Miscellaneous

Searchme: Search Goes Visual

Posted on March 25, 2008
I have been testing the beta version of a new search site that delivers results visually, showing pages rather than descriptions of pages. Called Searchme, it is by no means the first search engine to include images of matching Web pages within search results, but I have never seen one do it so smoothly and seamlessly...

Law Firm Launches Fuel Cell Patent Site

Posted on March 21, 2008
The law firm Thompson Hine this week announced the launch of a new Web site devoted to archiving fuel cell patents. From the announcement:"In an effort to assist the technical community in the advancement and development of fuel cell technology, the law firm Thompson Hine LLP announced that it has launched a fuel cell patent website containing an archive of U...

EverNote Beta: Never Forget Anything

Posted on March 21, 2008
EverNote has long been a popular desktop application among lawyers, who use it to store notes, Web page clips, images, ideas, to-do items and whatever. The "ever" in EverNote came from its appearance, storing all your notes and clips in a perpetual, scrolling tape-like window on your desktop...

Boston's Blogging Judge

Posted on March 21, 2008
In a post earlier this week, I noted the launch by the online magazine Slate of a legal blog, Convictions, with an array of contributors drawn from all corners of the legal world. Notably, one of those contributors is Nancy Gertner, a U.S. district judge who sits in Boston and who may be Massachusetts' first blogging judge...

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Lawyer2Lawyer: Spitzer and the Law

Posted on March 20, 2008
Lawyers considered Eliot Spitzer either a hero or a villain. But as the now-former governor of New York faces possible criminal charges, we explore the case against him on this week's edition of the legal-affairs podcast LegalTalkNetwork. Joining my cohost J...

Slate Launches Legal Blog

Posted on March 19, 2008
The online magazine Slate launched a legal blog this week, Convictions, that will provide commentary from a range of legal professionals, including Slate's Jurisprudence columnists Dahlia Lithwick and Emily Bazelon as well as practitioners and law professors from across the country...

Update on Case Law Libre!

Posted on March 18, 2008
My post yesterday, Case Law Libre!, pointed to the registration-required Law Technology News version of the article. Today, Law.com posted it on the Legal Technology page, where no registration is required.Also, I heard today from Thomas Smith, the University of San Diego School of Law professor who serves as CEO of the experiment legal search engine PreCYdent, which I discuss in the article...

Case Law Libre!

Posted on March 17, 2008
My latest Web Watch column for Law Technology News magazine, Case Law Libre (free reg. required), looks at several recent projects to move case law into the public domain, from Public.Resource.Org to Alt-Law to PreCYdent. Here are the opening grafs:"Feb...

More on 'Duby-ous' Law Firm Video

Posted on March 17, 2008
The Connecticut Law Tribune's Tom Scheffey interviews me for his article today, 'Duby-ous News'?, which follows up on a controversy I previously wrote about at Law.com's Legal Blog Watch surrounding a PR consultant's role in a law firm's staged news program...

Lawyer2Lawyer: Paralegals and Law Practice

Posted on March 17, 2008
The essential role of paralegals in law practice is our topic this week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer. Joining us as guests to discuss this topic are Tita A. Brewster, president of the National Association of Legal Assistants, and Chere Estrin, CEO of Estrin LegalEd and author of the blog, The Estrin Report...

E-mail Marketing Services Compared

Posted on March 17, 2008
Here is a useful feature that compares and reviews the top 10 e-mail marketing services. Top choice is iContact, followed by Constant Contact and Benchmark.

Video: How to Use PreCYdent

Posted on March 12, 2008
I recently wrote here about PreCYdent, a sophisticated search engine for public-domain law. Now, the project's CTO, Antonio Tomarchio, has posted this video showing how to use it and comparing it against commercial legal research tools.

Troll Tracker Sued for Libel

Posted on March 11, 2008
As I wrote here Feb. 25, efforts to unmask the anonymous author of the Patent Troll Tracker blog ended in the author revealing himself to be Rick Frenkel, a lawyer who works inhouse at Cisco. Now, the Daily Journal newspaper is reporting that two Texas patent attorneys, T...

Westcast: 2008 Legal Technology Trends

Posted on March 10, 2008
Kevin Hunt, corporate communications guru for Thomson North American Legal, filmed interviews at LegalTech New York with Law Technology News Editor Monica Bay, Legal Tech Newsletter Editor Adam Schlagman and me. Now he's woven them together in this video about current trends in legal technology...

Lawyer2Lawyer: 'Me Too' Evidence in Bias Cases

Posted on March 10, 2008
This week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, we discuss the recent Supreme Court decision Sprint/United Management Co. v. Mendelsohn, involving the admissibility of "me too" evidence in employment discrimination cases. Our guests are three employment lawyers: Michael Ketchmark, from Davis Ketchmark & McCreight in Kansas City, Mo...

Panel Tomorrow in Boston

Posted on March 04, 2008
I will be participating tomorrow in Massachusetts Continuing Legal Education's 6th Annual Municipal Law Conference. I am on a panel beginning at 11:15, "Open Government Issues: Public Records and Open Meeting Law," together with Assistant Attorney Generals Lorraine A...

Lawyer2Lawyer: Competence and the Immigration Bar

Posted on March 01, 2008
A recent decision of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals opened with these words: "With disturbing frequency, this Court encounters evidence of ineffective representation by attorneys retained by immigrants seeking legal status in this country." This week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, my cohost J...

JD Supra Launches Tomorrow

Posted on February 25, 2008
I first wrote in August about the planned launch of JD Supra and then told you in November that it had scheduled its launch for December. Now word comes from founder Aviva Cuyler that tomorrow, Feb. 26, will be the official launch, and this time it looks as if all systems are go...

Troll Tracker Revealed!

Posted on February 25, 2008
I recently wrote an article and also a blog post about Chicago plaintiffs' lawyer Raymond P. Niro's efforts to unmask the anonymous author of the Patent Troll Tracker blog with his offer of a $10,000 reward. Well, it worked. On Saturday, the blog's author unmasked himself as Rick Frenkel, a lawyer who works inhouse at Cisco...

Lawyer2Lawyer: The Lawyer Candidates

Posted on February 22, 2008
With the Democratic race for president down to two lawyers, how well did the legal careers of Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton prepare them to become our nation's chief executive. That is the topic this week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, as my cohost J...

Low-cost Web Sites - Plus Content to Add

Posted on February 21, 2008
Legal supplies and services company BlumbergExcelsior today announced the launch of Law Site Builder, a low-cost Web site development and hosting service for small- and medium-sized firms. Using a selection of pre-designed templates, Blumberg will create a Web site of up to 10 pages for a flat fee of $350 and then host it for a monthly fee of $75...

Podcast: Interviews from LegalTech

Posted on February 18, 2008
At the recent LegalTech New York, I played roving reporter and, armed with a Zoom H2 MP3 recorder, walked around the show interviewing exhibitors, attendees and show organizers. For this week's episode of the weekly legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, my cohost J...

Demoulas Law Clerk Speaks Out

Posted on February 15, 2008
Paul Walsh, the former law clerk who was the target of the bizarre scheme that led to last week's disbarment of two prominent Boston lawyers, breaks his silence about the case in a post yesterday at Boston Magazine's Boston Daily Blog. Now working for an international law firm in Hong Kong, Walsh said reading the Supreme Judicial Court's two disbarment decisions "brought back a lot of painful memories...

CT Puts Criminal Convictions Online

Posted on February 14, 2008
Via ResearchBuzz comes word that Connecticut now has an online database of criminal convictions, even including motor vehicle infractions.

Fastcase Unveils 'Largest Free Law Library'

Posted on February 13, 2008
There's something happening here. Just two days after Public.Research.Org published 1.8 million pages of copyright-free federal case law online (see my post), the company that provided it with those cases, Fastcase, unveiled an even larger free library of cases, statutes, regulations, court rules and legal forms...

Starbucks to Switch to Free Wi-Fi, Sort Of

Posted on February 11, 2008
The good news: Starbucks is dropping its Wi-Fi partnership with T-Mobile, which charges $9.99 for 24 hours access, and switching to an AT&T plan that will give Starbucks card holders two hours free a day and AT&T broadband customers unlimited free access...

Martindale Enters the YouTube Era

Posted on February 11, 2008
The LexisNexis-owned Martindale-Hubbell law directory announced this week that it is adding law firm videos to its martindale.com online legal directory and its lawyers.com legal-consumer site. One of the first examples is featured on the lawyers.com listing for the Newtown, Penn...

D-Day: 1.8M Pages of Case Law Released

Posted on February 11, 2008
The day we previewed here last week has arrived: The non-profit organization Public.Resource.Org today released 1.8 million pages of federal case law free of copyright or other restrictions, in a joint venture with Creative Commons. The release includes all Supreme Court cases and all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 on...

Sighted: Anonymous Blawg Review Editor

Posted on February 07, 2008
Life has many mysteries, among them the identity of the anonymous editor of Blawg Review, who for some reason opts to keep his who-abouts and his whereabouts a secret. I was intrigued when he wrote last week that he would be at LegalTech New York and invited e-mails from anyone interested in meeting him...

Federal Cases to Go Public Next Week

Posted on February 07, 2008
I reported here in November that 1.8 million pages of federal case law would go public early in 2008 through an agreement between Carl Malamud's nonprofit organization Public.Resource.Org and the legal research company Fastcase. Today, Malamud said the release of those cases is scheduled for next week...

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