Legal Design Jam, Helsinki, 15 November 2013

A legal design jam, Jamming in Helsinki , was held 15 November 2013 in Helsinki, Finland.

Stefania Passera, M.A., of Aalto University School of Science appears to have organized the event.

The Twitter hashtag for the event was #legaldesignjam

Click here for archived Twitter tweets from the event

HT @StewieKee

Filed under: Applications, Hackathons, Hacking Tagged: Designing legal documents, Jamming in Helsinki, Legal Design Jam Helsinki, Legal design jams, Legal hackathons, Legal hacking, Legal hacking events, Stefania Passera, Wikimedia Foundation



via Legal Informatics Blog http://legalinformatics.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/legal-design-jam-helsinki-15-november-2013/

Legal data projects at 2013 New York Times Developers Hack Day

Several legal data projects were worked on at the 2013 New York Times Developers Hack Day, held 16 November 2013 in New York City.

Click here for a storify about those projects.

The Twitter hashtag for the event was #NYTDevs

Here are the legal data projects I was able to identify, with URLs where available:

• API for Docket Wrench , Sunlight Foundation‘s regulatory comment analysis tool


• Catobills, a Ruby wrapper to the Deepbills Project API, by Derek Willis


• New York Times Inside Congress bill pages


• New York Times Bill Explorer


• Know Your Representatives, a “Windows 8 app” that provides information about legislators, using data from APIs produced by Klout, the New York Public Library, and the Sunlight Foundation (HT @amit)


• Tweet the Press, which “uses Sunlight Foundation and Twitter APIs to let you interact with members of Congress” (HT @timesopen)


• SayWhat?, which “uses Sunlight API to look into what legislators say publicly about their bills” (HT @timesopen)

For more details, please see the storify.

HT @derekwillis

Filed under: Applications, Storify, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: #LegalHack, #NYTDevs, APIs for legal data, APIs for legislative data, Apps and legal information, Legal APIs, Legal apps, Legal hackathons, Legal hacking, Legal hacking events, Legislative APIs, Legislative apps, Legislative information systems, Legislative metadata, New York Times Developers Hack Day



via Legal Informatics Blog http://legalinformatics.wordpress.com/2013/11/17/legal-data-projects-at-2013-new-york-times-developers-hack-day/

UK Parliament Hack 2013: 16-17 November 2013: Links and Resources

UK Parliament Hack 2013 legislative hackathon is being held 16-17 November 2013, in London.

The event is produced by Rewired State.

The Twitter hashtag for the event is #RSPARLY2013

Click here for some datasets to be worked on at the event.

Pages are still available for the 2011 and 2012 versions of the event.

Click here for information about other legal hackathons.

HT @greentrac and @pixelh8

Filed under: Conference resources, Data sets, Hackathons, Hacking Tagged: #LegalHack, #RSPARLY2013, Legal hackathons, Legal hacking, Legal hacking events, Legislative hackathons, Open legal data, Open legislative data, UK Parliament Hack, UK Parliament Hack 2011, UK Parliament Hack 2012, UK Parliament Hack 2013



via Legal Informatics Blog http://legalinformatics.wordpress.com/2013/11/16/uk-parliament-hack-2013-16-17-november-2013/

House GOP Turning Back Time With Rule 11 Mandatory Sanctions

Those darn lawyers, always filing frivolous litigation. We need to curb the rampant abuse and frivolous litigation that plagues our court systems! Yep. You've heard it before. We've heard it before. And even if there is a problem with frivolous...



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via Strategist http://blogs.findlaw.com/strategist/2013/11/house-gop-turning-back-time-with-rule-11-mandatory-sanctions.html

Efficiency 101: Optimizing the Workplace to Boost Productivity

"Work smarter, not harder." We hear these workplace mottos all the time, but sometimes workplace efficiency has less to do with how you are working, and more to do with your surroundings. We were inspired by an article we recently...



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via Strategist http://blogs.findlaw.com/strategist/2013/11/efficiency-101-optimizing-the-workplace-to-boost-productivity.html

Open legal data: Focus of Open Government Chicagoland Meetup, 14 November 2013

Open legal data was the focus of the Open Government Chicagoland Meetup held 14 November 2013, entitled Process and Products Around the Chicago Municipal Code .

Click here for the full agenda.

At this event, Carl Malamud gave a talk entitled The Virtuous Pipeline of Code , which many are discussing.

Some tweets from the event are in the streams of @opengovchicago, @danxoneil, and @FoundOpenGov, and at hashtag #opengovchicago

The event was Webcast, so a video may be available shortly.

Here are excerpts from the announcement:

November’s meetup centers on the code by which our city functions. Speakers are as follows:

• Susana Mendoza, City Clerk of the City of Chicago, will talk about her office’s key role in the complex task of maintaining the Municipal Code and their efforts to modernize the process of keeping it current


• A representative from American Legal Publishing Corporation will talk about the process of codification, where they do the hard work of making sure the actual proceedings of City Council are recorded into the journals and injected into the Municipal Code


• Carl Malamud, President and Founder of Public.Resource.Org, will talk about his work to get all the quarterly releases of these codes back to 2008 and publish them here


• Waldo Jaquith, an Open Government Technologist who is leading an effort to test the Open Data Institute model for open data standards in the United States


• Seamus Kraft, Executive Director of the OpenGov Foundation, will talk about the Chicago Decoded website they created using [Waldo's The State Decoded platform, and] existing Municipal Code PDFs from the City. He’ll also cover their plans for the product to make our existing laws more searchable, and linkable, and sharable


• Brett Goldstein will talk about the new Master’s Degree Program Merges Public Policy and Computer Science


• David Moore of the Participatory Politics Foundation will demo AskThem. [...]

For more details, please see the complete announcement.

HT @danxoneil

Filed under: Applications, Data sets, Meetings, Projects, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: AskThem, Carl Malamud, Chicago Decoded, Chicago Municipal Code, Citizens' participation in lawmaking, David Moore, Free access to law, Legal communication, Legal data standards, Legal open government data, Legislative information systems, Online legal communication, Open Government Chicagoland, Open government data, Open legal data, Open legal data standards, Open legislative data, OpenGov Foundation, Participatory Politics Foundation, Public access to legal information, Seamus Kraft, State Decoded, The State Decoded, The Virtuous Pipeline of Code, Virtuous Pipeline of Code, Waldo Jaquith



via Legal Informatics Blog http://legalinformatics.wordpress.com/2013/11/15/open-legal-data-focus-of-open-government-chicagoland-meetup-14-november-2013/

How Can Lawyers Avoid the Holiday Weight Gain?

The next few weeks are going to be hell for your health. There's stress. Holidays can be stressful, especially if you have "that uncle" who is now unwelcome at family events, or if your arrangements are complicated by joint custody...



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via Strategist http://blogs.findlaw.com/strategist/2013/11/how-can-lawyers-avoid-the-holiday-weight-gain.html