Is the Future of Legal Scholarship in the Blogosphere? (Law.com)

Margaret A. Schilt
Legal Times

If you are looking for the future of legal scholarship, chances are that you may find it not in a treatise or the traditional law review but in a different form, profoundly influenced by the blogosphere.

Law-related blogs are proliferating on the Internet -- more than 80 are listed on the blogroll of one popular law-related blog, Concurring Opinions. A significant number of the blogs -- sometimes called "blawgs" -- are hosted by law professors.

What do these blogs look like? There's a wide variety, from the weighty to the conversational or, in the jargon, the more "bloggy." On the Becker-Posner Blog, Judge Richard Posner and economist Gary Becker debate issues such as crime and economic development, health care reform and whether higher education is a good investment. (more . . .)

Upcoming NYC Electronics Recycling & Clothing Donation Events

Drop off your unwanted or broken electronics for recycling. Only the following items will be accepted:

* computers & laptops
* monitors
* printers & scanners (desktop only)
* keyboards & mice
* TVs
* VCRs & DVD players
* cell phones

Other kinds of electronics won't be accepted. Only NYC residents (no businesses allowed*) may drop off material (limit five pieces per vehicle). The first 100 people to drop off electronics will receive a $5 Best Buy gift card.

All dropped off items will be recycled through contracted vendors and all data on hard drives will be destroyed; no scavenging will be permitted and no tax-deduction receipts will be given out.

While safe to use, electronics contain hazardous materials, such as lead, mercury, arsenic, and cadmium. Recycling your unwanted electronic equipment keeps these hazardous materials out of the waste stream and the environment.



STATEN ISLAND
Saturday, September 8, 2007
8am - 2pm
Staten Island Mall, Parking Lot F (near main entrance, 2655 Richmond Ave.)

MANHATTAN
Sunday, September 9, 2007
8am - 2pm
Union Square North Plaza (southeast corner of 17th St. and Broadway; cars enter at 16th St & Union Square West).

BRONX
Sunday, September 16, 2007
8am - 2pm
Lehman College, North Lot (Goulden Ave., just south of Bedford Park West)

QUEENS
Saturday, September 29, 2007
8am - 2pm
St. John's University, Alumni Hall Parking Lot (corner of Utopia Parkway & Union Turnpike, cars enter at Gate 3 on Union Turnpike & 80th Rd.)

BROOKLYN
Sunday, September 30, 2007
8am - 2pm
Keyspan Park, Coney Island (Surf Ave. & 19th St., take Cropsey Ave. exit off the Belt Parkway)

More info.

How Much Will 'Best Law Firms for Women' List Influence Attorneys?

C.C. Holland

Female law students entering the recruiting season now have another weapon for their interviewing arsenal: a list of the 50 U.S. firms deemed most woman friendly.

The inaugural 2007 Best Law Firms for Women list, a joint venture between Working Mother magazine and Flex-Time Lawyers, LLC, was the result of a national survey of approximately 200 law firms. According to survey co-creator Deborah Epstein Henry, founder and president of Flex-Time Lawyers, the hundreds of questions helped narrow the results to firms that were exceptional in their woman-friendly policies and practices. (more. . .)

The Beloit College Mindset List

The Beloit College Mindset List is not a chronological listing of things that happened in the year that the entering first-year students were born.

The "Class of 2011" refers to students entering college this year. They are generally 18 which suggests they were born in 1989.

The list identifies the experiences and event horizons of students as they commence higher education and is not meant to reflect on their preparatory education.

1. What Berlin wall?
2. Humvees, minus the artillery, have always been available to the public.
   
3. Rush Limbaugh and the “Dittoheads” have always been lambasting liberals.
4. They never “rolled down” a car window.
5. Michael Moore has always been angry and funny.
6. They may confuse the Keating Five with a rock group.
7. They have grown up with bottled water.
8. General Motors has always been working on an electric car.
9. Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.
10. Pete Rose has never played baseball.
11. Rap music has always been mainstream.
12. Religious leaders have always been telling politicians what to do, or else!
13. “Off the hook” has never had anything to do with a telephone.
14. Music has always been “unplugged.”
15. Russia has always had a multi-party political system.
16. Women have always been police chiefs in major cities.
17. They were born the year Harvard Law Review Editor Barack Obama announced he might run for office some day.
18. The NBA season has always gone on and on and on and on.
19. Classmates could include Michelle Wie, Jordin Sparks, and Bart Simpson.
20. Half of them may have been members of the Baby-sitters Club.
21. Eastern Airlines has never “earned their wings” in their lifetime.
22. No one has ever been able to sit down comfortably to a meal of “liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”
23. Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears and has always employed more workers than GM.
24. Being “lame” has to do with being dumb or inarticulate, not disabled.
25. Wolf Blitzer has always been serving up the news on CNN.
26. Katie Couric has always had screen cred.
27. Al Gore has always been running for president or thinking about it.
28. They never found a prize in a Coca-Cola “MagiCan.”
29. They were too young to understand Judas Priest’s subliminal messages.
30. When all else fails, the Prozac defense has always been a possibility.
31. Multigrain chips have always provided healthful junk food.
32. They grew up in Wayne’s World.
33. U2 has always been more than a spy plane.
34. They were introduced to Jack Nicholson as “The Joker.”
35. Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names.
36. American rock groups have always appeared in Moscow.
37. Commercial product placements have been the norm in films and on TV.
38. On Parents’ Day on campus, their folks could be mixing it up with Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz with daughter Zöe, or Kathie Lee and Frank Gifford with son Cody.
39. Fox has always been a major network.
40. They drove their parents crazy with the Beavis and Butt-Head laugh.
41. The “Blue Man Group” has always been everywhere.
42. Women’s studies majors have always been offered on campus.
43. Being a latchkey kid has never been a big deal.
44. Thanks to MySpace and Facebook, autobiography can happen in real time.
45. They learned about JFK from Oliver Stone and Malcolm X from Spike Lee.
46. Most phone calls have never been private.
47. High definition television has always been available.
48. Microbreweries have always been ubiquitous.
49. Virtual reality has always been available when the real thing failed.
50. Smoking has never been allowed in public spaces in France.
51. China has always been more interested in making money than in reeducation.
52. Time has always worked with Warner.
53. Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.
    
54. The purchase of ivory has always been banned.
55. MTV has never featured music videos.
56. The space program has never really caught their attention except in disasters.
57. Jerry Springer has always been lowering the level of discourse on TV.
58. They get much more information from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert than from the newspaper.
59. They’re always texting 1 n other.
60. They will encounter roughly equal numbers of female and male professors in the classroom.
61. They never saw Johnny Carson live on television.
62. They have no idea who Rusty Jones was or why he said “goodbye to rusty cars.”
63. Avatars have nothing to do with Hindu deities.
64. Chavez has nothing to do with iceberg lettuce and everything to do with oil.
65. Illinois has been trying to ban smoking since the year they were born.
66. The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.
67. Chronic fatigue syndrome has always been debilitating and controversial.
68. Burma has always been Myanmar.
69. Dilbert has always been ridiculing cubicle culture.
70. Food packaging has always included nutritional labeling.

It's not spam, it's BACN. (Metafilter)

It's not spam, it's BACN. A web-term that was influenced by the proliferation of web 2.0 social networks used to describe "notifications you want, just not right now." Twitter requests, facebook notifications, bill-payment receipts, etc. Even though you're expecting the e-mail, *and* you want to read it, now is just not a good time to click the "read" button. You want to; you just don't have time right now. Hopefully the video and numerous blog postings in the last 24 hours will help to bring awareness to this new web-term recently brought to light this past weekend at Podcamp Pittsburgh.

Nora the Piano Cat

Really. You have to watch this. The cat has pretty good attack! ;-D

Confessions of a LinkedIn Dropout (Business Week)

by Jeff Pulver

Are you on Facebook yet? Maybe you should be.

I made this pronouncement on my blog recently, encouraging my friends and contacts to join me in leaving LinkedIn behind. Little did I know the ripple effect it would have.

Within hours of my posting, several high-tech bloggers took note of the move and started their own LinkedIn vs. Facebook discussions, many asking whether Facebook, a site that began as a social network for college kids, could replicate LinkedIn, a network aimed at helping professionals forge and maintain business connections. Hundreds of my contacts who did not have a Facebook account as recently as March were swarming Facebook by mid-July. Everywhere there were "Facebook for Business" blog posts, and the network, it seemed, had suddenly recaptured the attention of key executives across the media, entertainment, communications, and Internet fields.

Facebook already was recognized as a growing and disruptive social site for young people, but it was starting to be seen as a viable force for business. We are in the midst of a coming of age for Facebook, and I have embraced the network fully. (more. . .)

Law Firms Get Their Share of Attention From Bloggers

Amanda Bronstad
The National Law Journal
August 6, 2007


When Jeff Brauer left his job serving of counsel to a law firm in China, he spent five months sending e-mails and hired two attorneys to collect $150,000 in unpaid compensation he claims the firm still owed him.

When that didn't work, he started his own blog. Within weeks, the managing partner of the firm "told me to take the blog down immediately. I realized that, actually, I should do precisely the opposite," Brauer told The National Law Journal from China, where he has since started his own business consulting firm. "I was in the public eye, and that really made it sort of even more of a problem for them to ... do anything to me."

The publicized spat, while extreme, exemplifies a growing tension between law firms and their current or former lawyers, or employees, who post negative or confidential information about their employers online. In the past year, at least two other blogs, Skadden Insider and Above the Law, have raised eyebrows for publishing internal information at firms, such as confidential firings and sexual trysts with partners.

(more. . .)

Law Firms Get Their Share of Attention From Bloggers

Amanda Bronstad
The National Law Journal
August 6, 2007


When Jeff Brauer left his job serving of counsel to a law firm in China, he spent five months sending e-mails and hired two attorneys to collect $150,000 in unpaid compensation he claims the firm still owed him.

When that didn't work, he started his own blog. Within weeks, the managing partner of the firm "told me to take the blog down immediately. I realized that, actually, I should do precisely the opposite," Brauer told The National Law Journal from China, where he has since started his own business consulting firm. "I was in the public eye, and that really made it sort of even more of a problem for them to ... do anything to me."

The publicized spat, while extreme, exemplifies a growing tension between law firms and their current or former lawyers, or employees, who post negative or confidential information about their employers online. In the past year, at least two other blogs, Skadden Insider and Above the Law, have raised eyebrows for publishing internal information at firms, such as confidential firings and sexual trysts with partners.

(more. . .)

More on the California Voting Machine Review (Schneir on Security)

Bruce Schneier writes:

California Secretary of State Bowen's certification decisions are online.

She has totally decertified the ES&S Inkavote Plus system, used in L.A. County, because of ES&S noncompliance with the Top to Bottom Review. The Diebold and Sequoia systems have been decertified and conditionally recertified. The same was done with one Hart Intercivic system (system 6.2.1). (Certification of the Hart system 6.1 was voluntarily withdrawn.)

To those who thought she was staging this review as security theater, this seems like evidence to the contrary. She wants to do the right thing, but has no idea how to conduct a security review.

(more. .

Backup systems averted loss of N.Y. bar exam essays (NYLJ)

Joel Stashenko/New York Law Journal
August 3, 2007

Backup systems in software that malfunctioned last week for hundreds of students writing essays on the New York state bar examination appear to have prevented the loss of any test takers' answers, the software company's president said Wednesday.

Douglas M. Winneg of Software Secure Inc. said in an interview that he believes the essay question answers uploaded from the computers of approximately 5,200 people who used laptops to take the bar exam last week have been accounted for. The Cambridge, Mass.-based company is in the process of transferring the computer data to another company, which will print the essays and transfer them to the state Board of Law Examiners for grading.

The board has promised that all students who took the test last week on a laptop will be notified when their essays have been located. The other half of the test takers wrote the essays in longhand. (more . . .)