♫ Oh I…
I want to be with you everywhere… ♫

Words and music by Christine McVie, recorded by Fleetwood Mac.

It seems that we are living in a mini-renaissance with new technology applications being released seemingly daily. Google has released Google Chrome (see Simon Fodden’s post of Sept 1, 2008) with the stated justification that the web needs a solid foundation for modern web applications. Law firms face a similar problem – the need for a solid foundation for capturing of all the myriad bits of information that form the electronic client file into one place. . . . [more]

At ILTA last week, Lexis teamed up with Interwoven to announce a new product that they claim will solve the vexed problem of e-mail management, including the ability to automatically file by subject and client, as well as support for archiving and disposing of e-mail as appropriate. The tools integrate tightly with Microsoft Exchange Server and Open Text’s document management tools.

Here is the announcement: . . . [more]

While we’ve had discussions from time to time about Second Life, but we missed telling you about a novel virtual workshop on innovative forms of library services through virtual worlds. The workshop explored the benefits and challenges of operating a virtual world law library program, leading to practical advice on how to create and present a program or topical resource within Second Life.

The website noted that a legal community is developing in Second Life: over 65 lawyers and firms have an official Second Life presence, the “Second Life Bar Association” has 200+ members, and the ABA has recently . . . [more]

The race is on to make (and sell to users) the first truly good search engine that deals well with concepts, such that a search for “dog bites man” would include results without the word “dog” or “bites” but that include “Pomeranian” and “attacks,” to give a very simple example. Natural language processing — or NLP — is not easy for machines to learn, of course. Not only must they have a decent thesaurus, but as well they should be able to parse a document and derive some sense of context so that the results of a “dog bites man . . . [more]

As law schools explore more team learning (though they’ve a long way to go to get to the Business School small group culture), the possibility of collaborative tools becomes more important. Remember the line from Google’s Joe Kraus that “”the nature of information discovery is changing … from a solitary activity to a social one”.

That’s why a posting on the Italian blog Programmazione.it v6.0 beta caught our attention. A post on a tool for group collaboration, describing a free Internet Explorer plug-in that allows groups of people to collaborate on Web searches . The features include include group query . . . [more]

When the subject of “finding experts” comes up in most groups of legal KM professionals, the discussion often polarizes into two camps – either automated solutions or self-declared solutions. Indeed, some of this is fueled by early solutions that either tried to mine email, document and other work product to determine who the experts were (based on frequency, but not depth or quality, of conversation) or systems that allowed an individual to tick off the boxes indicating their self-declared expertise or interests in particular areas. But the landscape is more complex than that. It is simply not an “either / . . . [more]

I’ve always been leery of proponents of a biological basis for intelligence [or running].

I have conceded that genetics play some role on an individual basis, but need to be activated by the environment. Measures of intelligence are far too culturally specific, and ignore many other forms of intelligence. And I wholly reject, for largely scientific reasons, attempts to correlate genetic intelligence with racial or ethnic groups.

The same holds true for great lawyers.

Some of us are born to a long line of lawyers, or have parents that are judges or legal academics. We grew up . . . [more]

We’ve mentioned The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools & Technologies, Dennis Kennedy’s and Tom Mighell’s book, a few times here on Slaw. We’re big fans of both the authors. Now it’s time to report that they’ve started a companion blog — of the same name, natch. A month and a week old, the blog has a couple of interesting entries and we expect more of the same in the future. . . . [more]

One of my profs during the first-year of university told me there are 4 types of lawyers:

1. Finders are those who find the work, better known today as rainmakers
2. Grinders are those who grind out the client work, and are really efficient and doing research memos
3. Binders are those who bring the members of a firm together by (for example) inviting a small group to lunch or recognizing achievements of the firm’s lawyers
4. Minders are those who perform administrative tasks, and coordinate the efforts of the finders, grinders, and binders to be sure that the firm will run as

The Conference Board of Canada’s new report “Bridging the Gaps: How to Transfer Knowledge in Today’s Multigenerational Workplace (July 2008)” is full of ideas on how to transfer and retain knowledge between the generations in corporate settings. After providing an overview of the concept of knowledge transfer (knowledge transfer life cycle, types of knowledge, etc), the report goes on to describe how to select an effective knowledge transfer method and discusses 15 specific methods. Methods discussed include blogs, wikis, instant messaging, mentoring, and storytelling. For each method, the report examines its benefits, common business applications, good practices, and . . . [more]

Last week, the Canadian Judicial Council released its National Model Practice Direction for the Use of Technology in Civil Litigation:

“The Practice Direction provides much-needed guidance to trial judges and lawyers with respect to the best practices for exchanging productions in electronic form, as well as handling paperless trials. Counsel will be encouraged to use a format of exchange which reduces the cost of litigation and improves access to justice.”

“The Practice Direction is accompanied by a Generic Protocol which can be adapted as a checklist and form of agreement between parties to establish a meaningful and simplified exchange

Thanks to our friends at Spada’s new Swordplay site for links to an article at the Richmond Journal of Law & Technology on INFORMATION INFLATION: CAN THE LEGAL SYSTEM ADAPT which asks, how do vast quantities of new writing forms challenge the legal profession, and how should lawyers adapt?

It’s written by George L. Paul, a partner in Lewis and Roca, LLP and Jason R. Baron, Director of Litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration.

The piece is well worth your attention. . . . [more]