Thursday, July 03, 2008
Lawyer2Lawyer: Supreme Court Term Wrap-up
Another term has ended for our nation's highest court, so we've recruited two Supreme Court experts to wrap-up the term's most significant opinions and most influential justices, as well as to shaire their thoughts on the future of the court in a presidential election year. Joining us this week on the legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer are:
- Tony Mauro, Supreme Court correspondent for Legal Times, ALM and Law.com.
- Amy Howe, partner in the Supreme Court litigation boutique Howe & Russell and contributor to SCOTUSBlog.
Labels: Lawyer2Lawyer
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 2:12 PM,
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Student Loses Suit Against Mass. Law School
I have details in a post at Legal Blog Watch.
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 10:06 AM,
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Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Evernote Ends Closed Beta, Open to All
Evernote, the perpetual, multi-platform note-keeping and Web-clipping service that I reviewed favorably in March (Evernote Beta: Never Forget Anything) is now in open beta, which means that an invitation is no longer required to sign up. In addition, Evernote announced two new features:
- A premium subscription level, with a 500MB monthly upload allowance (versus 40MB for free accounts), enhanced security, enhanced customer support and priority image recognition.
- An enhanced Web clipper, which saves all or part of a Web page into Evernote, including text, images and source URL.
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 7:49 AM,
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Sunday, June 29, 2008
Older Copyright Renewal Records Now Available
Both beSpacific and Creative Commons provide pointers to the news reported on the blog Inside Google Book Search that Google Book Search now has copyright data for pre-1978 books, enabling users to determine whether books are in the public domain:
"How do you find out whether a book was renewed? You have to check the U.S. Copyright Office records. Records from 1978 onward are online (see http://www.copyright.gov/records) but not downloadable in bulk. The Copyright Office hasn't digitized their earlier records, but Carnegie Mellon scanned them as part of their Universal Library Project, and the tireless folks at Project Gutenberg and the Distributed Proofreaders painstakingly corrected the OCR.
"Thanks to the efforts of Google software engineer Jarkko Hietaniemi, we've gathered the records from both sources, massaged them a bit for easier parsing, and combined them into a single XML file available for download here."
Labels: copyright
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 9:46 PM,
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Wednesday, June 25, 2008
New Web-based Practice Management Tool
One of the products to be introduced this week at Legal Tech West Coast is Clio, a Web-based practice management suite designed for solo and smaller-firm lawyers. It is still in beta and pricing is not yet available, but anyone interested can sign up to participate for free in the beta testing of this software as a service. I have not yet tried it. According to an announcement, its features include:
- Time tracking: Track time by client, matter, and task.
- Billing and reporting: Includes integrated tracking for trust funds and retainers and generates customized invoices and outstanding bill reminders.
- Client/contact management: A contact management system that links to information on clients, matters and billings.
- Task scheduling: A calendaring and reminder system that allows tracking of appointments by day, week or month.
- Document management: Securely access documents online and track document versions.
- Trust management: Maintain and track trust transaction records.
- Practice performance metrics: Track current, expected and target billing figures daily, weekly or monthly.
A core advantage of a SaaS such as this is that it avoids the need to purchase, install and maintain software. Pricing, of course, will be an all-important determinant of its popularity. Clio was developed by Themis Solutions Inc., Vancouver, B.C.
Labels: practice management
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 8:19 PM,
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Preserving Mobile Phone Evidence
Ever wondered how to do this? Jim Calloway has an answer.
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 7:07 PM,
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Tuesday, June 24, 2008
'Stack' and Send Your Search Results
I wrote here in March about Searchme, a new search site, still in beta, that delivers results visually, showing pages rather than descriptions of pages. I learned today of two new features added to Searchme, one of which could be of particular use for research, presentations or any number of uses.
This new feature is called Stacks. It lets you collect groups of Web pages and then save them to a unique URL or share them via e-mail, blogs, Web pages or social-networking sites such as Facebook. Searchme has also added Media Search, which lets you search for images and videos from Flickr and YouTube. Images and videos can also be added to a stack, to create a collection of Web pages, images and videos around a particular subject.
All of this is easy to do. After you perform a search, you can click the "stack" button to create a new stack and give it a name. As you browse the Web pages shown in your search results, simply drag any you want to keep onto your stack. The same goes for images and videos -- drag them onto your stack and they are saved there. When you display your stack, it displays in the same flowing manner as the Searchme search results, which I compare to the way in which iTunes displays album covers. As you flow through videos in your stack, they begin to play automatically.
Here is a stack I created for the search "antonin scalia," including Web pages, images and videos:You can learn more about Stacks through this demo video or see an assortment of sample stacks at this page.
Labels: search
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 7:39 PM,
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Thursday, June 19, 2008
A Win in Oregon for Public Access
Efforts by Justia and Public.Resource.Org to overturn Oregon's claim of copyright in its statutes paid off today. Oregon's Legislative Counsel Committee met this morning and voted unanimously to put the Oregon Revised Statutes in the public domain. Tim Stanley has the news. Background on the Oregon issue is available from Public.Resource.Org.
Labels: public domain
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 8:06 PM,
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Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Legal PR Firm Launches Blog
The Texas consulting firm Androvett Legal Media & Marketing has gone live with its new blog, Androvett Blog. Androvett media consultant Robert Tharp, a former law and criminal justice reporter at The Dallas Morning News and The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, says the firm operated the blog internally for several months before going live. He hopes to update it at least once a day.
posted by Robert Ambrogi @ 9:43 PM,
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