Glassmeyer: CALI partners with law schools to build online tools for low-income litigants

Sarah Glassmeyer, JD, MLS, of CALI has posted Law Schools Team Up with CALI to Harness Skills of Law Students, Develop Online Tools for Low-Income Litigants, at the CALI Blog.

The post contains a press release, which begins:

The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI®) will announce at the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Schools in New Orleans on January 6, 2013 that they have reached agreements with faculty members from six law schools to develop course kits as part of the Access to Justice Clinical Course Project (A2J Clinic Project). Participating law schools include Columbia Law School, Concordia University School of Law, CUNY School of Law, Georgetown University Law Center, UNC School of Law, and University of Miami School of Law.

Each participating faculty member will develop and document a course model that uses A2J Author® to teach law students how technology tools can be used to lower barriers to justice for low-income, self-represented litigants. CALI will use those course models to assist other law schools in establishing A2J Clinical Courses as a permanent part of their law school curriculum.

A2J Author is a software tool developed by CALI and the Center for Access to Justice & Technology at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law to deliver greater access to justice for self-represented litigants by enabling lawyers and law students to rapidly build user-friendly web-based document assembly tools called A2J Guided Interviews®. These A2J Guided Interviews allow users to complete court documents by presenting a series of easy-to-understand questions while graphics virtually lead users along the path to the courthouse, where these documents can be filed. [...]

HT @caliorg

Masters: CALI Legal Topics Expressed as a Hierarchical Drupal Taxonomy

Elmer Masters, JD, MLIS, of CALI has posted an image of the CALI legal topics subject list as a hierarchical Drupal taxonomy.

Click here for other resources on legal knowledge representation.

HT @emasters

Masters on CourtCloud: A New Repository for Court Opinions

Elmer Masters of CALI introduced a new technology called CourtCloud today in a presentation at LVI 2012: Law via the Internet Conference.

Here is a description of CourtCloud from the service’s Website:

• CourtCloud is a repository for court opinions.
• Only the court can upload documents to CourtCloud.
• Save word processor files in the desktop CourtCloud folder.
• Saved word processor files are copied to the CourtCloud server.
• CourtCloud processes the document creating PDF, HTML, and XML versions.
• The files are stored in the court’s CourtCloud folder.
• Original file + PDF, HTML, XML versions are available on the desktop and archived on the server.
• There is no direct public access to CourtCloud.
• Opinions saved to CourtCloud are added to the Free Law Reporter
• Free Law Reporter provides powerful searching and public API for access.

Click here for Twitter tweets about the presentation.

Mayer: A Proposal for Nonmarket Social Production of Legal Casebooks

John Mayer of CALI: The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction, has posted How Law Schools Could Save Students $150 Million (updated), on CALI Spotlight Blog.

In this post Mr. Mayer proposes a cooperative project to create a set of 100 free legal casebooks for use by law students. He proposes that each U.S. law school “nominate just one faculty at that law school to write a casebook and donate that book, in electronic format, to the commons under a Creative Commons license.”

Mr. Mayer proposes a system of fellowships that would give faculty financial support for writing their casebooks, and he suggests that CALI could provide an online system to help nominated faculty find co-authors for their casebooks.

Mr. Mayer’s goal is to generate 100 new casebooks over a three-year period, and to host these casebooks on CALI’s eLangdell Legal Education Commons open legal educational resources platform.

Mr. Mayer’s project seems consistent with models of nonmarket social production or peer production described by Professor Yochai Benkler in The Wealth of Networks as being particularly well suited to the “authoring” of “textbooks and educational materials.”

For more information, please see the compete post.

Iglezakis on CALI

Professor Dr. Ioannis Iglezakis of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Law School has posted Insight into the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI), on his Informatics and Law blog.

In this post, Professor Iglezakis describes CALI‘s instructional and publishing programs and technology, and its role of fostering innovation in the areas of legal education and legal publishing.

(The deadline for submitting presentation proposals for the next CALI Conference: CALICon 2012, to be held 21-23 June 2012 in San Diego, California, USA, is 6 April 2012. Click here to submit a proposal.)

For more information, please see the complete post.

Granat on Unbundled Legal Services Online

Richard Granat, Esq., of the American Bar Association eLawyering Task Force has posted video and slides of his free Webinar entitled Unbundled Legal Services.

The Webinar is part of CALI‘s free course entitled Topics in Digital Law Practice.

Masters: The Future of The Legal (Case)Book Is The Web

Elmer Masters, Esq., of the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) has posted The Future of the (Case)Book Is the Web, at the CALI Spotlight Blog.

In this post, Elmer advocates the publication of free and open legal casebooks on the free Web, using the open EPUB format. He describes CALI’s eLangdell legal open educational resource service as an example of this approach.

For more information, please see the complete post.

CALI’s Free Online Course on Digital Law Practice

CALI, the Center for Computer Assisted Legal Instruction, is offering a free, online course on digital law practice, from 10 February – 6 April 2012.

The Twitter hashtag for the course is #tdlp.

The course will address topics including management of a virtual law office, electronic document automation and standardization, court technology, unauthorized practice of law, unbundling of legal service, and lawyers’ use of social media.

The instructors include Stephanie Kimbro, Marc Lauritsen, Richard Granat, Ronald Staudt, Kingsley Martin, Sarah Glassmeyer, William Hornsby, and Ernest Svenson.

For registration or more information, please see the course Website.

Legal Services Corporation Technology Initiative Grants Conference

LSC TIG 2012: The Legal Services Corporation Technology Initiative Grants Conference, is being held 11-13 January 2012 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA.

The conference features presentations about innovative applications of technology to improve access to justice.

Click here for the complete conference program.

The Twitter hashtag for the conference is #lsctig.

June 23-25: CALICon 2011: Conference on Law School Computing

CALICON 2011: The Conference on Law School Computing, will be held June 23-25, 2011, at Marquette University Law School, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.

The conference is organized by CALI: The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction.

Click here for the conference program, which includes presentations and panels on many recent legal technology developments.

Click here for live Webcasts of conference events.

The Twitter hashtag for the conference is #calicon11.