Robert Ambrogi's LawSites

Mass. AG Launches Workplace Rights Site

2008-07-18T20:14:00.001-05:00

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has launched a Web site, MassWorkRights.com, that provides Massachusetts workers with information about the rights on the job. The site features information about wages, overtime, tips and meal breaks, all provided in six languages: English, Chinese, Haitian Creole, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

New Blog: Jaffe Blog

2008-07-17T21:02:00.001-05:00

The legal public-relations firm Jaffe Associates (where I once worked as VP of editorial services) has launched a blog, Jaffe Blog. It will provide attorneys and legal marketers with information about using Web 2.0 in their marketing efforts, according to an announcement.

At the same time, Jaffe published a white paper on Web 2.0 and legal PR, Web 2.0 and PR 2.0, and unveiled a wiki, which is as yet without content.

New Blog: 'The LinkedIn Lawyer'

2008-07-17T20:28:00.002-05:00

Boston lawyer David A. Barrett, who claims to have the "world's largest LinkedIn lawyer network," has launched a blog, The LinkedIn Lawyer, devoted to answering other lawyers' questions about the professional-networking site. In a recent post, he explains his claim to the world's largest lawyer network:

"'The World's Largest LinkedIn Lawyer Network' refers to how many lawyers are in my personal, directly connected network which currently consists of 3400+ members and 1450+ lawyers."

Barrett says that he believes the most-connected lawyer on LinkedIn is Los Angeles lawyer Martin S. Rudoy. Somehow reminds me of that old saw, "He who dies with the most toys wins."

Lawyer2Lawyer: Zittrain on the Future of the Internet

2008-07-17T11:19:00.002-05:00

Unless something is done to change its course, the future of the Internet, as Jonathan Zittrain sees it, is one of far less innovation and far more -- and far more ominous -- control. Zittrain, who just became a tenured professor at Harvard Law School, discusses his book, The Future of the Internet — And How to Stop It, on this week's episode of the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer.

Zittrain discusses his book, the field of Cyberlaw and his post at Harvard. You can listen to or download the show from this page. As always, you can keep up to date with all Lawyer2Lawyer programs by subscribing via RSS or using iTunes.

Judge Gertner on Blogging, Judicial Speech

2008-07-10T17:07:00.002-05:00

U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner, who attracted the attention of bloggers and the news media earlier this year when she joined the roster of contributors to the new Slate legal blog, Convictions, shares her thoughts on judicial blogging and judicial speech in this week's episode of our legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer.

Judge Gertner is the first Massachusetts judge -- federal or state -- to blog and one of only a handful of judges nationwide who blog. She believes strongly that judges should have more leeway to discuss their work, through blogs and other media. "The more we talk about what we do, the more we expose the shibboleths and the more maybe we can get back to respecting the institution," she tells us in this interview.

You can listen to or download the entire interview from this page. As always, you can keep up to date with all Lawyer2Lawyer programs by subscribing via RSS or using iTunes.

Lawyer2Lawyer: Supreme Court Term Wrap-up

2008-07-03T14:12:00.002-05:00

Another term has ended for our nation's highest court, so we've recruited two Supreme Court experts to wrap-up the term's most significant opinions and most influential justices, as well as to shaire their thoughts on the future of the court in a presidential election year. Joining us this week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer are:

Tony Mauro, Supreme Court correspondent for Legal Times, ALM and Law.com.
Amy Howe, partner in the Supreme Court litigation boutique Howe & Russell and contributor to SCOTUSBlog.

You can listen to or download the show from this page. As always, you can keep up to date with all Lawyer2Lawyer programs by subscribing via RSS or using iTunes.

Student Loses Suit Against Mass. Law School

2008-07-03T10:06:00.001-05:00

I have details in a post at Legal Blog Watch.

Evernote Ends Closed Beta, Open to All

2008-07-01T07:49:00.001-05:00

Evernote, the perpetual, multi-platform note-keeping and Web-clipping service that I reviewed favorably in March (Evernote Beta: Never Forget Anything) is now in open beta, which means that an invitation is no longer required to sign up. In addition, Evernote announced two new features:

A premium subscription level, with a 500MB monthly upload allowance (versus 40MB for free accounts), enhanced security, enhanced customer support and priority image recognition.
An enhanced Web clipper, which saves all or part of a Web page into Evernote, including text, images and source URL.

The free version remains as it was in my earlier review, with automatic synchronization between Windows, Mac, Web and mobile clients and advanced image search. One notable enhancement to the free version since my earlier review is support for PDF documents.

Older Copyright Renewal Records Now Available

2008-06-29T21:46:00.003-05:00

Both beSpacific and Creative Commons provide pointers to the news reported on the blog Inside Google Book Search that Google Book Search now has copyright data for pre-1978 books, enabling users to determine whether books are in the public domain:

"How do you find out whether a book was renewed? You have to check the U.S. Copyright Office records. Records from 1978 onward are online (see http://www.copyright.gov/records) but not downloadable in bulk. The Copyright Office hasn't digitized their earlier records, but Carnegie Mellon scanned them as part of their Universal Library Project, and the tireless folks at Project Gutenberg and the Distributed Proofreaders painstakingly corrected the OCR.

"Thanks to the efforts of Google software engineer Jarkko Hietaniemi, we've gathered the records from both sources, massaged them a bit for easier parsing, and combined them into a single XML file available for download here."

New Web-based Practice Management Tool

2008-06-25T20:19:00.002-05:00

One of the products to be introduced this week at Legal Tech West Coast is Clio, a Web-based practice management suite designed for solo and smaller-firm lawyers. It is still in beta and pricing is not yet available, but anyone interested can sign up to participate for free in the beta testing of this software as a service. I have not yet tried it. According to an announcement, its features include:

Time tracking: Track time by client, matter, and task.
Billing and reporting: Includes integrated tracking for trust funds and retainers and generates customized invoices and outstanding bill reminders.
Client/contact management: A contact management system that links to information on clients, matters and billings.
Task scheduling: A calendaring and reminder system that allows tracking of appointments by day, week or month.
Document management: Securely access documents online and track document versions.
Trust management: Maintain and track trust transaction records.
Practice performance metrics: Track current, expected and target billing figures daily, weekly or monthly.

As for security, Clio is said to use password protection with bank-grade 256-bit SSL encryption. Data is backed up daily to a secure, offsite data center, and frequent third-party audits ensure data security.

A core advantage of a SaaS such as this is that it avoids the need to purchase, install and maintain software. Pricing, of course, will be an all-important determinant of its popularity. Clio was developed by Themis Solutions Inc., Vancouver, B.C.

Preserving Mobile Phone Evidence

2008-06-25T19:07:00.001-05:00

Ever wondered how to do this? Jim Calloway has an answer.

'Stack' and Send Your Search Results

2008-06-24T19:39:00.003-05:00

I wrote here in March about Searchme, a new search site, still in beta, that delivers results visually, showing pages rather than descriptions of pages. I learned today of two new features added to Searchme, one of which could be of particular use for research, presentations or any number of uses.

This new feature is called Stacks. It lets you collect groups of Web pages and then save them to a unique URL or share them via e-mail, blogs, Web pages or social-networking sites such as Facebook. Searchme has also added Media Search, which lets you search for images and videos from Flickr and YouTube. Images and videos can also be added to a stack, to create a collection of Web pages, images and videos around a particular subject.

All of this is easy to do. After you perform a search, you can click the "stack" button to create a new stack and give it a name. As you browse the Web pages shown in your search results, simply drag any you want to keep onto your stack. The same goes for images and videos -- drag them onto your stack and they are saved there. When you display your stack, it displays in the same flowing manner as the Searchme search results, which I compare to the way in which iTunes displays album covers. As you flow through videos in your stack, they begin to play automatically.

Here is a stack I created for the search "antonin scalia," including Web pages, images and videos:

Searchme

Maximize stack view

You can learn more about Stacks through this demo video or see an assortment of sample stacks at this page.

A Win in Oregon for Public Access

2008-06-19T20:06:00.001-05:00

Efforts by Justia and Public.Resource.Org to overturn Oregon's claim of copyright in its statutes paid off today. Oregon's Legislative Counsel Committee met this morning and voted unanimously to put the Oregon Revised Statutes in the public domain. Tim Stanley has the news. Background on the Oregon issue is available from Public.Resource.Org.

Legal PR Firm Launches Blog

2008-06-18T21:43:00.001-05:00

The Texas consulting firm Androvett Legal Media & Marketing has gone live with its new blog, Androvett Blog. Androvett media consultant Robert Tharp, a former law and criminal justice reporter at The Dallas Morning News and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, says the firm operated the blog internally for several months before going live. He hopes to update it at least once a day.

Mass. Law School Plans to Prosecute Bush

2008-06-16T20:33:00.001-05:00

The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover will convene a conference in September to lay plans for the war-crimes prosecutions of President Bush and other high administration officials. If they are convicted, says the school's dean, Lawrence Velvel, their punishment should mirror that of World War II war criminals: hanging. I have more in a post today at Legal Blog Watch.

Help! Blawger Identity Crisis

2008-06-16T19:45:00.002-05:00

I started this blog in November 2002. My plan was to use it to post news and reviews of Web sites of interest to the legal profession. I had just published the first edition of my book, The Essential Guide to the Best (and Worst) Legal Sites on the Web, and saw blogging as a way to keep myself and my readers up to date. In 2004, I launched a second blog, Media Law, devoted to legal issues involving the news media and freedom of the press.

Twin blogs kept me busy enough, but then in 2005, I began to cohost a weekly podcast, Lawyer2Lawyer with California lawyer J. Craig Williams, and we continue to record a program virtually every week. A year after that, I began to coauthor Law.com's Legal Blog Watch, where I alternate days posting with Carolyn Elefant of MyShingle.

Meanwhile, as all this has been happening, the distinctions between my LawSites and Media Law blogs have become less clear to me, particularly as the distinctions between traditional media and new media have faded.

Long story short: I have two blogs that really should be one, given both the topics I want to write about and the time I have to blog. But I am unable to decide how best to go about this and would welcome the advice of my readers. My goals are to:

Have one blog where I can write about a broader range of topics, including media, the Internet, technology and marketing.
Maintain as much of each blog's archives as possible.
Maintain as much of each blog's readership as possible, including those who subscribe via RSS.
Maintain some degree of the "brand recognition" each blog has.

As I see it, my best options are:

Keep LawSites as my primary blog, but rename it to better reflect a wider range of topics. This has the advantage of preserving LawSite's older and more extensive archive. The downside is possibly losing Media Law's archive and at least some of its subscribers. If it is dormant long enough, I presume Blogger will delete it.
Keep LawSites without renaming it. This has the advantage of preserving all of the elements of one blog, but the disadvantage of preserving a name that limits its theme.
Start a whole new blog, combining the themes of LawSites and Media Law. My fear here is even greater loss of subscribers and readers and, again, potential total loss of archives.
Do nothing and maintain the status quo.
Throw my laptop in the trash and focus on finding the meaning of life.

Am I missing something? Is there a way to somehow rename the blog, merge both sets of archives into one, and retain all RSS subscribers? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Justice Talking to Go Silent

2008-06-16T19:06:00.002-05:00

One of the best law-related podcasts will record its last program June 30. After nine years on the air, Justice Talking, the NPR radio program about law and American life, which is also available as a weekly podcast, has run out of funding. In a post on the program's companion site, Talking Justice, acting executive producer Ingrid Lakey explained that the show and Web site cost almost $1 million annually to produce. "We tried over a three year period to locate the needed funding but had to sunset the program when we failed," she wrote. "If someone found a funder willing to provide a multi-year commitment to the funding needed to produce Justice Talking and our sister website, Justice Learning, we would certainly revisit the decision."

On June 23, the show will feature host Margot Adler looking back over some of its more memorable moments. For now, archived shows will remain available through the Web site.

I am not sure when Justice Talking began to be distributed as a podcast, but that may leave our Lawyer2Lawyer podcast, which posted its first episode on Aug. 31, 2005, as the longest consistently running legal podcast.

Lawdragon's 100 Top Managing Partners

2008-06-16T15:09:00.001-05:00

Lawdragon has released its list of the 100 managing partners you need to know. The list is alphabetical, not ranked in "need to know" order. Names with a "Q&A" next to them link to the managing partner's answers to Lawdragon's questionnaire, where we learn, for example, that the attorney most admired by Bingham McCutchen chair Jay Zimmerman is Abraham Lincoln, while for WilmerHale's co-managing partner Bill Lee it is James D. St. Clair.

Lawyer2Lawyer: Too Many Law Schools?

2008-06-16T14:40:00.001-05:00

Does the U.S. need any more law schools? That is the topic we discuss this week on our legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer. The National Law Journal recently reported that as many as 10 new law schools are in the works, most of them on the East Coast. We discuss whether they are needed with guests Erwin Chemerinsky, founding dean of the Donald Bren School of Law at UC Irvine, and Thomas F. Guernsey, president and dean of Albany Law School.

Download or listen to the show at this page. Keep up to date with all Lawyer2Lawyer programs by subscribing via RSS or using iTunes.

My 15 Minutes of Fame

2008-06-13T13:14:00.001-05:00

It comes courtesy of the Boston Business Journal and reporter Lisa van der Pool, who profiled me for the weekly "Outside the Box" feature: Robert J. Ambrogi: Legal Beat. The photo by BBJ photographer W. Marc Bernsau shows Motif Number 1, the fishing-shack icon of my town of Rockport, Mass.

Article on Social Networking Sites for Lawyers

2008-06-08T20:29:00.001-05:00

Law.com has my Law Technology News column for this month, Social Networking May Pay Off in the End. This is the first of two parts looking at social networking sites of interest to legal professionals. This month's focuses on sites open to a range of members. Next month's will zero in on sites that focus on legal professionals.

Did I Say That??

2008-06-08T20:23:00.001-05:00

Interesting quote attributed to me on this not-so-interesting blog:

"Jivatma assume this is trekking in passage to breathe perpetual on those vaginal cases that becomes to a degree a pass inward restricting the brevet above this end."

Better yet, I am identified as a "preponderance-based figurehead." Just what I always wanted to be.

Biz Journal: Lawyers Look to Podcasts for Marketing

2008-06-06T14:44:00.001-05:00

The Boston Business Journal today features this piece, Lawyers Looking to Podcasts as Potent Marketing Tool, that highlights our podcast, Lawyer2Lawyer, and the company that produces it, the Legal Talk Network.

The reporter who wrote the story, Lisa van der Pool, is interviewed this morning on New England Cable News about lawyer podcasting. The interview is below.

A Unique Plug for our Podcast

2008-06-02T20:47:00.001-05:00

This Italian blog, Studenti Inglese Legale, devoted to the teaching of "legal English," recommends that students practice their listening skills through the legal podcasts of the Legal Talk Network. "My favourite," the author writes, "is Lawyer2Lawyer."

West Revamps Its Corporate Site

2008-06-02T18:33:00.002-05:00

This just in: West today unveiled a major redesign of its corporate Web site and online store, with the goal of making it easier to find and purchase legal information. The site has been given a new look and also a new organization. Users are invited to search for products and services according to the type of organization in which they work -- solo and small firm, mid-sized and large firm, government and education, corporate and nonprofit, law schools and law students. Alternatively, users can shop by jurisdiction or practice area. According to today's announcement, other features include:

More intuitive and user-friendly navigation, with enhanced global search capability that makes it easy for users to find information.
Comprehensive information on Westlaw and quick access to its collection of statutes, case law materials, public records and other legal resources.
A state-of-the-art online store with more robust searching, browsing and e-commerce support.
A comprehensive "About Us” background on the West business, including an extensive library of media materials, podcasts and other materials on key issues and trends in the legal and information marketplace.

The site provides access to more than 5,000 legal titles, the announcement said. It gets more than 200,000 visits a month.