07 Saturday Jan 2017
Posted in Juror Questionnaires, Jury Selection, Trial Tips and Techniques, Voir Dire
≈ Comments Off on Voir Dire and The Internet – The Litigator’s Way of Getting To Know You.
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Dennis Elias, Dr. Ken Broda-Brahm, Internet, Jury Selection, Litigation Strategies Inc., Social media, Voir Dire
Getting Up Close and Personal: Using Social Media in Jury Selection, by Dennis Elias, Litigation Strategy, Inc.
Are you more candid online than in person? Apparently, it’s true, which makes the Internet and social media a boon to litigators. Here’s why, how, and where to draw the ethical line before you go too far. -CCE
13 Saturday Feb 2016
Posted in Clouds, Cybersecurity, Legal Technology, Video, Wi-Fi
≈ Comments Off on Technology is Great, But Are You Safe?
The Unintended Consequences of the Internet of Things, by Jim Calloway, Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips Blog
How close is Big Brother – or someone worse? Too darn close, says Jim Calloway. The question? What do we do about it? -CCE
Refrigerators that automatically help you prepare your shopping list. Thermostats that adjust the temperature to your liking when they detect you are heading home on your commute. A device on the front door that sends a picture to you of everyone who rings the doorbell while you are away. All of these ideas seem great and maybe even a bit magical, and they are headed your way right now. The concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) holds a lot of promise.
Unfortunately, as with all things related to technology, it may not be quite that simple. . . .
19 Saturday Dec 2015
How to Conduct Legal Academic Research When Relying on Internet Sources? By Gijs Van Dijck, Tilburg University – Faculty of Law, Social Science Research Network (SSRN)(with hat tip to William P. Statsky!)
If you do any kind of research, legal or otherwise, you must read this paper. I admit that I am cheap – I do not like to pay for legal research resources. Although there are many really good legal research sources that are fee-based, there is a wealth of information out there – and it’s all free. -CCE
perma.cc/YBK7-DMHY
Abstract: Many legal researchers in this world lack access to books and to subscription-based journals. With more and more information disclosed online and with open-access policies becoming increasingly popular and more common, information is becoming more accessible. The potential impact of this development is enormous in areas or jurisdictions where offline information is scarce and where access to subscription-based journals or books is limited or non-existing. This paper discusses how to identify and select relevant publications when relying on Internet sources. The strategies, databases, and selection tools reported in this paper help researchers, particularly novices, who rely on the Internet to find relevant sources in an effective way when producing legal academic information.
09 Wednesday Sep 2015
Posted in Jury Selection, Research, Trial Tips and Techniques
≈ Comments Off on How To Investigate Your Jurors’ Presence On Social Media And The Internet.
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ABA Formal Opinion 466, Arianne Fuchsberger M.A., Internet, Juries, Persuasion Litigator™, Persuasion Strategies, Social media
Social Media Searches: Go Beyond the Google, Guest post by Arianne Fuchsberger, M.A., Research Associate, Persuasion Strategies, Persuasion Litigator™
Almost a year ago, the ABA released Formal Opinion 466 clarifying that it is permissible for ‘a lawyer to [passively] review a juror’s or potential juror’s [public] Internet presence.’ Since then, researching seated or potential jurors online has not only become an option, but a necessity. Any additional information on your panel can aid in jury selection and during the actual trial, and lawyers should be doing everything they can to gather information about the individuals who may become the deciders in their case. With the accessibility and abundance of information on the Internet, it would be senseless not to use it.
67 percent of adults use at least one social media website, with 52 percent of adults using two or more. Ranging from blogs to the all-mighty Facebook, there are hundreds of social media websites where you can gain information about a potential juror. Facebook alone has 1.4 billion active users, 25 percent of whom do not use any privacy settings on their account. LinkedIn comes in at 7th with 347 million active users, and the 10th-ranked social network Twitter had over 288 million active monthly users as of March 2015 (statista.com). Beyond social networks, there are also public Internet articles, company websites, public documents, and many more sources of information that can inform you on a potential juror. But with all that information out there, it can be challenging to filter through it and find useful information. I will provide several tips on how to go about locating the full range of an individual’s online presence, and share some guidelines on identifying useful information once you do find the person. . . .
21 Wednesday Jan 2015
Posted in Footnotes, Legal Technology, Link Rot
≈ Comments Off on Link Rot – How To Archive The Internet?
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beSpacific Blog., Content Drift, Footnotes, Internet, Jill Lepore, Link Rot, Reference Rot, Sabrina I. Pacifici, URLs
The Cobweb – Can The Internet Be Archived?, by Sabrina I. Pacifici, BeSpacific Blog
http://www.bespacific.com/cobweb-can-internet-archived/
This is not my first post on “link rot.” There are groups who are looking for solutions, but I cannot in confidence say that there is yet a definitive answer. -CCE
The New Yorker – Annals of Technology. January 26, 2015 Issue. The Cobweb Can the Internet be archived? By Jill Lepore
‘…The Web dwells in a never-ending present. It is—elementally—ethereal, ephemeral, unstable, and unreliable. Sometimes when you try to visit a Web page what you see is an error message: ‘Page Not Found.’ This is known as ‘link rot,’ and it’s a drag, but it’s better than the alternative. More often, you see an updated Web page; most likely the original has been overwritten. (To overwrite, in computing, means to destroy old data by storing new data in their place; overwriting is an artifact of an era when computer storage was very expensive.) Or maybe the page has been moved and something else is where it used to be. This is known as ‘content drift,’ and it’s more pernicious than an error message, because it’s impossible to tell that what you’re seeing isn’t what you went to look for: the overwriting, erasure, or moving of the original is invisible. For the law and for the courts, link rot and content drift, which are collectively known as ‘reference rot,’ have been disastrous. In providing evidence, legal scholars, lawyers, and judges often cite Web pages in their footnotes; they expect that evidence to remain where they found it as their proof, the way that evidence on paper—in court records and books and law journals—remains where they found it, in libraries and courthouses. But a 2013 survey of law- and policy-related publications found that, at the end of six years, nearly fifty per cent of the URLs cited in those publications no longer worked. According to a 2014 study conducted at Harvard Law School, ‘more than 70% of the URLs within the Harvard Law Review and other journals, and 50% of the URLs within United States Supreme Court opinions, do not link to the originally cited information.’ The overwriting, drifting, and rotting of the Web is no less catastrophic for engineers, scientists, and doctors. Last month, a team of digital library researchers based at Los Alamos National Laboratory reported the results of an exacting study of three and a half million scholarly articles published in science, technology, and medical journals between 1997 and 2012: one in five links provided in the notes suffers from reference rot. It’s like trying to stand on quicksand…’
01 Monday Dec 2014
Posted in Android Phones, Apple, Blackberry Phones, Clouds, Confidentiality, Emails, Encryption, iPad, iPhones, Legal Ethics, Legal Technology, Malpractice, PC Computers, Technology
≈ Comments Off on Is Email Between You And Your Client Safe? No, And This Is Why.
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ABA Legal Ethics Opinion, Allen Mihecoby, Email, Encryption, Gmail, Hacking, Internet, Lawyerist Blog, Lisa Needham
How to Encrypt Attorney-Client Communications, by Lisa Needham, Lawyerist Blog (with hat tip to Allen Mihecoby, CLAS, RP!)
If you have decided you need to get serious about client data protection, you will need to consider encrypting both your data and your communications. We have previously covered how to encrypt your data and will focus here on how to encrypt your email communication.
What Is Encryption?
Simply by using the Internet, you are probably using some sort of encryption scheme during some activities, whether you know it or not.
Encryption is simply the act of turning your data into unreadable gibberish. If your data is intercepted or hacked, the thief now has nothing but a pile of garbage.
End-to-end encryption is a must for transferring sensitive data across the internet. In end-to-end encryption, your data is encrypted while it travels towards your intended location and the same encryption occurs on the reverse trip. Your bank (hopefully) uses end-to-end encryption. Your practice management software (hopefully) uses end-to-end encryption if it stores and syncs data remotely. This sort of encryption is done for you without any effort on your part, as it is just a standard feature of the infrastructure you are using to bank or update client data or similar activities.
Why Do You Need to Care?
A few years ago, the ABA issued a formal ethics opinion stating that if there is a significant risk that a third party might gain access to the email, attorneys have to warn clients about that risk.
This poses a problem, because unlike your bank and practice management software, email is usually unencrypted. This is true whether you are using a desktop client or a web-based email like GMail. . . .
20 Sunday Jul 2014
Posted in Bad Legal Writing, Computer Forensics, Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Computer Virus, Copyright, Criminal Law, Cybersecurity, Digital Millenium Copyright Act, Discovery, Encryption, Evidence, Finance and Banking Law, Fraud, Google, Government, Identity Theft, Intellectual Property, Law Office Management, Legal Technology, Legal Writing, Legalese, Malware, Management, Patent Law, PC Computers, Plain Language, Presentations, Search Engines, Trial Tips and Techniques, Trojans, Video
≈ Comments Off on 10 Top Law-Related TED Videos.
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Copyright, Crime, Eyewitness, Fashion Industry, Government, Internet, Legal Productivity Blog, Legalese, Patent Troll, Plain Language, TED, Tim Baran
Top 10 Legal TED Talks, by Tim Baran, Legal Productivity Blog
http://www.legalproductivity.com/op-ed/top-10-legal-ted-talks/
Have you heard of TED? It began in 1984 as a conference and now covers a wide range of topics in more than 100 languages. Think of it as a massive brain trust that shares great ideas and information.
Each of the law-related TED talks listed in this article are worthwhile on their own: (1) four ways to fix a broken legal system; (2) eliminate legalese by using plain English; (3) how to beat a patent troll; (4) how the Internet will change government; (5) laws that choke creativity; (6) copyright law; (7) why eyewitnesses get it wrong; (8) how technology could make crime worse; (9) the Internet and anonymity online; and (10) how great leaders inspire. -CCE
15 Sunday Jun 2014
Posted in Android Phones, Cell Phones, Cybersecurity, Encryption, Fraud, Identity Theft, iPad, iPhones, Legal Technology, Malware, Tablets
≈ Comments Off on The Hole In Mobile Security Making Your Phone An Easy Target.
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All Tech Considered, Apple, AT&T, Comcast, Dave Porcello, Encryption, Facebook, Google, Hackers, Internet, Mobile Phones, NPR, Pwn Plug, Sean Gallagher, Security, Starbucks, Steve Henn, Twitter, Wi-Fi, Yahoo
Here’s One Big Way Your Mobile Phone Could Be Open To Hackers, by Steve Henn, All Tech Considered, NPR
Despite the fact that every major Internet provider has added some kind of encryption to its services over the past year, tracking your online traffic is easier than you think.
And you don’t have to be the target of the hacker or the NSA for your traffic to be intercepted. There is a hole in mobile security that could make tens of millions of Americans vulnerable.
Unsecure Wi-Fi networks have been a well-known vulnerability in the tech industry for years. They can let even the most unsophisticated hacker capture your traffic and possibly steal your identity. . . .
17 Saturday May 2014
Posted in FCC, Government, Internet
≈ Comments Off on New Net Neutrality Rules Postponed For Now.
The outcry over the FCC’s new neutrality rules for the Internet got the FCC’s attention. Big players, like Amazon and others, jumped in and urged the FCC to give this more thought.
For those who have not followed this story, basically the FCC’s proposed new rules would have changed the Internet as we know it today, and turn it into something more like the cable service. The short version is that it would have allowed Internet providers to influence the content that you would see when you ran a search – not that there’s a certain amount of that going on now. Some called it going from the “free” internet to being run by the highest bidder. -CCE
Federal regulators appear to share one view about so-called net neutrality: It is a good thing.
But defining net neutrality? That is where things get messy.
On Thursday, the Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to open for public debate new rules meant to guarantee an open Internet. Before the plan becomes final, though, the chairman of the commission, Tom Wheeler, will need to convince his colleagues and an array of powerful lobbying groups that the plan follows the principle of net neutrality, the idea that all content running through the Internet’s pipes is treated equally.
While the rules are meant to prevent Internet providers from knowingly slowing data, they would allow content providers to pay for a guaranteed fast lane of service. Some opponents of the plan, those considered net neutrality purists, argue that allowing some content to be sent along a fast lane would essentially discriminate against other content. . . .
28 Saturday Dec 2013
Posted in Criminal Law
≈ Comments Off on Internet Use Admissible Evidence in Negligent Homicide Charge.
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Breast implant, Internet, Legal Profession Blog, Legal Profession Prof, Negligent homicide, New Hampshire Supreme Court
Internet Use Admissible In Death Of Child, by Legal Profession Prof, Legal Profession Blog
A mother convicted of negligent homicide and related offenses after one of her children drowned in a bathtub and another was severely injured appealed, claiming the trial court erred in admitting evidence of her internet use while the children were in the tub.
