Legal Information Institute Tom Bruce, Dan Nagy & Deborah Schaaf visit Ithaca West (aka Berkeley & the Silicon Valley)
Hi Friends,
Tom Bruce, Dan Nagy and Deborah Schaaf from the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School stopped on by for some meetings with folks on new free information projects. The LII gang met with us, Nolo, Stanford and FreeGovInfo.info :) And there was a talk on privacy on the Internet with David Schellhase & Michael Blum moderated by Kevin Haroff. Here are some pictures of Tom in action making things happen...
Tom and Nolo CEO/Founder Jake Warner discuss legal information and services delivery to the public at Nolo's headquarters in Berkeley and maybe a joint project or two :)
Tom and FreeGovInfo.info / Stanford's James Jacobs discuss free government information. Only trouble will happen when these two guys site down together.
Peace & Yes We Scan!
Tim
Yes We Scan!!!! - Support Carl Malamud to head the Government Printing Office!!!! Support Free Public Information!!!!
:: Sugar Magnolia, American Beauty by the Grateful Dead
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Yes We Scan!!! Carl Malamud for Head of the Government Printing Office
Hi Friends,
A few weeks ago the New York Times floated a rumor/great idea that Carl Malamud, the great hard working free information Internet do-gooder, was being mentioned as a potential candidate for head of the Government Printing Office. Of course, we at Justia cheered this idea on -- who better to bring government publishing into the digital age than the man whose will and technology know how has lead millions of court decisions, SEC filings, patents, Congressional videos online and other public domain documents being brough online for all to research and enjoy.
Well, it turns out the rumor is true! We wanted to be among the first to announce our unqualified support for Carl as Public Printer of the United States. Carl's vision for open, secure, and efficient government publishing will be a welcome asset to the Obama Administration, helping to usher in the new era of accessible government.
At Justia, we believe that information produced with taxpayer dollars -- including laws and legal opinions -- belong to the people. We want all Americans to have access to the law, and to achieve that end, we need transparency, accountability, and a spirit of openness in our government. Carl Malamud embodies all of these qualities.
Carl's ability to lead and organize a variety of folks in this effort has been extremely impressive. He has an incredible ability to get folks from a variety of backgrounds to work together on a common goal for the public good. Most recently, through his work with public.resource.org, Carl has made an invaluable contribution to the growing collection of free case law, codes, and regulations on the internet. His Pacer Recycling Program adds court filings, opinions, and other public domain materials.
Carl also understands and supports business. Carl has been a CEO, and he especially knows the Internet business marketplace. He has been very encouraging to us and others to use the data and materials he has collected at public.resource.org to create new products and services. He has been invaluable in helping with technology issues we face in dealing with large amounts of public data. With Carl as head of the GPO, many more small businesses, would greatly benefit from the additional access to public information (and I am sure that many more new businesses would start up as well!).
Carl's demonstrated commitment to preserving and extending our public access to the public record and government works makes him the perfect candidate for the GPO. We are promised change -- and we need someone like Carl to make that happen. Having someone with the technological and leadership skills of Carl Malamud running the Government Printing Office will make the USA a better place for all! We cannot think of a bigger win for public access to government documents!
Please join us in supporting Carl by visiting his "campaign" site and reading his policy documents: www.yeswescan.org. Carl is a great man who deserves all our support!
Peace & Yes We Scan!
Tim, Ken, Stacy, Courtney, Cicely, Vasu, Dan, Nick, Soby and the Rest of the Justia Team!!!
:: It's a New Day by will.i.am
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For the Birds: LegalBirds: Twitter Directory for the Legal Community
Hi Friends,
In early December, Justia and the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School setup a pre-beta version of "Legal Birds" of legal twitterers and their tweets, and integrated twitter feeds into the attorney profile pages in our Lawyer Directory. We have now enhanced the twitter section with graphical tools, community-building functions and better search functionality. The updated version can be found at LegalBirds.com.
Currently, LegalBirds.com
- lists legal tweeters ("the community") ranked in a few different ways,
- displays Twitter user IDs and a hash tag cloud (e.g., #salmonella) for the most mentioned users and terms,
- groups tweeters by practice, location and occupation (lawyers, academics, legal professionals) so that you can find kindred spirits,
- spotlights tweeters in Google Maps and Google Earth,
- provides RSS feeds for subscribing to tweets by category or term,
- allows users to perform full-text searches of tweeters and the tweet archive,
We have further integrated Twitter into the Lawyer Directory with ia Twitter tab for individual profiles. And we have opened the directory to accommodate profiles from academics (professors, school librarians, students, etc.), legal professionals (legal publishers, experts, consultants, firm librarians, non-practicing lawyers who want a community profile, but do not want to be in a "lawyer" directory), and the judicary (judges, magistrates, and court staff).
Of course, we will be adding in more features and will be integrating a version of LegalBirds.com into the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School website with some extra academic focus :). And, we will be tying it into Justia BlawgSearch as well (the Justia version of LegalBirds.com design is based on the BlawgSearch.com's look and feel).
Rankings
Everybody loves rankings... and so we have set-up a few different versions. Find the one you rank best on, and use that one when talking with folks. First a few terms:
"Community" members are those tweeters currently in the Legal Birds Community (i.e., LegalBirds.com is indexing their twitter feed). If we are not following your twitter feed, be sure to Join Legal Birds today. We are continually adding feeds from new Legal Birds.
"All" are all twitter users.
"Connections" mean two tweeters are mutually following each other (i.e., tweeter A follows tweeter B AND tweeter B follows tweeter A). We view connections as the most valuable type of relationship because these are more likely to lead to conversations in the twittersphere.
"Followers" are those that follow a tweeter.
We rank tweeters by:
Community Connections - mutual followers from the community of legal tweeters.
Community Followers - followers from the community of legal tweeters.
All Connections - mutual followers from all twitter users.
All Followers - followers from all twitter users.
Tweets Today - the number of tweets a user has made in the last 24 hours.
We have set Community Connections as the default ranking because we value it the most (both tweeters in the legal community, following each other is more likely to lead to interesting legal twitter discussion).
Google Maps and Google Earth
You can view the people in multiple ways:
- list view showing their last 4 tweets (often useful when trying to determine who to follow),
- grid view which has quick ranking stats and
- map view (see below).
We also display community tweeters on Google Maps. You can view all of the community tweeters, those in a particular category or location, or just your own community connections, followers and followees.
Of course, you can also download a KML file to see all of the legal birds on Google Earth. We also provide KML files for each of the categories and for your individual community connections, as well as tweeters you follow and those who are following you. Click here to download the KML file of all Legal Birds.
In any event, enjoy LegalBirds.com, more will be coming soon :)
Peace,
Tim & Ken
:: Free Bird, Pronounced Leh-Nerd Skin-Nerd by Lynyrd Skynyrd
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Free Lawyer Directory from Justia & Cornell Legal Information Institute
Hi Friends,
Justia and the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School have been building a lawyer directory the last few months to help individuals, families and businesses find lawyers and legal service organizations. (See the Justia Lawyer Directory and the LII Lawyer Directory).
We are happy to announce that this project will be moving out of pre-beta and into beta. Also see the LII Blog announcement: LII launches free lawyer directory service.
Any lawyer licensed to practice in the United States may have a free full profile. Just claim or add your profile and update. It is really easy.
The Lawyer Directory can help lawyers reach new clients. The Lawyer Directory connects consumers and businesses facing legal issues with attorneys and legal services organizations. The directory organizes lawyers throughout the United States by practice area and location. To find a lawyer, a prospective client can browse the directory by practice area or location, or search by keyword and location.
Full lawyer profiles in the directory are free. Lawyers can claim their profiles and enhance them with professional biographical data including practice areas, education, job history, jurisdictions of practice, as well as photos, videos, and links and/or feeds from legal & social networks (JDSupra, Avvo, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and SSRN), and their law firm's web site and blog.
Provide & Promote Free Information and be Rewarded with Higher Rankings in the Lawyer Directory
Lawyers who support the publishing of free legal information online, either through their own direct efforts (such as by blogging) or by helping organizations like the Legal Information Institute, will be listed higher in the rankings.
Currently, the lawyer directory awards a "Blawg" badge to lawyers who have had their blog editorially included in Justia's BlawgSearch.com directory. Submit your Blawg to BlawgSearch.com for editorial consideration - it is free :). We also award a "Legal Birds" badge to lawyers who use Twitter. More participation options will be coming soon. With the badges also come higher lawyer directory rankings - so collect them all.
Support the Legal Information Institute. Lawyers can also earn a LII badge by supporting the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School. There are three levels of support: Bronze ($250/yr), Silver ($500/yr) and Gold ($1,000/yr). The support goes to Cornell, and they will use it to hire up programming and editorial talent to put up more free information. What could be better! All of the Justia in-house lawyers have Gold LII badges :). And we are now in the process of encouraging our clients to get badges too.
Blogging, tweeting, or financially supporting LII will lead to higher rankings on listing pages but are not required to be included in the directory with a full profile. They only impact the rank order on the listings pages. So get in the directory no matter what, and then start planning how you can help the online community put up more good free legal research information to make the world a better place and get some marketing credit for yourself.
We are developing more features... but more on those later :)
Peace,
Tim & Ken
:: Revolution Blues, On the Beach by Neil Young
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President Barack Obama inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States of America
President Barack Obama inaugurated as the 44th President of the United States of America
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President Barack Obama
President Barack Obama's Win on the Web
Graphic Copyright Charis Tsevis
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Home Foreclosure Resources & The Foreclosure Survival Guide by Steve Elias - New Nolo.com Book
Hi Friends,
As most of us know, Nolo.com is the best Website for consumer and small business USA legal information. Nolo's lawyers-writers-editors are the best. Nolo.com covers everything from starting a business, employment, real estate, intellectual property, immigration, family law, tax, estate planning, bankruptcy, credit law and foreclosures.
Well... as our country slowly quickly moves into economic tough times, I thought I would blog on a new book, The Foreclosure Survival Guide written by my friend Steve Elias.
Steve Elias has been writing about legal and consumer financial issues for Nolo.com for nearly thirty years. He has been covering the recent legal and ecomomic changes that folks face, including credit, bankruptcy and foreclosure issues. Steve is currently blogging (with Albin Renauer - Go Blue!) on Nolo's Bankruptcy & Foreclosure Blog, covering the latest issues, as well as legislation on bankruptcy and foreclosure. He also blogs on The Law Reform Soapbox.
Nolo.com also has put together the Property & Money Resource Center with loads of legal and consumer content from Steve and the other Nolo editors. This resource center includes specific sections with articles & FAQs on Foreclosure, Credit Repair & Debt, Bankruptcy and Social Security & Retirement. The Property & Money Resource Center is constantly being updated with the latest information.
Steve has written a new book on foreclosures, appropriately called the The Foreclosure Survival Guide (on Nolo.com the book costs $14.99, and the immediately downloadable ebook pdf costs $12.99, you can also get the book on Amazon and BarnesandNoble.com). The Foreclosure Survival Guide has information on mortgages, including adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs), short sales, deeds in lieu of foreclosure, judicial and non-judicial foreclosure, credit counseling, liens, and using bankruptcy to deal with foreclosure.
Steve goes into much more detail in his book, but here is some information from his book about nonprofit counselors that may be able to help:
Nonprofit Housing Counselors (from Chapter 10 - Resources Beyond the Book)
I strongly suggest that you find a nonprofit housing counseling agency. The counselors there can help you assess your mortgage situation and, if possible, negotiate a solution with your lender that will keep you in your house. Lenders--which suffer economically from foreclosures and benefit if something can be worked out--are the main source of funds for these agencies. (see Ch. 4 [of The Foreclosure Survival Guide] for an in-depth discussion of finding and working with a nonprofit housing counselor.)
- The Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has a list of approved counselors. You can find a hud-approved agency at www.hud.gov/foreclosure/index.cfm or by calling 800-569-4287.
- The Homeownership Preservation Foundation website, www.995hope.org, offers free online counseling, among other things. or you can call 888-995-HOPE and talk with someone.
- The Homeownership Crisis Resource Center, www.housinghelpnow.org, will link you up with a local nonprofit foreclosure prevention specialist who may or may not be hud approved.
- The National Foundation for Credit Counseling will get you to a nonprofit counselor (typically HUD approved) through its toll-free hotline, 866-557-2227.
The foreclosure problems have been going on for a while and could get much worse if something is not done by the lenders and government (who will soon own large stakes in the lenders). As it is in the best interest of the lenders and the neighborhoods to try to keep people in their homes to reduce the number of foreclosures and vacant units, there needs to be something done to revalue some of these loans. We will see what Congress, President Bush and then President ??? do. And then there is the US and world economy as a whole... we will see.
For those facing credit issues, foreclosure or possible bankruptcy, check out Nolo's Property & Money Resource Center for very helpful consumer information. For those facing foreclosure, falling behind on their payments, or just need help with paying their mortgages, check out The Foreclosure Survival Guide. The table of contents of The Foreclosure Survival Guide is in the extended entry of this post.
Peace,
Tim
:: Tangerine, Led Zeppelin III by Led Zeppelin
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Building Codes, State Codes & Regulations from Carl Malamud & Public.Resource.org
Hi Friends,
As many of you know (at least those in the Open Government & Law Groups), Free Public Information Hero Carl Malamud and Public.Resource.org have been working to get state codes, building codes, electrical codes and other state and city codes online for free... sort of a virtual city of free codes.
You can, right now, download these codes here on Public.Resource.org or through the Internet Archive. As a California bonus, you can also download the California Code of Regulations.
 | "I think his work is extraordinarily important" |
There is a nice article on Carl in last week's Santa Rosa Press Democrat by Nathan Halverson discussing Public.Resource.org's efforts, with some good comments from Larry Lessig and Pamela Samuelson on the policy and legal issues. We will see if this leads to some more litigation with California.
This is a great effort to put up the codes that are the most useful to everyday citizens. More free law to come (and maybe some litigation if needed).
Peace,
Tim
:: Walls, Meet Glen Campbell by Glen Campbell
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Google Keyword Search Volume Now Available with the Google's Keyword Tool
Hi Friends,
Google's AdWords Keyword Tool now gives the search approximate monthly search volume for different keywords.
You can read more about this new feature on the Google AdWords Blog here.
And here are a few words and their approximate monthly search volume
4,090,000 Lawyer
7,480,000 Attorney
1,000,000 Law Firm
7,480,000 Legal
20,400,000 Law
Of course, as can be seen in the image above, Google gives additional suggested terms as well. Should be something fun for people to play with :)
Peace,
Tim
:: Space Cowboy, Brave New World by the Steve Miller Band
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Oregon decides not to enforce any copyright claims on the Oregon Revised Statutes
Hi Friends,
Oregon's Legislative Counsel Committee had a meeting this morning to discuss the copyright claim on the Oregon Revised Statutes. After taking legal counsel from Dexter Johnson, talking with Karl Olson, Carl Malamud, three Oregon citizens and myself, they unanimously voted to not to enforce any copyright claims on the Oregon Revised Statutes. This is great!!!
Carl Malamud presents Oregon Senate President Courtney the "Seal of Approval"
Thanks to Dexter and the Committee!!!!
Update: Carl Malamud has put online the Oregon hearing testimony and videos on Public.Resource.org.
Peace,
Tim
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WWU, Seattle, Vancouver Visit 2008
Hi Friends,
Dan, Cicely and I flew over Oregon and headed up to LexBlog Country in the great Northwest. We were there to do some interviewing of computer folks... but we also had some fun (Seattle/As game, Vancouver and more :).
Dan and Cicely ran the booth at Western Washington University. We met a lot of great people.
Then it was off to Seattle to meet Kevin O'Keefe at the LexBlog offices to talk blogs and to see a baseball game.
Then off to beautiful Vancouver for fun...
... and a visit the UBC Computer Science Department.
more on copyright and codes later this week...
Peace,
Tim
:: Crystal River, Mudcrutch by Mudcrutch
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Cease, Desist & Resist - Oregon's Copyright Claim on the Oregon Revised Statutes
Hi Friends,
Last week, the State of Oregon Legislative Counsel Committee sent Justia a notice of copyright infringement and demand to cease and desist. In its letter, Dexter Johnson, the Legislative Counsel, asked us to remove a copy of the Oregon Revised Statutes stored on our servers (or pay a licensing fee) by April 30, 2008. The letter claimed copyright on many parts of the Oregon Revised Statutes:
[T]he Committee ... claim[s] a copyright in the arrangement and subject-matter compilation of Oregon statutory law, the prefatory and explanatory notes, the leadlines and numbering for each statutory section, the tables the index and annotations and such other incidents as are work product of the Committee in the compilation and publication of Oregon law.
Now, the letter is more detailed than the copyright claim on the Oregon Revised Statutes website:
The Legislative Counsel Committee claims copyright protection in those parts of Oregon Revised Statutes that are legally subject to copyright protection.
My take after reading the above claim on their website was that the State of Oregon was claiming a copyright to the annotation section and not the code itself. Accordingly, our copy of the Oregon Revised Statutes did not include the annotations. Needless to say Oregon's copyright claim on the code itself was a surprise (understatement).
As requested in the letter, I called Oregon's Sean Brennan the same Friday and Sean explained their position, reinforced the copyright claims in Dexter Johnson's letter and said he would get us some licensing information (which is $30,000 for 2 years). He also said that Oregon had been talking with other states about how to raise licensing revenue for their codes. That was somewhat disturbing, as we want states to open up their public laws and regulations.
After the call with Sean, I talked with and sent a copy of the letter to Carl Malamud, who being a former Oregon fire fighter, has a special affection for the state of Oregon. Carl checked out the site, and wrote some letters to Dexter Johnson seeking clarification of their copyright claims.
Thursday, we (Carl Malamud, Nolo's Stephen Elias and I) had a pleasant and constructive conversation with Dexter Johnson and his team. The Oregon folks are going to think through some different options. If Oregon comes up with a solution that promotes free and open access to the laws, then we will likely avoid litigation. If not, then we will likely have to ask the courts to determine whether state governments can prohibit others from downloading, reproducing or distributing the laws. I hope that given Oregon's public interest focus, the State will adopt an approach that promotes open access to laws instead of one that maximizes licensing fees. We should know more next week.
Some prominent legal bloggers have commented on Oregon's copyright claims. See Professor Tim Armstrong's post "Can States Copyright Their Statutes?" on Info/Law and William Patry's post "Oregon goes wacka wacka huna kuna" on the The Patry Copyright Blog and Sam Bayard's post "Oregon Claims Copyright in Its Statutes -- Well, Sort Of" on the Citizen Media Law Project Blog. We agree that public policy demands that state laws remain in the public domain. To otherwise permit the State of Oregon or any other governmental body to restrict access to the laws that govern all of us would make a mockery of the legal doctrine that all persons have presumed knowledge of the law. Fortunately, many courts have rightfully declined to recognize such copyright claims asserted by states and municipalities.
Peace,
Tim
:: Sugaree, Grateful Dead Download Series, Vol. 10 by Grateful Dead
* For those interested, we are working with folks from Public.Resource.Org, Cornell's Legal Information Institute, AltLaw, EFF, Creative Commons, Stanford & Cal, FastCase, as well as many other law schools, commercial organizations, courts, and government agencies on compiling a large archive of law that will be continuously updated and freely shared. Part of that is just getting the raw law, which includes cases, codes, and regulations. As we (quickly) move forward though, we will also have shared annotations and shared publishing tools. We will then want to have copies of the law along with secondary materials on thousands of servers. In addition to providing free access to all at many online locations, we want to provide the opportunity for each government institution, court, law school, nonprofit, company, and blogger to have their very own copy of the full corpus, as well as an easy way to keep it updated. It won't be easy, but it is doable. And it helps that we are working with folks from the government. Hopefully, we will soon be able to work with and include the State of Oregon. :)
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