More white papers from Summit on the Use of Technology to Expand Access to Justice, in Harvard JOLT

Several white papers from the 2012 Summit on the Use of Technology to Expand Access to Justice have been published as Occasional Papers by Harvard Journal of Law & Technology:

• John M. Greacen and William L. Jones: Summit on the Use of Technology to Expand Access to Justice: Analytical Framework
• Stephanie Kimbro: Using Technology to Unbundle in the Legal Services Community
• Marc Lauritsen: A Decision Space for Legal Service Delivery
• Susan Ledray: Virtual Services Whitepaper
• Richard Zorza: Preliminary Thoughts on Blue Sky Technology Driven Access and Decision Systems

HT @LSCtweets

Request for Comments on Future Developments in Technology and Access to Justice

Richard Zorza, Esq., of the Self Represented Litigation Network, seeks comments on “how technology and access to justice can interact in the not-immediate future,” as he, Marc Lauritsen, Esq., of Capstone Practice Systems, and Lisa Colpoys, Esq., of Illinois Legal Aid Online prepare a “blue sky” white paper on technology and access to justice for the upcoming LSC (Legal Services Corporation) Technology and Access to Justice Summit.

Mr. Zorza says:

Feel free to use the Comments section, or email me, and I will forward to the others.

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.

Goodenough and Lauritsen, eds.: Educating the Digital Lawyer

Professor Oliver Goodenough of Vermont Law School and Harvard’s Berkman Center Law Lab, and Marc Lauritsen, Esq., of Capstone Practice Systems have edited a new book entitled Educating the Digital Lawyer (New Providence, NJ: Matthew Bender, 2012).

Click here to access an EPUB ebook version of the book free of charge. (If you need an EPUB reader, try the Firefox EPUB Reader extension.)

According to the introduction, the book chapters are based on papers presented at “a pair of conferences — one in October 2010 at Harvard Law School and one in April 2011 at Columbia Law School — that brought together several dozen academics and practitioners who are deeply interested in the technology of law and how law schools and other institutions should educate students and lawyers about it.”

Here is the table of contents:

• Brian Donnelly, What Does “Digital Lawyer” Mean?
• Marc Lauritsen, Lawyering in an Age of Intelligent Machines
• David M. Blaszkowsky and Matthew Reed, Meta-What? Lawyers, Legal Training, and the Rise of Meta-Data for Digital Securities and Other Financial Contracts
• Harry Lewis, Under the Hood of the Internet
• Jeanne Eicks, Educating Superior Legal Professionals: Successful Modern Curricula Join Law and Technology
• Brock Rutter, Survey of Existing Courses in Lawyer Use of Technology
• Fred Galves, Teaching Litigation Technology
• Ronald W. Staudt, Cyberclinics: Law Schools, Technology, and Justice
• Paul Maharg, Simulation: A Pedagogy Emerging from the Shadows
• Stephanie Kimbro, What Should Be in a Digital Curriculum: A Practitioner’s Must Have List
• Barbara L. Bernier and F. Dennis Green, Law School Reset — Pedagogy, Andragogy, and Second Life
• Michael G. Bennett, A Critical Embracing of the Digital Lawyer
• Gregg Gordon, The Digital Lawyer’s Evolving Education in Scholarly Research

HT @stephkimbro.

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.

Lauritsen, Kimbro, and Granat on Virtual Law Practice: Basic Concepts

Marc Lauritsen, Esq., of Capstone Practice Systems; Stephanie L. Kimbro, Esq., of Kimbro Legal Services and VLOTech; and Richard S. Granat, Esq., of The Granat Group, have posted slides from their presentation: Virtual Law Practice: Basic Concepts, given 27 September 2011.

Click here for video of the presentation. (HT @stephkimbro).

The presentation was sponsored by the American Bar Association’s eLawyering Task Force, of which Mr. Lauritsen and Mr. Granat are co-chairs.

The presentation explains the basic concepts of virtual law practice and elawyering; describes the benefits of virtual law practice; furnishes examples of virtual law firms and their technology; discusses ethical issues arising from virtual law practice; and explores practical aspects of running a virtual law practice.

Many of the ideas introduced in the presentation are explained in more detail in Ms. Kimbro’s recent book, Virtual Law Practice: How to Deliver Legal Services Online.

[Updated 9 October 2011 to correct URL for video.]

Lauritsen on Technological Approaches to the Practice of Law

Marc Lauritsen, Esq., of Capstone Practice Systems has published Five Tips for Prospering in an Age of Legal Fee Deflation, TechnoLawyer, 7 June 2011. In this article. Mr. Lauritsen discusses how a range of law practice technologies, and problem-solving frameworks derived from computer science, can be applied in current legal practice settings, including the access to justice context.

Mr. Lauritsen also recently presented his paper, Intelligent Tools for Managing Legal Choices, at the ICAIL 2011 conference. The paper describes his innovative “Choiceboxing” legal decision support system. The approach is described further in the “Choosing Smarter” chapter of Mr. Lauritsen’s 2010 book, The Lawyer’s Guide to Working Smarter with Knowledge Tools.

Apps for Justice Project Recognized

The “Apps for Justice” proposal — created by a team including Marc Lauritsen, Esq., of Capstone Practice Systems; Professor Ronald W. Staudt of the Illinois Institute of Technology Chicago-Kent College of Law; and John P. Mayer, Executive Director of CALI: The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction — to “expand programs in which [law] students write software as part of their [legal] education,” was recognized at this weekend’s Future Ed 3 Conference with an award of a virtual dollar venture capital investment.

The proposal includes further development of law-school clinical programs that use the A2J Author software created by CALI and the Center for Access to Justice and Technology.

Click here for more information about A2J Author.

HT @sglassmeyer and @johnpmayer.

Legal Technology Programs at ABA 2010

A number of legal technology programs will be presented at ABA 2010: The American Bar Association Annual Meeting, being held 5-10 August 2010 in San Francisco, California, USA.

Click here for the conference program.

Here is one of the technology programs being presented at ABA 2010:

Marc Lauritsen, William Hornsby, Richard Granat, Stephanie Kimbro: The Virtual Law Firm: How to Build Your Practice in An Online World, 6 August 2010 (2:00-3:30 PM). Abstract:

This program will discuss, in a panel format, the concept of practicing law virtually and how it can enhance an existing traditional law practice, or exist as a totally virtual law firm. The program will discuss the benefits of delivering legal services online and how it can help a law firm acquire clients who are members of the connected Facebook generation, as well as provide more effective services to existing clients. Topics covered will include: what is a virtual law practice; the web architecture for a virtual law practice; online legal service applications, such as web enabled document automation: ethical issues in the delivery of online legal services, such as confidentiality, security, unauthorized practice of law, client identification and authentication procedures, conflict of interest checking; criteria of vendor selection; the costs associated with setting up a virtual law practice; and marketing your brand and virtual law practice online. This program is brought to you on behalf of the LPM eLawyering Task Force.

Lauritsen, The Lawyer’s Guide to Working Smarter with Knowledge Tools

Marc Lauritsen, Esq., of Capstone Practice Systems, has published The Lawyer’s Guide to Working Smarter with Knowledge Tools (2010). Here is the abstract:

This ground-breaking guide introduces lawyers and other professionals to a powerful class of software that supports core aspects of legal work. The author discusses how technologies like practice systems, work product retrieval, document assembly, and interactive checklists help people work smarter. If you are looking to work more effectively, this book provides a clear roadmap, with many concrete examples and thought-provoking ideas. Topics include:

• What does it mean to “work smart”?
• How can we enlist software in the substance of legal work?
• How can intelligent systems make us happier and more effective?
• Why don’t we make more use of them?
• Who are the players in the world of legal knowledge tools?
• Where is this all going?