Thanks to Jerry Lawson for his kind comments on our blog!!
I keep forgetting that people outside Stark County actually READ my stuff!! What a rush!
From the e-newsletter: “Brooklyn law professor Anthony Sebok weighs in on the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (CAFA). Sebok argues that CAFA is a reasonable law but that the problems it purports to address are minor, if they exist at all. Sebok stresses that CAFA ought not to open the door to wider tort reform, which would have many more drawbacks, he urges, than CAFA itself.”
Read full text http://writ.news.findlaw.com/sebok/20050221.html
Source: FindLaw's WRIT Legal Commentary
25 February 2005
Copyright (c) 2005 FindLaw, Inc. All rights reserved
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Genie Tyburski posts: “Senator Schumer last Friday made wild accusations about Westlaw, charging it with allowing "any employee--from high-level managers to interns"--access to sensitive information. "'We saw what happened with ChoicePoint,' he said, 'but what Westlaw does makes what ChoicePoint did look like child's play.'"
In unrelated news, similar trouble could be brewing for Accurint, LexisNexis and other public records vendors. Since Friday, two unrelated stories made the news concerning illegal use of Accurint and LexisNexis. The vendors' role in detecting the unauthorized use is unclear.
ACCURINT. A King County, Washington Sheriff's Office detective allegedly used Accurint to stalk his ex-wife and her friends. According to recent amendments to charges filed early in 2004, he also ran criminal background checks on employees and clients for the owners of escort services.
LEXISNEXIS. A Department of Health and Human Services employee "was charged Friday with illegally using her computer access at work to promote prostitution.... [She] queried LexisNexis for criminal history and other information relating to a prostitute she believed to be cooperating with law enforcement."
SEE, Officer faces charges of helping escort services evade the law
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 25 February 2005
SEE, Federal employee charged with using computer access to promote prostitution
Kansas City Star, 27 February 2005
RELATED, Stealing Identities
PBS Online NewsHour, 24 February 2005
(Transcript of an interview with two privacy experts.)
RELATED, Bank Loses Tapes of Records of 1.2 Million With Visa Cards
New York Times, 26 February 2005
("Bank of America said ... that it had lost computer backup tapes containing personal information [on] about 1.2 million federal employees ... with Visa charge cards issued by the bank.")
RELATED, Payroll site closes on security worries
CNet, 23 February 2005
("Online payroll service provider PayMaxx shuttered its automated W-2 site ... after a researcher claimed that two security holes had exposed data on more than 25,000 people.")
RELATED, ChoicePoint execs sold stock before leak revealed
The Arizona Republic, 27 February 2005
(Questions the timing of the sale of stock by two ChoicePoint executives.)
RELATED, Not the first time for ChoicePoint
Atlanta Business Chronicle, 25 February 2005
(The "company has been involved in at least 11 lawsuits since 2000 involving possible misappropriation of information." The article also is particularly useful for understanding the need to verify any information found via a public records research system.)”
Source: TVC Alert, The Virtual Chase
25 February 2005
Copyright: 1999 - 2005 Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP. All rights reserved.
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From an e-mail by Jill Eckert McCall and Charlie White: “Many Law Day programs center around lawyers and judges going into the schools to discuss careers in the law. On Law Day 2003, the ABA Career Resource Center launched the Pre-Law School Counselor list serve (CRC-SC Link) as part of its Pre-Law Toolkit Initiative, http://www.abanet.org/careercounsel/prelaw.html. Please review the website, which includes lawyer profiles, tip sheets, a reading list, Q&A, links, and more. The Center's two-sided pre-law handout is attached. It will help anyone who wants to use the opportunity to take Law Day a step further and discuss a life in the law. <<
The ABA's Division for Public Education has a wealth of materials that will help you do presentations on careers in the law, including a downloadable brochure you can hand out to students. Check out the career web page at http://www.abanet.org/publiced/legalcareers.html
Best wishes to you with your Law Day projects—“
Jill Eckert McCall and Charlie White
From Tom Mighell: “If you're looking for criminal offenders, Vinelink looks like it's going to be a great service. The home page features a map of the United States; just click on a state to see the databases offered there -- as of today you'll find databases in 35 states. On the search page, just enter as much information about the offender as you know, and you'll get information about that person's whereabouts. You can also be notified when the offender's status changes."
Check out http://www.vinelink.com
Source: Interner Legal Research Weekly
Volume 6, Issue 6
February 27, 2005
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From Tara Calishain: “Legal information site FindLaw has announced a Real Estate Center, which as you might imagine focuses on real estate law. It's available at http://realestate.findlaw.com .
The site is divided into three broad areas: tenant's rights, landlords, and home ownership. Pick a section and you'll be asked for your zip code. Once you've provided it, you'll be directed to the section (and the attorney pointers on the right side of the page will actually cover attorneys in your area, and not in California.)
Areas are divided up into several sections. The homeowners section, for example, includes sections on buying and selling a home as well as neighbor relations and home construction and improvement. There's also a set of resources available as well.
Over on the left side of the page there's also a lawyer search, keyword search, and forums. Plenty to read here...”
Source: ResearchBuzz #325
28 February 2005
Reproduced with permission of ResearchBuzz (http://www.researchbuzz.com).
Copyright 2005 Tara Calishain. All rights reserved.
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Tom Mighell writes: “Yahoo! has introduced a new service called Y!Q Context Search, which is designed to help you find more relevant content online. As Chris Sherman puts it, it's hard to describe what the Y!Q product does without actually trying it. Download the Y!Q DemoBar and give it a try -- just highlight words on a web page, click "Find Related Pages," and you'll be taken to sites thought to be relevant to those particular words. Yahoo! is offering this service already in its Yahoo! News site.”
Check out:
http://yq.search.yahoo.com/splash/ and
http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3467911
Source: Interner Legal Research Weekly
Volume 6, Issue 6
February 27, 2005
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From Tom Mighell: “The ability to customize your search terms into an RSS feed is coming along nicely (if a bit slowly), and MSN Search is the first of the big search engines to offer it. Just enter a query, and on the results page scroll down to the very bottom. There's an RSS button there that will allow you to subscribe to an MSN search feed for those terms.”
See http://search.msn.com
Source: Interner Legal Research Weekly
Volume 6, Issue 6
February 27, 2005
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Sabrina posts: "Welcome to the Nooked RSS Directory (beta). You can search for corporate RSS feeds by keyword or browse the categories below. If you publish corporate RSS feeds, you can submit them to our directory." [Moonwatcher]
Source: beSpacific - Accurate, focused law and technology news by Sabrina I. Pacifici
25 Febryary 2005
Copyright ©2002-2005 BeSpacific LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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Electronic Discovery Case Database
Gary Price posts: "Preston Gates & Ellis maintains and continually updates a database containing nearly 300 electronic discovery cases collected from state and federal jurisdictions around the United States. This database is searchable by keyword, as well as by any combination of 19 different case attributes, e.g., back-up tapes, allegations of spoliation, etc. Each search will produce a list of relevant cases, including a brief description of the nature and disposition of each case, the electronic evidence involved and a link to a more detailed case summary if available."
Source: The ResourceShelf, 18 February 2005
Dennis Kennedy blogs: “The latest "Electronic Discoverers" column by George Socha and me (Dennis Kennedy) has been published on the excellent DiscoveryResources.org site.
In the column, called "Looking into the Electronic Discovery Crystal Ball for 2005—Predictions, Observations and Opinions," George and I serve up our images from from our looks into the crystal ball for electronic discovery in 2005 and beyond. Perhaps not surprisingly, any look into the future use of technology by lawyers brings back memories of technology discussions from the past. Interestingly, many of the lessons you need to know have already been available for several years.
I think the money quote from the column this month might come from me, for a change:
"In many ways, George, I don't see much mystery about 2005, although I'm sure that we'll see some surprises. The winners in 2005 will be those who make the efforts to learn all that they can, develop personal relationships and potential partners with those in the electronic discovery space, and, perhaps most important, seek out and listen to the wishes, concerns and recommendations of their clients. It will be a year to get out from behind your desk and work with people rather than paper."
Source: DennisKennedy.com, 24 February 2005
And the Winners Are ...
In the news: “If you're an in-house lawyer eagerly awaiting the broadcast of the 77th Academy Awards, you'll no doubt be disappointed at the lack of corporate counsel movies (or even roles) nominated for one of those handsome gold statuettes. In celluloid, as in real life, litigators hog the limelight. Yet, due diligence will reward the tenacious counselor-cum-critic with a small collection of movies featuring in-house lawyers. Here are the awards for the Best Corporate Counsel Roles and Films.”
Read full text
Source: Law.Com's Daily Legal Newswire
25 February 2005
Copyright 2005 ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Bibliography on Weblogs and Blogging
Genie posts: “Susan Herzog, Information Literacy Librarian at Eastern Connecticut State University, compiled an 8-part bibliography on Weblogs and blogging, with a focus on blogs run by libraries and librarians. It covers articles and interviews about blogging, libraries that blog, blogging tools, select library blogs, books on blogging, studies on blogging and presentations on blogging. It looks like the compilation has been submitted for publication to The Reference Librarian.”
Source: TVC Alert, The Virtual Chase
25 February 2005
Copyright: 1999 - 2005 Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP. All rights reserved.
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From Sabrina Pacifici: "The Latest Initiative in Congress: Blogging
· As referenced here on February 13, Rep. Pence has a blog; Sen. Patrick Leahy has been blogging since January 4, 2005; Rep. Mark Kirk launched his blog January 9, 2005; and Rep. Katherine Harris began blogging on January 28, 2005.
Topic(s): Blogs, Congress, E-Government
Source: beSpacific - Accurate, focused law and technology news by Sabrina I. Pacifici
24 February 2005
Copyright ©2002-2005 BeSpacific LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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Sabrina posts: "The NewPR Wiki, resources on legal problems, provides news, links and documentation that relates to blogging on and off the job."
Source: beSpacific - Accurate, focused law and technology news by Sabrina I. Pacifici
January 24, 2005
Copyright ©2002-2005 BeSpacific LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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New website gives patients access to medical research
"Publishers and US voluntary health organizations have teamed up to provide medical research information to the public. Scheduled for pilot launch in spring 2005, patientINFORM (www.patientinform.org) will provide patients and their caregivers with free access to up- to-date, reliable research about specific diseases, initially cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. The information will be integrated into materials created for patients by the participating health organizations and will link to free full-text research articles and additional selected material on journal websites."
Source: The ResourceShelf, 22 February 2005
EMPLOYEES MISSING OUT ON 401(K) SAVINGS
From the e-newsletter: “Many workers are letting free money slip away in the form of matching 401(k) contributions from their employers - and it'll take more than a friendly reminder to convince them to seize that opportunity. While employees lack very basic knowledge about their 401(k) plans, it's not necessarily because they weren't provided with that information. Instead, they simply haven't retained it or they haven't pursued what they have learned. . .”
Read full text
401(k) Plans for Employees
SCIENTIST EXAMINES WORKPLACE GERMS
From the e-newsletter: “You probably clean vigorously at home, at least occasionally. But how often does this happen at work, the valiant efforts of the janitorial staff notwithstanding? Maybe not as effectively as you might wish or suspect, according to a five-city study of germs found in office settings.”
Read full text
Employees' Rights: Workplace Health & Safety
Source: FindLaw's PUBLIC ADVISOR
A Weekly FindLaw Newsletter Providing News and Resources for the Public
24 February 2005
Copyright (c) 2005 FindLaw, Inc. All rights reserved.
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From Charlie White: “You can buy all your Law Day products through our online store, which now has every product available. Just access http://www.lawday.org/ldstore.html and you'll be in the store.”
Source: Email from White, Charlie. "Law Day Online store open." 23 February 2005.
Genie Tyburski posts: “A new feature at the LexisNexis Lawyers.com Web site helps people find a lawyer in their area for their specific legal problem. Attorney Match prompts potential clients for information about their location and legal issue. It then returns a list of participating lawyers who match the legal need. The individual submits an e-mail request for help, and the lawyer chooses to respond, or not.
Lawyers pay an annual subscription fee to participate. While the service might help those building a new practice, lawyers should review the categories available. Make sure the one(s) you represent are present in the list and clearly defined. I imagine some consumers might not know how to categorize their legal problem. And when I tried filling in the form this morning, it forced me to select a category even though my fictional legal concern (special education) was not represented.”
SEE, LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell Launches Attorney Match
Press Release, 23 February 2005
Source: TVC Alert, The Virtual Chase
24 February 2005
Copyright: 1999 - 2005 Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP. All rights reserved.
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In the news: “ ‘Podcasting,’ which might evoke images of sci-fi fly fishing for some, could be the next big thing in continuing legal education. Hugely popular with bloggers, podcasting -- the "pod" comes from Apple's popular iPod music player -- is a way to distribute digital audio files, which can be heard on an MP3 player or a computer, or burned on a CD. With law-related podcasts growing in number, Robert Ambrogi listens for signs of a CLE revolution and points you to the best podcast directories.”
Read full text
Source: Law.Com's Daily Legal Newswire
24 February 2005
Copyright 2005 ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved.
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From the e-newsletter: “Apple Computer Inc. released new versions of its popular iPod digital music player Wednesday, cutting prices and expanding memory capacities. The price of the 4-gigabyte iPod mini was cut $50 to $199. A new 6-gigabyte version will sell for $249. The battery life of the second-generation mini models has also been improved.”
Read full text
Source: THE PRACTICE PAPER, Edited by Joel R. Zand, Esq.
A FindLaw Resource for Solo Attorneys and Small Law Firms
23 February 2005
Copyright (c) 2005 FindLaw, Inc. All rights reserved.
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From the e-newsletter: “The way you type is as unique as your eye color or speech patterns and can be used instead of a password to protect your computer, researchers at Louisiana Tech and Penn State say. Their discovery will bring Louisiana Tech its first direct royalty income, university president Daniel D. Reneau said in signing a joint licensing agreement with BioPassword Inc. of Issaquah, Wash.”
Read full text
Source: THE PRACTICE PAPER, Edited by Joel R. Zand, Esq.
A FindLaw Resource for Solo Attorneys and Small Law Firms
23 February 2005
Copyright (c) 2005 FindLaw, Inc. All rights reserved.
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From Sabrina:
· "ChoicePoint Victims Have Work Ahead, Eternal Vigilance Is Price of Credit
(Free Registration required)
· Dodging some ID theft not so easy
· Hacking Attacks Rarely Made Public, Experts Say”
Source: beSpacific - Accurate, focused law and technology news by Sabrina I. Pacifici
23 February 2005
Copyright ©2002-2005 BeSpacific LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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Genie posts: “PC Magazine offers a tip for making Windows XP (Service Pack 1 or 2) boot up faster. The tip includes advice on disabling unnecessary services, editing the start up configuration, switching to manual IP addressing, disabling the Recent Documents History, and more. It's one of the few articles available that actually explains which services are necessary to the operating system. The tip is re-printed from the book Windows XP Speed Solutions.”
Source: TVC Alert, The Virtual Chase
24 February 2005
Copyright: 1999 - 2005 Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP. All rights reserved.
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Posted by Genie Tyburski: “The Federal Judges Biographical Database at the Federal Judicial Center recently added a new search feature, which limits retrieval to current judges. If you want to find biographical information for a judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, for instance, follow the link for the database (mid-way down the page). Then select "Court" and "Limit Query to Sitting Judges." Choose your court from the drop down list and the option you want for sitting judges. Press search, and the bio for the judge should appear in the resulting list.”
Source: TVC Alert, The Virtual Chase
23 February 2005
Copyright: 1999 - 2005 Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP. All rights reserved.
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Posted by Jerry Lawson: “Kevin O'Keefe argues that blogging benefits both lawyers and the public:
American lawyers have a moral and social obligation to serve the public. Providing free legal information via a blog whether it be to corporate officers, in-house counsel, consumers or small business people serves the public two ways.
One, legal information will be made freely accessible 24/7 at the World's library - the Internet. According to the Pew Foundation, the Internet is now Americans' 'go to' place for information.
Two, the image of our legal profession will be improved. A recent ABA study found our reputation to be at an all time low. In the same study, the public said we lawyers can improve our image by providing legal information to the public via the Internet, of all places.”
Source: eLawyer Blog, 22 February 2005
From the blog: "The research branch of the U.S. Department of Justice has issued a call for research on the reliability and appropriate standards for fingerprint identification, according to a report in yesterday's Chicago Tribune.
From the Tribune story:
Four years after scuttling a study into the reliability of fingerprinting, the research arm of the Justice Department is seeking answers to fundamental questions about the grandfather of forensic science.
The National Institute of Justice recently called for researchers to explore such crucial issues as how to measure the quality of fingerprints lifted from crime scenes and the accuracy of comparisons made by law-enforcement examiners.
The research solicitation seeks to "provide juries with increased information about the significance and weight of fingerprint evidence" and also to create tools "to improve the fingerprint examination process," said Catherine Sanders, spokeswoman for the Office of Justice Programs, which includes the institute.
The agency's decision is the latest example of an unmistakable shift in the previously defiant world of fingerprint experts. Until recently, they had pointed to nearly a century of convictions in U.S. courts to dismiss calls for a closer examination of their discipline.
The institute's solicitation is "very significant because it's recognizing that there is an area that needs to have research done, and they're willing to step up to the plate and fund it," said Ronald Singer, president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.
The article quotes an FBI forensics instructor who says that the FBI will probably issue standards within a year, including a minimum number of points needed for declaring a match."
Source: Blog 702, 22 February 2005
In the news: “In-house lawyers are finding themselves at the center of a legal maelstrom as employees are becoming more willing to sue over religious bias. EEOC figures show that religious complaints spiked in 2002 and have nearly doubled in the last 10 years. What makes religious disputes especially challenging is that while companies are honing diversity policies that encourage acceptance of differences, employees with religious complaints often insist on the right to stand apart from their colleagues.”
Read full text
Source: Law.Com's Daily Legal Newswire
23 February 2005
Copyright 2005 ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Genie blogs: “Ballard Spahr is proud to announce the addition of research tips by Mary Ellen Bates to The Virtual Chase. Bates' research tips provide insight into the techniques and resources professional searchers use to find information. We launch this feature with a tip entitled "Googling Better," which illustrates 4 ways to improve Google searches.
Mary Ellen Bates is founder of Bates Information Services, Inc., which provides business research to business professionals and consulting services to the information industry. Look for announcements about future tips in TVC Alert.”
Source: TVC Alert, The Virtual Chase
23 February 2005
Copyright: 1999 - 2005 Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP. All rights reserved.
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From Mary Ellen Bates' newsletter: "Every good researcher maintains at least a small collection of bookmarks of her favorite web resources. It's the virtual equivalent of the "ready reference" shelf of books that librarians use to answer the majority of their questions. And some researchers (and you know who you are) have bookmark files that run into the hundreds. While it is nice to have handy access to key resources, it can be difficult to manage and, more importantly, find information buried in a large bookmark file.
A new solution to this problem is Furl (www.furl.net), a "social bookmarking" service. What is social bookmarking, you ask. The idea is similar to the social networking services such as LinkedIn or Orkut, or Amazon.com’s "people who bought this book also bought these books." If other people have bookmarked the same site you just bookmarked, perhaps you would be interested in seeing the other sites they bookmarked as well.
I am not convinced that this is an efficient resource discovery technique, but the features of Furl have certainly caught my attention. In a nutshell, Furl lets you bookmark pages to the Furl site, annotate the bookmark, and assign keywords ("controlled vocabulary" to us librarians) to the bookmark. Furl not only stores that information in your My Archive area of its site, but it also archives a copy of the page as it exists when you bookmark the page. Whoa! That means you can, in essence, build your own mini version of the Wayback Machine (www.archive.org). While the personalization features of MyYahoo, MyJeeves and other search engines offer some annotated-bookmark features, these are generally tied to marking pages found through a web search results page, and none of the my-[search engine] archives the full text of the page being bookmarked.
What else can you do with your "Furled" pages? You can run a search of your bookmarks, which actually goes out and searches the current version of all the bookmarked pages, not just your annotations of that page. Work with me here... what that means is that you can build your own searchable version of the web, or at least that corner of it that you are particularly interested in. (If the search terms don't appear in any of your Furled pages, Furl returns the first 300 search results from a LookSmart web search.)
You can also choose to search the universe of Furled pages – not just your own but those of all other Furl members. The search results page shows the links to Furled pages and a snippet showing your search term in context, the number of other Furl members who have Furled the page (an interesting indication of the relative influence of that page, at least within the Furl community), and a link that lets you add that page to your own Furled bookmarks. One more click and you can see comments people made when ~they~ furled the page; again, a potentially useful perspective into what other Furl members are thinking. Interestingly, the results of an entire-Furl search are relevance-ranked based on PeopleRank (note the similarity in naming to Google's PageRank). The more Furl members that Furled the page, the higher its PeopleRank.
So, what do I use Furl for?
* I see a thought-provoking article and think, "hmmmm, looks interesting, but I'm not going to have time to read it in the next few weeks. It's likely to disappear from this newspaper's site before then. Rather than print it off, I'll just Furl it and read the archived copy later."
* I am conducting web research and want to save a large collection of white papers, reports, or other resources. While I can save them to my own computer, I want a copy on another server that I know is backed up daily.
* I see a web site that I know I will need to use in a month or two. My short-term memory isn't what it used to be; I would rather Furl it, with a long note reminding myself of why I care about this, than try to find it a month from now.
* I am preparing for a presentation that includes demonstrations of web sites. While I can build an HTML page of the URLs I want to show, loading the bookmarks on Furl ensures that, even if the site I want to show is down, I can show the archived page from my Furl collection. I can even filter my Furled bookmarks by topic; for a recent presentation, I loaded all my bookmarks into Furl and tagged them with a topic name of "Melbourne 2005". When I started my talk, I just filtered the bookmarks for that topic and the attendees never had to see my other Furled bookmarks.
* I want to share my personal view of the web with others. While I could always set up a blog, a different approach is to let my friends and colleagues subscribe to an RSS feed of the Furled bookmarks (and my associated annotations) I chose to make publicly available."
Source: Mary Ellen Bates' Tip of the Month
23 February 2005
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Sabrina Pacifici posts:
**Guide to International Refugee Law Resources on the Web
Elisa Mason's guide directs readers to key texts and resources available on the Web that can help shed light on, and provide a context for, many of the issues currently being deliberated in the refugee law arena.
**Notes from the Tech Trenches: Factiva Finds New Moorings in Rough Seas
Cindy Curling's insights and reflections on the recent changes that have altered the availability of the Factiva databases will no doubt be of interest to the community.
**FOIA Facts: Balancing the Budget, One FOIA Request at a Time
Recent headlines about a FOIA request which will generate costs estimated at almost $400,000 prompted Scott A. Hodes to examine the issue for this month's column.
**The Role of Peer to Peer File Sharing in Law Firm Marketing
Andy Havens describes how a popular P2P application can be leveraged as an innovative tool when used to accomplish specific marketing objectives.
**Burney's Legal Tech Reviews: Laptop Security - Tips and Product Recommendations
Brett Burney offers a range of common sense security precautions to assist you in protecting your laptop while traveling, as well as recommendations for cost effective gadgets and carrying bags in which to discretely transport your precious cargo.
**Metaforix@Health - Older Americans, Healthcare, and the Internet: Reactions to the Kaiser Report on e-Health and the Elderly
Lois C. Ambash provides an in-depth critique of the Kaiser report, as well as extensive links and documentation for additional perspective on this significant topic.
**LawProLinks
New additions on a range of categories including blogs, upcoming conferences, web people finding resources, a new online job search source, and news on and uses for RSS newsfeeds.
**LLRX.com Bookstore
Topics this month include privacy, e-government, search engines, marketing and internet security.
**And don't forget LLRX Court Rules, Forms, and Dockets, the only such free searchable database, updated and maintained by Margaret Berkland
Source: New on LLRX.com for February 13, 2005
LLRX.com
13 February 2005
Copyright © LLRX TM, Law Library Resource Xchange, LLC. All rights reserved.
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Sabrina blogs: "By Chris Jay Hoofnagle, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, Putting Identity Theft on Ice: Freezing Credit Reports to Prevent Lending to Impostors.
· "This article argues that the third actor, credit granting institutions, are culpable for a large number of identity theft cases. Institutions enable identity theft by maintaining lax credit granting practices, ones that make it easy for impostors to get credit in victims' names...This article proposes a fix to address lax credit granting practices."
· Related references on ID theft"
Source: beSpacific - Accurate, focused law and technology news by Sabrina I. Pacifici
21 February 2005
Copyright ©2002-2005 BeSpacific LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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In the news: “If you practice law and use a computer, you must be a whiz at creating files in the Portable Document Format, eh? Or at least you should know all about PDF files. The format has been adopted as the standard for electronic filing in the federal courts. Many other government agencies are following suit. But don't rush out and buy Adobe Acrobat just yet -- read this article first.”
Read full text
Source: Law.Com's Daily Legal Newswire,
18 February 2005
Copyright 2005 ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved.
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Posted by Jerry Lawson: “The recent report named "Not In The Public Interest - The Myth of Municipal Wi-Fi Networks" received quite a bit of news media attention.
It's best to take its thesis--that publicly owned wi-fi networks are evil--with a grain of salt. eWEEK.com reports that "the New Millennium Research Council is actually owned and sponsored by Washington lobbying firm Issue Dynamics Inc., whose clients include most of the major telecommunications companies in the United States. Those companies have been active in opposing municipal wireless and broadband efforts." Wi-Fi Networking News has good coverage of this issue.”
Source: eLawyer Blog, 18 February 2005
Genie posts: “Northern Light's commercial search service might be back in business. Tara Calishain outlines the pros, the cons, and how much it costs.”
RELATED, Best publication on searching
Pandia, February 2005
(Calishain's Web Search Garage wins Pandia's award for the best publication on searching.)"
Source: TVC Alert, The Virtual Chase
18 February 2005
Copyright: 1999 - 2005 Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP. All rights reserved.
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From the e-newsletter: “Google has released a new beta version of its toolbar with some new features. The new toolbar is currently available at http://toolbar.google.com/T3; unfortunately it's still only available for Internet Explorer (@*%!) The new toolbar is currently also available only to customers in the US, but it's planned that the new features will be expanded to international markets.
New features in the new Toolbar include a spellcheck (typing into Web forms leads to correction ideas from the Google Toolbar. I can see this getting real useful or real annoying.)
There's also an AutoLink: whenever users see a US address on a Web page, clicking on it links the address to an online map. That's cool. The feature also links unique numbers to relevant information -- package tracking status, VIN information, ISBN number information, etc.
Finally there's a WordTranslator: hover your cursor over a word and the WordTranslator feature will display the word in French, Italian, German,
Spanish, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Japanese, or Korean. That feature is going to come in really handy."
Source: ResearchBuzz #323
17 February 2005
Reproduced with permission of ResearchBuzz (http://www.researchbuzz.com).
Copyright 2005 Tara Calishain. All rights reserved.
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Tara Calishain reports: "Yahoo announced last week that their toolbar is now available for Firefox. The toolbar, which you may download at http://toolbar.yahoo.com/firefox, is available for Windows only at the moment though versions for MacOS X and Linux are supposed to be available shortly. (Yahoo Anti-Spy for Firefox is noted as "coming soon" on the Web site.)
Toolbar features include searching (durhey), search history, a one-click function to add RSS feeds to My Yahoo, and translation tools based on Altavista's Babelfish. The toolbar's free, of course."
Source: ResearchBuzz #323
14 February 2005
Reproduced with permission of ResearchBuzz (http://www.researchbuzz.com).
Copyright 2005 Tara Calishain. All rights reserved.
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Tom posts: “A few years back David Maister, an international management consultant to professional service firms, wrote in his book True Professionalism that, based on a survey of firms he worked with, in excess of 50% of lawyers merely tolerated or hated the work they did and the clients they did it for. How incredibly sad! I know many lawyers who fit into that category.
The point came to mind when I saw a posting by copywriter Bob Bly on being passionate about what you do. It really is a matter of common sense that one works harder and is more successful when they are doing what they enjoy. Actually, to these lucky people it isn’t work, it is a passion. I have long recommended that lawyers’ marketing efforts should be aimed at landing the work they enjoy doing for clients they like doing it for. It will make marketing easier to commit to and more enjoyable to implement with that focus. “
Source: The Legal Marketing Blawg.com, 13 February 2005
From Genie Tyburski: “LawMeme reports on testimony concerning proposed amendments to the federal rules of civil procedure on discovery of electronic documents. "Plaintiffs' attorneys and public interest groups argue that the proposed amendments put new and undue burdens on requesting parties to justify the value of documents they have not yet seen before the responding party is compelled by the courts to produce them."
Source: TVC Alert, The Virtual Chase
17 February 2005
Copyright: 1999 - 2005 Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP. All rights reserved.
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Sabrina Pacifici posts: “The Financial Times and The Economist now provide RSS feeds. The Financial Times requires a subscription to portions of its respective content, so be aware that the newsfeeds will be likewise restricted if you are not a subscriber. The paper is currently offering links to 14 content areas on this webpage. The Economist has two rather limited feeds, one to the print edition table of contents (weekly) and one to stories published by Global Agenda (weekdays). [via NevOn]
Source: beSpacific - Accurate, focused law and technology news by Sabrina I. Pacifici
17 February 2005
Copyright ©2002-2005 BeSpacific LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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P.S. If you were using the feed, you would have come across “Skewering the Lawyers: Congress deals a blow to class actions—but the basic tort system is unchanged.”
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From the blog: "Dennis Kennedy has helpfully referred his readers, of which I am gladly one, to Professor Ribstein's recent post The law and economics of blogging. Dennis has his own thoughts, here, on the professor's posts. The passage I like in the professorial post is this:
... the most valuable blogger posts are what I would characterize as “loss-leaders” – that is, information made freely available by experts as a way of marketing or publicizing their expertise. The instant and cheap broadcasting enabled by the web makes such marketing or publicity cost-effective.
It's the same thing that many legal bloggers out there are saying, Kevin O'Keefe and Larry Bodine being two obvious examples. Larry Smith said something similar in February 2003 in an article entitled "When 'Value-Added' Really Means Value Added". He said:
... the future belongs to those law firms that have figured out what marketing professional services is all about. ... It is all about giving away intellectual capital - tons of it. The institutional mindset that develops as a result will pay supreme dividends down the line."
Source: Feedmelegal, 17 February 2005
Posted by Robert Ambrogi: "Because I only understand things by tinkering with them, I've decided to tinker with podcasting." So explains Lawrence Lessig as he joins the ranks of lawyer/podcasters -- or as Denise Howell calls them, plawdcasters.”
Source: Robert Ambrogi’s Lawsites, 17 February 2005
From the e-newsletter: “All the cool kids have iPods these days, it seems. If you're a cool kid or want to be a cool kid, check out the new search engine for iPods, FINDiPod.com (http://www.findipod.com/) Looks like it's a meta-search engine tooled for the iPod.
While there are pointers to a variety of products and searches on the front page, there's a search too -- at the top of the page. You search by keyword, whether you want to run a "deep" or "fast" search, and what "channel" you want to search. channels include iPod, iPod Mini, iPod Shuffle, iTunes, and the usual variety of acoutrements (cables, software, cases, headphones, etc.)
I left the search on deep, turned the channel to iPods, and searched for "ogg vorbis". (Ogg vorbis is a type of audio encoding.) I got 205 results, which included title, snippet, URL, search engine the result came from, quick view (which opens up the page under the search result listing) and a link to open the page in a new window.
Relevance was good at the top of the results, catching discussions about Ogg Vorbis compatibility with iPod and technical issues. At the bottom of the page of 20 results, not so good, with reviews of the Rio Karma and an article called "An Introduction to Compressed Audio with Ogg Vorbis." Still, the beginning results were useful enough that I'd experiment with this search engine a bit more.”
Source: ResearchBuzz #323
15 February 2005
Reproduced with permission of ResearchBuzz (http://www.researchbuzz.com).
Copyright 2005 Tara Calishain. All rights reserved.
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Genie Tyburski posts: “EContent profiles Jabber, Inc., maker of Jabber IM and Jabber XCP. Jabber IM is a secure instant messaging product while XCP "is a more robust presence, messaging, and XML-routing infrastructure for firms that want to build real-time applications, systems, and services."
Source: TVC Alert, The Virtual Chase
17 February 2005
Copyright: 1999 - 2005 Ballard Spahr Andrews & Ingersoll, LLP. All rights reserved.
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FDA Promises Action on Painkiller Safety
From the e-newsletter: “The Food and Drug Administration promised prompt action Wednesday on recommendations from advisory committees probing the safety of popular painkillers, but urged the advisers to balance the risks and benefits of the drugs. Vioxx was pulled from the market Sept. 30 after a long-term clinical trial indicated some patients suffered heart attacks or strokes. Similar safety questions have risen concerning the related drugs Celebrex and Bextra. The advisory committees are hearing from government officials, physicians, researchers and the public in three days of meetings before voting on recommendations for these prescription drugs, known as Cox-2 inhibitors.”
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Source: FindLaw's PUBLIC ADVISOR
A Weekly FindLaw Newsletter Providing News and Resources for the Public
17 February 2005
Copyright (c) 2005 FindLaw, Inc. All rights reserved.
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From Ken Kozlowski: “My weblog, Ohio Law, has been up for a few months now, and I have enjoyed doing it both as an informational resource and a way to keep myself updated. Aside from some off-topic posts that occasionally make it to the blog, I have settled on some resources that I will be posting on every time I find something of interest. They include:
- Supreme Court of Ohio (SCO) oral arguments and links to streaming video
- Case summaries of SCO opinions that have been handed down
- Information from the Reporter’s Office
- Links to stories or summaries from Gongwer News Service
- Updates on the still surviving sanctions motions stemming from the election dispute cases
- New legislation (introduced or passed or signed) from the Ohio General Assembly
- Anything new on the 2006 race for Ohio governor. I am looking at the web sites of Montgomery, Petro, and Blackwell and will add some of the Democrats to the watch list soon.
- Relevant stories culled from the Ohio News Network site
- General library information gathered from other library web logs
- new technology info
- anything else I think might be good to know
I would encourage anyone who needs this type of information delivered to their desktop to take advantage of the wonders of RSS. Get yourself a news aggregator like Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com) and start receiving the feeds and/or posts. There are some great web logs out there covering a myriad of topics of local, state, and national significance. Of course, please subscribe to the Ohio Law blog at http://ohiolawinfo.blogspot.com.”
Source: An email from Ken Kozlowski, “Update on Ohio Law web log” 16 February 2005
Sabrina I. Pacifici posts: “The Openness Promotes Effectiveness in our National Government Act of 2005 (OPEN Government Act, S. 394) was introduced today by Senators John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont). For related documents on this bill which has bipartisan support on the Hill, as well as from associations, press, and think tanks, see the following:
· From Senator Leahy's website, this link provides access to two documents: 1) press release - Cornyn, Leahy Introduce Bill To Promote Openness In Government; 2) and Statement of Senator Patrick Leahy, Introduction of the "Openness Promotes Effectiveness In our National Government Act", February 16, 2005.
· From the Project on Open Government, this backgrounder, which states: "If enacted, the legislation would substantially enhance and expand the accessibility, accountability, and openness of the federal government."
Topic(s): Government Documents, Legal Research,
Source: beSpacific - Accurate, focused law and technology news by Sabrina I. Pacifici
January 27, 2005
Copyright ©2002-2005 BeSpacific LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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Can We Tape?
From Gary Price: “Chart shows 'tape recording laws at a glance' for all 50 states. Indicates whether consent of all parties is required, if there are criminal penalties, whether statute allows for civil suits, if a specific hidden camera law exists, and whether there are additional penalties for disclosing or publishing information.”
Source: The ResourceShelf, 16 February 2004
In the news: “With big law firms scooping up smaller practices at record speed, some midsize firms are flouting the merger trend by using consortium networks to expand their reach and compete with the giants. Believers in this alternative say the affiliations enable firms to bring in referral work, swap services with firms outside their home turf, and maintain their independence in an increasingly consolidated legal market. So, what's the downside?”
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Source: Law.Com's Daily Legal Newswire
17 February 2005
Copyright 2005 ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved.
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In the news: “While the use of contract attorneys for document review is not a novel concept, the need for such assistance has increased along with the sophistication and scope of today's major pharmaceutical products liability litigation. But coordinating hundreds of contract hires on a single litigation can be like managing a midsize firm. "The client is very sophisticated and the stakes are enormous, so that's incentive enough to come up with the right process," said Dechert's Sean Wajert.”
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Source: Law.Com's Daily Legal Newswire,
17 February 2005
Copyright 2005 ALM Properties, Inc. All rights reserved.
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From the e-newsletter: “Today, the ability to share personal knowledge and prior work determine the firm's place in a very competitive market. Most major law firms have invested thousands of dollars in processes, training and technology to capture and leverage partners' knowledge. However, most documents created as part of a transaction include sensitive information pertinent to that transaction. This data can comprise deal details, such as price; company identifiers, such as name and address, and personal information, such as individuals' names, titles, and phone numbers. Similar to the metadata of a shared file, these details can give away potentially sensitive information.”
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Source: TOOLS OF THE TRADE
A FindLaw Monthly Law And Technology Resource
February 2005
Copyright © 2005 FindLaw, Inc. All rights reserved
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Sabrina I. Pacifici posts: “From SIDEWALK/theory, a continually updated guide to the RSS feeds provided by national and local newspapers, which currently comprises an alphabetical list of 73 titles.”
Source: beSpacific - Accurate, focused law and technology news by Sabrina I. Pacifici
16 February 2005
Copyright ©2002-2005 BeSpacific LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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Carolyn Elefant posts: “Next time you find yourself thinking about letting the retainer agreement requirement slide ("I trust the client," or "There's no time," are some excuses that might run through your mind), think again. Lack of a retainer agreement one can cost you your entire fee. That's what happened in the case described in this New York Lawyer article, No Retainer = NY Firm: $0; Client: $205,000 (2/15/05).
According to the article, client Bazerjian filed a pro se claim to the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund. Disappointed with the amount he received, he subsequently decided to retain attorney Santucci to pursue an appeal. A week after the initial meeting, Santucci represented Bazerjian at a hearing and recovered $205,000, $140,000 more than Bazerjian initially was given (as an aside to those who wonder whether lawyers actually add value, this is a perfect example that they do). Subsequently, Santucci sought to collect from his client 25 percent of the increase or roughly $35,000.
When his client would not pay, claiming that he was never given a retainer or told what the case would cost, Santucci sued. The judge sided with the client, writing that: "Plaintiff's failure to provide a letter of engagement or a signed retainer was deliberate, and not a result of being 'impracticable,'..." Clearly, plaintiff has not complied with [the New York Codes, Rules and Regulations]." (Klein, Calderoni & Santucci v. Bazerjian, 22351/04.) Santucci had argued that the short time between the initial client meeting and the hearing precluded a retainer, but the client stated that he never retained the attorney and "was uncomfortable" with his presence at a hearing. In the absence of the retainer, the judge denied Santucci any recovery.
Personally, I find this result overly harsh. I can certainly understand the judge denying a contingency recovery in the absence of a fee agreement. A contingency arrangement needs to be explained in detail to clients. And when clients don't understand all of the risks and alternatives, they may feel cheated down the line - as did this client. Had Santucci committed the terms of the contingency to writing - that recovery would be based on the difference between what the client had recovered on his own and the appeal, that he would take 25 percent rather than the standard third, etc... the agreement would undoubtedly have been found reasonable.
But at the same time, I wonder what the client was thinking. Did he really believe that an attorney would show up fully prepared for a hearing such that he could triple the award the client received pro se and not expect anything in return? I would have liked to see the judge ask the client what he expected to pay. And if the client claimed that he did not want the attorney at the hearing, I would have asked him why he didn't say so instead of letting the attorney represent him. At the very least, I think the client ought to pay an hourly fee because retainer agreement or not, the attorney's participation in the case did confer a substantial benefit to the client.
The reason that there are retainer agreement requirements is to protect clients from overreaching attorneys. But attorneys can't forget - retainers also protect us from overreaching clients. My gut here (and again, it's not supported by any facts; I can't even find the court's opinion) is that this client was in fact advised of the terms of the contingency and conveniently "forgot them" when he saw how quickly the attorney dispatched his case. The reason for my speculation? Fir