The latest issue of the Virginia Law Weekly contains a look back at the law school from 1958 to 1967, a period so far back in history that even I was back in school.

But I was surprised to read one sentence about the firm library:

In 1962 the head law librarian attended a meeting to assess the workability of a “computer-like” machine designed to index and retrieve whole bodies of legal information

Okay Slaw, what was this about? . . . [more]

Here is a link to a summary of the attendee survey results from the ALM Legal Tech Conference in January.

Odd that it took this long to compile – at ABA Techshow in 1988, we were doing automated audience surveys, using unbelievably primitive tools, but real-time.

Here is the answer list to one question:

What topics do you see as hot technology issues in 2008?

Electronic Discovery 69%
Online Collaboration 32%
Knowledge Management 36%
Document Management 53%
Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity 29%
Data Security 48%
Other 13% . . . [more]

It’s in the very early stages of its development, but I just found a new site called Booklamp, which claims to do for books what pandora.com (sadly, off limits to us) does for music: recognize patterns in the ones you like and suggest others that you might as well. The FAQ is not available yet to shed some light on how the matching is done, but it seems to employ five criteria: “density”, “pacing”, “action”, “dialogue” and “description”.

There are very few books in the database yet, so it’s more of a novelty than a useful tool, but they . . . [more]

At TechShow last week, a roll-out for what I believe to be a first – a book devoted to advanced technologies for lawyers to collaborate.

The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell empowers lawyers who are just beginning to try these tools, as well as providing tips and techniques for lawyers with intermediate and advanced collaboration experience. . . . [more]

The TechnoLawyer Blog is compiling a growing list of blog posts and reports at ABA TECHSHOW 2008: Read Our Exclusive Firsthand Reports.

. . . [more]

Slate, the U.S. internet magazine of political commentary, has started a law blog called Convictions. Seems it’s going to be a multi-author thing — practitioners, law profs… — but there’s no “about” page so you have to hunt through the recent posts for the skinny.

Clearly one worth watching, so open it up in your feed reader for a test drive. . . . [more]

Slawyer Dominic Jaar presented twice at the recent ABA Techshow in Chicago. Here’s the text of his presentations:

• The first is on the use of Web 2.0 tools for [doc] collaboration
• The second is about the use of phones and PDA’s to create the [PDF] mobile office

Thanks, Dominic. . . . [more]

On Monday the British House of Lords starts blogging. The Times reports that Lord Soley, Lord Norton, Lord Tyler, Lord Lipsey, Lord Dholakia, Baroness D’Souza, Lord Teverson, Baroness Young of Hornsey and Baroness Murphy — collectively to be known as Lords of the Blog — will begin a 6-month experiment aimed at raising public awareness of the role and business of the House of Lords.

Lord Soley of Hammersmith has been blogging for some time under the title of Lord of the Blog, and has just now (6 pm EST Sunday, March 16), even as I write, posted about . . . [more]

Monica Bay has put together a nice list of bloggers who have been live at this year’s ABA TechShow in Chicago covering the event for the rest of us stuck in the snow or underneath paperwork! . . . [more]

Mike Hoeflich, a professor at the University of Kansas School, has just created a blog called The Legal Antiquarian.

As he mentions in his intro post last week, the blog deals with “the various aspects of legal history having to do with the daily life of lawyers and judges, as well as to the sources, manuscript, printed, and otherwise preserved which can be used to help understand how law and the legal profession functioned in the past. Among the subjects I will cover will be the daily lives of lawyers, their practices, their offices, the books they owned and . . . [more]

After years of looking the same, the Google Advanced Search page has changed. For the better:

It looks simpler, more straightforward to use. As far as I can remember, the features I used to use still seem to be there. Is anyone else missing anything?

This was quietly changed (no mention on the official blog) following the implementation of Google Teleportation. Note that, toward the bottom of the Advanced Search form, there is an option to search any one specific website domain which has been available all along. If you don’t get the Teleportation option from the Google . . . [more]

In the February 14 edition, the Economist printed a special report on how governments are using technology to better communicate with citizens. The report contained a number of fascinating examples of the creative uses of information technology, but highlights the fact that governments are light-years behind businesses in using communication technology to serve people more efficiently.

The report tosses around two key terms: “i-government” and “e-government” . The first refers to the basic process of using the internet to provide information to citizens, while the second refers to providing government services directly to people through the internet.

A second way . . . [more]