Vincent G. Rinn Law Library

Websites for Keeping Up With EDD Blogs & Tools

The November 2007 issue of the publication “Law Technology News”,  alerts its readers to a new blog covering e-discovery news and analysis, EDD Blog Online . Postings will include breaking news, key verdicts and judicial rulings, articles, press releases and more. This blog is mentioned as part of Robert J. Ambrogi’s story listing and describing several websites dealing with e-discovery and he also includes some vendor sites that include useful resources.

See full story: Keeping Up With EDD Blogs and Tools

Changes Made To SCOTUS Blog

Changes announced  to the SCOTUSblog  [ Supreme Court of the United States Blog brought to you by Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP] homepage to provide new ways to get their information:

* Two additional ways to read every SCOTUSblog post :
By e-mail - sign up to have a daily digest of all entries delivered right to your inbox
Read SCOTUSblog much more efficiently on your BlackBerry or other mobile device.

*  Added a second sidebar to the site with  two search boxes rather than one: the first one is an improved search box for finding content within SCOTUSblog, and the search box below that one searches the Supreme Court’s docket directly.

* Moved the “Round-up” to the sidebar to allow  updates to  the Round-ups with fresh links throughout the day, so that you won’t have to wait for a new once-daily post to appear in the main scroll to be made aware of the relevant links.

* A more useful, interactive calendar, to continue to track important upcoming dates.  If you click in the calendar, you’ll be able to mouseover for a brief summary of the day, and click for more details.

* Migrated from the MovableType platform to WordPress, and over the summer will upgraded  server configuration as well. The switch in platforms and servers will allow adding a lot of these new features.

The Harvard Hybrid of Law Journal and Mediated Blog

Most law students have heard of The Yale Law Journal, but they may not  know about The Yale Law Journal Pocket Part. The Pocket Part supplements the scholarship and work of The Yale Law Journal by providing original essays and responses to articles printed in the Journal.It has been around for a while but may not be well-known yet. It’s a good example of combining traditional law school publishing with some of the newer web tech that makes users into producers, as well. Perhaps it is a model that other law reviews may experiment with ?

In a September 2006 article from the “Pocket Part”, the organizers describe how they hope to combine the strengths of two media to create a new participatory forum :

"… Blogs insightfully critique scholarship, comment usefully on problems of legal doctrine, and speak to decision-makers in straightforward language. The Yale Law Journal Pocket Part is our effort to join these strengths of online debate to the traditions of the student-edited law journal. The blogs have flaws that student editors can help to mend. Many online postings are incomplete or of only passing interest; students can help to select the most significant. Every online posting is subject to change or deletion at its creator’s whim; students can help to preserve and archive them. Many postings lack proper citations to the relevant authorities; students can carefully check the necessary sources. This Journal’s editors have long performed these tasks, and readers may rely on the permanence and the accuracy of these web pages as they have for so long relied on our printed pages. …

By publishing the Pocket Part we hope to introduce new readers to the discussions begun in the Journal. We place special value on responses that relate the Journal’s work to the concerns of members of the bench and the bar who rarely read law review articles….

We welcome new writers to the Pocket Part as well. These pages are meant to bring other scholars into the Journal’s theoretical discussions and to correct and update older works…

We invite all our authors and readers to work with us to combine the Journal’s traditions of accuracy and thoroughness with the clarity, brevity, and responsiveness of online legal scholarship."

There are links on the page for registering, and information on making submissions to the Pocket Part.

Blawgs Peaking ? - Mixed Opinions

In a posting right at the end of the year contibutor Peter Spiro thought that with all the  abandonded law blogs that he was encountering, perhaps the expansion of this medium was peaking. As he puts it,

“One sign that the blogging phenomenon may have peaked is the number of abandoned blogs one comes across these days — blogs that are still up, but on which nothing's been posted for months. And I'm not talking about personal blogs (among which there must be millions), but ones by professionals aimed at professional audiences, many of which started with great stuff (law-related examples here, here  and here). There's something a little saddening about these sites, like a nice house that's gone vacant or a favorite restaurant that is closed "for renovations."

Several comments to his posting seem to concur :

Comment from Dave Hoffman :

Interesting post. Putting aside the value question (my answer: timely provocation), I wonder whether the number of abandoned blogs is a good proxy for "enthusiasm" (or faddishness, or popularity, or whatever the blog-academic-metric is). Restaurants fail all the time: that doesn't mean that eating out is passe.

That said, it seems unlikely that law professors (the audience and participants I care about) will continue to blog at high numbers for much longer if (a) institutions don't commit to reward the activity; or (b) it doesn't pay. Since I think both of these possibilities are long-shots (and the first possibly normatively undesirable) I too see a downward trend in total bloggers. That doesn't mean that the ones left will die on the vine, just that the gold rush time is at a conclusion.

Comment from “Belle Lettre” :

“Perhaps the writing on the wall indicates the slow demise of personal soap boxes in favor of easier to maintain group efforts. While I am all in favor of the former, I admit that the latter is a more effective platform for communication, and is more in keeping with the spirit of collaboration and collegiality that is (hopefully) especial to academia. Such group efforts make it easier for occasional bloggers, and allows individual bloggers a bigger forum without the difficulty of posting every day--all of which might help young academics (and particularly female ones) like myself.”

However, a link to a posting on the Law librarian Blog seems to indicate that this downturn may not be universal and that may be sub-areas where law blogs are quite healthy and “open for business”.
See  Law Librarian Blog is Two Years Old!

“May I also call attention to the editors and contributing editors of the Law Professor Blogs Network. What a great job! Being a co-founder of the Network (with Cincinnati Law Prof Paul Caron) I can say I never imagined the growth and popularity of the Network back in July 2004 when we started this venture. We now have 57 editors and 25 contributing editors writing for 36 law blogs with several more blogs expected to go into production soon.”

Should Blawgs Be Regulated As advertising ?

A story [ link for DePaul users] in yesterday’s Chicago Tribune Business section looks at the complications that may arise for lawyers who blog about their field, when state regulators treat their content as advertising rather than non-commercial speech. Featured is a young blogger,Evan Brown, at the local firm of Hinshaw & Culbertson. He blogs about legal developments involving the internet. While there are business benefits that result from his blogging. He says that, "It's certainly not the reason I started it." The article goes on to point out two recent attempts by professional ethics regulators in New York and Kentucky , to strictly control the blogging activities of lawyers under their jurisdiction.

A very thorough critique of the proposed rules in NY, is presented in the Public Citizen blog in a posting entitled “This Blog Is False and Misleading (in New York)” . The author, Greg Beck, states that

In the name of protecting consumers from false and misleading lawyer advertising, New York is proposing draconian new restrictions on Internet communications and other forms of attorney advertising that will directly impact attorneys who maintain blogs or websites in New York, or in many cases who simply send an email into the state.  Instead of protecting consumers, however,the proposed rules will burden completely truthful and non-misleading communication by attorneys,and will serve no purpose other than to deprive consumers of useful information about their legal rights, protect established law firms from competition, and render many aspects of the Internet largely unusable for New York attorneys.

The proposed rules are still open to comment at this time.

The Federal Trade Commission itself has expressed reservations with such overly broad approaches in a letter sent, as a comment, to the New York, Office of Court Administration, on their proposed rules revisions.

…This letter briefly summarizes the Commission’s interest and experience in the regulation of  attorney advertising and solicitation and provides the staff’s opinion regarding the anticipated  effects of the Proposed Amendments on consumers and competition. The FTC Staff believes  that while deceptive advertising by lawyers should be prohibited, restrictions on advertising and  solicitation should be specifically tailored to prevent deceptive claims and should not  unnecessarily restrict the dissemination of truthful and non-misleading information. …

In the state of Kentucky, a challenge by a blogging attorney has led to a significant change in the original regulatory requirements. Eugene Volokh in his blog the Volokh Conspiracy, describes the burdensome speech limiting features of the origianl Attorney Advertising Commission Rules, in this posting : “Kentucky Lawyers Must Pay $50 for Each Post They Blog”.  He takes a strong position  stating that :

I hope the Commission quickly recognizes that it has no business restricting lawyer speech this way. Commercial advertising may indeed be restricted in certain ways, perhaps including these submission and filing fee requirements. But lawyer speech that isn't advertising — such as a lawyer's self-published book, or a magazine run by a lawyer in which the lawyer has a publisher's column — is fully protected…

See Rules Of The Supreme Court Of Kentucky, Practice Of Law, SCR 3.130(7.05) Filing of advertisements.

Fortunately, the negotiations with the Commission have resulted in what the challenging attorney, Ben Cowgill, describes as  “…a “win-win” outcome for all interested parties”. In a blog posting entitled,“Update: How Kentucky's Attorney Advertising Commission is now treating law-related blogs”,
He says that :

… The short answer is that the Commission has adopted a fair and sensible approach to the regulation of law-related blogs published by Kentucky lawyers. … It permits the Commission to maintain consistency in the regulation of on-line information about Kentucky lawyers. It permits Kentucky lawyers to publish law-related blogs without undue burden or expense associated with regulatory compliance. It promotes the image of the profession by allowing lawyers to disseminate free information about developments in the law. And it allows the public to enjoy the benefit of law-related blogs authored by Kentucky lawyers.

The Tribune article states that in Illinois, the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission has not received any complaints about blogs. If the issue does arise, perhaps the experiences in Kentucky & New York may guide the participants to a similar win-win outcome.

The Impact of Web Communications on Legal Scholarship

From a posting on the "Law Librarian Blog" regarding the current issue of Yale Law Journal Pocket Part. Featuring a collection of essays on "The Future of Legal Scholarship." Each essay, written by a law prof blogger explores the impact of web communications on legal scholarship.

Let the Law Journal Be the Law Journal and the Blog Be the Blog, by Ann Althouse, Althouse

Online Legal Scholarship: The Medium and the Message, by Jack Balkin, Balkinization

A Blog Supreme?, by Christopher A. Bracey, Blackprof.com

The Long Tail of Legal Scholarship, by Paul Caron, TaxProf Blog

That's So Six Months Ago: Challenges to Student Scholarship in the Age of Blogging, by Stephen I. Vladeck, PrawfsBlawg

Law Reviews, the Internet, and Preventing and Correcting Errors, by Eugene Volokh, Volokh Conspiracy

Why Blogs Are Bad for Legal Scholarship,  ESSAY | Brian Leiter

What the Internet Age Means for Female Scholars ,  ESSAY | Rosa Brooks

What's Been Happening in Law Library Blogs ?

The State of the Law Library Blogosphere

by Bonnie Shucha
Head of Reference, University of Wisconsin Law Library
August 15, 2006

"Although the legal and library literature is filled with information  about the theoretical pros and cons of blog publishing, little has been  written about actual blogging experiences. Who is blogging? What are they blogging about? Who reads blogs? What technologies are being used? Have  blogs been successful? What lessons can be shared? These are the questions  explored in this article. Through this study, potential bloggers will better evaluate whether this technology is right for them and veterans will gain insight into their own blogging experience in comparison to their peers."

latest oral arguments from the Seventh Circuit

Access As Easy As Tuning In

"The next time you see someone pop on the headphones  and get that faraway look in his or her eyes, don't be  so sure it's a tune that's beguiling them. It just may  be the latest oral arguments from the Seventh Circuit. The circuit is the first federal court of appeals to make  RSS feeds of opinions and audio recordings of oral arguments  available from its Web site."

7th Circuit RSS Feeds

Exuberant Linking in the Blawgoshere, Oh My !

    Brooke Chappell,regular writer for the site Lawcrossings provides a wry anaysis of   why so much cross-citation seems to take place among many legal blogs. Is it only giving credit where credit is due ? She suggest some more interesting reasons .

The Future of Academic Publishing?

The Institute for the Future of the Book has announced a new project, MediaCommons, intended to provide an electronic forum intended to help extend formal scholarship into the networked age.  They describe the project as

a wide-ranging scholarly network -- an ecosystem, if you can bear that metaphor -- in which folks working in media studies can write, publish, review, and discuss, in forms ranging from the blog to the monograph, from the purely textual to the multi-mediated, with all manner of degrees in between.

While restricted to media studies, the network's founders clearly hope to become a model for the rest of the academy to follow.  Whether this will succeed only time will tell, but even legal scholarship (which tends to lag behind the physical and social sciences in its embrace of new communications media) has begun to face questions about what constitutes scholarly writing.  Should blogging be considered in tenure decisions-- and if so, for or against?  (Some untenured legal scholars have gone so far as to suspend their blogging, lest it affect their prospects negatively.)  What about contributing to a wiki?

As traditional publications and courts (including the Supreme Court) begin to draw on blogs and other new means of exchanging ideas, the line between formal publication in law reviews and monographs and in other fora for scholarly discussion may well begin to break down somewhat.  However, formal publication does offer a filtering process that many forms of electronic publication do not.  MediaCommons hopes to serve that purpose with

a process of "peer-to-peer review," in which texts are discussed and, in some sense, "ranked" by a committed community of readers. This new process will shift the purpose of such review from a gatekeeping function, determining whether or not a manuscript should be published, to one that instead determines how a text should be received. Peer-to-peer review will also focus on the development of authors and the deepening of ideas, rather than simply an up-or-down vote on any particular text.

Similar processes have been used to filter informal internet discussion spaces for years.  Slashdot, for example, uses a moderation system whereby articles are rated with numerical scores by moderators who are themselves largely selected by an automated system, based on their experience, how they themselves have been rated by other moderators, and various other factors.  Time and experience will show whether something along these lines can do a comparable or better job of filtering scholarship than peer review or standard editorial oversight.

A more critical note is sounded by CALI Director of Internet Development Elmer Masters, who points out that thus far this project is essentially vaporware, and further observes:

As a developer of tools in the educational technology field I do get tired of hearing about all of these great things that get trumpeted across the web only to never see the light of day when the actual working tools I develop are rarely mentioned outside of the small world I work in.