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From music to film to theatre, celebrities can be a challenge in an entertainment law practice. Attorney and co-host Bob Ambrogi welcomes Gordon Firemark, an entertainment and new media lawyer in Los Angeles, to take a look at entertainment litigation and working with a celebrity. Bob & Gordon look at the various legal cases in Hollywood and chat about Gordons new e-book, The Podcast, Blog & New Media Producers Legal Survival Guide.

On this edition of The Un-Billable Hour, host Attorney Rodney Dowell, Director of the Massachusetts Law Office Management Assistance Program, chats with Carole Levitt, President and Founder of Internet for Lawyers and Mark Rosch, Vice President of Internet for Lawyers, to talk about their new book, Google For Lawyers: Essential Search Tips and Productivity Tools. They discuss their inspiration for the book, overall thoughts on Google as a search engine for attorneys, free office applications and how Google, in the long run, can save attorneys time and money.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that the Association of Research Libraries previewed at their annual meeting and now has released their scenarios for different futures that research libraries may face. The publication, “Envisioning Research Library Futures: A Scenarios Thinking Project,” includes a User’s Guide, and is entirely open and free on the web. The four scenarios imagine different futures for researchers, and do not explicitly mention libraries at all. The ARL imagines this may open the way for other types of organizations to use the scenarios as planning or visioning tools, as well. While the scenarios and membership are based on large research libraries, the thinking and futures may be worth considering for all types of libraries.

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The Chronicle of Higher Education is reporting the unanimous decision of a three-judge panel of the Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division, that “has denied the legal clinics of that state’s public law schools immunity from its open-records law, exposing them to new document requests that could greatly complicate their work.” The defendants in the case were Rutgers University and the Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic, part of the law school’s well-regarded clinical program. The suit was brought by a “real-estate developer [Sussex Commons Associates] whose plans to build an outlet mall were successfully opposed by a citizens’ group represented by the clinic.” The attorneys for the developer “are seeking documents that .. will show that the owner of two existing outlet malls conspired with the citizens’ groups and the clinic to thwart Sussex Commons’s mall plans.” At issue was New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act, 47 N.J.S.A. 1A-1-1A-13, to which, according to the court, the legal clinics are subject as public institutions. Clinicians worry that short-staffed law school clinics will be drowned by discovery requests from law firms; most clinics do not have the resources to take on such requests, and having to comply with open-records laws might well result in clinics refusing to take on certain clients or cases. It sounds to me that New Jersey’s law needs to be amended to make it clear that it is not meant to apply to the legal clinics at the state’s two public law schools. It’s hard to tell if that is feasible in today’s political climate. Read the rest of this entry »

On this edition of The ESI Report, host Gina Jytyla, Managing Staff Attorney in the Legal Technologies division at Kroll Ontrack welcomes Terry Wit, Partner at Quinn Emanuel and Christine Falcicchio, Product Manager and Senior Consultant for TrialGraphix, to discuss hyperlinked briefs - a solution that will help present your case in the most streamlined and effective way. In the Bits & Bytes Legal Analysis segment, Kroll Ontrack Legal Correspondent Kelly Kubacki looks at two recent cases: Multiven, Inc. v. Cisco Systems, Inc. and Barnes v. CUS Nashville.

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an exciting article on a proposal for a National Digital Library. There are a cluster of related articles, but you may not be able to read them without a Chronicle password. Fortunately, Robert Darnton of Harvard, who is spearheading the proposal, has put a lengthy essay about his arguments, in a more accessible place, at the New York Review of Books. In the essay, A Library Without Walls, he sets forth his utopian vision for a national digital library. I am not sure quite how this either builds upon or competes with either Hathi Trust Digital Library, which already exists, or the Google Book Project, and Google Scholar. Darnton’s essay is lovely to read, full of stirring language, referring to Enlightenment ideals and actual projects in a number of other countries to digitize their national libraries. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, there has been a lot of buzz about the need to archive websites and social media. On this edition of Digital Detectives, co-hosts Sharon D. Nelson, Esq., President of Sensei Enterprises, Inc. and John W. Simek, Vice President of Sensei Enterprises, welcome Chase Reeves, the director of marketing at Iterasi, to take a look at the archiving of social media sites for compliance and e-discovery purposes. Sharon, John and Chase look at the challenges of social media archiving, the status of archiving video and blogs, and what the future holds for social media archiving.

On NPR this morning I heard an interview with Avi Steinberg about a book he just published titled Running the Books: the adventures of an accidental prison librarian. Mr. Steinberg, having graduated from college, wasn’t sure what to do with himself. He answered an ad for a prison librarian at the Suffolk County (New York) House of Correction. His book tells about his experiences and the people he met. It’s an interesting interview. I wonder what the more long-term, professional prison librarians who may read this blog or be directed here might think about it?

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Andrew Berger, a New York City based IP lawyer and author of the blog IP in Brief, which can be found at www.ipinbrief.com, joins us as a guest presenter in this podcast. Mr. Berger discusses the RIAA v Tenenbaum decision.

On this edition of The Landy Law Letter, host John L. Torvi, from the Herbert H. Landy Insurance Agency of Needham, Massachusetts welcomes Dan Reed, Second Vice President of Travelers Bond & Financial Products, Professional Liability and Mary King from Travelers Bond & Financial Products Claim, to talk about Lawyers Malpractice Insurance claims issues. They discuss the recent economys impact on malpractice claims, look at whats new in claim trends and what law firms should look for when evaluating malpractice insurance from a claims standpoint.