Should You Go 'Secret Shopping' at Your Own Law Firm?

You might think your firm's customer service is just peachy-keen, but you might be wrong. A recent FindLaw audit of 100 firms found that 73 of them didn't have any way to answer the phone after business hours. "Fine," you...



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3 Things Lawyers Can Learn From NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month, aka NaNoWriMo. It's an artificial deadline, chosen in an arbitrary month, meant to force people to finally conquer that dream of penning the next great American novel. Because everybody has a story, right? And...



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Law Firm Signage: Where Should You Literally Hang Your Shingle?

It's the dream of many lawyers to hang out their own shingle. But once you set up your own practice, literally where should you hang your shingle? On the roof? In front of the building? On the window or front...



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Holy Crap: Lawyer's Led Zeppelin Complaint Is a Work of Art

A complaint is a complaint is a complaint. Most have captions, parties listed, and many have that line numbering along the side of the page that Word just loves to tinker with if you shift away from double-spacing. Some courts...



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Applications invited for LAST-JD Ph.D. program; includes legal informatics research; fellowships available

Applications are invited for LAST-JD: Joint International Doctoral (Ph.D.) Degree in Law, Science and Technology, 2015/2016.

The program includes legal informatics research.

The submission deadline is 1 February 2015.

According to Monica Palmirani, Head of the program’s Doctoral Board, the program offers “four fellowships for non-EU candidates and one fellowship for an EU candidate.”

For more details, please see the program’s Website.

HT @monicapalmirani

Filed under: Fellowships, PhD programs Tagged: LAST-JD, LAST-JD Joint International Doctoral (Ph.D.) Degree in Law Science and Technology, Legal informatics doctoral programs, Legal informatics fellowships, Monica Palmirani



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Xiao et al.: Human Rights Researchers’ Data Analysis and Management Practices

Lu Xiao , Isioma Elueze , and Jillian R. Kavanaugh are scheduled to present a paper entitled Human Rights Researchers’ Data Analysis and Management Practices , at the ASIST 2014 Annual Meeting, being held 31 October-5 November 2014, in Seattle.

Here is the abstract:

The impetus to assist human rights researchers in data analysis is stronger than ever; however, little is known in the literature on human rights researchers’ practices in collecting, managing, and analyzing their research data. In an attempt to address this gap, we interviewed human rights researchers and conducted an online questionnaire to understand the characteristics of the data they analyze, as well as their data analysis and management practices, such as their experiences with data analysis software programs. We also explored their expectations with respect to a qualitative data analysis (QDA) software program.

Filed under: Articles and papers, Conference papers, Research findings Tagged: ASIST, ASIST 2014, Data analysis in human rights research, Human rights research, Human rights researchers' information behavior, Isioma Elueze, Jillian R. Kavanaugh, Legal information behavior, Legal information science, Lu Xiao, Qualitative data analysis in human rights research, Qualitative methods in legal information science



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Li and Palin to teach course: “Law is Code: Software for Access to Justice, Legal Aid, and Open Law,” at MIT, January 2015

William P. Li and William Palin are scheduled to teach a course entitled Law is Code: Software for Access to Justice, Legal Aid, and Open Law , January 2015, at MIT.

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

Can computing technologies provide access to justice, provide legal aid more effectively, or make government and the law more open? In the United States, nearly a million people are turned away from federally funded legal aid services a year; new, scalable solutions are desperately needed.

This course is an opportunity learn about and make a positive impact on reducing the “justice gap” in Massachusetts and beyond. Individuals or teams will learn about the challenges that nonprofit legal aid organizations and government agencies face, choose a challenge, and develop mobile, web, or desktop-based software that addresses this need. Examples might include: an app that determine whether people qualify for legal assistance or expunge their criminal record; interactive data visualizations on open government datasets; systems that would help under-resourced public interest lawyers or organizations serve more clients.

We will invite lawyers and non-profit organizations to talk about their challenges and work closely with teams. This class aims to build a community of thoughtful designers, coders, hackers, lawyers, and other stakeholders to tackle these important problems.

Registration

All prospective students should complete the registration form and show up at the first class on Friday, January 6, 2015. We also welcome designers, coders, and members of the legal community to participate, space permitting. If you are not an MIT student, please complete the form and email us lawiscode-staff@mit.edu. [...]

For more details, please see the course Website.

HT @williampli (here and here)

Filed under: Applications, Courses and curricula, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Access to justice technology, Bill Palin, Legal informatics courses, Legal open data, MIT, Open legal data, Technology for access to justice, Visualization of legal information, William P. Li, William Palin



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