The ABA Ethics 20/20 Commission is holding hearings to explore the impact of technology on client confidences and lawyers’ use of the internet to develop business. The Commission invites interested persons to register now to testify at an Oct. 14 public hearing in Chicago. You may also make written submissions. See below for details on registering or making written submissions.

The commission has issued two issues papers identifying areas it expects to explore in oral testimony or written comment. One explores implications for client confidentiality raised by lawyers’ use of such technological tools as cloud computing, while the other raises . . . [more]

Given that lawyers are heavy users of Blackberrys, most Slaw readers will already know that RIM just announced the Playbook tablet, which is an iPad competitor.

RIM has taken an interesting approach. It is designed for business users, and as a companion device that will tether to a Blackberry. Indeed, its promo hits heavily on features that the iPad has been criticized for lacking – such as a forward facing camera, and usb. It may very well be a compelling choice for Blackberry users.

While it was just announced, it is not available until early 2011. I suspect it was . . . [more]

This is a short endorsement of the iAnnotate application for the iPad, produced by Aji and available on iTunes for $9.99.

I used to maintain piles of case law on a bookshelf, working my way though cases one highlighter at a time. I bought an iPad to rid myself of the enviro-guilt borne by my case law habit and was also happy to get rid of highlighters – my suits, shirts, linen, pets and kids too-often marked with indelible pink, green and yellow. The iPad, however, was a less than perfect replacement until I installed iAnnotate about a week ago. . . . [more]

If you are not careful, the Internet can be a dangerous place that can expose you to malpractice claims. LAWPRO Magazine has featured articles on Social media pitfalls to avoid and how there may be no coverage for some online activities: Danger Signs: Five activities generally not covered by your LAWPRO policy.

Another recent LAWPRO Magazine article on Practice pitfalls contains a section on Internet liability, which points out that “statements that lawyers make on the Internet, whether on law firm or other websites, or on social media sites such as Facebook, are a significant potential growth area for claims.” . . . [more]

Today the Audiencia Provincial in Madrid released a significant ruling in the fight between Spanish television channel Telecinco and Google’s Youtube service. Surprise, surprise, sometimes fans post videos from television broadcasts on Youtube without tracking down rights owners to clear copyright.

But is Youtube liable for any infringement?

The Spanish company argued that its intellectual property rights were being violated, but a court in Madrid ruled that it was the responsibility of the copyright owner to identify such infringement and alert Google. It had set out to obtain what it believed would be an international precedent.

Historically, . . . [more]

What can today's students teach us about combatting information overload? Personal learning environments

With Fall in the air, this week in biotech was full of change, as Canadian biotech advocates converged on Ottawa and new priorities were the order of the day:

A report on a so-called “Express License” for university technology transfer led me to call for new priorities at tech transfer offices and led to some debate in the comments. Universities often take in 10-fold more money from industry-sponsored research as they do from licensing royalties, so the Express License makes sense for those willing to sacrifice a bit of royalty income to encourage more sponsored research.

The Business Development Bank . . . [more]

The way we communicate has been steadily shifting away from telephone calls to e-mail, instant messaging, Skype, BlackBerry Messenger, Facebook, and other Internet-based communication methods. This shift has been bad news for more than just telcos; the difficulty of wiretapping the myriad of cloud-based communication methods has become an increasing cause of frustration for law enforcement agencies around the world.

That may be about to change. The New York Times reports that the FBI, NSA, US Justice Department and other agencies are seeking extensive new regulations that will significantly bolster law enforcement’s ability to wiretap Internet-based communications. Internet-based services such . . . [more]

Zotero has announced that it will be releasing a standalone desktop version of the program that will integrate with Internet Explorer, Safari, and Chrome. At the present, Zotero is only an extension to the Firefox browser.

Zotero is a free note-taking application much favoured by researchers and others who need to clip, annotate, and organize material from the web along with bibliographic metadata. Zotero comes with a variety of bibliographic and citation styles built in (though not, I think, the Canadian legal citation format).

This move will make Zotero Everywhere a sensible alternative to other popular note-taking tools, such as . . . [more]

I’m returning from the Canadian Centre for Court Technology conference with a mix of problems, questions, solutions, and vague ideas swirling around in my head. I’d like to pluck one of my wilder notions out of this brain brew and offer it up here for discussion and a reality check.

As is the case whenever people get together to talk about technology, there’s a good deal of nervous and plaintive discussion about its unwelcome aspects — the way it intrudes work into formerly private time, the way it gooses the already speedy nature of our lives. There’s nothing here that’s . . . [more]

According to the Official Google Blog:

Second, today we demonstrated new mobile editing capabilities for Google Docs on the Android platform and the iPad. In the next few weeks, co-workers around the world will soon be able to co-edit files simultaneously from an even wider array of devices.

This is good news for iPad owners who will no longer need to buy an app to edit Google Docs. (Not to mention making a number of iPad-owning SLAW contributors very happy.) . . . [more]

Hat tip to Susannah Tredwell (@hannasus) for retweeting:

Google Docs now supports web fonts – we’ve added 6 new fonts to documents & more are on the way

The article starts out with: “Documents without font choices are like photographs without colors. Just as shades of color can add depth to a picture, smart font choices give your text another dimension.”
This is just the beginning for font additions to Google Docs.

A question for Slaw readers: Does this font addition create enough of an incentive to start using Google Docs if you aren’t using it now? . . . [more]