You know how it goes: You sign up for a new website and you get an automatically generated email thanking you for registering. Well, when you sign up with Estate Map, you get a personal email from the company president, Joe Henderson, welcoming you and encouraging you to contact him directly…
RIP: Ross Kodner, Legal Technology Guru
The legal technology field lost a giant this week with the death of Ross Kodner, who suffered a heart attack two days after turning 52. Ross was a lawyer — a 1986 graduate of Marquette University Law School — but was known worldwide as the founder of the legal technology consulting firm…
Podcast: Should Chimps Have Legal Rights?
Sometime in the next couple of months, in a yet-to-be disclosed courthouse somewhere in the United States, the Nonhuman Rights Project is planning to file a writ of habeas corpus on behalf of a chimpanzee. In what will be the first of a series of…
Labor Firm’s App Calculates FMLA Leave
In a recent article about mobile marketing I wrote for Law Practice Magazine, I explained why I am skeptical about the marketing value of law firm apps. I made an exception, however, for apps that provide a useful or practical function, whether…
More Judges Who Blog
Yesterday, Law Technology News featured my article, Blogging from the Bench, a survey of present and former judges who write blogs. It grew out of an earlier post here. Since the story appeared yesterday, I have learned of three more judges who…
Thoughts on the Closing of ‘Lawyers USA’
The legal newspaper Lawyers USA announced that the issue it published yesterday will be its last. It will continue to post news on its website and send email alerts through the end of this month, and then cease to exist. Two members of the editorial staff are being laid off, managing editor…
Box Makes Push Into Legal Industry
If you happened to read the June issue of Law Technology News, you may have noticed a three-page “advertorial” section on cloud computing for the legal profession sponsored by the file-sharing platform Box. Or if you visited the Box site recently, you may have noticed a new teaser…
New Site, Wysk.com, Lets You Research Business Public Records
A new website founded by a Houston lawyer aims to make it quick and easy to obtain official information about businesses, including business organization filings, certificates of good standing, UCC secured transactions, IRS tax liens, trademarks, bankruptcies and civil litigation. Called Wysk.com, the site allows you to search for a…
Mass. Moves to Require Technology Competence for Lawyers
For a geek like me, it was big news last August when the American Bar Association’s House of Delegates voted to amend the Model Rules of Professional Conduct to make clear that lawyers have a duty to be competent in technology. Specifically, the ABA voted to amend the comment to Model Rule 1.1, governing lawyer…
Podcast: After Supreme Court’s DOMA and Prop 8 Rulings, What’s Next for Gay Rights?
With the Supreme Court’s end-of-term Prop 8 and DOMA rulings, same-sex marriage is now legal in California and same-sex married couples can receive federal benefits across the nation. These landmark decisions for gay rights have sparked the question: Is nationwide marriage equality on the way? This week on our legal-affairs podcast Lawyer2Lawyer, we…