Legal information in the digital age – on the blawg since 2004
You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May 2007.
OUT-Law.com reports that more than a third of employees who keep personal blogs are posting information about their employer, workplace or colleagues and risk dismissal, according to YouGov research commissioned by Croner.
OUT-Law provides plenty of advice on employee blogging and related policies in its guidance notes on:
The web was supposed to be the great leveller. But, according to Compete, the top 10 websites account for 40 per cent of all web page views. Topping the charts is MySpace with a staggering 16 per cent of all page views. Figures for time spent and unique visitors tell the same story.
Google, though not right at the top of these rankings, handles 65 per cent of all web searches according to Hitwise and Wikipedia tops Google rankings for millions of queries.
Nicholas Carr, writes in the Guardian on the shrinking web:
On the internet, the big get bigger. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. When the web arrived in the early 1990s, it was heralded as a liberating force that would free us from the confines of gated communities like AOL and Compuserve. The internet was supposed to be an open, democratic medium, an information bazaar putting individuals on the same footing as big companies.
In the end, though, the internet seems to be following the same pattern that has always characterised popular media. A few huge outlets come to dominate readership and viewership and smaller, more specialised ones are consigned to the periphery.
The long tail applies. First there is MySpace, then there is their space and then there is ours. We shall have to make the best of it.
(Hat tip: Read/Write Web).
It being the start of Blawg 2007 Conference day, I had better post something lest I be castigated there for not doing my homework.
A good place to go when you are short of immmediate legal web stimulation is your fave blogs’ blogrolls. So it was that I recently examined Charon QC’s, finding two new links:
Reactionary Snob is a Scottish advocate, but he defines himself politically rather than by his profession. Apart from the self-applied tags Reactionary and Snob, he describes himself as a Libertarian and an Atlanticist.
prisonlawinsideout is an ex-con who spent 35 years in prison, reformed and rehabilitated himself and was transformed from a law breaker into a law-maker. He is firmly committed to prisoners rights and is a campaigner for penal reform.
The no news last week was that MoJu had set up shop. I visited the new site – a rather boring affair utilising some standard eGov template, and consequently devoid of character. I shall revisit of course once they’ve found their bearings and actually achieved something.
One thing they could do is brief the judiciary in the ways of the webby world. This follows from the disturbing news that Judge Peter Openshaw, 59, brought a terror trial to a halt when he admitted he did not really know what a website was. Here’s the original Reuters newswire:
A British judge admitted on Wednesday he was struggling to cope with basic terms like ‘Web site’ in the trial of three men accused of inciting terrorism via the Internet.
Judge Peter Openshaw broke into the questioning of a witness about a Web forum used by alleged Islamist radicals.
‘The trouble is I don’t understand the language. I don’t really understand what a Web site is,’ he told a London court during the trial of three men charged under anti-terrorism laws.
Prosecutor Mark Ellison briefly set aside his questioning to explain the terms ‘Web site’ and ‘forum’. An exchange followed in which the 59-year-old judge acknowledged: ‘I haven’t quite grasped the concepts.’
Violent Islamist material posted on the Internet, including beheadings of Western hostages, is central to the case.
Concluding Wednesday’s session and looking ahead to testimony on Thursday by a computer expert, the judge told Ellison: ‘Will you ask him to keep it simple, we’ve got to start from basics.’
Two related pieces on hiring and firing employees based on what is said about them on the web:
CNet reports, under Fired federal worker sues over googling, that a government worker claimed a department official violated his “right to fundamental fairness” by using Google to research his prior work history in a dispute over the use of government property. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled unanimously that no harm was done by using the search engine, the judges appearing to say that the internet should be considered as any other research source. (Hat tip: John Battelle)
Michael D Mann writes in a lengthy article on Law.com, Some Job Hunters Are What They Post, that law firm hiring committees would be foolish to ignore the “treasure trove of information” the internet offers in recruiting trainees. However, postings not by the student should be given less weight than those that the student has clearly put up on their own – in particular MySpace profiles and the like.
But students can – as can we all – use their web presence positively to market themselves, and firms should focus on looking for the positives rather than the negatives:
Perhaps, when searching the internet, firms should look for people who can market themselves well and present an appealing image, or who can post on a blawg cogent and original thoughts on a recent court decision, rather than launch a witch hunt for pictures taken at a fraternity party.
(Hat tip: Slaw)
I know nothing about UK legal ethics rules. I don’t even know if the UK has legal ethics rules. But I’m pretty sure this site would not pass muster in the US.
This from Bob Ambrogi, a Massachusetts (US) lawyer, referring to the (UK) Expert Legal Advice service in association with Net Lawman. This service provides by email (and will provide later by telephone) “fast, accurate legal advice on: business and commercial law; land law (including leases); contracts and t&c; company and partnership law” via prepaid units. So, what’s the big deal?
NL Advice is provided by a team of solicitors in New Delhi supported by the same precedents and sources as are available to UK solicitors. These are very bright people who have shown a real knowledge of English law before they even begin to look at legal source material. … we are not solicitors, we do not offer a full range of legal services.
You could argue with the wording, but the provenance of the advice is certainly not in unreadable small print and they also allude to its origin with the main site graphic.
So is this service hunky dory according to UK legal practice rules? Legal Eagle, a Melbourne (Victoria, Australia) lawyer, mother, part-time academic, PhD student, artist and illustrator responds to Bob’s post, looking at section 20 of the Solicitors’ Act 1974 and rule 20 of the International Code of Ethics 1988 established by the International Bar Association. The Solicitors’ Act refers to the functions that are only to be conducted by qualified solicitors and the International Code prohibits delegation by lawyers to the legally unqualified “not in their employ and control” of any of these functions; giving basic legal advice is not one of these. Others more qualified may care to comment.
Legal Eagle also points to an excellent post by John Flood on legal outsourcing.
More on the ethics of legal advice outsourcing is on Law.com (US) and Slaw (Canada).
So what’s my advice? Always read the About page.
First published May 2007 in the Internet Newsletter for Lawyers.
“Does IT Matter?” is the title of a controversial 2003 article in the Harvard Business Review by technology writer Nicholas Carr and also of his follow-up book in 2004 which expands on the theme. The nub of his argument is that IT has become a commodity input and that for most companies there is little strategic advantage to be gained from aggressive IT investment; rather companies should spend more frugally and think pragmatically. (See his Rough Type blog.)
IT has lost its mystique: it has become normal; it has even started to disappear. Let’s start at the beginning and see how this came about and what this means to us now in practical terms.
Computer scientist Bran Ferren memorably defined technology as “stuff that doesn’t work yet”. That’s not just a clever definition, it is particularly apt in helping us understand what’s happened to “technology” and how much it now matters.
Time was when the wheel was technology. But as the wheel was refined and its use proliferated, a wheel came to be regarded as … well … just a wheel: the technology disappeared.
What of IT? By information technology (or, more fully, information and communications technology – ICT) we mean all the technology, both hardware and software, used to store, process and transport information in digital form. The invention of the microprocessor in 1968 marked the beginning of what we now refer to as the information revolution. (And note, even here, that the word “technology” is absent.) The advent of the personal computer, bringing computing power to office and then home desktops at affordable prices, led to a rapid development of information technologies. They were technologies because they didn’t (quite) work. To use the hardware and software effectively we needed a degree of technological competence, a dogged persistence with trial and error or thick paper manuals and training courses. To get things to work and to “talk” to each other, if we were lucky, we had IT departments that would deign to help us in our hours of need (and there were quite a lot of those). “IT” (both the concept and the department) assumed an importance that some of us feared and many of us resented.
By the early-90s we had some sophisticated operating systems and office applications that did work rather well. The vast majority of workers used Windows and predominantly two applications – word processing and spreadsheets – which had matured and standardized (thanks, or not, to Bill Gates) to the point where the technology had all but disappeared. But beyond those areas, numerous proprietary systems vied for our attention and communications (the C in ICT) was still a headache. Technology still mattered. The internet has changed all that.
The internet has played a critical role in accelerating the commoditization of IT, encouraging standardization and, in many cases, increasing the penalties of using proprietary, closed systems. At the same time, by facilitating effortless and instantaneous communication in globally-standardised ways, the internet has placed zero distance between everybody and everything else. The network has become the computer.
Recent developments demonstrate just how profoundly the internet is transforming business. Just as the development of the great infrastructure technologies of the past – the rail and shipping networks in the 19th century and the electricity, highway and telegraph networks in the 20th century – brought not just operating efficiencies but broad changes in the market, so the internet in the 21st century is transforming and creating businesses and markets. Lawyers are not immune from this!
…
Of course IT matters. But it is only by becoming a shared and standardized infrastructure that it can deliver its greatest benefits. Ultimately it may disappear as we simply plug into “the grid”.
First published May 2007 in the Internet Newsletter for Lawyers.
It is now 4 months since the Statute Law Database was released to the public. In the first couple of weeks following the launch there was a flurry of comment and criticism; but since then, near silence. Is everyone ecstatically happy with it, reserving their judgment or quietly cursing its shortcomings? I set out to find out.
The SLD is a database of UK legislation containing the updated texts of all Acts that were in force on 1 February 1991 or have come into force since, and the (unupdated) texts of all “printed” SIs passed since then. A key benefit of the SLD is also that one can view the primary legislation as it stood at any date from February 1991.
It is thus a vast improvement on the incomplete and “as enacted” statute law available on OPSI and in principle, as to the raw law, provides functionality similar to that in the costly commercial alternatives. So, how does it compare and does it compete?
The most serious defect at present is that it is not complete. Approximately 30 Acts remain to be loaded. Further, the effects of much 2002 to 2006 legislation are not yet consolidated. Nor is the set of SIs yet complete. It is now understood this work will be completed by the end of 2007.
There is also some anecdotal evidence that it is not entirely accurate. This may be as a result of its incompleteness, but even so, the impression it leaves with some is that it is currently unreliable.
Together these two shortcomings are the killer for the larger firms and chambers with sufficient budget to subscribe to LexisNexis or Westlaw or a more specialist service such as Complinet: there is no question that the commercial services still prevail. However, for the smaller firm and the individual barrister, for whom the big two commercial services are not an option, the SLD is winning the day, albeit with reservations.
Librarian: I am still very nervous about directing library users to SLD. I think if you did not have the full suite of subs. available to you then this would be a more attractive option.
Librarian: I don’t use it. I don’t know anyone who does use it. We never told our lawyers about it when it came out … We don’t really want them to use it, as we put more trust in the paid-for services.
QC: A great asset … I use it in preference to the paid services. Its worst defect is the failure to update in the past six years.
Barrister: I use SLD about 80 to 90 per cent of the time … The fact that it has updated statutes is very useful. The lack of some is a problem. I have got rid of my Justis statute/SI subscription.
Barrister: It is rare that I find something that I can categorically say is up to date on the database. Until the database is updated its use will be limited.
Sole practitioner: I have been using the SLD ever since it came out. I have been able to find all the statutes I need.
The other main issue concerns its functionality and ease of use. Statute law is complex, and that complexity is revealed rather than hidden in the SLD. It is undoubtedly a good attempt, but there is some way to go before it delivers intuitive use. There are also several inexplicable obstacles to fully-effective “open” use. (The DCA is to be commended for finally declaring it open, after earlier indications to the contrary.)
Librarian: The SLD … is not that easy to use. It looks cluttered and badly designed; you can only print, you can’t save or email things. I still don’t get the icon thingies, and I still wish there was a link to it from OPSI.
Librarian: SLD is still rather messy looking; the URLs are very unhelpful. The lack of ability to save things often makes it less than useful.
QC: The interface remains amateurish. … it also has a number of technical irritancies.
Barrister: The SLD is a mess in terms of [its] user interface and misses lots of opportunities.
Sole practitioner: I have to say I do not understand what all the icons and annotations mean, but I am not worrying about that too much at the moment.
Follow the SLD thread at Binary Law.
Silicon Valley entrepreneur and polemicist Andrew Keen is kicking up a storm with his views on Web 2.0, soon to be published in his book The Cult of the Amateur: how today’s internet is killing our culture.
Leading national media columnists have recently commented in balanced terms on his views and the book in particular:
and others are also questioning the Web 2.0 hype, in particular that surrounding blogging:
But much of the criticism of Keen has come from Web 2.0 enthusiasts who have not read the book, though they may have read his views on his blog or heard them at one of his many speaking appearances. Until the book appears, the following comments from his blog will give a flavour of his views:
As I will show in my Cult of the Amateur, we are teetering on the edge of catastrophe. Blogs, wikis and social networking are, indeed, assaulting our economy, our culture and our values. Web 2.0 is pushing us back into the Dark Ages.
In the Web 2.0 world, our brands are personalized and transformed into channels. We are what we broadcast ourselves to be. Thus the infantilized nature of the blogosphere. Thus its corruption of democratic politics and traditional notions of citizenship.
The blogosphere is structurally flawed. It is inhabited by instantly forgettable people uttering instantly forgettable things (ie: the crowd). Best to stay out of the swamp entirely.
At least there are a few sane people left in the world not intimately familiar with these online dens of iniquity. And they are our representatives because they’ve got more important things to do than hang-out at MySpace or watch the latest hits on YouTube.
The whole blogosphere is one big diary of a nobody. We are all Mr Pooters.
The choice is Lehrer or Drudge [the archetypical outsider]. Responsible news journalism or the hyper democracy of the Freak Show.
Anti MSM’ers [ie those "opposed" to the mainstream media] … remind me of provincial “intellectuals” (Lenin, Robespierre, Pol Pot, etc etc), their noses pressed up against the window of the real world, blaming everyone but themselves for their own gaping inadequacies.
Close your eyes. Imagine Google’s universal library – a world without physical books, where authors are transformed into power-point wielding consultants and intellectual clowns. A nightmare, right?
So Keen is long on scorn for the “amateurs” and sees cultural disaster looming at every turn, but does he provide any constructive thought? One respected blogger (indeed the granddaddy of blogging), Dave Winer, has read the book and finds it distinctly lacking:
The solution isn’t to call the amateurs names, the new world requires thought, and Keen does not provide any.
His book, while based on an important and valuable premise, that Silicon Valley is too-much admired for the good of all of us, including the tech industry, fails to enlighten while he props up the egos of obsolete people and businesses. Each of his arguments is easily refuted, too easily. There’s no food for thought in this book. I was ready for a work that would inspire a thoughtful response, because I like Andrew, at a personal level, but this book is beneath criticism. Back to the drawing board.
In a quick trawl through Keen’s blog posts I was able to find only one constructive comment. On the prospect of a world without physical books he says:
The challenge is to convince the world that the book is just as futuristic as the search engine. The challenge is to make the case that it will be the concreteness of the physical book, and not abstraction of the digital universe, which will dominate our culture in 2020.
Web 2.0, and the internet in general, is neither good nor bad. Internet technologies are enabling positive developments for businesses and individuals but are also giving succour to the vain, the greedy, the irresponsible and the perverted. The challenge is to promote the former whilst putting the brakes on the latter. The answers will be found in a combination of technologies (eg to filter out the low-value and the undesirable), regulation (where necessary) and, perhaps most importantly, education (so that users learn how to assess information, contribute constructively and behave responsibly).
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