I did manage to get myself out to San Diego for the 15^th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Law. As mentioned in my short introductory post about the conference in early May that ICAIL 2015 was took place from June 8-12 at the University of San Diego. The view from the elevated USD campus was spectacular and made spending time in the Joan R. Kroc Institute for Peace and Justice and surrounding gardens all the more pleasurable. Congratulations to the organizers for providing a well-run and fruitful conference.

When I think of artificial intelligence (AI) my thoughts . . . [more]

Are you keeping track of the law on digital currency such as Bitcoin? Are your clients using it, or wanting to? Are you?

The Senate of Canada has issued a report supporting its use. Here’s a story on the report (in case you don’t subscribe to Crypto Coin News…).

Objects in the future are closer than they appear (sometimes). . . . [more]

Bill C-51 (Anti-Terrorist Act, 2015) has been passed by the Senate despite massive opposition against its privacy unfriendly invasive powers. See, for example, commentary by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, this article by security law professors entitled “Why Can’t Canada Get National Security Law Right“, and this post on Openmedia.ca .

Yet in the United States, the USA Freedom Act was just passed that pulled back a bit on the ability of the NSA to collect domestic data.

There seems to be no evidence that all this invasive spying and data collection actually reduces or prevents terrorism . . . [more]

Law firms and legal departments often rely on technology to create cost-effective training options. Mistakes can be costly, though. If you choose the wrong platform or make incorrect assumptions, both you and your program could lose credibility.

In the second half of an interview with Holly MacDonald, driving force behind Canadian e-learning innovation consultancy Spark &+Co, we learn what to consider when creating an e-learning module, and which trends might help sustain progress. (The first half of the interview discussed what individual lawyers should look for when selecting an e-learning course.)

Q. Which mistakes do organizations commonly . . . [more]

Online courses, webinars and other digital media open up a wide range of convenient, cost-effective training options for busy professionals. But there are a lot of options. Myriad combinations of technology, platforms, content and classrooms sometimes make the selection of a course as challenging as learning new subject matter.

How can you tell which choice is right for you? I interviewed e-learning strategist Holly MacDonald to find out. Macdonald is the driving force behind Canadian e-learning innovation consultancy Spark + Co, where she creates strategies and program development for clients including Fortune 100 corporations, technology firms, public institutions and . . . [more]

I probably won’t be making it to the Chicago Bar Association’s CLE on “How To… Get the Most Out of Twitter” tomorrow. But that’s not to say that I wouldn’t have been choked to miss Catherine Reach’s tweet mentioning it. Mostly that’s because there was something else she linked to which caught my attention: Kevin O’Keefe’s post from last Thursday heralding that “Twitter is teaming up with Google to bring Twitter’s real-time content to Google’s search results.”

So there it is. Google and Twitter are getting friendly (once more). And just when you thought Mobilegeddon was . . . [more]

“Teaching The Digital Caveman: Rethinking The Use Of Classroom Technology In Law School” is an article written by James B. Levy, Associate Professor at Nova Southeastern University, Shepard Broad Law Center. In it Levy provides a great overview of the impact of technology and its effect on the science of learning in the law school classroom including examining our assumptions about so-called “digital natives.”

He outlines his paper as follows:

“This article begins in Part II with a short history of modern classroom technology, why it has routinely failed to work as promised and the

The Regulation on Integrated Accessibility Standards under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) provides, in s. 14, that ‘large organizations’

‘shall meet the requirements of this section in accordance with the following schedule:
1. By January 1, 2014, new internet websites and web content on those sites must conform with WCAG 2.0 Level A.’

Are your clients or other large organizations you know of complying with this obligation? Have they sought your advice on how to comply?

I ask not in order to send in the forces of order (‘not my department’, as we say in government), but . . . [more]

A common rebuke to self-driving cars are thoughts about cars behaving like computers – like freezing or rebooting while driving. Those make amusing sound bytes or twitter comments, but there is a grain of truth to it. Self driving technology has come a long way, but while computers and software can follow programmed instructions, and can learn over time, humans are still better at many things.

An article in the New York Times entitled Why Robots Will Always Need Us does a good job of putting this in context, in part by the experience of aircraft.

Author Nicholas Carr points . . . [more]

When it comes to technology, are we not always hearing about the breakneck speed of change? The inexorable pace and ubiquity of it? How technology is revolutionizing law and practice? Our magazines, CLEs and law bloggings are replete with calls to brace for one type of Lawmageddon or another—the imminent (or at least happening really, really, probably, rather soon) confluence of events that will change lawyers’ lives forever. Anything short of fully encrypted communication between lawyer and client will spell negligence. You will become or be devoured by an alternative business structure. Cybersecurity will become the mantra by which you . . . [more]

OASIS* is a “nonprofit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society.” Under the OASIS umbrella is the LegalXML Member Section a group of “lawyers, developers, application vendors, government agencies and members of academia” working on the creation of “standards for the electronic exchange of legal data.”

The OASIS LegalDocumentML (LegalDocML) Technical Committee recently announced a month long review period to gather feedback for a number of standards they have development.

“The OASIS LegalDocML TC works to advance worldwide best practices for the use

Depending on how you define a self driving car – probably sooner than you think.

Sometimes new technology seems to come out of nowhere, but it often creeps up on us. Legal disruptions that new tech spawns often follows the same path – usually a combination of lagging behind new technology, and getting in the way of new technology.

Current advances that come to mind include smart watches, drones, electric cars, and Tesla’s Powerwall.

Take self driving cars for example.

Its not as if we will go directly from a totally human driven car to a totally autonomous car. They . . . [more]