Maharg: Convergence and fragmentation: Legal research, legal informatics and legal education

Paul Maharg of Australian National University has published Convergence and fragmentation: Legal research, legal informatics and legal education , European Journal of Law and Technology , 5(3) (2014).

Here is the abstract:

Fragmentation and convergence are two discoursal lenses that have been used to view changes that have taken place in the domains of legal services, the legal profession, regulation and legal education. While they may appear orthogonal, the relationships between them are intimate, sophisticated, constantly shifting and require much more analysis.

In this paper I shall argue that law schools need to engage with both processes for they are powerful actants upon the way we perceive our schools and our roles within them. They are also powerful forces upon what and how we teach, and the nature of the knowledge that is the focus of our heuristics. To exemplify this argument and to begin to examine its strength as a tool for analysis I shall focus on one area of legal education, namely the three fields of legal information literacies, legal informatics and legal writing. I shall argue that the sum of the convergence of all three would significantly improve the educational effects of the parts in our curricula. I shall explore how studies in New Media on media convergence give us models for such convergence, and can reveal the educational effects that the process may bring about.

Click here for slides associated with this article.

Click here for Paul Maharg’s post about the original version of this article.

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Others' scholarly or sophisticated blogposts, Slides, Technology developments Tagged: EJLT, European Journal of Law and Technology, Genealogies of Legal Education, Influence of media on legal information, Influence of media on legal knowledge, Legal communication, Legal education reform, Legal educational technology, Legal informatics, Legal information literacy, Legal instructional technology, Legal knowledge, Legal writing, New media and law, Paul Maharg



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5 Traits to Look For in a Great Legal Assistant

What should you look for in a paralegal or legal assistant? We don't mean "what should you put in the job application." That's easy: Writing skills, attention to detail, flexible schedule, and so on. We're talking about personality traits that...



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Lawyer's Suspension Shows the Ethical Perils of Co-Representation

The perils of co-representation! Representing two parties at the same time usually comes up in the divorce context, where the parties are (more or less) agreeable and really just want to save money by using just one lawyer. That sounds...



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What Can You Learn From Competitors' Law Firm Websites?

Business people know that one of the best ways to figure out what you're doing right or wrong is to spy on what the competition is doing. Back in Ye Olde Times, that might have involved sending a "secret shopper"...



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Call for papers: DESI VI Workshop on Advanced Technologies to Address Legal Problems in E-Discovery and Information Governance

A call for papers has been issued for the ICAIL 2015 DESI VI Workshop on Using Machine Learning and Other Advanced Techniques to Address Legal Problems in E-Discovery and Information Governance, scheduled to be held 8 June 2015 at the University of San Diego, San Diego, California, USA.

The workshop is being held in conjunction with ICAIL 2015: International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law.

The submission deadlines for the DESI VI workshop are 10 April 2015 for refereed papers, and 1 May 2015 for unrefereed position papers.

Here is an excerpt from the description of the workshop’s purpose:

The DESI VI workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners to explore innovation and the development of best practices for application of search, classification, language processing, data management, visualization, and related techniques to institutional and organizational records in e-discovery, information governance, public records access, and other legal settings.

Questions addressed include:

• What combinations of machine learning and other techniques can best categorize information in accordance with existing records management policies?


• Do effective methods exist for performing sentiment analysis and personal information identification in a legally useful way in e-mail and other records of interpersonal communication?


• How well can we estimate the end-to-end costs of workflows that combine artificial intelligence and human coding to accomplish legal tasks on a broad range of content types?


• Can proactive insider threat detection leverage information already being collected for records management purposes, and what would be the ethical and legal fallout of such approaches?


• Are approaches available to reduce the perceived conflicts between privilege and transparency in labeling data for Technology-Assisted Review (TAR) in e-discovery and public records access applications?


• What technical, procedural, and legal issues arise from recent proposals to shift the focus of e-discovery from relevance to materiality?


• Where do recent legal cases point to the need for new research to better inform the decision of courts and the practices of parties?


• What lessons can we draw from recent shared-task evaluations such as TREC and EDI, and how can future shared-task evaluations best be structured?


• How can current techniques for issue coding be applied to compliance tasks (e.g., in regulatory, enforcement, and investigations settings), and what capability gaps exist that call for new research?


• What implications do emerging technologies such as deep learning and fine-grained access to behavioral traces have for e-discovery, business intelligence, and records and information management purposes? […]

For more details, please see the complete call.

HT @JasonRBaron1

Filed under: Applications, Calls for papers, Research findings, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Artificial intelligence and law, DESI, DESI VI, ediscovery, ICAIL, ICAIL 2015, ICAIL workshops, ICAIL Workshops 2015, International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law, Legal evidence information systems, Legal informatics conferences, Legal information retrieval, Legal machine learning, Legal search, Machine learning and law, Visualization of legal information



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Lee et al.: Integrating Today’s ‘Next Gen’ Research Tools Ravel and Casetext in the Law School Classroom

Katrina June Lee , Susan Azyndar , and Ingrid Mattson have published A New Era: Integrating Today’s ‘Next Gen’ Research Tools Ravel and Casetext in the Law School Classroom , forthcoming in Rutgers University Computer & Technology Law Journal .

Here is the abstract:

The legal research landscape is changing…again. In recent years, law school professors introduced Google, WestlawNext, and LexisAdvance into their classrooms. Now, a new generation of legal research tools that include the innovative Ravel and Casetext will have law school professors grappling with the questions: Should law professors teach these next gen research tools as part of the skills curriculum? If so, how? In this article, the authors respond with a resounding “Yes” and propose a set of teaching ideas for doing so without sacrificing precious class time. They conclude that Ravel and Casetext pose an intriguing and exciting possibility for achieving the pedagogical goals of legal skills classrooms. In Spring 2014, the authors implemented a teaching and assessment classroom pilot module in the legal writing classroom using Ravel and Casetext, and this article builds from the lessons of that pilot. The authors contend that integrating these legal research innovations in the law school classroom advances significant pedagogical goals: teaching law students information literacy (e.g., research strategy, context, and source evaluation); teaching metacognitive skills; preparing students for law practice; and exploring professionalism and ethics issues. This article provides an overview of the pedagogical goals of teaching legal research skills, describes the newest “next gen” tools Ravel and Casetext, and discusses how teaching these tools furthers the pedagogical goals. Finally, the article describes in detail the pilot module used in one of the authors’ first-year legal writing classroom and suggests many possibilities for the integration of the newest “next gen” research tools in the legal skills classroom.

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Courses and curricula, Curriculum materials, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Casetext, Computer assisted legal research, Ingrid Mattson, Katrina June Lee, Katrina Lee, Legal annotation systems, Legal crowdsourcing, Legal crowdsourcing systems, Legal educational technology, Legal research, Legal research instruction, Legal research technology, Ravel, Ravel Law, Rutgers University Computer and Technology Law Journal, Susan Azyndar, Technology in legal research instruction, Visualization of legal information



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Law Office Ergonomics: Monitors Can Be a Pain in the Neck

Big, roomy computer monitors are essential for comfortable lawyering. You spend a lot of your time at your desk, and a big monitor allows you to have multiple documents open side-by-side. But monitors, like every other part of your desk,...



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What the Heck Is a 'Brand'? Here's What Lawyers Need to Know

We talk all the time on FindLaw's Strategist blog about branding and how it's important to you as a lawyer. Truthfully it is -- and you can, and should, use branding to differentiate yourself from other law firms. Tossing around...



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Unsolicited Email Requests for Legal Help: What Should Lawyers Do?

It's happened to you before: You get an unsolicited email from someone you don't know, claiming that someone else did something to him and now he wants to sue. You're pretty sure this person got your email address from the...



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Proposed Bar Opinion: Your Blog May Be an 'Attorney Communication'

Well, this one hits close to home. At the end of last year, the State Bar of California proposed a formal ethics opinion on attorney blogging. We here at FindLaw's Strategist are all in favor of attorney blogs (well, when...



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Katz and Bommarito: Slides: Legal Analytics – Introduction to the Course

Daniel Martin Katz and Michael Bommarito have posted slides from the first class session of their course entitled Legal Analytics, which they are teaching at Michigan State University College of Law.

Here is an excerpt from Dan’s post describing the slides:

Here is an introductory slide deck from Legal Analytics which is a course that Mike Bommarito and I are teaching this semester. Relevant legal applications include predictive coding in e-discovery (i.e. classification), early case assessment and overall case prediction, pricing and staff forecasting, prediction of judicial behavior, etc.

As I have written in my recent article in Emory Law Journal – we are moving into an era of data driven law practice. This course is a direct response to demands from relevant industry stakeholders. For a large number of prediction tasks … humans + machines > humans or machines working alone.

We believe this is the first ever Machine Learning Course offered to law students […]

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

Filed under: Applications, Course materials, Slides, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Computational Legal Studies, Daniel Martin Katz, Legal analytics, Legal analytics courses, Legal informatics courses, Legal machine learning, Machine learning and law, Michael Bommarito, Michigan State University College of Law



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Cambridge Workshops on Legal Aspects of Blockchain Technologies: Storify, links, and resources

Two workshops on legal aspects of blockchain technologies were held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, 15-18 January 2015, at MIT and Harvard’s Berkman Center.

• January 15-16, 2015: Technical and Legal Workshop: Blockchain: Cryptocurrencies and Distributed Ledgers, at MIT Media Lab


• January 17-18, 2015: Berkman Workshop on Crypto-equity and the Law, at Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University

Click here for the agenda of the Berkman Center workshop.

The agenda for the MIT workshop seems to be unavailable.

Organizers of these events included Primavera de Filippi , Constance Choi , and Joel Dietz .

One Twitter hashtag for the workshops was #decentlaw

Click here for a storify of images and Twitter tweets from the events.

These workshops have been announced on the Website of the Berkman Center’s study group on Legal, Social, and Economic Aspects of Cryptoledger-based Technologies.

Here is a description of the MIT workshop, from the announcement:

[…] A workshop examining the interplay between blockchain technologies including distributed cryptoledger technology, decentralized identity, and policy frameworks and legal infrastructure for existing regulatory regimes. The workshop will gather select lawyers and entrepreneurs involved in the deployment of distributed ledger applications, in order to sketch out a techno-legal framework that could resolve foundational issues common to these emerging innovations.

The goal is to examine the current applications and potential opportunities of cryptocurrency and distributed ledger technologies in order to create a viable working document outlining appropriate adaptations and integrations to existing legal infrastructure and policy frameworks. The workshop participants will distill the current state of the art of blockchain-related technologies into a set of recommendations and open questions concerning potential applications of distributed architecture and how they can be regulated within the existing legal and policy frameworks, as well as recommendations with regard to different areas (e.g., modification of existing financial services laws to distributed architectures (i.e., travel rule for p2p transfers), identification of common business models exempt from oversight, model safe harbors and scalable requirements for startups, blockchain innovations relevant to AML/KYC/financial controls/corporate governance, permission-based requirements, appropriate sphere of regulated activities, CSBS or NYDFS proposed policies). […]

Here is a description of the Berkman Center workshop, from the announcement:

[…] A workshop organised in the framework of the Study group on Legal, Social & Economic Aspects of Cryptoledger-based Technologies at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, examining the interplay between blockchain technologies including distributed cryptoledger technology and existing legal infrastructure or regulatory regimes. The workshop will gather a small group of lawyers and entrepreneurs involved in the deployment of distributed cryptoledger-based applications in order to sketch out a techno-legal framework that could resolve the issues that most of these applications are currently facing, without hindering their distributed potential and decentralized character. […]

The goal is to examine the current applications and potential opportunities of cryptoledger technology to create policy recommendations outlining appropriate integrations to existing legal infrastructure. Ideally, the document will contain a set of recommendations concerning potential applications of distributed cryptoledger technology and how they can be regulated within the existing legal framework, as well as recommendations with regard to different areas that should either be better regulated or rather be left unregulated. The workshop participants will also come up with potential recommendations (in the US context) to reform existing laws or regulation that may prevent innovation around these technologies. […]

Click here for other posts about legal applications of blockchain technology.

HT @compleatang

Filed under: Applications, Conference resources, Policy debates, Storify, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Berkman Workshop on Crypto-equity and the Law, Constance Choi, Cryptoledgers, Distributed autonomous organizations, Ethereum, Joel Dietz, Legal applications of blockchain technology, MIT Media Lab, Primavera de Filippi, Smart contracts, Technical and Legal Workshop: Blockchain: Cryptocurrencies and Distributed Ledgers



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LSC TIG 2015: Technology Initiative Grants Conference: Storify, links, and resources

LSC TIG 2015: U.S. Legal Services Corporation’s Technology Initiative Grants Conference 2015, was held 14-16 January 2015 in San Antonio, Texas, USA.

Click here for the conference Website.

The conference program is available at: 2015tig.sched.org/

One Twitter hashtag for the event was #lsctig

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

Here is a description of the conference, from the conference Website:

The TIG Conference is the nation’s largest gathering of experts and persons interested in the use of technology to address the civil legal needs of low-income Americans.

HT @DavidBonebrake

Filed under: Applications, Conference resources, Storify, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Access to justice technology, Law practice technology, Legal document assembly systems, Legal informatics conferences, Legal Services Corporation, LSC TIG, LSC TIG 2015, Plain legal language, Self represented litigants and technology, Technology and access to justice, Technology for self represented litigants, Technology Initiative Grants Conference



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Dunn and Larrington: Best Practices for the Authentication of Official Electronic Legal Material

Catherine M. Dunn and Jane Larrington have posted Best Practices for the Authentication of Official Electronic Legal Material .

Here is the abstract:

Many state governments publish primary legal material online, potentially saving money, increasing efficiency, and expanding access to such material. However, the transition away from print raises many important questions about the management of electronic legal information, including issues related to the trustworthiness of the information as it moves from the content originator to the end user. In states publishing primary legal material online, it is critically important that state officials take steps to ensure that the electronic legal information they publish is unaltered and can be verified as authentic. Digital authentication solutions assure users that the material is trustworthy and has not been altered since dissemination by a trusted source.

These best practices, which stem from analyses of other studies and discussions with countless experts in the field, are designed to help cut through the confusion related to the selection, implementation, and maintenance of a digital authentication solution for the electronic publication of official legal material. The authors created these best practices because they are in states on the leading edge of state government publication of official, authentic versions of primary legal material online, and they personally observed a need for this guidance. As such, they created these best practices primarily for use by those charged with implementing and investigating digital authentication solutions, but they may also benefit anyone interested in digital authentication.

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Policy debates, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Authentication of digital legal documents, Authentication of digital legal information, Authentication of electronic legal documents, Authentication of electronic legal information, Catherine Dunn, Catherine M. Dunn, Jane Larrington



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Call for papers: Special issue in honor of Jon Bing, of the journal: Artificial Intelligence and Law

A call for papers has been issued for a special issue in honor of the late Jon Bing, of the journal Artificial Intelligence and Law.

The submission deadline is 31 March 2015.

Here are excerpts from the call:

[…] At the Law Faculty of the University of Oslo, Jon [Bing] co-founded – as early as 1970 – the Norwegian Research Centre for Computers and Law (NRCCL), and worked tirelessly over the years to establish it as a leading international research hub. It was characteristic of Jon’s commitment to an interdisciplinary approach, and further evidence of the breadth of his knowledge and understanding of the field, that the many researchers who visited NRCCL included most of the key figures in the development of the field of Artificial Intelligence and Law. Together with some of his NRCCL colleagues, Jon participated in several of the International Conferences on AI & Law, and co-chaired the organization of ICAIL 1999, held at the University of Oslo.

It is therefore highly appropriate that the editors of Artificial Intelligence and Law have decided to publish a special issue of the journal in Jon’s honour. Submissions are sought of papers that either discuss aspects of Jon’s own contributions to AI and Law, or else address issues related to Jon’s work in that field. Given the very wide range of Jon’s interests, the proposed remit of the special issue is suitably broad in scope. Authors should follow the instructions for document preparation and submission described at http://ift.tt/1AOMils

The deadline for submissions will be March 31 2015. The provisional plan is to publish the selected papers in the fourth issue of the 2015 volume. The guest editors of the special issue will be Emily Weitzenboeck (Senior Associate, Wikborg, Rein & Co. Advokatfirma DA), Tobias Mahler (Associate Professor, NRCCL) and Andrew Jones (Emeritus Professor, King’s College London, and an associate member of NRCCL 1986-2001) […]

For more details, please see the complete call.

HT Anne Gardner

Filed under: Calls for papers Tagged: Andrew Jones, Anne Gardner, Artificial intelligence and law, Emily Weitzenboeck, Jon Bing, Tobias Mahler



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5 Ways Lawyers Can Improve Their Calendaring System

Believe it or not, something as simple as missing deadlines is among the Top 10 reasons for legal malpractice claims. Remembering when something is due seems like such a simple task, but it's so simple that practitioners -- especially solos...



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Want to Expand? 5 Hot Legal Practice Areas to Consider for 2015

Certain practice areas are like a leather jacket: They never go out of style. Personal injury, estate planning, and criminal defense will always be there. But is there something more you could be doing? As it turns out, there is....



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OpenBazaar + CommonAccord: Tool for creating legally enforceable versions of blockchain-based agreements

James Hazard of CommonAccord and Washington Sanchez of OpenBazaar have released OpenBazaar + CommonAccord: A […] tool to help you write legally enforceable OpenBazaar contracts.

Here is a description from the site:

Client-side tools created with AngularJS to parse OpenBazaar Ricardian Contracts formatted in JSON, displaying them in stylish HTML (twitter bootstrap, responsive design), and also automagically populate the fields of CommonAccord’s legally enforceable escrow contract template.

Please note that this is for testing only, using a yet unimplemented version of the OpenBazaar contract schema. […]

Background on this project — in which CommonAccord templates are used to create legally enforceable versions of OpenBazaar blockchain-based agreements — is available at: http://ift.tt/17GunDO

HT @eris_ltd

Filed under: Applications, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: CommonAccord, Escrow agreements, James Hazard, Legal applications of blockchain technology, Legally enforceable blockchain agreements, Legally enforceable smart contracts, OpenBazaar, Ricardian contracts, Smart contracts, Washington Sanchez



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5 Problems Unique to Work-From-Home Solos (With Solutions!)

Like Bruce Wayne, I have an alter ego. In my alternate life, I'm Batman a solo practitioner who works from home. Lots of solos have a separate office, but being that I'm part-time, all that office space wouldn't make sense....



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Is Your Marketing Plan Working? 3 Ways to Tell

Every lawyer knows that marketing is important. But few spend the time to evaluate the success of their marketing campaigns. Most will try a few things and if they fit in the budget, and there are enough clients coming in...



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Lessons From 5 Lawyers Who Made Fools of Themselves in 2014

Happy 2015. We have many thing to be thankful as the new year begins, not the least of which is this: We didn't make this list. Last year, we talked about the biggest legal fools of 2013 on social media,...



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Call for chapters: Book: Achieving Open Justice through Citizen Participation and Transparency

Mila Gascó and Carlos E. Jiménez have issued a call for chapters for a proposed book that they are editing, which is entitled Achieving Open Justice through Citizen Participation and Transparency, to be published by IGI.

Here are excerpts from the call:

Call for Chapters

Proposals Submission Deadline: February 28, 2015

Full Chapters Due: June 30, 2015 […]

The aim of this book is […] to introduce the concept of open justice and to identify and analyze worldwide initiatives that focus on opening the judiciary by making it more transparent, more collaborative and more participative. This is important for open justice is not a new concept. Common Law has traditionally linked it to transparency and public scrutiny in order to guarantee the proper functioning of the courts and the opening of information to the general public. This book goes beyond this classical definition of open justice and intends to apply the three open government principles (transparency but, also, collaboration and participation) to the justice field.

Our ultimate goal is to show that an open government is not enough. We need to talk about an open state and, therefore, to make sure, we guarantee openness in the three state’s branches. No other publication has approached open government from the state perspective emphasizing the need to also have an open justice. […]

Target Audience

This book will be useful to politicians, judges and public sector officials (mainly those working in the judiciary) who need a convenient source of information on what open justice is and what it can do for opening the state and improving governance and democracy and on what it is being done around the world, to leaders and consultants who liaise with judicial agencies to design and implement open justice initiatives, to practitioners within the justice field (such as lawyers), and to academicians, researchers and students interested in the field of open justice in particular and open government in general.

Recommended Topics

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The role of ICT in opening the judiciary


• Transparency in the judiciary


• Participation and participatory justice


• Collaboration, collaborative justice & community courts


• Open justice and the modernization of the courts


• Social media and openness in the judiciary


• Innovation in the justice field


• Open data and big data


• Co-production/co-creation of justice


• Evaluation of open justice initiatives

It is the intention of the book to include both empirical and theoretical chapters. Regarding the former, case studies of both developed and developing countries will be more than welcome. These cases may refer to examples of successful and less successful open justice efforts. […]

For more details, please see the complete call.

HT @MilaGasco

Filed under: Calls for papers Tagged: Carlos E. Jiménez, Carlos Jimenez, Citizen participation in court proceedings, Citizen participation in judicial proceedings, Citizen participation in justice administration, Court information systems, Court transparency, eparticipation, IGI, Judicial information systems, Judicial transparency, Legal open data, Mila Gascó, Open court data, Open judicial data, Open justice, Open legal data, Public access to court data, Public access to judicial data, Public access to legal information



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Winkels et al.: Towards a Legal Recommender System

Radboud Winkels , Alexander Boer , and Bart Vredebregt have posted Towards a Legal Recommender System , a paper presented at JURIX 2014: International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems.

Here is the abstract:

In this paper we present the results of ongoing research aimed at a legal recommender system where users of a legislative portal receive suggestions of other relevant sources of law, given a focus document. We describe how we make references in case law to legislation explicit and machine readable, and how we use this information to adapt the suggestions of other relevant sources of law. We also describe an experiment in categorizing the references in case law, both by human experts and unsupervised machine learning. Results are tested in a prototype for Immigration Law.

The paper appears to have won an award at JURIX 2014.

HT @radboud

Filed under: Accolades, Applications, Articles and papers, Conference papers, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Alexander Boer, Automated categorization of legal citations, Bart Vredebregt, Immigration law information systems, JURIX 2014, Legal citation information systems, Legal citations, Legal machine learning, Legal recommendation systems, Legal recommender systems, Legislative information systems, Machine learning and law, Radboud Winkels



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du Feu and Lambert: Publishing Legal Information in a Small Jurisdiction: Privacy versus Open Justice

Sue du Feu and James Lambert have published Impacts and Effects of Publishing Legal Information in a Small Jurisdiction: Privacy v Open Justice , Legal Information Management , 14, 284-289 (2014).

Here is the abstract:

This paper […] outlines the challenges faced by the Jersey Legal Information Board (JLIB) in providing free access to legal information. The power of modern internet search engines has implications for a small island jurisdiction wishing to make its case law available on-line (see: http://www.jerseylaw.je ). Having established protocols and policies to ensure a balance between open justice and privacy, several years later, JLIB is faced with concerns from individuals who feel that continuing public access to their earlier misdemeanours is an unfair burden. The paper will explain how the JLIB addressed the challenge of publishing court judgments online while safeguarding the interests of the individual.

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Policy debates, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Free access to law, James Lambert, Jersey Law, Jersey Legal Information Board, JerseyLaw, Legal information institutes, Legal Information Management, Privacy and court decisions, Privacy and judicial decisions, Privacy in court records, Public access to legal information, Sue du Feu



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Virtual Law Office 105: Processing Credit Card Payments

How complicated is getting paid by credit card? In an ideal world, one would only need a credit card processor, such as the many ones we've talked about that handily operate via an attachment to your smartphone. If a food...



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10 Words Misused by Lawyers (and What They Really Mean)

When someone is "livid," has he turned red with anger, white with anger, or purple with anger? As lawyers, words are our currency, and there are many other lawyers and judges out there who will know if you use a...



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Virtual Law Office 104: Using Google Forms for Your Practice

Sick of transcribing paper intake forms into your computer after every consultation? Want a free, paperless, electronic option? Well Google Forms might be your new best friend. The idea is simple: Create online forms, such as an intake form, that...



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Legal Informatics Conference Calendar: Updated as of January 2015

The legal informatics conference calendar has now been updated.

The calendar lists primarily scholarly conferences that focus on legal information systems, legal communication, legal/forensic linguistics, or egovernment (as applied to legal information), or that are known to welcome papers on those topics. The calendar also lists legal hackathons and other legal hacking events.

Click here for a list of events just added to the calendar.

Valentino Spataro’s enhanced version of the calendar is available at http://www.gloxa.it/rr/

Click here for a list of upcoming and recent legal hackathons.

If you know of events or other information that should be on the calendar but are not; or if you spot errors in the calendar, I’d be grateful if you would please share that information in the comments to this post.

Filed under: Calls for papers, Calls for participation, Calls for proposals, Conference Announcements, Hackathons, Hacking Tagged: egovernment conferences, Forensic linguistics conferences, Legal argumentation conferences, Legal communication studies conferences, Legal design jams, Legal hackathons, Legal hacking, Legal hacking events, Legal informatics conference calendar, Legal informatics conferences, Legal information science conferences, Legal linguistics conferences, Legal rhetoric conferences, Legal translation conferences



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Lawyers: What's the Best Way to Fire a Client?

The online legal researcher. The one whose non-lawyer friends know better. The one who wants updates daily. The one who wants to double-check your work. There are a lot of kinds of irritating clients out there, and while any one...



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Virtual Law Office 103: Cloud Practice Management Software

Is there a better fit for Cloud Practice Management platforms than a law practice in the cloud? That's what a virtual law office (VLO) is -- a law office run entirely online, and cloud practice management software gives you the...



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How Should Lawyers Be Using LinkedIn?

We conducted an informal survey here at FindLaw's Secret Volcano Headquarters, and for the life of us, we can't figure out what LinkedIn is supposed to be. Ten years after it launched, we know we're members of LinkedIn, but why...



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Virtual Law Office 102: Which Web-Conferencing Software Do You Need?

If you're not meeting your clients in person, then your options are limited: phone or videoconferencing. The problem with videoconferencing is the competing standards. There's (deep breath): Skype, Facebook, FaceTime, Google Hangouts, WebEx, and more. Some are mobile-friendly, some are...



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Legal informatics papers at HICSS 2015

Several legal informatics papers are scheduled to be presented at HICSS 2015 / HICSS 48: Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences , being held 5-8 January 2015 in Kauai:

• Bjørn Furuholt, Fathul Wahid, Oystein Sabo: Land Information Systems for Development (LIS4D): A Neglected Area within ICT4D Research?


• Loni Hagen, Ozlem Uzuner, Chris: Understanding Citizens – Direct Policy Suggestions to the Federal Government: A Natural Language Processing and Topic Modeling Approach


• Kincho Law, Siddharth Taduri, Gloria T. Lau, Jay Kesan: An Ontology-Based Approach for Retrieving Information from Disparate Sectors in Government: The Patent System as an Exemplar


• Fu-ren Lin, Shih-Yao Chou, Dachi Liao, Hao De: Automatic Content Analysis of Legislative Documents by Text Mining Techniques


• Nial Raaen: A Strategic Approach to Ensure the Integrity and Availability of Electronic Court Records


• Rodrigo Sandoval-Almazan, J. Ramon Gil-Garcia: Understanding Judicial Websites: An Exploration of Portals in the States of Mexico


• Kimberly Stoltzfus: Inter-Organizational Information System Digital Government Change in Justice Agencies: The Complexity of Stakeholder Identification

For abstracts or full text of papers, please contact the authors.

The complete conference program is available at: http://ift.tt/1DlWSRs

If you know of additional legal informatics papers being presented at HICSS 2015, please let us know about them in the comments to this post.

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Conference papers, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Access to digital court records, Access to electronic court records, Authentication of electronic legal information, Automated content analysis of legislative texts, Court information systems, Court Websites, Criminal justice information systems, Digital court records, Electronic court records, HICSS, HICSS 2015, Integrity of legal information, Judicial information systems, Judicial Websites, Justice information systems, Land information systems, Legal informatics conferences, Legal ontologies, Legislative information systems, Patent law information systems, Policy modeling, Real property information systems, Security of electronic legal information, Stakeholder identification in criminal justice, Stakeholder identification in justice administration



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3 Lessons From an Elder Law Attorney's Disbarment Over Client Funds

Remember that 2011 movie "Win Win," where probate attorney Paul Giamatti tells the court that he'll become an elderly man's caretaker, and in return he'll receive money for doing so from the man's estate? Then he sticks the guy in...



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Virtual Law Office 101: Conflict Checks, Intake for Online Clients

So you've decided to make the leap into a "virtual" or online law practice. You've weighed the pros and cons and think you have a client base that is (a) tech-savvy, (b) in need of counsel, and (c) willing to...



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Ward: Building Free Access to Law in Africa: Some Examples of Successful Projects

Ruth Ward of Webber Wentzel has published Building Free Access to Law in Africa: Some Examples of Successful Projects , Legal Information Management , 14, 290-300 (2014).

Here is the abstract:

Ruth Ward explains how open access to legislation in Africa is a much more recent development than in the developed world. Several recently launched projects are well underway, and are contributing towards promoting justice and the rule of law in Africa. Access to legislation facilitates great transparency and access to the law for the promotion of trade and investment; and supports the resulting economic development on the continent. Several different approaches to establishing projects which deliver reliable consolidated access to legislation are illustrated, and show that successful projects can be established and maintained on modest budgets by very small teams.

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Free access to law, Free access to law services in Africa, Legal Information Management, Public access to legal information, Ruth Ward



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