Miscellaneous

Gunmen Invade Hospital, Murder Patient

Posted on May 22, 2008
This is a horrifying story from The Virgin Islands Daily News, with no coverage that I've seed from the mainland media. Five gunmen forced their way into a hospital, past multiple layers of security, and shot a patient to death in his bed.

Zittrain and Me at Berkman@10

Posted on May 22, 2008
IMG_0838, originally uploaded by arcticpenguin.In a post earlier this week at Legal Blog Watch, I wrote about the 10th anniversary conference of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Harvard's "courtship" of Jonathan Zittrain to accept a tenured position on its faculty...

Super-Powered Web Sites

Posted on May 19, 2008
Law.com today has a piece I wrote, Super-Powered Web Sites Hit the Jackpot, which reviews Web sites that help you "build memory stronger than an elephant's, have the vision to search across the Web, and develop the ability to communicate from the afterlife...

Legal Channels: Video for Law Firms

Posted on May 18, 2008
Law.com and LegalTalkNetwork.com have collaborated to launch Legal Channels, a service that produces professional-quality marketing and informational videos for lawyers and law firms. The videos are produced by Emmy award winning broadcast professionals (these are the folks who produce my Lawyer2Lawyer podcast) and the finished videos are posted on both Law...

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My Powerpoint on Russian Courts and Media

Posted on May 11, 2008
It was a year ago tomorrow that I left for my trip to Russia. A year later, the trip stands out as one of the most memorable events of my life. After I returned, I gave a presentation in Boston on Russian courts and the news media. I have converted that presentation to Flash and posted it here, should anyone be interested in viewing it...

Lawyer2Lawyer: The Am Law 100

Posted on May 08, 2008
Our topic this week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer is the Am Law 100, which reports that total revenues for the nation's highest-grossing law firms reached $64.5 billion. We discuss the survey and what it reveals about the state of the legal profession with Aric Press, editor-in-chief of The American Lawyer magazine, and Bruce MacEwen, consultant to law firms on strategic and economic issues and author of the blog Adam Smith, Esq...

OUT-LAW, ABA Journal Win Webbys

Posted on May 06, 2008
Winners of the 2008 Webby Awards have been announced, honoring excellence in Web sites in more than 100 categories, and in the law category, the Webby Award winner is OUT-LAW.COM, the IT and e-commerce legal-help site of the international law firm Pinsent Masons...

Lawyer2Lawyer: Case Law in the Public Domain

Posted on May 05, 2008
Legal publishing is a $5 billion industry. Now, the portion of that industry that focuses on publishing and selling court opinions is facing a threat from movements on several fronts to put all federal and state case law in the public domain (a topic I've written about here on several occasions)...

My op-ed today on open meetings

Posted on May 03, 2008
The Boston Globe today published an op-ed I wrote on current efforts to reform the Massachusetts open meeting law: Open the doors to public meetings.

Updates on Two E-Discovery Sites

Posted on April 30, 2008
Updates to two of the sites I discussed in my recent two-part article, "Discovering E-Discovery on the Web" (Part One, Part Two):First, I wrote in the article that DiscoveryResources.org "may be the leading e-discovery portal" and that its Sound Evidence blog, written by e-discovery expert Mary Mack, is "one of the best known e-discovery blogs...

Free AmLaw 100 Webinar Today

Posted on April 29, 2008
Aric Press, editor-in-chief of The American Lawyer, presents a free webinar today in which he previews the results of this year's Am Law 100. The 15-minute program begins at 3 p.m. Eastern time. Register for it at this page.

Lawyer2Lawyer: Polygamy and the Law

Posted on April 27, 2008
The raid of a polygamist compound in West Texas has raised difficult and troubling issues concerning the interplay between the state, religion and the rights of children, women and families. This week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, I discuss the events in Texas with two guests: Betsy Branch, a family-law attorney with the Dallas firm of McCurley, Orsinger, McCurley, Nelson & Downing, who serves as attorney ad litem for several children in the West Texas case, and lawyer and social critic Wendy Kaminer, who has written about the civil liberties aspects of the case at the blogthefreeforall...

Updates on Free Case Law

Posted on April 21, 2008
I've had several posts in recent months about various efforts to move caselaw into the public domain and, once there, to make it more accessible. I also had a recent article about this in Law Technology News, Online Legal Research Revolution. Now, some updates:IT Conversations interviews Carl Malamud, the man behind Public...

Instant Legal Bliss?

Posted on April 18, 2008
That's what a new Web site, SueEasy.com, promises consumers. But one lawyer calls the site "the worst lawyer idea ever." See my post today at Legal Blog Watch.

Lawyer2Lawyer: The Case for the Shield Law

Posted on April 18, 2008
On our legal affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer this week, we discuss the federal shield bill pending in Congress. I have complete details about the show at my Media Law blog.

Mass. Open Meeting Bill

Posted on April 18, 2008
At my Media Law blog, I have this post about the open meeting bill reported out yesterday by a committee of the Mass. legislature. I have also posted the text of the bill. Here are two news reports in which I comment on the bill:Lawmakers ax fines for meeting violations...

Boston Blawger Meetup a Success

Posted on April 17, 2008
Amy Campbell has this picture from last night's meetup of Boston blawgers at Emmets Pub. The occasion was the Boston visit of Kevin O'Keefe, president of lexBlog. Among other bloggers who attended were Diane Levin of MediationChannel.com, Leanna Hamill of Massachusetts Estate Planning and Elder Law, Joshua Paulin of Boston Immigration and Nationality Blog, Doug Cornelius of KM Space, Aaron Silverstein and Matthew Saunders of Saunders Silverstein & Booth, Jessica Foley of Massachusetts Driving Laws, and others that I know I am forgetting...

Free Beer in Boston?

Posted on April 15, 2008
See here.

Boston Massacre Trial Documents

Posted on April 15, 2008
Recently at Law.com's Legal Blog Watch, in a post titled Massacring the Boston Massacre Trial, I wrote about bloggers' critiques of the dramatization of that trial in the recent HBO miniseries, John Adams. Now you can obtain a less dramatic and perhaps more historically accurate perspective, by way of the Law Library of Congress, which has posted details about its collection of documents related to the trial -- some of which are full text versions in PDF.

Boston Blawger Meetup Wednesday

Posted on April 14, 2008
Kevin O'Keefe, president of LexBlog, is coming all the way from Washington state to Boston this week, so the least we can do is get some blawgers and blawgees together to buy him a beer. Our meetup will be this Wednesday, April 16. Tentative time is 6-ish and tentative place is Emmet's Pub...

Lawyer2Lawyer: Law Firms Go Green

Posted on April 14, 2008
With global warming and environmental issues plaguing the world, the legal community is doing its part by going green. This week on the legal affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, we discuss initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility within the legal profession...

Two New Sites Simplify Life after Death

Posted on April 08, 2008
Savvy estate-planning lawyers help their clients prepare for every contingency that may arise after they leave this life. This week brought announcements of two new Web sites, each aimed at simplifying the process of settling a decedent's affairs, even when no estate planning was done...

Hillary Would be Happy With These Results

Posted on April 04, 2008
A new search engine, Picollator, purports to search for images on the Web that match images you upload. It uses pattern recognition to look for matching visual objects in other images. In this way, it claims, is helps "find photos of people more easily than any existing text-based search system...

Google Docs to Enable Offline Use

Posted on April 04, 2008
The problem with using Google Docs as a word processor is that you have to be connected to the Internet. Not a problem anymore. According to this report in The New York Times, Google will start over the next several weeks making its Web-based software available offline...

More on Avvo's Arrival in Mass.

Posted on April 03, 2008
As a follow-up to my post Monday, Avvo Expands to Mass., Florida, here is a report from the Boston Herald: Lawyers Caught in Web of Scrutiny.

Perfect for Lawyers: Gmail Custom Time

Posted on April 01, 2008
Ever wish you'd e-mailed that pleading to the court a few minutes or even a few days earlier? Ever regret having missed the deadline for exercising that option? Ever wish you'd e-mailed a birthday wish to your partner on the actual birthday? Never again miss a deadline -- or at least never again appear to miss a deadline -- thanks to a feature launched today as part of Google's Gmail called Gmail Custom Time...

Avvo Expands to Mass., Florida

Posted on March 31, 2008
Lawyer-rating site Avvo expands this week to Massachusetts and Florida, bringing its coverage to 60 percent of licensed U.S. attorneys and spanning 11 states and the District of Columbia. Launched in June 2007, Avvo's goal is to serve as a consumer resource by rating and profiling every U...

Even More on 'Duby-ous' Firm Video

Posted on March 27, 2008
I mentioned in this March 17 post that I'd been interviewed by Connecticut Law Tribune reporter Tom Scheffey for his article, Duby-ous News?, about the controversy surrounding a law firm's staged news program. Now Law.com Legal Technology has picked up the story.

I Have More EverNote Invites

Posted on March 27, 2008
Following up on my post about EverNote beta (EverNote Beta: Never Forget Anything), I have more invitations available. To request one, send me a note at ambrogi-at-gmail.com.

Award Honors Best Legal Web Site

Posted on March 27, 2008
The Web site of law firm Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice has been named Best Legal Web Site in the Web Marketing Association's annual WebAward competition. The award judges Web sites using an Internet Standards Assessment Report based on seven criteria: design, innovation, content, technology, interactivity, copywriting and ease of use...

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