Proposals invited for lawTechCamp 2013

Proposals for sessions are invited for lawTechCamp 2013, “a BarCamp-style community UnConference for new media and technology enthusiasts and legal professionals,” to be held 8 June 2013 in Toronto, Canada.

lawTechCamp 2013 is being organized by Monica Goyal of MyLegalBriefcase, Mitch Kowalski, and Sapna Mahboobani of Sapna Law Professional Corporation.

Here are details on the session proposals:

LawTechCamp is all about you, the participants. We want the participants, to dictate what sessions are covered at lawTechCamp, and to present them. The only thing to remember is that topics should bridge technology and law in some way. This could mean technology that could help in the practice of law. Or legal issues that affect the development of technology.

Last year, we had a sessions on knowledge management, social media and the law, IP issues, and cloud computing.

If we receive more suggestions then rooms available for the event, we will put the suggestions to a vote. [...]

For more details, please see the event Website.

Click here for information on previous lawTechCamp events.

Service of Legal Documents via Social Media: Two U.S. Developments

Here are two recent items regarding service of legal documents via social media, in the context of U.S. law:

• Evan Brown, Esq., tells us that a U.S. federal district court has allowed service of documents via Facebook, in a case involving defendants located in India (FTC v. PCCare247 Inc., 2013 WL 841037 (S.D.N.Y. March 7, 2013))
• The Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog tells us of a new Texas bill that would allow service of citation [i.e., summons] by social media (text of the bill, H. B. 1989)

Anders: When Lawyers and Judges Must Sever Ties on Social Media

Kelly Lynn Anders, JD has published Ethical Exits: When Lawyers and Judges Must Sever Ties on Social Media, Charleston Law Review, Vol. 7, 187-205 (2012-2013).

Here is the abstract:

This article addresses the very recent trend of requiring lawyers and judges to sever ties on social media, the professional implications of doing so, relevant rules governing judicial and attorney conduct, and a discussion of “best practices” for lawyers and judges to follow when social media connections must be broken. Recent opinions from states that have issued social media directives in this area will also be discussed, along with a brief overview of three of the most commonly used social media sites at the time of the publication of this article – Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Through this discussion and analysis, one theme will continue to resurface – the increasingly pressing need for guidance and clarity in the MRPC and M[C]JC so that expectations involving social media connections will be clear, uniform, and much easier to manage for lawyers, judges, and anyone with whom they may communicate, either professionally or personally. Such clear-cut guidance would also decrease the need for severing ties that should not have been formed in the first place, thereby also serving to contribute to the preservation of solid and favorable reputations of all jurists and counselors in an increasingly virtual world.

Justia launches a Free Law discussion group on Google+

Tim Stanley of Justia has started a new Free Law discussion group on Google+.

Recent topics have included Courtney Minick’s post about the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision to begin self-publishing its opinions online.

On Participedia: Iceland’s Crowdsourced Constitutional Drafting Process

Alexander Kok and others have posted Icelandic Constitutional Council 2011, on Participedia, the open global knowledge community for researchers and practitioners in the field of democratic innovation and public engagement.

This page describes the processes by which Iceland has drafted a new national constitution, and the institutions involved in those processes. The page includes a helpful diagram of the drafting process.

Those processes are notable in part because they involved crowdsourcing the drafting of parts of the constitution by means of online social media.

The page also includes links to several sources that describe or analyze these drafting processes.

For more information, please see the complete page.

Disclosure: I contribute to Participedia.

Request for Proposals, July 6, 2012 Deadline: Social Media in Rulemaking: ACUS

A request for proposals (RFP) — with submission deadline of 6 July 2012 — has been posted by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) for “a consultant to undertake a research project that will consider legal and policy issues raised by agency use of social media to support rulemaking activities.”

According to the RFP here is the project description:

The Conference seeks to study various policy and legal issues agencies face when using social media in rulemaking. The goal of the project is to identify relevant issues, define applicable legal and policy constraints on agency action, resolve legal uncertainty to the greatest extent possible, and encourage agencies to find innovative ways to use social media to facilitate broader, more meaningful public participation in rulemaking activities. [...]

For more information, please see the complete RFP.

HT @garvinfo.

Issa and Wyden Crowdsource the Drafting of a Digital Bill of Rights

Representative Darrell Issa of the United States House of Representatives and Senator Ron Wyden of the United States Senate have launched a project to crowdsource the drafting of a Digital Bill of Rights, on Representative Issa’s KeeptheWebOpen site (also called “MADISON”).

It’s unclear whether the Digital Bill of Rights is intended to be a statute or an amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Representative Issa and Senator Wyden announced the project at a program at PDF 2012: The Personal Democracy Forum, held 11-12 June 2012 in New York, New York, USA.

Please see the video of the program and a description of the project in Alex Howard’s post, What should be in a “Digital Citizen’s Bill of Rights?” at Gov 2.0.GovFresh.

Anderson Releases Prototype System Enabling Citizens to Comment on Legislation and Court Decisions

Kerry Anderson of the African Legal Information Institute (AfricanLII) has released a prototype of a new software system enabling citizens to comment on legislation, regulations, and court decisions.

The system is called Social Wrapper/Feedback Loop for the Law, and the prototype is available now on the Seychelles Legal Information Institute (SeyLII).

Ms. Anderson describes the new system — and offers video tutorials for users and for system administrators — in her new post, Social Wrapper/Feedback Loop for the Law: Continuation (v1.0), on the AfricanLII Blog.

The annotation software used in the system is called AnnotateLawApp (click here for the specification in .ods format), which is based on the Annotation module of the Drupal open source content management system.

Click here for a video tutorial of AnnotateLawApp for users.

Click here for a video tutorial of AnnotateLawApp for system administrators.

AfricanLII has also opened an online group for the project, called Feedback Loop for the Law Group.

Ms. Anderson and Andrew Rens, LL.M., will give a presentation about the project at LVI 2012: The Law via the Internet Conference, to be held 7-9 October 2012 at the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School, in Ithaca, New York, USA.

For more information, please see Ms. Anderson’s complete post.

Click here for Ms. Anderson’s earlier post about the project, entitled Social Wrapper for the Law: An Introduction.

Click here for Andrew Rens’s earlier post about the project, entitled A Feedback Loop for Law: Version 1.0.

Call for Presentations: LawTechCamp London 2012

Presentation proposals — with submission deadline of 25 May 2012 — are invited for LawTechCamp London 2012 — “a BarCamp-style community UnConference for new media and technology enthusiasts and legal professionals” — to be held 29 June 2012 in London, England, UK.

Click here to submit a presentation proposal.

Here is a description of the event:

lawTechCamp is a BarCamp-style community UnConference for new media and technology enthusiasts and legal professionals including bloggers, twitters, legal-technology lawyers, social networkers, and those curious about new media and the law. Anyone with an interest in technology, law, and innovation–especially in the wake of UK deregulation–will want to attend.

Building off the strength of lawTechCamp Toronto – LawTechCamp London will be the first such event held in outside of North America.

lawTechCamp is not just for lawyers. If you are interested in the intersection of law and technology, such as legal issues facing startups, access to justice issues, or someone just interested in technology or law, then please join us – and bring a friend or colleague.

This event is casual, with active participation between the audience and the workshop presenters and event-attendees. Attendance is free, but registration is required.

The keynote speaker will be Professor Dr. Richard Susskind.

This event is brought to you by the following organizers:

• Daniel Martin Katz, Michigan State University College of Law
• Renee Newman Knake, Michigan State University College of Law
• Monica Goyal, owner and CEO of MyLegalBriefcase.com
• Lisa Webley, University of Westminster Law School
• John Flood, University of Westminster Law School
• David Allison, The College of Law
• Jon Harman, The College of Law 

LawTechCamp London 2012 is co-sponsored by Michigan State University College of Law, The University of Westminster, and The College of Law.

For more information, please see the LawTechCamp London 2012 Website, or the post at Computational Legal Studies.

HT Professor Dr. Daniel Martin Katz.

Bromby on Using Live, Text-Based Communications from Court for Reporting

Dr. Michael Bromby of Glasgow Caledonian University has published Response to the consultation by the Judicial Office for England and Wales on the Use of Live, Text‐Based Forms of Communications from Court for the Purposes of Fair and Accurate Reporting, European Journal of Law and Technology, 3(1) (2012). Here is the abstract:

This is a collaborative submission from a group of academics based in the UK with expertise in information technology law and related areas. This response is broadly in favour of the use of live text-based communications being used from the courtroom, subject to existing safeguards and further guidance given to social media users. The preparation of this response has been funded by the Information Technology Think Tank, which is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and led by the SCRIPT/AHRC Centre for Research in Intellectual Property and Technology, University of Edinburgh. This response has been prepared by Michael Bromby. Important contributions to preparing the response were also made by James Chalmers, Burkhard Schafer and Michelle Hynes-McIlroy. In addition, this response is submitted by the following individuals: Dr Abbe Brown, SCRIPT, University of Edinburgh, Professor Philip Leith, Queen’s University, Belfast, Karen McCullagh, University of Salford, Dr Dinusha Mendis, University of Bournemouth, Professor Andrew A Adams, Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan, Abhilash Nair, Sheffield Hallam University.