LexRedux West: Legal Startup Event, 30 April 2014: Storify, tweets, and resources

LexRedux West, an event for legal startup founders and investors, was held 30 April 2014 at Stanford Law School in Stanford, California, USA.

The event was co-sponsored by Law Angel Network and CodeX: The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics.

Click here for the event announcement.

Click here for the event agenda.

Twitter hashtags for the event included #lexredux and #lexreduxwest

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

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

Filed under: Conference resources, Meetings, Storify, Tweet archives Tagged: CodeX: The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics, Joshua Kubicki, Law Angel Network, Law Angels, Legal startups, Legal technology startups, LexRedux West



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Dressing For the Jury -- It's More Complicated Than You Think

Dressing your client for a jury is more complicated that it might seem. Blanket advice, such as "have your client wear glasses," is supported by research for some cases, but not for others, for some types of clients, but not...



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Death Penalty Debate: Did Oklahoma Torture a Man to Death?

Few will mourn Charles Lockett. He was convicted, beyond a reasonable doubt, of shooting 19-year-old Stephanie Neiman with a sawed-off shotgun before watching his friends bury her alive. Along with Charles Warner, a man convicted of raping and murdering an...



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Spring Cleaning Your Law Firm Before Summer Comes

We're well into spring, but if you're like most lawyers, you've been busy dealing with your case load and managing your firm, so you've let things like spring cleaning pass you by. It's not too late, it's still technically...



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Francesconi: A description logic framework for accessing and reasoning over normative provisions

Dr. Enrico Francesconi of ITTIG-CNR has published A description logic framework for advanced accessing and reasoning over normative provisions , forthcoming in Artificial Intelligence and Law .

Here is the abstract:

A model of normative provisions and related axioms represented by using RDF(S)/OWL are presented as a contribution to implement the semantic web in the legal domain. In particular, a pattern able to implement the Hohfeldian legal fundamental relations between provisions using OWL-DL expressivity is proposed. Moreover, a query-based approach able to deal with relations between provision instances is described. An example of advanced access and reasoning over provisions using the proposed approach, as well as a prototype architecture of a provision retrieval system, are shown. The main benefit is represented by the ability of the approach to keep the complexity of the problem within a description logic computational tractability.

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Artificial intelligence and law, Consumer law information systems, Description logic and law, Enrico Francesconi, Hohfeldian reasoning, Hohfeldian reasoning in law, Inferential information retrieval, Inferential legal information retrieval, Inferential legal search, Inferential legal search engine, Inferential search engine, Legal information retrieval, Legal knowledge representation, Legal ontologies, Legal semantic web, Modeling consumer law, Modeling Hohfeldian legal relations, Modeling legal logic, Modeling legal norms, Modeling legal reasoning, Ontologies of Hohfeldian legal relations, Ontologies of Hohfeldian relations, Ontologies of legal logic, OWL-DL, PROMISE, Provision Model, Provision Model-based Inferential legal Search Engine, RDF(S)/OWL, Reasoning over legal norms, Reasoning over legal provisions, Semantic Web and law



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Call for participation in survey about ideas and use cases for openlaws.eu

Participants are invited for a survey about ideas and use cases for openlaws.eu .

Here are excerpts of the description of the survey:

www.openlaws.eu will be an online platform for legal professionals and for citizens to better find and organize legal information and to collaborate with others. [...]

The survey is open-ended and we are very interested in the opinion of both legal practitioners and non-experts. All feedback and ideas that you submit is anonymous and will be attentively reviewed and integrated into community proposals. All articulate proposals relevant to the openlaws platform will be distributed among the community regardless of a difference of opinion with the administrators of this web site! You will see the results of others immediately after having filled-out the survey. The final survey summary will be published under a Creative Commons 4.0 license (BY SA). [...]

For more details, please see the first page of the survey.

HT @openlaws

Filed under: Applications, Projects, Surveys, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Big data analysis and law, Big data and law, Big Open Legal Data, BOLD, BOLD ICT, BOLD ICT platform, Clemens Wass, eparticipation, eparticipation systems, EU, Fabian Vogler, Free access to law, Judicial information systems, Law Mining Hackathon, 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 Law Search, Open legal data, OpenLaws, OpenLaws.eu, openlaws.eu survey, Public access to legal data, Public access to legal information, Results of legal hackathons, 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



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Deely and Nesh-Nash: my.con: An Online Constitution-Making Platform

Dr. Sean Deely of the University of York and Tarik Nesh-Nash, M.S., of Software Centre, presented a paper entitled The Future of Democratic Participation: my.con: An Online Constitution Making Platform , at CROWD 2014: Sintelnet WG5 Workshop: Crowd Intelligence: Foundations, Methods, and Practices, held 8-9 January 2014 in Barcelona.

Here is the abstract:

During the Arab Spring revolutions protestors used mobile communications technology and social media platforms to share information, mobilize supporters, and organize activities to bring about the political transformation of their countries. In each case the drafting of a new constitution was the next step adopted to continue that transformation. We ask whether the digital revolution that powered the overthrow of old regimes during the Arab Spring can also be used to facilitate a similar level of participation in the constitution making process and we present “my.con”, an online platform allowing citizens to collaborate in constitutional drafting.

HT @mpoblet

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Conference papers, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Citizens' participation in constitutional drafting, Citizens' participation in lawmaking, Citizens' participation in legal drafting, Constitutional law information systems, CROWD, CROWD 2014, CROWD 2014: Crowd Intelligence: Foundations Methods and Practices, CROWD 2014: Sintelnet WG5 Workshop: Crowd Intelligence: Foundations, Crowd Intelligence: Foundations Methods and Practices, eparticipation, eparticipation systems, Legal communication, Legal crowdsourcing, Methods, my.con, Online legal communication, Sean Deely, Tarik Nesh-Nash



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The Single Most Effective Way to Get New Clients Online: Got PPC?

There are dozens of ways to get clients. Slap up a billboard. Run a late night commercial. Beg family and friends to send in referrals. But, when it comes to finding clients online, there's one way that is more efficient,...



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Visual law featured in new ABA Journal cover article

Visualization of legal information is the focus of Bob Ambrogi’s cover article in the new issue of ABA Journal : Visual law services are worth a thousand words—and big money (May 2014).

The individuals featured in the article include:

• Margaret Hagan and Ron Dolin of the Program on Legal Technology and Design


• Daniel Lewis and Nik Reed of Ravel Law


• Don Philbin of Picture It Settled


• Colin Starger and his SCOTUS Mapping Project


• Ed Walters of Fastcase


• Colette R. Brunschwig for organizing the International Conference on Multisensory Law


• Michael Curtotti , Helena Haapio , and Stefania Passera for their paper, Making the Meaning of Contracts Visible

For more details, please see the complete article.

HT @stephkimbro

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Law practice technology, Visualization of legal information



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OCLC releases work-level bibliographic records for many legal titles as open Linked Data

Open Linked Data versions of work-level bibliographic records for a large number of legal publications appear to be available as part of OCLC WorldCat Works, which was announced on 28 April 2014: OCLC releases WorldCat Works as linked data .

Click here for a detailed description of WorldCat Works.

Data appear to be available in the following formats:

Turtle (text/turtle)

JSON-LD (application/ld+json)

RDF/XML (application/rdf+xml)

N-TRIPLES (text/plain)

HTML+RDFa (text/html)

One can view Linked Data available for a particular publication, by displaying an OCLC WorldCat record, scrolling to the end, and clicking “Linked Data.” See, e.g., this record for a recent edition of Chitty on Contracts, a treatise on British contract law that has been published in many editions.

The data are licensed under an Open Data Commons Attribution License.

The data appear to include records for both primary and secondary legal resources.

In terms of primary legal resources, here is a human-readable display of OCLC work-level Linked Data for the UK Copyright Act 1956: http://ift.tt/1h9fF68

In terms of secondary legal resources, here is a human-readable display of OCLC work-level Linked Data for a recent edition of Chitty on Contracts: http://ift.tt/1pJj053

HT @lorcanD

Filed under: Data sets Tagged: Legal Linked Data, Linked Data and law, OCLC work-level bibliographic records as Linked Data, OCLC WorldCat Works, Work-level linked data, WorldCat Works



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Martic on Anonymous Crowdsourced Online Arbitration

Dusko Martic, LL.M., of IDT-Universitat Autonoma Barcelona, presented a paper entitled Blind Arbitration: Proposal for Anonymous Crowdsourced Online Arbitration , at CROWD 2014: Sintelnet WG5 Workshop: Crowd Intelligence: Foundations, Methods, and Practices, held 8-9 January 2014 in Barcelona.

Here is the abstract:

Shifting the academic discourse from general term of ODR [online dispute resolution] to more specific modalities like online arbitration is a clear sign of research advancements in the area of online dispute resolution. In this paper we explore the online arbitration in relation to crowdsourcing trends. The goal of this paper is to present new approach to online arbitration, based on several different principles and technologies. The proposal of anonymous / privacy-preserving online arbitration or “blind arbitration” is built upon technologies for online arbitration, crowdsourcing, blind bidding negotiation and founded upon privacy-by-design principles. We aim to propose higher-level of confidentiality, secrecy and privacy preservation along with leveraging “the wisdom of the crowds”.

HT @mpoblet

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Conference papers, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Blind arbitration, CROWD 2014: Crowd Intelligence: Foundations Methods and Practices, Crowd Intelligence: Foundations Methods and Practices, Crowdsourced arbitration, Crowdsourced legal dispute resolution, Dusko Martic, Legal crowdsourcing, Online arbitration, Online dispute resolution, Privacy by design, Privacy in legal information systems, Privacy in online dispute resolution



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3 Ethical Traps for Lawyers You Might Have Never Heard About

You know not to threaten your clients, not to lie or break the law and not to fool around with trust accounts. But did you know there are hidden ways an honest lawyer can still get in ethical trouble? Here...



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Emotional Intelligence: How to Find It in Prospective Associates

With the next crop of law school graduates soon out of school, hiring season is upon us. If you're thinking about adding to your firm's roster, before you just look at law schools and grades, consider the big picture. Apparently,...



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Lucas et al.: Computer assisted text analysis for comparative politics, and analysis of legal texts

Christopher Lucas , Professor Dr. Richard Nielsen , Margaret E. Roberts , Brandon M. Stewart , Dr. Alex Storer , and Professor Dr. Dustin Tingley presented a paper entitled Computer assisted text analysis for comparative politics , 26 April 2014 at the New Faces in Political Methodology conference, sponsored by the Penn State Quantitative Social Science Initiative, and held at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania, USA.

Here is the abstract:

Comparative politics scholars are well poised to take advantage of recent advances in research designs and research tools for the systematic analysis of textual data. This paper provides the first focused discussion of these advances for scholars of comparative politics, though many arguments are applicable across political science subfields. With the explosion of textual data in countries around the world, it is important for comparativists to stay at the cutting edge. We situate recent and existing tools within a broader framework of methods to process, manage, and analyze textual data. While we review a variety of analysis tools of interest, we particularly focus on methods that take into account information about when and who generated a particular piece of text. We also engage with more pragmatic considerations about the ability to process large volumes of text that come in multiple languages. All of our discussions are illustrated with existing, and several new, software implementations.

The paper focuses particularly on Structural Topic Model, a form of unsupervised topic modeling.

The paper describes a number of studies involving automated analysis of legal texts, and provides an extended example involving analysis of Islamic legal texts (fatwas).

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Conference papers, Methodology, Research findings, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Alex Storer, Analysis of Islamic legal texts, Automated analysis of Islamic legal texts, Automated legal text analysis, Automated text analysis, Brandon M. Stewart, Christopher Lucas, Dustin Tingley, Fatwas, Islamic legal texts, Legal text analysis, Margaret E. Roberts, New Faces in Political Methodology, New Faces in Political Methodology 2014, Penn State QSSI, Penn State Quantitative Social Science Initiative, QSSI, Richard Nielsen, Semantic analysis of legal texts, Structural Topic Model, Structural Topic Model and legal texts, Text analysis, Topic modeling, Topic modeling and legal texts, Unsupervised topic modeling, Unsupervised topic modeling and legal texts



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Schilling: Field of Forces: Strategic Interdependence in Legislative Behavior

Emily U. Schilling of the University of Iowa presented a paper entitled Field of Forces: Interdependence in Legislative Decision Making , 26 April 2014 at the New Faces in Political Methodology conference, sponsored by the Penn State Quantitative Social Science Initiative, and held at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania, USA.

Here is the abstract:

Since Woodrow Wilson’s (1885) analysis of Congress, researchers assumed that members of Congress look to one another for information, cues, and advice on unfamiliar policy areas. The amount of time and effort that each legislator and their staffers would have to put in to make all of these decisions would be insurmountable. Fellow legislators are a resource to turn to for guidance or assistance. Legislators cannot dictate what is law all on their own; they must make decisions as a collective. Legislators are able to influence their colleagues above and beyond each of their individual preferences. The members of Congress that are most influential will not necessarily be the same for every bill. The significant legislators may be one’s co-partisans and the party leadership or they may be a group of legislators with whom they share a common interest. Spatial analysis allows researchers to look more explicitly at the relationships between legislators and their counterparts. Using spatial probit, I study these issues by examining the factors that influence voting decisions. I will look at NAFTA testing which of the many relationships that every legislator has are most influential on their voting decision. The use of the spatial probit model provides an opportunity to test this relationship and see if even after controlling for other influences that there is dependence between legislators.

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Conference papers, Methodology, Research findings Tagged: Emily Schilling, Emily U. Schilling, Legal decision making, Legislative decision making, Legislative information systems, Legislative voting, Legislators' decision making, Legislators' legal decision making, New Faces in Political Methodology, New Faces in Political Methodology 2014, Penn State QSSI, Penn State Quantitative Social Science Initiative, QSSI, Spatial analysis in legal informatics, Spatial probit in legal informatics, Statistical methods in legal informatics



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A Happy Lawyer is a Good Lawyer: 5 Ways to Get Happy Today

You know the stereotype about how lawyers are happy all the time? Me neither. Lawyers suffer from high rates of alcoholism, depression and suicide. (Note: If you feel like harming yourself, it is a medical emergency -- please call 911...



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Rocher, de Montjoye, and Campbell: Uniform Law Adoption Analytics and Visualizations

The MIT Legal Science research team have posted Uniform Law as Data and Systems , at eCitizen.MIT.edu .

Here are excerpts from the post:

Initial Research Study Preview: Uniform Law Adoption Analytics

[...] One of the promising entry points being pursued by the Legal Science research team here at the MIT Media Lab is with an important body of statutes known as “Uniform Law”. The idea was initially proposed by the kick-off LegalScienceSalon Keynote Speaker Joshua Lenon, of Clio [...] This body of law has some great characteristics making it especially amendable to analytics, including that the 50 state legislatures that enact these statutes all receive the initial legislative bill language from a single point source: The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Law (NCCUSL). Legal Science research lead Dazza Greenwood brings significant experience with this method of law making engagement with drafting the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA), among other uniform laws. This direct experience, combined with the fresh perspectives and insights available when the body of law is analyzed as data, make this type of legal instrument especially well suited for exploration and analytics by the Legal Science research team.

Preliminary Analytics and Visualizations:

MIT Human Dynamics Lab data science visiting graduate student Luc Rocher (with oversight and feedback by Human Dynamics doctoral student Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye ) generated the visualization below (available in higher resolution here), depicting the normalized time it took each state to adopt a sample set of uniform laws. The colors are based upon the average time for adoption by states. The median time overall is show next to the name of the law. The states are ranked according to their borda count and dT is the average time it took them to enact. [...]

MIT Human Dynamics Lab legal research team collaborator Ray Campbell generated the visualization below using the Tableau visual analytics package and hosted service. A higher resolution image is available here and an interactive version is available here. [...]

For more visualizations and details, please see the complete post.

HT @LegalScience and @RightBrainLaw

Filed under: Applications, Images, Others' scholarly or sophisticated blogposts, Research findings, Technology developments Tagged: Analysis of legislative data, Dazza Greenwood, Legal analytics, Legal data analytics, Legislative analytics, Legislative data, Luc Rocher, MIT Legal Science research team, Ray Campbell, Tableau and legal data, Tableau and legislative data, Uniform law data, Uniform laws, Uniform legislative data, Visualization of information about uniform laws, Visualization of legal information, Visualization of legislative data, Visualization of legislative information, Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye



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Keppens: On modelling non-probabilistic uncertainty in the likelihood ratio approach to evidential reasoning

Dr. Jeroen Keppens of King’s College London has published On modelling non-probabilistic uncertainty in the likelihood ratio approach to evidential reasoning , forthcoming in Artificial Intelligence and Law .

Here is the abstract:

When the likelihood ratio approach is employed for evidential reasoning in law, it is often necessary to employ subjective probabilities, which are probabilities derived from the opinions and judgement of a human (expert). At least three concerns arise from the use of subjective probabilities in legal applications. Firstly, human beliefs concerning probabilities can be vague, ambiguous and inaccurate. Secondly, the impact of this vagueness, ambiguity and inaccuracy on the outcome of a probabilistic analysis is not necessarily fully understood. Thirdly, the provenance of subjective probabilities and the associated potential sources of vagueness, ambiguity and inaccuracy tend to be poorly understood, making it difficult for the outcome of probabilistic reasoning to be explained and validated, which is crucial in legal applications. The former two concerns have been addressed by a wide body of research in AI. The latter, however, has received little attention. This paper presents a novel approach to employ argumentation to reason about probability distributions in probabilistic models. It introduces a range of argumentation schemes and corresponding sets of critical questions for the construction and validation of argument models that define sets of probability distributions. By means of an extended example, the paper demonstrates how the approach, argumentation schemes and critical questions can be employed for the development of models and their validation in legal applications of the likelihood ratio approach to evidential reasoning.

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers Tagged: Argumentation schemes in legal evidentiary reasoning, Argumentation schemes in legal reasoning, Artificial intelligence and law, Evidential reasoning, Evidentiary reasoning, Jeroen Keppens, Legal argumentation schemes, Likelihood ratio approach to evidential reasoning, Likelihood ratio framework and legal evidence, Modeling evidential reasoning, Modeling evidentiary reasoning, Modeling legal reasoning, Modeling non-probabilistic uncertainty in legal evidentiary reasoning, Non-probabilistic uncertainty in legal evidentiary reasoning



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Georgetown Iron Tech Lawyer Competition, 23 April 2014: Video, storify, tweets, and resources

The latest Georgetown Iron Tech Lawyer Competition was held 23 April 2014 at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC, USA.

Click here for the event Website.

Click here for video of the event.

Click here for links to descriptions of the projects.

A Twitter hashtags for the event was #irontechlawyer

The Twitter account for the event is: @GtwnLawIronTech

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 description from the event’s Website:

Georgetown Law Iron Tech Lawyer — Access to Justice Edition. In just one semester, students in Georgetown Law’s Technology Innovation and Law Practice practicum [click here for the course description] built apps to help the public navigate legal processes. Six teams will show off their apps in the hopes of earning the title of Iron Tech Lawyer. This semester’s apps include:

The Den: New York City Debt and Eviction Navigator – Collects data on the ability of seniors in the New York City area to access the courts, and helps non-lawyer social workers aiding the elderly to offer assistance and materials relating to legal problems such as housing and consumer debt.

Immigration Navigator – Guides immigrants through the complex landscape of immigration law. By asking a few simple questions, the Navigator can pinpoint which of the many immigration laws and relief programs may help the user.

New York City Earned Sick Time Advisor – Provides clear and easy guidance to New York City employees to help them determine if they qualify for sick leave under the New York City Earned Sick Leave Act and, if so, how much sick time they have earned.

Pennsylvania Children’s Medicaid Appeals Advisor – Helps parents with minor children navigate the Medicaid appeals process after their coverage provider has denied, reduced or terminated their services.

Triage and Intake Assessment System – Helps potential clients determine whether they are eligible to receive Virginia Legal Aid’s assistance and provides referral resources.

The Unemployment Benefits Hearing Coach – Serves as a coach to users preparing for unemployment benefit hearings at the D.C. Office of Administrative Hearings, and provides targeted guidance regarding the evidence users should present. [...]

DC Legal Hackers organized a lunch before the event.

Filed under: Applications, Competitions, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: DC Legal Hackers, Employment law information systems, Georgetown Iron Tech Lawyer Competition, Housing law information systems, Iron Tech Lawyer Competition, Landlord and tenant information systems, Law practice technology, Legal aid information systems, Medicaid law information systems, Neota Logic, Public benefits law information systems, Tanina Rostain, Technology for access to justice, Unemployment benefits law information systems, Unemployment insurance law information systems, Welfare law information systems



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Georgetown Iron Tech Lawyer Competition, 23 April 2014: Video, storify, tweets, and resources

The latest Georgetown Iron Tech Lawyer Competition was held 23 April 2014 at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC, USA.

Click here for the event Website.

Click here for video of the event.

Click here for links to descriptions of the projects.

A Twitter hashtags for the event was #irontechlawyer

The Twitter account for the event is: @GtwnLawIronTech

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 description from the event’s Website:

Georgetown Law Iron Tech Lawyer — Access to Justice Edition. In just one semester, students in Georgetown Law’s Technology Innovation and Law Practice practicum [click here for the course description] built apps to help the public navigate legal processes. Six teams will show off their apps in the hopes of earning the title of Iron Tech Lawyer. This semester’s apps include:

The Den: New York City Debt and Eviction Navigator – Collects data on the ability of seniors in the New York City area to access the courts, and helps non-lawyer social workers aiding the elderly to offer assistance and materials relating to legal problems such as housing and consumer debt.

Immigration Navigator – Guides immigrants through the complex landscape of immigration law. By asking a few simple questions, the Navigator can pinpoint which of the many immigration laws and relief programs may help the user.

New York City Earned Sick Time Advisor – Provides clear and easy guidance to New York City employees to help them determine if they qualify for sick leave under the New York City Earned Sick Leave Act and, if so, how much sick time they have earned.

Pennsylvania Children’s Medicaid Appeals Advisor – Helps parents with minor children navigate the Medicaid appeals process after their coverage provider has denied, reduced or terminated their services.

Triage and Intake Assessment System – Helps potential clients determine whether they are eligible to receive Virginia Legal Aid’s assistance and provides referral resources.

The Unemployment Benefits Hearing Coach – Serves as a coach to users preparing for unemployment benefit hearings at the D.C. Office of Administrative Hearings, and provides targeted guidance regarding the evidence users should present. [...]

DC Legal Hackers organized a lunch before the event.

Filed under: Applications, Competitions, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: DC Legal Hackers, Employment law information systems, Georgetown Iron Tech Lawyer Competition, Housing law information systems, Iron Tech Lawyer Competition, Landlord and tenant information systems, Law practice technology, Legal aid information systems, Medicaid law information systems, Neota Logic, Public benefits law information systems, Tanina Rostain, Technology for access to justice, Unemployment benefits law information systems, Unemployment insurance law information systems, Welfare law information systems



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Making a Good Impression With Clients: 3 Simple Tips

They say that image is everything, but it isn't: Substance is. Unfortunately, clients can't just look at you and know the quality of your legal work. They tend to judge you on the image you project. With that in mind,...



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Dodson and Starger: Mapping Supreme Court Doctrine: Civil Pleading: Article and Video

Professor Scott Dodson of the University of California Hastings and Profesor Colin Starger of the University of Baltimore have published Mapping Supreme Court Doctrine: Civil Pleading , Federal Courts Law Review , 7, 275-284 (2014).

The article, and the video on which it is based, have been posted to SSRN .

Here is the abstract:

This essay, adapted from the video presentation available on Vimeo as #89845875, graphically depicts the genealogy and evolution of federal civil pleading standards in U.S. Supreme Court opinions over time. We show that the standard narrative — of a decline in pleading liberality from Conley to Twombly to Iqbal — is complicated by both progenitors and progeny. We therefore offer a fuller picture of the doctrine of Rule 8 pleading that ought to be of use to judges and practitioners in federal court. We also hope, through the video presentation, to introduce a new visual format for academic scholarship that capitalizes on the virtues of narration, graphics, mapping, online accessibility, and electronic dissemination.

This is an interesting example of the use of SSRN‘s video display capability.

Click here for previous posts about Colin Starger’s research using the SCOTUS Mapper Software.

HT @ColinStarger

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Research findings, Technology developments, Technology tools, Videos Tagged: Argument mapping and law, Argument maps and law, Civil procedure information systems, Colin Starger, Constitutional law information systems, Darren Kumasawa, Iqbal doctrine, Legal argument mapping, Legal argument mapping software, Legal argument maps, Legal doctrine maps, Mapping Civil Pleading, Mapping legal arguments, Mapping legal doctrines, Mapping legal rules, Mapping Supreme Court Doctrine: Civil Pleading, Scott Dodson, SCOTUS Mapper Software, SCOTUS Mapping Project, SSRN videos, Supreme Court Mapping Project, Twombly doctrine, Twombly Iqbal caselaw, Twombly Iqbal doctrine, Videos on SSRN, Visualization of court information, Visualization of judicial information, Visualization of legal argumentation, Visualization of legal arguments, Visualization of legal doctrine, Visualization of legal information



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Schwartz: Public Access vs. Open Access regarding legislative data

Molly Schwartz has posted Public Access vs. Open Access , at the Congressional Data Coalition Blog .

Here are excerpts from the post:

“Doesn’t Congress already make its information publicly accessible?”

That’s the question I hear most frequently when I tell people about the Congressional Data Coalition’s mission to get Congress to provide open access to its data. “Open access” is a complicated and loaded term in the digital information world, but at its core it involves three main components:

The ability to find the data.

The ability to use the data.

The ability to repurpose the data.

Truly achieving open access to congressional data will require more than just posting the information online: the information has to be in the correct format. Presenting data as gobs of text is seriously problematic because machines cannot read it.

In today’s information ecosystem, information that cannot be parsed and read by machines is like building an all-terrain vehicle that can only drive straight forward. It might be able to get you where you need to go, but only if your destination lies straight ahead. And it completely defeats the purpose of being able to drive off-road.

So what can congressional data that is machine-readable do that facilitates open access?

Finding the data: Search engines can search for the content stored within documents.

Using the data: A variety of programs can access and display the data. Mobile apps can provide to-the-minute updates, APIs can scrape it and immediately display it on another website, programs can download it into spreadsheets, etc.

Repurposing the data: Data can be run through programs that display it in charts, graphs, or elegant visualizations. Journalists and engaged citizens can also get timely access to the data that informs their output and ideas. [...]

For more details, please see the complete post.

Filed under: Applications, Others' scholarly or sophisticated blogposts, Policy debates Tagged: Congressional Data Coalition, Congressional Data Coalition Blog, Legal open data, Legal open government data, Molly Schwartz, Open legal data, Open legislative data, Public access to legal information, Public access to legislative information, Reuse of legal data, Reuse of legal open government data, Reuse of legislative data, Reuse of public sector information, Reuse of public sector legal information



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Webcast: 23 April: Iron Tech Lawyer Competition, Georgetown Law Center

The latest Iron Tech Lawyer Competition is scheduled to be held 23 April 2014 at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, DC.

A live video webcast of the event is said to be available at: http://ift.tt/1jzaYDb

This is an event in which law students present new legal technologies that they have developed in the past few months in a course at Georgetown University Law Center.

Here is a description of the event:

Georgetown Law Iron Tech Lawyer — Access to Justice Edition. In just one semester, students in Georgetown Law’s Technology Innovation and Law Practice practicum built apps to help the public navigate legal processes. Six teams will show off their apps in the hopes of earning the title of Iron Tech Lawyer. This semester’s apps include:

• The Den: New York City Debt and Eviction Navigator – Collects data on the ability of seniors in the New York City area to access the courts, and helps non-lawyer social workers aiding the elderly to offer assistance and materials relating to legal problems such as housing and consumer debt.


• Immigration Navigator – Guides immigrants through the complex landscape of immigration law. By asking a few simple questions, the Navigator can pinpoint which of the many immigration laws and relief programs may help the user.


• New York City Earned Sick Time Advisor – Provides clear and easy guidance to New York City employees to help them determine if they qualify for sick leave under the New York City Earned Sick Leave Act and, if so, how much sick time they have earned.


• Pennsylvania Children’s Medicaid Appeals Advisor – Helps parents with minor children navigate the Medicaid appeals process after their coverage provider has denied, reduced or terminated their services.


• Triage and Intake Assessment System – Helps potential clients determine whether they are eligible to receive Virginia Legal Aid’s assistance and provides referral resources.


• The Unemployment Benefits Hearing Coach – Serves as a coach to users preparing for unemployment benefit hearings at the D.C. Office of Administrative Hearings, and provides targeted guidance regarding the evidence users should present. [...]

DC Legal Hackers is organizing a lunch before the event.

The Twitter account for the event appears to be @GtwnLawIronTech

Filed under: Applications, Competitions, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: DC Legal Hackers, Employment law information systems, Georgetown Iron Tech Lawyer Competition, Housing law information systems, Iron Tech Lawyer Competition, Landlord and tenant information systems, Law practice technology, Legal aid information systems, Medicaid law information systems, Neota Logic, Public benefits law information systems, Tanina Rostain, Technology for access to justice, Unemployment benefits law information systems, Unemployment insurance law information systems, Welfare law information systems



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Stopczynski, Greenwood, Hansen, and Pentland: Privacy for Personal Neuroinformatics

Arkadiusz Stopczynski ; Dazza Greenwood, JD ; Professor Dr. Lars Kai Hansen ; and Professor Dr. Alex Pentland have posted a working paper entitled Privacy for Personal Neuroinformatics , on SSRN .

Here is the abstract:

Human brain activity collected in the form of Electroencephalography (EEG), even with low number of sensors, is an extremely rich signal raising legal and policy issues. Traces collected from multiple channels and with high sampling rates capture many important aspects of participants’ brain activity and can be used as a unique personal identifier. The motivation for sharing EEG signals is significant, as a mean to understand the relation between brain activity and well-being, or for communication with medical services. As the equipment for such data collection becomes more available and widely used, the opportunities for using the data are growing; at the same time however inherent privacy risks are mounting. The same raw EEG signal can be used for example to diagnose mental diseases, find traces of epilepsy, and decode personality traits. The current practice of the informed consent of the participants for the use of the data either prevents reuse of the raw signal or does not truly respect participants’ right to privacy by reusing the same raw data for purposes much different than originally consented to. Here we propose an integration of a personal neuroinformatics system, Smartphone Brain Scanner, with a general privacy framework openPDS. We show how raw high-dimensionality data can be collected on a mobile device, uploaded to a server, and subsequently operated on and accessed by applications or researchers, without disclosing the raw signal. Those extracted features of the raw signal, called answers, are of significantly lower-dimensionality, and provide the full utility of the data in given context, without the risk of disclosing sensitive raw signal. Such architecture significantly mitigates a very serious privacy risk related to raw EEG recordings floating around and being used and reused for various purposes.

HT @LegalScience

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Technology developments Tagged: Alex Pentland, Arek Stopczynski, Arkadiusz Stopczynski, EEG data, EEG data privacy, EEG data privacy systems, Electroencephalography data, group member Dazza Greenwood, Health law information systems, Lars Kai Hansen, Neurological data privacy, Neurological data privacy systems, open Personal Data Store, openPDS, Privacy by design, Privacy law information systems, Sandy Pentland, SSRN



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Carmel: A project to increase free public access to the U.S. Statutes at Large

Joe Carmel has posted a description of a new project to increase free public access to the U.S. Statutes at Large, and a call to participate in that project: US Statutes at Large: Essential to understanding our laws and legislative history , at the Congressional Data Coalition Blog .

Here are excerpts from the post:

[...] The United States Statutes at Large is the legal and permanent evidence of all the laws enacted during a session of Congress (1 U.S.C. 112) [...]‘

[...] So far, volumes 65 through 124 (1951-2010) of the Statutes at Large [...] have been published by the Legislative Branch per the November 2010 authorization. [...]

Making more laws available

Starting in January 2014, the Congressional Data Coalition and citizens joined together to make the individual laws and other documents of the US Statutes at Large available as discreet PDF files. We’re a little over half way through the initiative but we need volunteers to help for the final push.

Rather than attempting to produce a full-text table of contents for each volume as was accomplished by GPO for the post-1950 volumes, we’ve extracted the page number where each component (public law, resolution, etc.) begins by reusing the OCRed text from the constitution.org PDF files. We then crowdsource the proofreading and correcting of the data which is where we need your help. Once the simple table of contents is completed, software extracts the individual PDF files for each sub-document. The software to do all this is open source and available online.

As of April 2014, volumes 28 through 64 (1893-1951) have been processed. We’ve also begun extracting the text from the tables of contents from the volume files and combined it with the simple table of contents data being used to create the files (sort of like a final QA check). By combining the two data sources (the text from the tables of contents along with the public law number and stat page data, we’ve been able to build more usable tables of contents. See the U. S. Statutes at Large Pre-1951 Directory. [...]

Please consider helping our effort and volunteering along with us at http://ift.tt/1hauPeS [...]

For more details, please see the complete post.

Filed under: Applications, Calls for participation, Data sets, Others' scholarly or sophisticated blogposts, Projects, Technology developments Tagged: Congressional Data Coalition, Congressional Data Coalition Blog, Joe Carmel, Legis Works, Legis Works Statutes at Large Project, Legislative data, Legislative information systems, Open legislative data, U.S. Statutes at Large, United States Statutes at Large



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Danner: Influences of the West Legal Digest Classification System: What Can We Know?

Senior Associate Dean Richard A. Danner of Duke University School of Law has posted Influences of the Digest Classification System: What Can We Know? forthcoming in Legal Reference Services Quarterly .

Here is the abstract:

Robert C. Berring has called West Publishing Company’s American Digest System “the key aspect of the new form of legal literature” that West and other publishers developed in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Berring argued that West’s digests provided practicing lawyers not only the means for locating precedential cases, but a “paradigm for thinking about the law itself” that influenced American lawyers until the development of online legal research systems in the 1970s. This article discusses questions raised by Berring’s scholarship, and examines the late nineteenth and early twentieth century legal environment in which the West digests were created and became essential research tools for American lawyers.

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, History Tagged: Influence of legal classification systems, Influence of legal digests, Lawyers' use of West Digest, Lawyers' use of West Key Number System, Legal classification systems, Legal descriptive metadata, Legal digests, Legal knowledge representation, Legal metadata, Legal Reference Services Quarterly, Legal taxonomies, Richard A Danner, Richard Danner, West Key Number System



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Presentation of book, Peruginelli and Ragona (Eds.), “Legal Informatics in Italy,” at Italian Senate, 14 May 2014

A presentation ceremony and panel discussion regarding Ginevra Peruginelli and Mario Ragona (Eds.), Legal informatics in Italy. Fifty years of study, research and experience (2014), will be held 14 May 2014 at the Italian Senate in Rome.

Dr. Peruginelli sends the following information additional information about the event:

To participate in the event (in Italian) one needs to register by May 9th at eventi@ittig.cnr.it .

We look forward to seeing foreign experts also this May in Rome.

The index of the Volume and English abstracts are available at:

http://ift.tt/1h1UMsf

Click here for earlier posts about the book.

Filed under: Conference Announcements, Panel discussions Tagged: Ginevra Peruginelli, History of legal informatics, History of legal informatics in Italy, Legal informatics conferences, Legal informatics in Italy: Fifty years of studies research and experiences, Mario Ragona



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Alsinet et al.: RP-DeLP: A weighted defeasible argumentation framework based on a recursive semantics

Dr. Teresa Alsinet , Dr. Ramón Béjar , Dr. Lluís Godo , and Francesc Guitart , have published RP-DeLP: A weighted defeasible argumentation framework based on a recursive semantics , forthcoming in Journal of Logic and Computation .

Here is the abstract:

In this article, we propose a recursive semantics for warranted formulas in a general defeasible logic argumentation framework by formalizing a notion of collective (non-binary) conflict among arguments. The recursive semantics for warranted formulas is based on the intuitive grounds that if an argument is rejected, then further arguments built on top of it should also be rejected. The main characteristic of our recursive semantics is that an output (or extension) of a knowledge base is a pair consisting of a set of warranted and a set of blocked formulas. Arguments for both warranted and blocked formulas are recursively based on warranted formulas but, while warranted formulas do not generate any collective conflict, blocked conclusions do. Formulas that are neither warranted nor blocked correspond to rejected formulas. Then we extend the framework by attaching levels of preference to defeasible knowledge items and by providing a level-wise definition of warranted and blocked formulas. After we consider the warrant recursive semantics for the particular framework of Possibilistic Defeasible Logic Programming (RP-DeLP for short). Since RP-DeLP programmes may have multiple outputs, we define the maximal ideal output of an RP-DeLP programme as the set of conclusions which are ultimately warranted, and we present an algorithm for computing it in polynomial space and with an upper bound on complexity equal to PNP. Finally, we propose an efficient and scalable implementation of this algorithm using SAT encodings, and we provide an experimental evaluation when solving test sets of instances with single and multiple preference levels for defeasible knowledge.

In one example, the framework is applied to a parliamentary debate on economic policy, regarding which laws restricting the types of economic policies that can be implemented are treated as defeasible rules within the framework.

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers Tagged: Defeasible legal rules, Defeasible logic argumentation frameworks, Defeasible reasoning, Defeasible reasoning in law, Journal of Logic and Computation, Legal argumentation, Legal argumentation frameworks, Legal defeasible reasoning, Modeling legal rules, Possibilistic Defeasible Logic Programming, RP-DeLP



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