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Saturday, February 15, 2003
Lawyers, Doctors Warn U.N. Over U.S. Attack on Iraq Inter Press reports on a statement issued by groups representing more than 300 international lawyers, jurists and physicians warning that a military attack on Iraq would not only be a blatant violation of international law but could kill over 260,000 people. Global Action to Prevent War - Lawyers and Jurists Appeal On this day of protest against war, consider the International Appeal by Lawyers and Jurists against the "Preventive" Use of Force. Wednesday, February 12, 2003
Consult a 'live' law librarian via the Web Final testing is underway for a new service that will allow lawyers to consult law librarians in real time, via chat, over the Internet. The service, Legal Reference Services Inc., began a six-week pilot Feb. 10 with five law firms in New York City. They are using the service for free to help identify any issues or problems that need to be addressed prior to the service being launched more broadly. When it does launch, the service initially will be available 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. EST Monday through Friday, although its operators hope to build it to 24/7 within a year. LRSI, based in Huntington, N.Y., will operate its site using Virtual Reference Services software, developed by Library Systems and Services Inc. Two new blogs aimed at solo lawyers Two Washington, D.C., lawyers have each launched Web logs intended to serve as resources for solo and small-firm lawyers. Jonathan Bender's site, SohoAttorney, focuses on attorneys practicing from small offices or home offices. More than just a blog, SohoAttorney allows other lawyers to register and participate in developing the site's content. For example, Bender hopes others will add links to Web sites they find useful along with reviews of the linked site. He also plans to add a photo gallery where members can post pictures of themselves. He has also included a user poll, which is currently surveying visitors about their standard hourly rates. When he is not blogging, Bender practices Internet law. Another D.C. lawyer, Carolyn Elefant, recently hung out MyShingle.com. Elefant does not intend her site to be about the traditional general-practice small firm. Instead, her focus is lawyers who start small boutique or corporate practices that directly compete with large firms. She wants the site to be a resource for these lawyers to exchange advice, seek guidance or find local counsel in other jurisdictions. She also hopes the site will help law students learn about the possibilities of small-firm practice and enable small-firm lawyers to broadcast their accomplishments to others in the legal profession and the public at large. Like SohoAttorney, MyShingle is more than just a blog, offering useful content such as the On-Line Guide to Creating A Law Practice, containing hundreds of links to manuals, articles, forms, sample agreements and books. Elefant created the site using slashcode, the code that powers slashdot. Elefant describes her own law practice as "an eclectic mix of energy regulatory work, renewable project development and permitting, appellate practice and civil rights and commercial litigation." MyShingle includes an RSS feed. Tuesday, February 11, 2003
LLRX suspends operations LLRX.com, a consistently outstanding resource for legal professionals who use the Internet ever since its launch in 1996, announced today that it is "going on hiatus." The site will remain available, but without the twice-monthly webzine or other updates. Here is the announcement that appeared on the LLRX front page: Dear LLRX Readers, This is to let you know that LLRX.com is going on hiatus. We would like to express our thanks for the contributions of hundreds of authors who shared their expertise with our readers, a global readership that just kept growing, and a terrific group of vendors whose support allowed us to provide you with this free webzine for so long. These relationships have enriched our professional and personal lives, and we are truly grateful. Now it is time for a transition. LLRX will remain available to our readers without any updates at this point, and we look forward to providing you with continued access in the future. For now, we invite you to visit Sabrina's new law and technology current awareness site, beSpacific. Sabrina I. Pacifici Principal Editor, Publisher, Web Manager Cindy L. Chick Co-Editor, Co-Publisher Discovering a flaw in RSS autodiscovery Jonas Luster over at J/files posted this enormously helpful item explaining how to make RSS autodiscovery work on a blog or Web page. With autodiscovery, news aggregators such as Newz Crawler and discovery tools such as discover/it can automatically detect whether a blog has an RSS feed and, in the case of Newz Crawler, add it to your subscriptions. But in attempting to set up autodiscovery on LawSites, I discovered what appears to be a bug in News Crawler (at least according to Jonas). The name of my RSS file is www.legaline.com/lawsites_rss.xml. For some reason, Newz Crawler refuses to detect this, even though discover/it has no problem. But, if I change the name to simply www.legaline.com/rss.xml, Newz Crawler picks it right up. The moral: If you want your RSS feed to be detected by Newz Crawler, do not give the file a name any fancier than "rss.xml." Monday, February 10, 2003
ADR Cyberweek 2003 set for Feb. 24-28 From Ethan Katsh, director of the Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution at UMass/Amherst: "The UMass Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution, in collaboration with the Online Dispute Resolution Section of the Association for Conflict Resolution, is pleased to be holding Cyberweek 2003 this year from February 24-28th. This is the fifth Cyberweek, a free all-online conference focused on the use of technology in dispute resolution. This is a conference that you can participate in from anywhere at anytime. Please register here and we will send you additional information prior to the start of Cyberweek. "Cyberweek consists of online discussions, simulations and other activities that we hope will illustrate the opportunities and challenges provided by our new technologies. This year's most ambitious activity is ICODR 2003, the International Competition for Dispute Resolution. ICODR 2002, held in conjunction with Cyberweek 2002, involved eleven schools in a negotiating competition. ICODR 2003 involves over thirty five schools from five continents in negotiation, mediation and arbitration competitions." |
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