Blogs by law professors now have a hub with a RSS feed. At "Welcome to Law Professor Blogs" you'll find links to about a dozen topic-specific blogs, each focused on a particular subject matter, from Antitrust to White Collar Crime. Their site avoids personal ruminations in favor of resources and links to assist law professors in research and teaching.
Developing database that includes links to primary sources of international law available free online. Organized by The American Society of International Law, with support from the Mellon Foundation, Northern Lights Internet Solutions, and its authors:
Search and reserve corporate names online, make corporate filings and get filing history on business entities formed in Delaware (including 58% of the Fortune 500) under the new "Delaware @ Your Service" system.
Unveiled this week by Governor Ruth Ann Miller, the Corporate Name Reservation and Information service is available at the Division of Corporation’s website . A comprehensive list of Delaware e-Government services is available on the State’s web portal by selecting “Delaware @ Your Service.”
Source: Press Release: 020404 - New Online Corporate Services
Thanks to Sabrina Pacifica for pointing to this resource.
The author of Blog "Flit" is coordinating inquiries after Arabic-language editions of the Federalist Papers, currently in hot demand and short supply in Iraq. He reports that the US Embassy in Jordan, which has been a source, is out and does not plan to reprint. He says that he has found an impending source of reprints at the US Embassy in Egypt.
Flit(tm): Federalist Papers in Arabic IV
I have an American friend who is guest-teaching American legal systems at a law school in Kurdish Northern Iraq. He is looking to distribute The Federalist Papers in Arabic and would appreciate learning of an affordable source. If you know of a source, please Comment, Trackback or email me.
Ross Anderson is a Reader in Security Engineering at Cambridge University. He maintains a collection of links to papers and other resources on the subject of Economics and Computer Security, including Peer-to-Peer issues and Trusted Computing.
"More and more people are realising that information insecurity is often due to perverse incentives rather than to the lack of technical protection mechanisms. " -- Ross Anderson, about the Economics and Security Resource Page
Three Internet law courses this fall at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. Class abstracts and links to reading online.
Researchers will find valuable the guidance from a research committee of the American Library Association about finding, evaluating and using Primary Sources on the Web. Thanks to beSpacific.com
Who needs live TV in the courtroom when there are bloggers on scene? Thanks to beSpacific.com for the pointer to the minute-by-minute blog of John Allen Muhammad trial updates. Kerry Sipe, online news coordinator for The Hampton Roads Virginian-Pilot, is covering the ongoing Virginia Beach trial of the alleged DC/Virginia sniper. 24 postings on October 16 between 9:37 AM and 5:34 PM followed the questioning of each juror and decisions on their selection or release.
Open thread ... what do you think?
A posting at ethicalEsq?: suggests that online legal service delivery is constrained by a "guild mentality" of the legal profession. Quoting: "my experience looking at learned professions from the competition-consumer perspective tells me that the real culprit is the historic "guild" mentality, which fears and opposes virtually every type of innovation in services or marketing. This is especially true if most guild members see themselves as threatened with the loss of business and income, the need to become more efficient, or the pressure to engage in price or quality competition. " The author also points to his personal experience with professional peer pressure against his offering "affordable" alternatives to traditional legal services.
(Read more ... )
In a comment at a note, "What Led to the Demise of So Many Online Legal Websites?" at eLawyerBlog.org, I noted that some progress in using online resources to deliver legal services and support is being made by nonprofits in the area of probono work. One with which I happen to be familiar is an international group that happens to be based here in Hartford, Lawyers Without Borders (LWOB). This nonprofit uses the Internet to connect lawyers in the developed world with non-governmental organizations ("NGO's") and over-worked lawyers in the developing world and in war-torn areas to provide support for human rights and rule of law efforts. Their example could be a model to other probono and public service organizations seeking to tap a variety of legal resources from wide-spread areas.
Removing the profit motive and fear of competition from more efficient delivery channels might make a big difference in the profession's attitude toward online delivery of legal services.
Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School continues building the schedule for Day One of their first conference about weblogs in journalism, education, science, business and politics: The BloggerCon 2003 Weblog: Day 1 Schedule (In Progress)
Scheduled presenters include: Jenny Levine, A.K.M. Adam, Jon Udell, Patrick Delaney, Mathew Gross, Joshua Marshall, Jim Moore, Susan Mernit, Kaye Trammell, Elizabeth Spiers, Scott Heiferman, Chris Locke, Doc Searls, Adam Curry, Halley Suitt, Scott Rosenberg, Glenn Reynolds, Brian Weatherson, Joe Jones.
I plan to drive up from Hartford for Day One, October 4, 2003, and join the conclave. More information about the conference is at their BloggerCon in a Nutshell page.
Insurance Defense Blog editor Dave Stratton points us to online white papers relating to toxic tort defense and other material of interest to insurance people in his post: Independent Insurance Brokers of America Virtual University
DougSimpson.com/blog
Jerry Lawson has created a new blawg, eLawyer Blog, focused on helping lawyers use technology, especially the Internet, to better provide legal services to middle and low income Americans. The site advances a vision of former ABA President Bill Paul, but is independent of the ABA. Jerry has invited several prominent commentators to contribute to this group blog, including John DeBruyn, Ron Friedmann, Richard Granat and Dennis Kennedy. To show how generous he can be, he even added yours truly to his list of Commentators, for which I suggest we question his sanity.
DougSimpson.com/blog
New on the web: The Blawg Review ("Reviewing the Law Reviews") is a group blog providing pointers to new law review articles, scholarly opinions, summaries of articles and announcements of symposia and paper calls. They presently have eight contributing writers, with a diversity of interests including antitrust, intellectual property, bioethics, and more. Several have their own blogs, including Gary O'Connor's Statutory Construction Zone, and Frank Pasquale's What Really Matters. Frank also was co-author of "Beyond Napster: Using Antitrust Law to Advance and Enhance Online Music Distribution." (8 B.U. Sci. L. Tech 451 (2002). Other contributors include Andrew B. Loewensten, Carlton Larson, David Dudley, Stephanie Tai, and two contributors so far identified only as "michele" and "simon."
DougSimpson.com/blog
Statutory Construction Zone Extra posts a copy of their article "LEGAL AND APPELLATE WEBLOGS: WHAT THEY ARE, WHY YOU SHOULD READ THEM, AND WHY YOU SHOULD CONSIDER STARTING YOUR OWN". Thanks to LawTechAdvisor.com for the heads up on this digital authorized 'reprint' of the article originally published in the Journal of Appellate Practice and Process.
Relaunched: Stanford University Libraries Copyright & Fair Use Website
This very handy portal has links to:
* primary materials including statutes, international treaties and cases.
* various exemplar guidelines, articles and communities
* key copyright sites, including a "Copyright Crash Course" at Univ. of Texas
* detailed "Copyright and Fair Use Overview" from Nolo, based upon the book "Getting Permission"
* resources for librarians
* current issues and recent legislation
I'll be exploring this frequently. Thanks to BeSpacific for the heads up on this grand reopening.
Prism Legal Consulting's blog, Strategic Legal Technology commented on one large law firm's choice of document management outsourcer. Ron Friedman at Prism brings much experience in the field of customizing technology to law firms. His blog is one to watch develop. I look forward to him commenting on Digital Rights Management tools, increasingly valuable to comply with Gramm-Leach-Bliley and HIPAA.
Also, he was kind enough to add Unintended Consequences to his BlogRoll. Thanks, Ron.
The syllabus and and reading list for Harvard Law's Program of Instruction For Lawyers: Internet Law 2003 includes weblogged commentary by John Palfrey and Donna Wentworth of the Berkman Center.
The program runs 6/16-20 and addresses Jurisdiction, Intellectual Property, Digital Democracy, Litigation and the Digital Environment and Privacy, one topic each of the five days. Thanks to beSpacific.com for the heads up on this resource.
Donna Wentworth, of the Berkman Center attended and blogged the legal panel discussion at the ClickZ Weblog Business Strategies Conference & Expo in Boston. This conference addressed "the recent emergence of Weblogs into the business world and their rising importance as a medium of communication." The various panelists presented "the latest developments, strategies, and success stories behind what is now becoming known as the Business Blog, or B-Blog for short."
Her detailed notes are in: Harvard Weblogs: The Law of the Blog
Among the panelists was John Palfrey, who works at the Berkman center with Wentworth. She quoted him in part:
"Three or four months ago we created Weblogs at Harvard Law, a blogspace; we put it up and watched to see what happened--like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. Anyone with a Harvard email address can now get a weblog in that space--including untold numbers of alumni, etc.
We've learned three things, pretty quickly: 1.) watch out about becoming an ISP, 2.) be ready for take-off, it happens more quickly than you think and 3.) blogs are good for the Web and good for you.
Thanks for Wentworth for alerting this reader at her site about the law and politics of intellectual property in a networked world, Copyfight.org. She has been with the Berkman Center since 1997 and also hosts The Filter, which has a steady stream of public interest Internet news and commentary, also published by the Berkman Center.
LawSites is a legal blog, or "blawg" that tracks new and intriquing web sites for the legal profession, hosted by Robert Ambrogi, an attorney now practicing in Rockport, Massachusetts. Robert has long experience in practice, as well as serving as an ADR neutral and as a legal writer and editor. He is author of "The Essential Guide to the Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web."
Hopefully, this humble blogger will do well enough to stay off Ambrogi's "(Worst)" list. Meanwhile, much thanks to Bob for the link.