Cyberbullying Epidemic: What Can Lawyers Do to Help?

FindLaw released a survey yesterday: 1 in 12 parents report that their child has been cyberbullied. And a Thomson Reuters whitepaper on cyberbullying trends, released this month as well, reports that only 2 in 5 kids that are cyberbullied will...



Continue reading this article, and get more law firm business news and information, at FindLaw.com.



via Strategist http://ift.tt/1obK7Qp

Katz and Bommarito: Legal Analytics, Machine Learning, and Comments on the Status of Innovation in the Legal Industry

Professor Dr. Daniel Martin Katz of Michigan State University and the ReInvent Law Lab , and Michael J. Bommarito II, M.S.E., M.A., of Bommarito Consulting, have posted slides of their presentation entitled Legal Analytics, Machine Learning, and Some Comments on the Status of Innovation in the Legal Industry , given 26 February 2014 at the Forum on Legal Evolution, in New York City.

The presentation deals with a number of topics, including the role of legal startups at performing research and development work for the legal industry, and the increasingly prominent role of data analysis, machine learning, and statistical prediction in fostering innovation in legal services and legal technology.

HT @computational

Filed under: Applications, Presentations, Slides, Technology developments Tagged: #legalevolution, Computational Legal Studies, Daniel Martin Katz, Forum on Legal Evolution, Innovation in law firms, Innovation in legal services delivery, Innovation in legal technology, Law firm innovation, Legal innovation, Legal machine learning, Legal services innovation, Legal startups, Legal technology innovation, Machine learning and law, Michael Bommarito, Michael J Bommarito II, Quantitative legal prediction, Statistical methods in legal informatics



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/1hHkQvg

Hsiung: Miami-Dade County State Decoded Project

Ernie Hsiung has posted an overview of a new State Decoded project in Miami-Dade County, Florida, USA , in the Code for Miami google group.

The State Decoded is Waldo Jaquith ‘s free and open free-access-to-law and e-participation platform.

I think Waldo and personnel from the OpenGov Foundation, are advising on this project.

For more information on The State Decoded, please see the project’s Website and GitHub repositories, and the site of the OpenGov Foundation.

Click here for earlier posts about The State Decoded .

HT Waldo Jaquith

Filed under: Applications, Projects, Technology developments Tagged: Code for Miami, eparticipation, eparticipation platforms Miami-Dade County State Decoded Project, Ernie Hsiung, Free access to law, Miami-Dade County Decoded, Public access to legal information, State Decoded, The State Decoded, Waldo Jaquith



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/1eEfKfV

Ebner and Thompson: Nonverbal Communication and Trust Development in Online Video-Based Mediation

Professor Noam Ebner of Creighton University and Jeff Thompson of Griffith University have published @ Face Value? Nonverbal Communication & Trust Development in Online Video-Based Mediation , forthcoming in International Journal of Online Dispute Resolution .

Here is the abstract:

Mediation is a process wherein a third party, or mediator, attempts to assist two conflicting parties in dealing with their dispute. Research has identified party trust in the mediator as a key element required for mediator effectiveness. In online video-based mediation, the addition of technology to the mix poses both challenges and opportunities to the capacity of the mediator to build trust with the parties through nonverbal communication. While authors researching the field of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) have often focused on trust, their work has typically targeted text-based processes. As ODR embraces video-based processes, nonverbal communication becomes more salient. Nonverbal communication research has identified examples of specific actions that can contribute to trust. This paper combines that research with current scholarship on trust in mediation and on nonverbal communication in mediation, to map out the landscape mediators face while seeking to build trust through nonverbal communication in online video-based mediation. Suggestions for future research and implications for practice are noted, holding relevance to researchers and practitioners in any field in which trust, nonverbal communication and technology converge.

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers Tagged: Communication in online dispute resolution, International Journal of Online Dispute Resolution, Interpersonal communication in online dispute resolution, Interpersonal communication in online mediation, Interpersonal legal communication, Jeff Thompson, Legal communication, Legal video communication, Noam Ebner, Nonverbal communication, Nonverbal communication in online dispute resolution, Nonverbal legal communication, Online dispute resolution, Online dispute resolution and video communication, Online legal communication, Online mediation, Trust, Trust development, Trust in legal communication, Trust in online dispute resolution, Video communication and online dispute resolution, Video-based mediation, Video-based online dispute resolution, Video-based online mediation



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/1hGMwjT

Your Law Firm Website is (Probably) Designed to Fail

We can sum up our thought-provoking white paper, "Why Most Law Firm Websites are Designed to Fail," in two words: conversion optimization. You can build a website for your firm. You can plaster it with great content, pretty pictures, and...



Continue reading this article, and get more law firm business news and information, at FindLaw.com.



via Strategist http://ift.tt/N8Y9XC

Tennant: OCLC Exposes Bibliographic Works Data as Linked Data; Appears to Include Very Large Numbers of Legal Works

Roy Tennant announced this week that OCLC is releasing 194 million work-level bibliographic data records as open Linked Data .

This release of work-level records as Linked Data appears to include records for a very large number of legal works.

The release seems to include a high proportion of the legal works in the OCLC database, amounting to tens of thousands of legal works from many different nations.

The release is of potential interest to developers of legal information systems that use Linked Data technology: these new OCLC work-level records can be linked to by, or integrated with, other legal information resources that employ Linked Data.

Tennant means “work” as that term is used in the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) framework.

FRBR has been incorporated into some major legal metadata standards, including Akoma Ntoso, CEN MetaLex, and the LEX naming convention (specifying URN:LEX and the HTTP-based LEX identifier).

FRBR has been implemented in some legal information systems, including Legislation.gov.uk, the MetaLex Document Server, the Brazilian Senate’s LexML system, and the implementations of Akoma Ntoso and the LEX identifier.

According to Tennant, the OCLC announcement was posted by Richard Wallis at Data Liberate .

For more details, please see Tennant’s post or the OCLC announcement.

HT @jafurtado

Filed under: Applications, Data sets, Others' scholarly or sophisticated blogposts, Standards, Technology developments Tagged: AKOMA NTOSO, Bibliographic records for legal resources, Bibliographic records for legal resources as Linked Data, CEN Metalex, FRBR, Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, Legal Linked Data, Legal metadata, Legal metadata as Linked Data, Legislation.gov.uk, LEX Naming Convention, Linked Data and law, OCLC, OCLC work-level bibliographic records as Linked Data, Roy Tennant, Secondary legal resources, URN:LEX



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/1cTDK2c

The Justice Index: Quantitative measures of access to justice in U.S. states

The Justice Index has been launched, by the National Center for Access to Justice at Cardozo Law School.

The index provides quantitative measures of access to justice for U.S. states.

The broad variables in the model are attorney access, self-representation, language assistance, and disability assistance.

The methodology is explained at http://ift.tt/1cTzT57

Richard Zorza has a new post about the index.

HT Richard Zorza

Filed under: Applications, Others' scholarly or sophisticated blogposts, Projects, Reports Tagged: Access to justice, Indexes of access to justice, Indices of access to justice, Justice Index, Measures of access to justice, Measuring access to justice, National Center for Access to Justice, Quantifying access to justice, Richard Zorza, The Justice Index



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/1kmdfUz

Forum on Legal Evolution, NYC, 26 February 2014: Storify, tweets, and resources

The Forum on Legal Evolution was held 26 February 2014 in New York City.

According to Ron Friedmann, the event was organized by Professor William Henderson , Professor Dr. Daniel Martin Katz , and Bruce MacEwen .

The Twitter hashtag for the event was #legalevolution

Click here for a storify of Twitter tweets from the event.

Click here for archived Twitter tweets from the event, in .csv format.

Here is a summary of the program, based on the conference Website and Ed Walters’s photo of the program:

Introductory Session: Bruce MacEwen.

I. The Rogers Diffusion Curve: How Industries Change and Adapt, Including Law.

Presenter: William D. Henderson

Commentator: Firoz Dattu

II. Innovation No. 1: Predictive Analytics for Substantive and Operational Decisions.

Presenters: Chris Zorn, Evan Parker-Stephen

Commentator: David Cambria

III. Innovation No. 2: Process Design and Implementation in an Endless Quest for Perfection.

Presenter: Raymond Bayley

Commentator: Kimberley A. DeBeers

IV. Contemporary Examples of Innovations Nos. 1 and 2 within the Legal Industry.

Presenters: Daniel Martin Katz, Michael J. Bommarito II

Commentator: Paul Carr

HT Dan Katz

Filed under: Applications, Conference resources, Storify, Technology developments, Tweet archives Tagged: Big data and law, Christopher Zorn, Daniel Martin Katz, Forum on Legal Evolution, Innovation in law firms, Innovation in law practice, Innovation in legal services delivery, Law firm innovation, Law practice innovation, Legal analytics, Legal big data, Legal evolution, Legal informatics conferences, Legal process design, Legal process management, Legal services innovation, Michael Bommarito, Michael J Bommarito II, Predictive analytics and law firm processes, Predictive analytics and law practice, Quantitative legal prediction, Statistical methods in legal informatics, Statistical methods in the study of legal institutions, William Henderson



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/1hBKm56

Do Attorneys General Have the Right to Decline to Defend Laws?

This is a question that has been bugging us since Perry and Windsor: if officials don't agree with a law, do they have the right to refuse to defend it? It seems like a silly question. After all, state attorneys...



Continue reading this article, and get more law firm business news and information, at FindLaw.com.



via Strategist http://ift.tt/1pur5YL

Neocodex Project

Here is an update on the Neocodex Project , announced last year by Dr. Sergio Puig of Stanford University and Dr. Enric Torrents of the Autonomous University of Barcelona.

The project was announced in Puig and Torrents’s article entitled The Case for Linking World Law Data .

According to a description of the project posted on YouTube on 10 February 2014, the Neocodex Project:

is a collaboration between researchers and professors from Stanford Law School, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Université Pierre et Marie Curie and other institutions to develop open source technology for integrating, analyzing and making available information from all international courts and national jurisdictions in open linked data standards, including the automated processing, analysis and visualization of social networks (neutrals, litigants, and other entities), semantic networks (citations, case-law contents, legal knowledge) and the publication of corpus collections with added metadata.

The project has a Twitter account: @hackthelawcode

The project has posted a new video to YouTube: Lady Justice Experiment .

The project is seeking crowdfunding, on the experiment.com platform.

The project held a legal hackathon last week in London, which was part of Open Data Day: Neocodex Open Law Challenge .

The project is directing those who want more information to go to Dr. Puig’s Website, to join the Open Law Index email list, or to contact Dr. Puig or Dr. Torrents.

HT @hackthelawcode

Filed under: Applications, Hackathons, Hacking, Projects, Technology developments, Videos Tagged: @hackthelawcode, Adding metadata to legal text corpora, Automated network graphing, Case for Linking World Law Data, Enric Torrents, Enriching legal text corpora, Free access to law, Judicial information systems, Legal data analysis, Legal hackathons, Legal network graphs, Legal semantic networks, Legal social networks, Legal structural graphs, Legal text corpora, Machine learning and legal information, Neocodex, Neocodex Open Law Challenge, Neocodex Project, Network analysis and law, Network graphs, Network graphs of justice systems, Open legal data, Public access to legal information, Sergio Puig, Social network analysis and law, Structural graphs of law, Visualization of legal information, Visualization of legal networks, Visualization of legal social networks



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/1cOUHL1

Winners of Second Library of Congress Legislative Data Challenge

The Law Library of Congress has announced the winners of the Second Library of Congress Legislative Data Challenge, on Legislative XML Data Mapping:

First prize goes to Jim Mangiafico for Akoma Ntoso Converter , which includes a functioning Web app and a Chrome extension.

Second prize goes to Garrett Schure for Translate U.K. and U.S legislative documents to Akoma Ntoso , consisting of a written analysis of “a Perl/LibXML mapping of U.K. and U.S. legislative documents, with a set of scripts to add additional semantic and analysis markup.”

Here is a description of the challenge:

[...] The Legislative XML Data Mapping Challenge invites competitors to produce a data map for US bill XML [i.e., the U.S. House XML Legislative Document Type Definitions, Schemas, and Samples] and the most recent Akoma Ntoso schema and UK bill XML [i.e., Crown Legislation Markup Language schema] and the most recent Akoma Ntoso schema. Gaps or issues identified through this challenge will help to shape the evolving Akoma Ntoso international standard. [...]

The judges of the challenge were:

• Kirsten Gullickson, U.S. House of Representatives


• Monica Palmirani of CIRSFID, University of Bologna


• John Sheridan of The National Archives (UK)


• Fabio Vitali of the University of Bologna

For more details, please see the announcement and the challenge Website.

HT @LawLibCongress

Filed under: Applications, Competitions, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: (John Sheridan, AKOMA NTOSO, Akoma Ntoso Converter, Akoma Ntoso mapping, Akoma Ntoso mapping applications, Akoma Ntoso mapping tools, Fabio Vitali, Garrett Schure, Jim Mangiafico, Kirsten Gullickson, Law Library of Congress, Legal metadata, Legal structural metadata, Legislative data challenge, Legislative data challenges, Legislative metadata, Legislative structural metadata, Legislative XML Data Mapping, Legislative XML Data Mapping Challenge, Library of Congress, Library of Congress legislative data challenge, Library of Congress legislative data challenges, Mapping from Crown Legislation Markup Language to Akoma Ntoso, Mapping from U.S. House XML to Akoma Ntoso, Mapping legal metadata, Mapping legislative metadata, Mapping legislative structural metadata, Mapping to Akoma Ntoso, Monica Palmirani, National Archives UK



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/1c7bdIx

Learn From Frank Underwood: 5 Legal Lessons From 'House of Cards'

Oh hello there. Sorry if that seemed informal, we're trying out more of that fourth-wall breaking that seems to work so well for Frank Underwood on Netflix's political thriller "House of Cards." But there's more than just gravitas and Southern...



Continue reading this article, and get more law firm business news and information, at FindLaw.com.



via Strategist http://ift.tt/1fQVDfu

CodeX FutureLaw 2014: Conference on Legal Technology and Innovation, 2 May 2014

CodeX FutureLaw 2014 — “a conference focusing on how technology is changing the landscape of the legal profession and the law more broadly” — will be held 2 May 2014 at Stanford Law School .

Registration is now open — early registration continues until 2 April 2014.

The conference is presented by CodeX: Stanford Center for Legal Informatics.

Tim Hwang, JD, is Chair of the conference.

Click here for the full conference program.

Here is an overview of the program:

Keynotes: Richard Susskind and Michael Genesereth

Panels:

Forging an Open Legal Document Ecosystem

• Brian Carver, Free Law Project


• Thomas Bruce, Legal Information Institute


• Paul Sawaya, Restatement


• Monica Bay, Law Technology News (moderator)

Managing Legal Marketplaces

• Matt Faustman, Upcounsel


• Raj Abyanker, Legal Force


• Eddie Hartman, Legalzoom


• Mark Britton, Avvo


• Greg McPolin, Thomson Reuters


• Jason Boehmig, Fenwick and West (moderator)

Rebuilding Legal Education

• Marc Lauritsen, Capstone Practice Systems


• Richard Granat, Direct Law, Granat Legal Services


• Janelle Orsi, Sustainable Economies Law Center


• Ron Dolin, Research Fellow at the Center on the Legal Profession and Instructor of Law at Stanford Law School


• Jason Solomon, Stanford Law School (moderator)

Legal Technology in the Public Interest

• Ronald W. Staudt, Center for Access to Justice and Technology, IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law


• Margaret Hagan, Institute of Design at Stanford


• Stephanie Kimbro, Center for Law Practice Technology and Burton Law LLC


• Phil Malone, Stanford Law School (moderator)

Legal Ethics in the Age of Machines

• Harry Surden, University of Colorado Law School


• Deborah Rhode, Center on the Legal Profession, Stanford Law School


• Norm Spaulding, Stanford Law School


• Will Hornsby, American Bar Association, Division for Legal Services


• Tim Hwang, Robot Robot & Hwang (moderator)

For more details, please see the conference Website.

HT @timhwang

Filed under: Applications, Conference Announcements, Policy debates, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: #futurelaw, CodeX FutureLaw, CodeX FutureLaw 2014, CodeX: The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, Ethics and legal technology, Free access to law, Free access to law movement, FutureLaw 2014, Law practice innovation, Legal education reform, Legal ethics and legal technology, Legal informatics conferences, Legal startups, Legal technology and legal ethics, Online law practice, Open legal data, Public access to legal information, Technology and access to justice



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/1fPDhLY

5 Things to Consider When Starting a LinkedIn Group

By now you probably have a LinkedIn profile, which may or may not be getting a little dusty. If so, it's time to refresh your profile as LinkedIn can be a valuable tool for networking, promoting yourself, and hiring staff....



Continue reading this article, and get more law firm business news and information, at FindLaw.com.



via Strategist http://ift.tt/1jumrq8

Congressional Data Coalition

The Congressional Data Coalition is a new organization advocating for greater public access to U.S. federal legislative information.

The group’s Website is at: http://ift.tt/1doh3Qk

The group has a Twitter account at @congressdata

Here is a description of the group, from the group’s About page:

[...] Who we are

We’re a coalition of citizens, public interest groups, trade associations, and businesses that champion greater governmental transparency through improved public access to and long-term preservation of congressional information.

Mission

For the benefit of the general public, we encourage Congress to broadly disseminate information about congressional activities and to create congressional information in ways that optimize its reuse and facilitate its long-term preservation. We marshal coalition members to create, share, and collaborate on legislative data byproducts for further reuse. And we educate Congress on the benefits of open data and partner with it to improve internal processes.

Principles

We believe the public has a right to know what its government is doing. Want to know what else we believe? Read our statement of principles.

Steering Committee

To help advance our mission, we formed an advisory board of data and transparency experts to direct the activities of the coalition. This current board consists of the following members.

• Zach Graves, R Street Institute


• Hudson Hollister, Data Transparency Coalition


• Seamus Kraft, OpenGov Foundation


• Eric Mill, Sunlight Foundation


• Ryan Radia, Competitive Enterprise Institute


• Daniel Schuman, CREW


• Josh Tauberer, GovTrack.us


• Ed Walters, Fastcase

The group’s members include:

• CREW


• R Street Institute


• Electronic Frontier Foundation


• Sunlight Foundation


• Competitive Enterprise Institute


• TechFreedom


• GovTrack.us


• Capitol Bells


• Washington Watch


• LEGIS★WORKS


• (Leg)Cyte


• Free Government Information

To participate or for more information, please contact the group.

HT @congressdata and @garvinfo

Filed under: Groups, Policy debates Tagged: Congressional Data Coalition, Eric Mill, Free access to law, Joshua Tauberer, Legal open government data, Legislative information systems, Open legal data, Open legislative data, Public access to legal information, Public access to legislative data, Public access to legislative information



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/OsYEg9

Blockchain contracting and conveyancing systems

Blockchain technology — the technology that underlies Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency systems — is now available to be applied to contracts and conveyancing (property transfers).

Technologies including Ethereum and Master Protocol and Mastercoin now enable this.

The developers of these technologies refer to the resulting electronic contracts and property transfers as “smart contracts” and “smart property”.

A new post at Thought Infection has spurred a wider discussion of these legal applications of blockchain technology: Cryptocontracts Will Turn Law Into a Programming Language .

The argument seems to be that the adoption of blockchain contracting and conveyancing systems will hasten the automation and democratization of commercial law.

Here are excerpts from the post:

[...] The twin technologies of cryptocurrencies and cryptocontracts are going to turn contract law into a programming language.

Essentially what we are talking about is a real democratization of contractual agreements. Whereas today contracts are restricted to deals with enough value to justify a lawyers time (mortgages, business deals, land transfer etc…), in the future there is no limit to what could be codified into simple contracts. You could imagine forming a self-enforcing contract around something as simple as sharing a lawnmower with your neighbor, hiring a babysitter, or forming a gourmet coffee club at work. Where this could really revolutionize things is in developing nations, where the ability to exchange small-scale microloans with self-enforcing contractual agreements that come at little or no cost would be a quantum leap forward.

‘For more exotic examples, I was thinking of what could come if such contracts were combined with the ubiquity of data tracking today. In my example above, you could set up a contract with my blog to transfer a micropayment to support the blog every time you refer to an idea you found on my blog. Similar payment contracts could be set up for knowledge archives like wikipedia where you might agree to submit a micropayment every time you use or reference information from the site. [...]

The emergence of cheap and plentiful self-enforcing contracts means that we can codify simple transactions and agreements. We will be able to reprogram our lives based on self-enforcing cryptocontracts.

The coming boom in cryptocontracts comes with its own risks as well. In a world where self enforced contracts will be an everyday occurrence, we must be much more careful clicking on those terms of service agreements which nobody reads. We are going to need to be well aware of what it is we are giving away. [...]

Ultimately, cryptocontracts will offer us a revolutionary new way to rebuild and reorganize our lives and our societies from the bottom up. [...]

Other law-related applications of blockchain technology include:

• “decentralized notary services,” such as Proof of Existence, as described by Jerry Brito in his article, Bitcoin: More Than Money


• decentralized voting systems, for use in direct democracy and by legislatures, such as Agora Voting

For more information, please see the complete post.

HT @ThoughtInfected and @konklone

Filed under: Applications, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: @ThoughtInfected, Agora Voting, Authentication systems, Bitcoin and legal information systems, Bitcoin and legal technology, Bitcoin: More Than Money, Blockchain technology, Blockchain technology and contracting systems, Blockchain technology and digital authentication, Blockchain technology and document authentication, Blockchain technology and econtracts, Blockchain technology and econveyancing systems, Blockchain technology and evoting, Blockchain technology and legal information systems, Blockchain technology and notarization systems, Blockchain technology and voting systems, Contract information systems, Contract law information systems, Conveyancing information systems, Conveyancing systems, Cryptocurrencies, Digital document authentication, Digital notary systems, econtracting, econtracting systems, econtracts, econveyancing, econveyancing systems, Electronic contract information systems, Electronic contract systems, Electronic contracts, Electronic conveyancing systems, Electronic notarization systems, Ethereum, evoting, Jerry Brito, Legal applications of bitcoin technology, Legal applications of blockchain technology, Legal applications of cryptocurrency technology, Legal authentication systems, Master Protocol, Mastercoin, Notarization systems, Notary information systems, Notary systems, Property information systems, Property law information systems, Property transfer information systems, Property transfer systems, Smart contracts, Smart property, Thought Infection



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/1h4NAQj

Legal data and projects worked on at Open Data Day 2014: Links and resources

Several legal data sets and projects were worked on at Open Data Day 2014 (also called the International Open Data Hackathon, and Open Data Day Hackathon) , held 22-23 February 2014, at many locations around the world.

The main event Website is at http://opendataday.org/

The Website for the Washington, DC event is at http://ift.tt/125SOWS

There appear to be several Twitter hashtags for the event, including:

• #odd2014


• #odd14


• #opendataday


• for events in Italy: #ODDIT14 and #ODDIT2014


• for the DC event: #opendataday #dc and #opendatadaydc

A map of locations/events is at http://ift.tt/1eFenlb

For the DC event, IRC chat took place at: http://ift.tt/w3RUwg #opendatadaydc

The wiki listing locations, projects, and datasets is at http://ift.tt/10xFqtU

Projects and datasets worked on at the DC event are listed at the hackpad at http://ift.tt/1ddoDxj

Here are the legal data and projects worked on at the events, that I’ve been able to identify (if you know of others, please feel free to identify them in the comments to this post):

CRS Report Freshness Ratings

• Location: Washington, DC


• Participant: Daniel Schuman


• Goal: “CRS reports should have freshness ratings based on a comparison of the current text to the previous iteration.”

dcca: Scrape the DC Court of Appeals for use in Courtlistener

• Location: Washington, DC


• Participant: V. David Zvenyach


• Goal:“use the CourtListener scraper framework to get the DC Court of Appeals fully plugged in.”


• Result: “700+ DCCA opinions loaded to github.”


• Link: http://ift.tt/MT8k2t

DC Municipal Regulations Conversion

• Location: Washington, DC


• Participants: Chris Birk, Bill Hunt, Leili Slutz, Matt Steinberg, Keith Porcaro


• Goal: “scrape the municipal regulations of D.C. from dcregs.dc.gov and convert them to the formats described for the StateDecoded and the DC Code prototype”


• Result: “We were able to get most (~98%) of the regulations imported to some degree.”


• Links:


• 
  
  
  
  • http://ift.tt/1k2MWmb
  
  
  • http://ift.tt/MT8man
  
  
  • http://ift.tt/1k2MVif
  
  
  
  

Index of the ease of access to regulations from World Bank data

• Location: Washington, DC


• Participants: Joan-Josep Vallbé, Núria Casellas


• Description: “an index of the ease of access to regulations from #WorldBank data.”


• Related resource: Vallbé and Casellas: What’s the cost of e-Access to Legal Information? A composite indicator

NeoCodex Open Law Challenge

• Location: London, England, UK


• Goals: “brainstorm crowdsourcing methods for data acquisition and refinement [regarding court decisions] which can work at an international/transnational level”, and “Help us come up with ideas for visualising the impact of the law via social media and geo-hacking”


• Link: http://ift.tt/MT8kiI

StateDecoded Global Law Search and Compare

• Location: Washington, DC


• Participants: Chris Birk, Bill Hunt, Leili Slutz, Matt Steinberg


• Goal: “consume the APIs from each of the existing StateDecoded APIs and create a simple search interface for laws across instances.”


• Link: http://ift.tt/MT8mat


• 
  
  
  

  What’s Happening on the Hill

  
  

  
  
  • Location: Washington, DC
  
  
  • Participant: Daniel Schuman
  
  
  • Goal: “pull the XML version of the hearing data for the [U.S. federal] House and Senate, combine it, and output it daily on a website (that is also emailed out to subscribers)”
  
  

  
  

  Here are additional selected resources:

  
  

  
  
  • The OpenGov Foundation has a new post describing the legal projects and data its personnel will work on at the DC location, including State Decoded Global Search and Compare, and DC Municipal Regulations Conversion.
  
  

  
  

  For additional resources related to this event, please see the comments to this post.

  
  
  
  Filed under: Applications, Conference reports, Conference resources, Data sets, Hackathons, Hacking, Software, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Court decisions, Daniel Schuman, DC Municipal Regulations, Joan-Josep Vallbé, Joshua Tauberer, Legal hackathons, Legal open government data, Legislative information systems, Neocodex, Nuria Casellas, Open Data Day, Open Data Day 2014, Open Data Day DC, Open Data Day DC 2014, Open legal data, Open legislative data, Open regulatory data, Regulatory information systems, State Decoded, The State Decoded, V. David Zvenyach
  
  
  
  via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/1k2MWTj
  
  

Passera, Haapio and Curtotti: Making the meaning of contracts visible – Automating contract visualization

Stefania Passera , Dr. Helena Haapio , and Michael Curtotti presented a paper entitled Making the meaning of contracts visible – Automating contract visualization , at IRIS 2014: Internationales Rechtsinformatik Symposion, held 20-22 February 2014 in Salzburg, Austria.

Click here for the presentation slides.

Click here for demos of the technologies described in the paper, at Michael Curtotti’s Automated Visual Contracting site.

Here is the abstract of the presentation:

The paper, co-authored by Passera, Haapio and Curtotti, presents three demos of tools to automatically generate visualizations of selected contract clauses. Our early prototypes include common types of term and termination, payment and liquidated damages clauses. These examples provide proof-of-concept demonstration tools that help contract writers present content in a way readers pay attention to and understand. These results point to the possibility of document assembly engines compiling an entirely new genre of contracts, more user-friendly and transparent for readers and not too challenging to produce for lawyers.

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Demonstrations, Slides, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Automated Visual Contracting, Contract assembly systems, Contract information systems, Contract law information systems, Contract visualization, Contract visualization systems, Helena Haapio, Internationales Rechtsinformatik Symposion, IRIS, IRIS 2014, Legal document assembly systems, Michael Curtotti, Online contracting, Online contracting tools, Stefania Passera, Visualization of contract information, Visualization of legal information, Visualized contract assembly system



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/1eiHxT6

Henderson and Zorn: Statistical analysis of lateral hiring by law firms, and explanations

Professor William Henderson of Indiana University and Professor Dr. Christopher Zorn of Penn State University have published Is Reliance on Lateral Hiring Destabilizing Firms? , American Lawyer , 3 February 2014.

The article presents results of a statistical analysis of the lateral hiring of partners among law firms, and then discusses theoretical explanations for the results. The article is a very interesting example of the application of data analysis to legal institutions.

Here are excerpts of the article

[...] The market for lateral partners is a brisk one. Since 2000, the volume has varied between 1,900 and 3,500 lateral moves annually, with the volume peaking during the frothy days of 2007 and 2008.

[...] we sought to test a fairly simple hypothesis: Do firms that engage in more lateral partner hiring become more profitable over time? [...]

Last year, using an arsenal of multivariate statistical methods, we were unable to find a relationship between a lateral partner hiring strategy and higher law firm profitability [...]. [...] the data is telling us that for most law firms there is no statistically significant relationship between more lateral partner hiring and higher profits.

Here is a good question — why [is lateral partner hiring still so frequent]? [...] In the absence of organic growth, incoming lateral partners provide evidence that the firm is still vital and attractive. [...]

For more details, please see the complete article.

Filed under: Articles and papers, Research findings Tagged: American Lawyer, Christopher Zorn, Empirical legal studies, Empirical methods in legal informatics, Empirical methods in the study of legal institutions, Lateral hiring by law firms, Law firm economics, Law firm lateral hiring, Law firms, Statistical methods in legal informatics, Statistical methods in the study of legal institutions, Why do law firms do so much lateral hiring?, Why do law firms hire so many lateral partners?, William Henderson



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/1eiEUR2

Legal data and projects being worked on at Open Data Day 2014

Several legal data sets and projects are being worked on at Open Data Day 2014 (also called the International Open Data Hackathon, and Open Data Day Hackathon) , being held 22-23 February 2014, at many locations around the world.

The main event Website appears to be at http://opendataday.org/

The Website for the Washington, DC event is at http://ift.tt/125SOWS

There appear to be several Twitter hashtags for the event, including:

• #odd2014


• #odd14


• #opendataday


• and, for the DC event: #opendataday #dc

A map of locations/events is at http://ift.tt/1eFenlb

The wiki listing locations, projects, and datasets is at http://ift.tt/10xFqtU

Projects and datasets being worked on at the DC event are listed at the hackpad at http://ift.tt/1ddoDxj

The OpenGov Foundation has a new post describing the legal projects and data its personnel will work on at the DC location, including State Decoded Global Search and Compare, and DC Municipal Regulations Conversion.

Filed under: Applications, Data sets, Hackathons, Hacking, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: DC Municipal Regulations, Legal hackathons, Legal open government data, Legislative information systems, Open Data Day, Open Data Day 2014, Open Data Day DC, Open Data Day DC 2014, Open legal data, Open legislative data, Open regulatory data, Regulatory information systems, State Decoded, The State Decoded



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/1e1OI6s

The Trial Penalty is a Myth ... Or is It?

Everything you know is a lie. Remember criminal procedure? Remember the lesson, and the trope, that there is a "penalty," in terms of sentences received, for defendants who take trials instead of pleas. If a recent study is to be...



Continue reading this article, and get more law firm business news and information, at FindLaw.com.



via Strategist http://ift.tt/1cyDYeY

5 Ways to Find Your Law Firm's Social Media Tone

From blogs to tweets, Facebook posts to Pinterest pins, it's no wonder certain law firms' social media strategies can come off as a little, shall we say, schizophrenic. When working across multiple social media platforms, striking a consistent tone is...



Continue reading this article, and get more law firm business news and information, at FindLaw.com.



via Strategist http://ift.tt/1hBxEYw

Ashley: Toward Integrating Computational Models and Legal Texts

Professor Dr. Kevin Ashley of the University of Pittsburgh gave a presentation entitled Toward Integrating Computational Models and Legal Texts , on 6 February 2014 at Stanford Law School.

Click here for video of the presentation.

The talk was part of the CodeX Speaker Series, sponsored by Stanford CodeX: Center for Legal Informatics.

Here is a summary:

This talk will survey some techniques and prospects for enabling computational models of legal reasoning to work directly and automatically with legal texts to perform legal problem-solving tasks. For example, users of commercial legal information retrieval (IR) systems often want to retrieve not merely sentences with highlighted terms, but arguments and argument-related information, that is, argument retrieval (AR). The talk will illustrate how argument-relevant information could be extracted and applied to retrieve arguments from legal decisions. A second example involves techniques for annotating state statutory texts in a particular domain (dealing with public health emergencies), both manually and using machine learning, so that policy analysts can compare states’ regulatory schemes using network analysis. Related AI and Law work on information extraction from cases and statutes will be highlighted.

Filed under: Applications, Presentations, Technology developments, Videos Tagged: Artificial intelligence and law, CodeX Speaker Series, CodeX: The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, Computational models of legal reasoning, Kevin Ashley, Legal argument extraction, Legal argument retrieval, Legal information extraction, Legal information retrieval, Legal text annotation, Legal text mining, Legal text processing, Legislative network analysis, Machine learning, Machine learning in legal text annotation, Modeling legal arguments, Modeling legal reasoning, Network analysis, Network analysis in legal informatics, Regulatory network analysis



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/1f1A7DG

Social Media Use by BigLaw Firms Sucks; 3 Ways to Be Better

Good2BSocial and Above the Law did a survey last year of the 50 biggest U.S. law firms, measuring their social media use. The predicable findings were that BigLaw moves slowly, and isn't particularly socially adept, reports CMS Wire. What were...



Continue reading this article, and get more law firm business news and information, at FindLaw.com.



via Strategist http://ift.tt/1eYqFkk

IRIS 2014: Internationales Rechtsinformatik Symposion, 20-22 February

IRIS 2014: Internationales Rechtsinformatik Symposion is being held 20-22 February in Salzburg.

Click here for the short version of the program.

Click here for the detailed program, which includes abstracts.

The Twitter hashtag for the conference appears to be #IRIS2014

HT @StewieKee

Filed under: Conference Announcements, Conference resources Tagged: #IRIS2014, Erich Schweighofer, Internationales Rechtsinformatik Symposion, IRIS, IRIS 2014, Legal informatics conferences, Visualization of legal information



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/1jKwzL3

Judge's Illegal Disposition of Cases Leads to Docket Seizure

How does an award-winning judge, who is ironically the elected head of the American Judges Association (an organization that promotes best practices on the bench), lose total control of his docket? No big deal. He just, allegedly, ignored the law,...



Continue reading this article, and get more law firm business news and information, at FindLaw.com.



via Strategist http://ift.tt/1fhvhH4

OpenLaws.eu: Improving access to legal information in Europe

OpenLaws.eu is a new project aimed at improving access to legal information in Europe.

In 2013 the project received funding from European Commission (DG Justice).

According to the project’s Website, the project lasts for two years and begins in April 2014.

The project has a Twitter account, @OpenLaws, and a Facebook page.

Here is a description of the project, from the grant announcement:

Our vision is to provide open and easy access to legal information for everybody: Legal professionals, citizens and businesses.

For this purpose we will link legal content (legislation and case law based on open data), provide meta search functionalities, offer productivity tools (setting favorites, highlighting, tagging, etc), and run an open access journal. We are following an open innovation strategy, so everybody will be invited to contribute.

The project has already made available legal meta-search tools for the European Union and Austria.

Here are the project’s vision and objectives, from the project’s About page:

Vision

openlaws.eu aims at opening access to existing legal information systems and proactively involving and integrating our target groups, i.e. communities of individuals and businesses, legal professionals and public bodies. Open innovation, mass customization, big data analysis, social features and social networks are already highly successful in other markets and we want to introduce them in the legal domain on a European scale. Based on open data, open source software and open innovation principles we are adding a “social layer” to the existing “institutional layer” of legal information systems.

Objectives

The main objectives are:

• To create a clear BOLD Vision 2020 about what Big Open Legal Data (BOLD) could do in the year 2020 and propose a roadmap to implement it.


• To build a BOLD ICT Platform, based on open source software, which will be the first step to combine legal content and the knowledge and feedback of the community.

[...]

The consortium carrying out the project includes:

• University of Amsterdam, Leibnitz Center for Law


• Salzburg University of Applied Sciences


• London School of Economics and Political Science


• University of Sussex


• Alpenite srl


• BY WASS GmbH

Filed under: Applications, Projects Tagged: Big data analysis and law, Big data and law, Big Open Legal Data, BOLD, BOLD ICT, BOLD ICT platform, Chris Marsden, Clemens Wass, eparticipation, eparticipation systems, EU, Free access to law, Judicial information systems, Legal big data, Legal information retrieval, Legal Linked Data, Legal metasearch, Legal metasearch engines, Legal metasearch systems, Legal open access journals, Legal scholarly communication, Legal social networks, Legislative information systems, Leibniz Center for Law, Linked Data and law, Open access to legal scholarship, Open legal data, OpenLaws, OpenLaws.eu, Public access to legal data, Public access to legal information, Radboud Winkels, Reuse of legal data, Reuse of legal information, Reuse of open legal data, Reuse of open legal information, Social networks and law, User-generated content and legal information systems



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/N8ZPjD

Mancuhan and Clifton: Combating discrimination using Bayesian networks

Koray Mancuhan and Professor Dr. Chris Clifton of Purdue University have published Combating discrimination using Bayesian networks , forthcoming in Artificial Intelligence and Law .

Here is the abstract:

Discrimination in decision making is prohibited on many attributes (religion, gender, etc…), but often present in historical decisions. Use of such discriminatory historical decision making as training data can perpetuate discrimination, even if the protected attributes are not directly present in the data. This work focuses on discovering discrimination in instances and preventing discrimination in classification. First, we propose a discrimination discovery method based on modeling the probability distribution of a class using Bayesian networks. This measures the effect of a protected attribute (e.g., gender) in a subset of the dataset using the estimated probability distribution (via a Bayesian network). Second, we propose a classification method that corrects for the discovered discrimination without using protected attributes in the decision process. We evaluate the discrimination discovery and discrimination prevention approaches on two different datasets. The empirical results show that a substantial amount of discrimination identified in instances is prevented in future decisions.

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Research findings, Technology developments Tagged: Antidiscrimination law information systems, Artificial intelligence and law, Bayesian networks and legal information systems, Bayesian networks in antidiscrimination law information systems, Bayesian networks in discrimination detection systems, Bayesian networks in discrimination prevention systems, Bayesian statistical methods in legal informatics, Chris Clifton, Christopher W. Clifton, Civil rights law information systems, Discrimination detection systems, Discrimination prevention systems, Koray Mancuhan, Legal compliance information systems, Statistical methods in discrimination detection systems, Statistical methods in discrimination prevention systems, Statistical methods in legal informatics



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/1e6nGpU

What Is Reputation Management?

In our profession, reputation can make or break a practice. That's why it's paramount to being a competent and successful legal practitioner to manage your reputation. Here are some basic principles of reputation management that every lawyer should know....



Continue reading this article, and get more law firm business news and information, at FindLaw.com.



via Strategist http://ift.tt/1kSqDmC

Vallbé and Casellas: What’s the cost of e-Access to Legal Information? A composite indicator

Dr. Joan-Josep Vallbé of the University of Barcelona, and Dr. Núria Casellas of Wolters Kluwer, will present a paper entitled What’s the cost of e-Access to Legal Information? A composite indicator , at Doing Business: Past, Present, and Future of Business Regulation, a conference being held at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 20 February 2014.

Here is the abstract:

There is a shared belief that e-government policies can help turning regulatory compliance less costly, thus improving the regulatory environment that surrounds economic growth. While there is a growing volume of literature assessing the economic, political, and social benefits of a good regulatory environment, the effects of online access to legal information on both governance and the business environment have been so far unexplored. On one hand, the Doing Business indicators are produced under the assumption of full availability of information on the procedures needed to set up a business. On the other, despite the cost of regulatory information discovery looms large for businesses, institutional economics literature has not yet provided a model for these specific costs of information discovery.

Therefore, the design and implementation of measures for online access to legal and regulatory information proves much needed to gain insights into the costs of information discovery and their effects on the regulatory environment for policy reform that are simply unavailable to us using current methods.

This paper makes two main contributions. First, it provides a model for the costs of discovery of legal information and an empirical test of the relationship between governmental online presence and legal publication, on one hand, and the quality of the regulatory environment, on the other. Second, it shows that current measures of access to legal information are in need of improvement and presents a composite indicator to measure the costs of online access to legal information.

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Policy debates, Policy Materials, Research findings Tagged: Cost of access to legal information, Doing Business indicators, Doing Business: Past Present and Future of Business Regulation, Empirical methods in legal communication studies, Empirical methods in legal informatics, Free access to law, Indicators of legal information costs, Indicators of the costs of access to legal information, Joan-Josep Vallbé, Legal information costs, Modeling costs of accessing legal information, Modeling legal information costs, Nuria Casellas, Public access to legal information



via Legal Informatics Blog http://ift.tt/N5Nixn