Beer, Bacon, and Barristers: Ludicrous Lawsuits Filed by Lawyers

Last weekend, a festival promoter in Maryland (almost) pulled off the greatest festival concept ever: all-you-can-eat bacon, plus craft beer, and bands. Kenneth MacFawn, the event promoter promised two tons of bacon, but somehow, after attendees waited over an hour...



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The 'F U' Response Letter: 5 Tips for Writing One

On Tuesday, we looked at two recent "F U letters." These letters, sent in response to legal claims that the recipient felt were lacking in merit, are not of the "let's settle this peacefully" variety -- they are of the...



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Carver: RECAP to be managed jointly by Free Law Project and CITP

Professor Brian Carver of Free Law Project announced on 19 May 2014 that the RECAP platform — which provides free public access to selected U.S. federal court documents — will be managed jointly by Free Law Project and Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy .

Here are excerpts from the announcement:

Today Free Law Project announced that it is partnering with Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy to manage the operation and development of the RECAP platform. Most readers here will know that the RECAP platform utilizes free browser extensions to improve the experience of using PACER, the electronic public access system for U.S. federal courts, and crowdsources the creation of a free and open archive of public court records. [...]

RECAP is a perfect complement to Free Law Project’s existing efforts. The first version of CourtListener covered only the federal circuit courts and the Supreme Court of the United States. We’ve been working recently to roll out coverage of the courts of last resort in all the states (not quite there yet…) but have largely held off on tackling “the PACER problem” presented by the federal district courts. In part, we knew we could wait on this because RECAP was already addressing it about as well as anyone could. We have long assumed that we would at some point look to merge the RECAP documents with our existing documents, and knew because we focused on different courts, these would be largely complementary sets of documents. Well, the time to tackle that merger has arrived, and in the process we hope to provide a long-term home for RECAP maintenance and improvement. [...]

P.S. Please follow @RECAPtheLaw. We intend to start tweeting there.

See also, Steve Schultze’s post at Freedom to Tinker.

For more details, please see the complete announcement.

HT Pablo Arrendondo

Filed under: Applications, Data sets, Projects, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Brian Carver, Center for Information Technology Policy, Free access to law, Free Law Project, Princeton CITP, Public access to court decisions, Public access to judicial decisions, Public access to legal information, RECAP, RECAP Archive, Stephen Schultze, Steve Schultze



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Legal informatics / legal communication papers at ICA 2014

The following legal informatics or legal communication papers were presented at ICA 2014: The Conference of the International Communication Association, held 22-26 May 2014, in Seattle, Washington, USA (The full conference program is available here and here. The Twitter hashtag for the conference is #ica14. If you know of other legal communication or legal informatics papers presented at the conference, please feel free to mention them in the comments. For abstracts of papers, please see the conference program. For full text of papers, please contact the authors):

• Mary Angela Bock: Argument by Appearance: Digital Images and the Unspoken Proposition in Legal Discourse


• Suzannah Evans and Daniel Riffe: Communty Structure, Economic Dependency, and News Coverage of Fishing Regulations in New England


• Teresa Marie Harrison et al.: We the People: U.S. E-Petitioning as Technology-Mediated Social Action


• Daniel J. Mauro: Curating Activism: Locating Politics in the Amateur Videos of WITNESS’ Human Rights Channel


• Ella Elizabeth McPherson: The Influence of Editorial Lines on Human Rights Reporting at Mexican Newspapers


• Anat Peleg and Bryna Bogoch: Guilty or Victimized? Shaming” and “Laundering” Rituals in the Media Trial of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert


• Sandra Ristovska: Human Rights Through the Camera’s Eye


• Christopher R. Terry and Mitchell Bard: An Eye on McCutcheon v FEC: An Empirical Analysis of Issue Advertising in Wisconsin Judicial Races Before and After Citizens United


• Nancy E. Worthington: Turning the Tables With Twitter: Shifting Suspicion From Rape Victims to Rape Culture With Social Media

Filed under: Applications, Articles and papers, Conference Announcements Tagged: ICA, ICA 2014, International Communication Association Annual Conference, Legal communication, Legal communication conferences, Legal journalism, Legal rhetoric, Media representation of law



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Just Don't Do It: Law Firm Website Don'ts

We've done a few posts on law firm websites, and tried to cover all the basics from branding, website design and content, and even covered the basics of search engine optimization. For some, following easy steps is enough. Others...



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Williams: Open law and open legislative data resources

Rebecca Williams, J.D., of the Sunlight Foundation has posted two new resources on open law and open legislative data:

A list of resources on open law and open legislative data

• The list covers Open Law Tools (Code), Open Lawmaking Tools (Legislative Data), Supportive Policies, and Supportive Organizations. Most of the resources listed appear to concern the U.S.

A post entitled When will open legislative data come to your town? , at the Sunlight Foundation’s Blog

Here are excerpts from the post:

Last September, after observing an increased velocity in the number of formal open data policies being created around the country, we posed the question: “When will open data come to your town?” [...] [T]racking these laws at the local level is not easy, so now we pose a follow up question: When will open legislative data come to your town? [...]

Efforts to open legislative data are happening all over the country at all levels of government: from the the /unitedstates project at the federal level, to the growing popularity of Sunlight’s Open States tool [...]

Collecting, structuring and opening local legislative data makes it possible to build tools like Open States and OpenCongress for your hometown, integrate your local legislative information into any app, and compare your local legislation to other jurisdictions. [...]

Codified law is getting opened up too, making it easier to access law when and how you need it. The OpenGov Foundation has been working hard to redeploy OpenGov Champion Waldo Jaquith’s State Decoded work across the country as AmericaDecoded, forming inspiring partnerships (see the AmLegal Decoder) and complementary tools like Madison, a platform where community members participate directly with the lawmaking process. Civic hackers in D.C. have worked to create DCCode.org, amongst other projects. [...]

Coalitions of folks interested in democracy tools, legal informatics and upgrading the legal practice with technology are being built. [...]

Now cities are starting to introduce legal reforms mandating that municipal code and legislative data (ordinances, representatives, votes, meetings) be proactively made available to the public online in structured, machine-readable, open formats — law for open law! In March, after San Francisco made its municipal legal code available on GitHub, Supervisor Mark Farrell introduced a motion that called for San Francisco’s ordinances and all relevant legal information to be made available online in machine-readable formats (as defined by San Francisco’s open data law) within three days of any introduction or amendment to any ordinance or resolution. Last Wednesday, the New York City Council passed a resolution amending their City Council Rules, supported by Councilmember Ben Kallos, that calls for all New York City proposed ordinances and associated legislative information be available through an online database that “will be provided to the general public in a machine-readable format at no cost and without restriction as soon as practicable, in order to facilitate public engagement with the Council through the use of third-party software.” [...]

The Sunlight Foundation is pleased to see and contribute to these policy and technological efforts to make essential law and lawmaking information openly available online and reusable for all. [...]

For details on particular resources and ways to get involved, please see the complete post.

HT @SunFoundation

Filed under: Applications, Data sets, Lists of resources, Others' scholarly or sophisticated blogposts, Policy debates, Policy Materials, Projects, Technology developments, Technology tools Tagged: Free access to law, Open legal data, Open legislative data, Public access to legal information, Public access to legislative data, Public access to legislative information, Rebecca Williams, Sunlight Foundation, Sunlight Foundation Blog



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The 'F U' Response Letter: Two Examples for Inspiration

We've all dealt with that case, that opposing counsel, or have at least heard stories about it -- the frivolous patent troll, the baseless lawsuit asking for $5 million, the opposing counsel that threatens sanctions every other day. And while...



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