Year: 2008
Not a plug for Lexis Web
Tried out the (US) Lexis Web beta search engine yet? It indexes “important, legal-oriented Web content selected and validated by the LexisNexis editorial staff”, including Governmental agency information (federal, state, local) Informal commentary on legal issues (e.g., blogs specifically for lawyers and legal professionals) General Web information about legal topics At first it seems quite […]
Free Legal Web Barcamp
The Free Legal Web Barcamp is taking place on Saturday 18 October at the RSA in London. We already have a good number of people participating, but more is better. If you’d like to have your say as to how the Free Legal Web might be developed, please do sign up. If you’re not able […]
Will lawyers always be tech laggards?
Simon Fodden on Slaw writes that the 2008 ABA Legal Technology Survey reports that most attorneys stay current via websites and email newsletters; only a small minority reads blogs, and blogging is seen as geeky; RSS feeds are not used by most, social networks are only just now catching on and podcasts and online videos […]
Catching up
Been away on protracted hols. Quite possible to have kept posting of course, but did not have the inclination. Had I done so, here’s a few things I might have posted about: Martindale-Hubbell Connected In July Robert Ambroggi took an exclusive first look. It’s now out in public beta. Will this fly or crash? The […]
Two new ebooks with CPD
A belated plug for the two new Legal Web ebooks edited and published jointly by me and Delia Venables. The 2008/2009 ebooks are: Topics of Modern Legal Practice Software as a Service for legal applications New and developing legal resources on the web Alternative legal services – how will legal services be delivered in future? […]
The Law publishers and Web 2.0
(with James Mullan) First published August 2008 in the Legal Web ebook Law 2.0 in Progress Web 2.0 has revolutionised publishing. Technologies like blogs, wikis and RSS have made the publishing process so easy that countless millions are now publishers and yet more millions are contributors. And no longer is publishing simply about broadcasting a […]
Behind the times
Alex Wade in Times Online looks at blawging: “only a handful of legal practitioners maintain blogs”. No way! Sure only a handful of law firms maintain firm-branded blogs, but as we on Binary Law all know, maybe half the hundreds of UK blawgs out there are by practitioners; and let’s not forget to mention the […]
Don’t don the black cap
A recent post on LexBlog highlights the importance of knowing what you’re doing or what others are doing for you when you seek to boost your Google juice by purchasing links or engaging in “excessive” link exchanges. In his post FindLaw gaming Google? Kevin O’Keefe reviews what FindLaw are doing for lawyer customers for $1,000 […]
The Free Legal Web
The Free Legal Web is an initiative designed to deliver a web service that joins up UK law and legal commentary and analysis on the web and provides a useful service to both lawyers and the community at large. Read the Manifesto.
Hello Canada!
I’ve recommended the Canadian-based co-operative blog Slaw before as one of the best blawgs around. Pop it in your reader now. There’s been a recent decision to expand its coverage beyond the original “legal research” – we’ll have to see how that pans out – and to expand its membership. I’m chuffed to have been […]
Blogs as a publishing platform
Dave Winer, pioneer of blogging, RSS and other publishing standards, recently posted about the importance of blogs as a publishing platform: Publishing keeps getting cheaper. That’s been the constant push, the practical application of Moore’s Law in my neck of the woods. I’ve always been a publishing guy, and that’s always been how I viewed […]
Towards Gov 2.0
Democracy – as Abraham Lincoln famously defined it – is the government of the people, by the people and for the people. Hitherto, we’ve been able to exercise our democratic rights only at the ballot box, by lobbying our MP and perhaps in public demonstrations. Can Gov 2.0 – the application of Web 2.0 to […]
Quick and easy custom search with Google
Some 18 months ago Google launched its Custom Search service (still in beta) that enables you to create a custom search engine (CSE) focussing on anything up to 2,000 specified URLs. The rationale is that, despite its undoubtedly sophisticated algorithms, even with a carefully crafted search, Google will always return results near the top that […]
A wake-up call to lawyers
Professor Richard Susskind is, as I write, no doubt completing the final draft of his forthcoming treatise, The End of Lawyers? to be published in June by Oxford University Press. More than 12 years ago he wrote its predecessor, The Future of Law. Then only a few of us had awoken to the internet; only […]
Unlocking the power of information
As regular readers will know, one of my pet subjects is unlocking the power of public sector information, and I’ve actively campaigned for it as it relates to legal information. The ball is now really rolling on this with the introduction of two new services from government: From OPSI – Public Sector Information Unlocking Service […]
