time. But in earlier versions of Google Docs, to share a document you'd have to do it with each separate document, which can be a pain. Now Google has made it easier to share multiple documents with others, with just a few mouse clicks. On the main Google Docs page, just select all the documents you want to share, then click the Share button. An Invitation window will pop up, and multiple invitations will go out to your collaborators. Easy!

Bulk Upload to Google Docs

Posted on February 25, 2008
For you Power Google Docs users out there, here's a nifty tool: the Documents List Uploader is a utility that lets you upload multiple documents from your computer up to Google Docs. If you want to go straight to the download, click here. Once you've installed it, all you have to do is drag and drop Word, Excel, or Powerpoint documents to the Uploader, and they'll automatically be added to your Google Docs account.

Blawg of the Day -- Life Science Law in Canada

Posted on February 22, 2008
Next up on our tour of Canadian law blogs is Life Science Law in Canada. It's brought to you by Mala Joshi, a life sciences lawyer at Blaney McMurtry in Toronto. She's discussing a lot of topics here: Canadian patent and trademark law, biotechnology law, patented medicines, regulations, and food and drug law.

Blawg of the Day -- Visa Lawyer Blog

Posted on February 21, 2008
The Visa Lawyer Blog is published by Jacob Sapochnick, a San Diego immigration attorney. He represents corporations, hotels, restaurants and other organizations, and provides representation in family sponsored immigration matters. He's discussing, as you might imagine, immigration and naturalization issues.

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