Legal Docs LibraryKnow Your Rights

The Public Online Information Act (POIA) HR 4858, has been introduced into the House of Representatives by Congressman Steve Israel of the second district of New York. If you follow the link for POIA above, it will take you to an excellent links page provided by the Sunlight Foundation, which describes itself as “a non-partisan, non-profit organization based in Washington, DC that focuses on the digitization of government data and the creation of tools and Web sites to make that data easily accessible for all citizens.” Here is most of the summary of the bill provided at that site: Read the rest of this entry »

Senators Patrick Leahy and John Cornyn have introduced a bill establishing a committee of citizens to make recommendations on improving FOIA performance. A similar version of this bill was introduced in 2005 and went nowhere fast, according to Scott A. Hodes.

In every city and town in America, there has been an overwhelming reaction to the political gridlock in Washington D.C. over healthcare, economic recovery, taxes, Afghanistan (almost everything). So why cant the lawyers in Congress who specialize in negotiating solutions to problems fix Washington? Co-hosts and attorneys J. Craig Williams and Bob Ambrogi welcome Attorney Philip K. Howard, a well-known leader of legal reform in America and founder of Common Good, to examine the problem.

from the ABA Grassroots Newsletter:
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In this debut podcast of The Robert Half Legal Report, host Diane Domeyer, district director for Robert Half Legal, welcomes Attorney Charles Volkert, Executive Director of Robert Half Legal, to discuss the latest in hiring and compensation trends for the legal profession. Diane and Charles will look at how 2010 is shaping up in terms of hiring, the impact of the recession on the hiring process and how to excel in a competitive job market.

The New York Times ran an article, “States’ Rights is Rallying Cry for Lawmakers” on March 16, 2010 (I saw it in the Boston Globe). Kirk Johnson wrote: Read the rest of this entry »

In this weeks Intellectual Property podcast, Professor Andrew Beckerman-Rodau, Co-Director of Suffolk Laws Intellectual Property Concentration, discusses the right to publicity and Lindsay Lohans suit of E*Trade.

The United States Judicial Conference voted on March 16 to increase the number of free documents that the public can retrieve from PACER. Currently, users can get $10 of free pages per year; in the future, users will get $10 of free pages per quarter–a significant increase and one worth cheering. What would be even better, of course, is if all documents on PACER were freely available. Here is a link to the press release that describes this change and other changes coming to PACER. Read the rest of this entry »

From the Sedona Conference on e-discovery to the latest features of Office 2010, the hot technology topic of the day is collaboration. However, when most lawyers think of collaboration tools, their lists end after email and track changes. What are the real stories of collaboration technology in 2010? In this episode, co-hosts Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell discuss the current state of affairs in collaboration tools for lawyers and the many ways these tools can benefit your practice. After you listen, be sure to check out Tom & Dennis co-blog and book by the same name, The Lawyers Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies.

And you thought foursquare was just a cool little social media tagging tool. Well, it is. You use your cell phone to add a metadata tag to anyplace, and you can set up a game. “Earn badges!” urges the website, “Unlock your city.” Or your campus. And the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the game is taking off at campuses, in an article titled, “Will Your College Be Covered in Virtual Graffiti?” by Marc Parry. There is a lot more than what I quote here: Read the rest of this entry »