Law student + web & media background = belief that legal services should be affordable, accessible, and online.
Yesterday I took some time to try to address the recent net neutrality debate in a bit more level-headed fashion than my previous post. Check out this monster post over at Telecom Attorneys and let me know what you think. Thanks!
There’s been quite the dust-up today over the report that Google and Verizon are negotiating prices for tiered network access. I first heard about it via Brett Trout’s tweet, then read that Google and Verizon are denying the story (via Dan Gillmor). Then a News Hour journalist said this Wall Street Journal piece is backing up the New York Times claim of settlement negotiations. (That’s a bit of a stretch, as the WSJ piece emphasizes both Google and Verizon claim to be pushing for a level-playing-field law that doesn’t necessarily control price.)
The truth? Who knows. But Google is smart to determine what it might need to pay to push its content to the top of consumers’ pipes if broadband access remains mostly unregulated. Especially when Verizon is paying the most to bend the ears of those in power.
Confusion arises when people (read: professional journalists) take the rather vague term of “network neutrality,” as is bantered about by lobbyists (read: Google) and embrace the vagueness for the sake of making a story. Today, it’s that Google, one of the world’s biggest internet content providers, is talking with Verizon, a major broadband service provider and Google’s primary handset-based internet access provider, about how Google can ensure its services are delivered to its consumers. Framed that way, the talks make perfect sense. (Remember: Google is now, always has been, and will continue to be, paying someone to get its content from one end of the internet to the other. This is just a question of whether Google can pay more to get better service.)
Wikipedia can tell you what net neutrality is. Net neutrality is not the law. It is a very nice idea that would require a major political commitment by our government to subvert free market principles in broadband access. I’m looking for where Google swore it would never plan for what happens when our government lacks the political will or simply lacks the legal authority to enforce net neutrality for Google’s benefit. I don’t think I’ll find such a promise.
Until Congress gets the courage to enact something to prevent such lawful collusion, or the FCC solidifies its stance with legitimate rules, this is exactly the kind of behavior we should expect from Google and its content and delivery brethren.
Bottom line: this is capitalism at its finest. If you want to protect the internet, you’ve got to be willing to have the government step in. Net neutrality is a socialist idea. I am comfortable with that. The New York Times clearly is not.
I’ve been following the American Association of Law Libraries tweets from the annual conference at #aall2010. I’m filtering the discussion by checking in only when I see something of interest from someone in my “not to miss” list (a high proportion of whom are at AALL, incidentally).
What caught my attention earlier today was the discussion from the Economics of Interface: Vendors Respond session. You can get a feel for it through Greg Lambert’s tweets, starting here and Meg Kribble’s starting here. The gist that interested me was that Westlaw (here, in the form of WestlawNext) and LexisNexis representatives were recycling content and information about product upgrades that everyone has heard before. But Fastcase was unveiling new research features and talking researching scholarship. Telling was Sarah Glassmeyer’s characterization of Ed Walters as a third-party candidate in a political debate. (Ed is founder and CEO of Fastcase, which I’ve written about before.) Westlaw and Lexis came off like the big-party candidates with canned non-responses, while Fastcase was there to actually discuss the issues.
My interest has always been piqued by horror stories of legal research pricing. I appreciate that every company must make money to survive, but, as a long-time public servant, I’m put off by anyone who’s willing to capitalize so much on information that’s created with public money (statutes, case law, and much legal scholarship).
So what makes Fastcase different? First, it is very open about pricing, and about what’s included in a given price. Compare that to WestlawNext’s gymnastics to keep pricing out of new product discussions. Second, Fastcase is a small company, with leadership that’s extremely approachable (Ed responds to tweets and phone calls promptly and personally). It also doesn’t hurt that Fastcase had positioned itself well in the eyes of some AALL attendees before the vendor session. Finally, Fastcase is willing to innovate for the sake of better research — and not just by creating a Google-esque interface, which WestlawNext’s primary improvement, from my perspective as a novice researcher. Fastcase’s four dimensional search visualization really is useful, and it’s brand-new Forecite feature will bring together the purposefulness Fastcase’s interface design with the common-sense usability of a Google keyword search. (Though Ed Walters might have overstated Foresite’s gravity just a bit; pretty sure Google beat ‘em to this with “did you mean.” But still awesome.)
Thanks to the AALL tweeters for delivering insightful perspectives on the rapidly-changing landscape of legal research.
LLRX.com recently posted “Basic Legal Research on the Internet.” How handy to have an up-to-date list of sites for primary and secondary sources, all free or, at most, requiring a library card at a library with access to some of the noted databases. Bookmarking this article has saved me a lot of room in my poorly-organized bookmarks folders. Thanks to @Cornell_LII for the tip!
I also had the chance to get a personlized tour of Spindle Law today. The site organizes the law into an easily-browseable tree of topics that drill down to specific legal rules, displaying supporting authority for the rules. David Gold, one of the site’s creators, turned me on to the site after I’d tweeted about the need for a crowdsourced, legal-rule-based research system. Voila! The site is very cool, and I especially like how it displays links to authorities on free databases (Google Scholar and Public Library of Law). But they need contributors to make the site better. Currently anyone can contribute topics, rules, authorities, and can comment on others’ contributions. If this site takes off, it will be a boon to law students and a good jumping-off point for legal research of all kinds.
I am now working for the St. Paul law firm of Bradley & Guzzetta, LLC, as Social Media Policy and Technology Consultant. My job is to help cities, businesses, and organizations effectively use social media to carry out their missions, while addressing the legal pitfalls and encouraging best practices for social media use. With my background working for city government, and my Social Media Best Practices project, I’m in a great place to fill this role.
I’m also contributing to a couple of Blogger blogs for the firm, which will be moving over to fancy new Wordpress digs in the near future. I you want want any tidbits of general telecommunications news, check out Telecom Attorneys. Cities and government employees might appreciate our posts on Municipal Telecommunications.
Today the United States Supreme Court released its opinion in the antitrust case American Needle, Inc. v. National Football League. The question was whether or not the NFL could be held accountable under Section 1 of the Sherman Act, which regulates agreements that restrain trade. SCOTUS decided that the NFL, despite having formed a tidy single legal entity back in 1963 to handle all the teams’ licensing needs (National Football League Properties) , was not acting as a single entity and therefore could be held to account for restraining trade under Section 1. The holding invalidates Judge Easterbrook’s 7th Circuit opinion in Chicago Prof’l Sports v. NBA that treated a sports league as a single entity for antitrust purposes, the case on which the 7th Circuit relied, in part, for its affirmation of summary judgment in the NFL’s favor.
This opinion:
Cases like this — that concretely connect something I’ve recently studied in law school to the popular real work — fully activate my dormant lawgeek, and make me glad I’ve committed to learning and studying law.
For my loyal subscribers, who are willing to show up here for one post every six weeks (c’mon, it’s really just my résumé disguised as a blog), I want to highlight my contributions elsewhere: I write twice a month over at Lawyerist (here’s a link to just my posts there). The many other fine writers at Lawyerist provide a steady stream of advice about law practice and legal marketing for law students, new lawyers, and seasoned practitioners.
But the seriously humongous peacock feather in my online identity cap is the Legal Geekery podcast. About once per month, Josh Auriemma and I yuk it up via Skype and record the conversation. I’ve never met Josh, but I know him better than even some of my closer law school friends. We cover law school, legal news, a bit of gossip, and many of Josh’s “funny stories.” Perhaps best of all, a bona fide awesome artist volunteered to “chibify” Josh and me for the podcast album art. US News was nice, but having someone use my likeness in an X-Files parody pic? *That* makes me feel cool.
Today the controversial US News law school rankings dropped (well, ok, they’ve been leaked online for a few days…). I’m not going to comment on the ridiculousness of the rankings and how they distort what would otherwise be a competitive system. I’m just going to point out that there’s a picture of me in the current issue of US News. :) There’s also a rather awkwardly-worded quote at the end, about the importance of following and commenting on blogs (something I’ve been preaching for a while). In any case, I’ll take the publicity. After all, this is print, and it’s print that reaches thousands of men over the age of 50. Ooooh.
Several people have asked me how I happened to end up in a national magazine, so here’s the story:
In February I got an email and follow-up call from Jessica Rettig, US News reporter, who had found me online through Legal Geekery (go Josh!). She and I talked twice, at length, about how law students can use social media to connect with experts in their interest areas, present themselves as intelligent humans, and maybe even discover a meaningful career. Obviously that story won’t sell as many magazines as the “OMG law school is ’spensive and there are no jobs!!!!1″ story that I ended up being quoted in, but such is the media business.
In March US News flew a photographer out from Maryland. To my house. In Iowa. The photographer was Jeffrey MacMillan, a first-class news veteran (note the pictures of presidents, senators, etc. on his website…) who’s now focusing on helping colleges and universities visually promote themselves. (So, any law schools out there who might want alumni coverage in the DC area, drop him a line.) He spent the day with my daughter and me, taking pictures for about five hours. Being a good photojournalist, he’d done some research on me and had even watched some of the video I directed about homelessness in Iowa, and was impressed with the quality of my video work. That little tidbit made my day. He also had great stories of campaign coverage and politics in Washington. When we went to Iowa City’s famous Hamburg Inn for lunch, he pointed to Bill Clinton’s official presidential portrait on the wall and said, “I had lunch with the guy that took that just the other day.” Very cool.
This is a social media success story. (Thanks to my Twitter friend Omar Ha-Redeye for pointing that out, clichéd as it may be.) If nothing else, it’s evidence of the point that most journalists start with Google, and if you’ve made any kind of SEOed name for yourself in a particular field, they can, and will, find you online.
I’m currently taking Conflict of Laws, from one of my favorite professors. When we talk about the interests at stake in something as abstractly benign as choice of law, the benefit of finality and repose for civil defendants comes up often. Back in Civ Pro, I recall first hearing the term and picturing a would-be tortfeasor kicking back poolside. “Ahh, so nice to finally have some repose,” he thinks. “Never have to worry about that minor car crash again…” At the time, I had trouble seeing why the concept was very important. What’s the big deal if he has to answer for some kid’s whiplash five years down the line?
I know a lot more now about the balance of equity involved in barring or allowing claims. I get that shorter statutes of limitation are good for finality, but also for judicial efficiency: keeping stale claims out of the courts. Today I learned why statutes of limitations, and the finality that they provide defendants, are absolutely critical in the criminal context, thanks to criminal defense attorney and blogger Brian Tannebaum. On the risks of removing the Florida statute of limitations for some sex offenses:
We live in a country where person after person after person is being exonerated by DNA evidence. People who were sentenced to death, and to life. Is this the time to abolish statutes of limitations on cases where a mere accusation can result in a criminal prosecution that can take away a person’s liberty for the rest of their life?…Why we are OK letting our elected leaders convince us that finality and liberty only matter in the types of cases in which they decide?
Brian’s point is that the very real and tragic victims’ stories often prevent discussion of why we have statutes of limitations in the first place: that freedom from fear of prosecution is integral to our liberty, and liberty is a fundamental American right. Thanks, Brian, for bringing this point home.
I thought I knew how to write. I excelled in English classes. I got a liberal arts education. Professionally, I cranked out press releases and honed online copy every day. I wrote scripts for TV and blog posts* for my ego. I thought I knew what I was doing.
Unfortunately, I tried to apply those make-’em-think-this-is-exciting writing skills to law school. Big mistake.
First, good academic writing is not good legal writing. Second, good writing in every other context is not good legal writing. Legal writing makes you do things like label sentences that would otherwise flow just fine from one to the next with “First,” and “Second.” Legal writing wants you to use serial commas. Legal writing puts spaces between the periods in ellipses. Legal writing forces the writer to break down every possible leap of logic or twist of mystery you might hope to leave between the lines and forces them into cold, black text. Text interrupted by citations. Text with endless footnotes. Text in short sentences. Text that is redundant. Text that never varies in form. Text that is repetitious.
My current bitterness has everything nothing to do with the fact that I’m eyeballs-deep in a paper that already has 10 pages of single-spaced 10-point endnotes, all in sparkling Bluebook format. Right about now I just want to take IRAC and CRAC by the serifs and shake them until their silly, rigid bodies fall apart.
But I guess I’ll go work on my paper.
* Now that you know how much I love legal writing, you should check out my Lawyerist post on the pros and cons of writing for a law school journal.