An Answer to the FTC’s Question?

While I was perus­ing the twit­ter­stream yes­ter­day, @ProfJonathon shared a link to a new web ser­vice named CMP​.ly. Accord­ing to the web­site, it pur­ports to be a “dis­clo­sure engine” for every­one online — from blog­gers to Agen­cies.
My first ques­tion to ProfJonathon was whether it was rec­og­nized by the FTC. Since he was merely shar­ing a link and was in no way asso­ci­ated with the ser­vice, we agreed that it was an inter­est­ing intel­lec­tual exer­cise and we each went our sep­a­rate ways. Then, I got a response from @cmply:

@ProfJonathan @mglickman — Good ques­tion. Although the FTC can­not endorse a par­tic­u­lar solu­tion we met and reviewed our sys­tem. DM for info.

Details »

Published on 12/09/2009 8:39 am.
Filed under: blawg Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Realities of Criminal Defense — Updated

UPDATE
Please take a moment and read Scott’s and Rick’s posts. I severely abridged their posts to the point of ruin­ing their mean­ings, and I apol­o­gize about that.
This post has been mod­i­fied in response to Rick’s com­ment below.

Yes­ter­day brought another inter­est­ing post from Scott Greenfield’s Sim­ple Jus­tice. He had been made aware of a blog by a new law school grad­u­ate with hopes of enter­ing the world of crim­i­nal defense. The author mono­logued about the moral dilemma a defense attor­ney has when rep­re­sent­ing a “guilty-as-charged” client. Her ulti­mate answer to it was that a defense attor­ney has a duty to tell her client’s story in order to achieve a fair outcome.

Scott, lodged in a les­son about the dan­gers of blog­ging (Loose blog posts Sink egos, or some­thing of the sort), explained that there is no moral dilemma. A defense attor­ney is there to beat the pros­e­cu­tion and win free­dom for his client. It is, after all, an adver­sar­ial sys­tem. (Dis­claimer: This is my sum­mary. Read his com­ment.)

That was yes­ter­day.
Details »

Published on 11/23/2009 9:16 am.
Filed under: blawg Tags: , , , , ,

Advice for Twitter

I had an idea the other day for a ser­vice twit­ter should offer to corporate/registered accounts.
One thing peo­ple have noticed is that twit­ter seems to have very high search engine rank­ing; so that if I were to Google my name, one of the top links is my twit­ter page. That has raised some con­cerns in the past about how a lawyer can be viewed by poten­tial clients who look the lawyer up online.
My idea is to allow firms to lever­age this strong search engine rank­ing of twit­ter. A firm can have its own twit­ter ID, but, as any social media guru will tell you, it’s bet­ter to have an indi­vid­ual face peo­ple can relate to. So a firm will appoint an indi­vid­ual to be the face of the firm on twit­ter (and what­ever other social net­work it deems nec­es­sary). That’s pretty darn straight­for­ward.
Details »

Published on 11/13/2009 11:13 am.
Filed under: blog Tags: , , , , , ,

The sum is not greater than the whole of its parts

Dear World,

Social Media.
Social.
Media.
Why do these two words con­fuse the hell out of so many peo­ple? I don’t just mean con­fuse in the whim­si­cal way your par­ents might be con­fused about how to open a file in an email. I mean con­fused — to the point where peo­ple end up doing things com­pletely bass-ackwards and screw­ing them­selves over.

Yes­ter­day, Scott Green­field and Brian Tan­nebaum posted excel­lent, some­what related and extra­or­di­nar­ily rel­e­vant state­ments regard­ing the need for lawyers to sub­scribe to and fol­low an eth­i­cal guide­line. The over­lap between them lies in a lawyer’s online pres­ence, and since I am so obvi­ously steeped in online real­ity that I instantly asso­ci­ated those verbs as online col­lo­qui­alisms (“sub­scribe” to a feed and “fol­low” on twit­ter) I will focus mainly on the online aspect of the issue.
Details »

Published on 11/09/2009 11:21 am.
Filed under: blawg Tags: , , , , ,

All letters look scarlet to the color-blind

Scott Green­field at Sim­ple Jus­tice adds to an ongo­ing dis­cus­sion regard­ing trans­parency in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.
The orig­i­nat­ing post came from Doug Berman who sug­gested the idea there should be reg­is­tra­tion for all con­vic­tions in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.
   The next sally came from Bobby Fred­er­ick who raises the very valid con­cerns of mis­takes and poor rep­re­sen­ta­tion.
Details »

Published on 10/18/2009 9:30 pm.
Filed under: blawg Tags: , , ,

You might be in law school if…

With apolo­gies to Jeff Foxworthy.

  • If the joke you heard last night about Arti­cle 9 of the UCC had a punch­line based on Jus­tice Frankfurter’s opin­ion on stomach-pumping under the 4th Amend­ment… you might be in law school.
    • If you got the joke and laughed… you are def­i­nitely in law school… and you’re a geek.
  • If, some­where in your sub­con­scious, you feel guilty when you’re not car­ry­ing roughly 200 lbs of text­books… you might be in law school.
  • If you have dreamed of a § key on your key­board.… you might be in law school.
    • If you even know what the § sym­bol means… you might be in law school.
  • If you have ever com­plained that Bar­Bri is a monop­oly… you might be in law school.
  • If you have a stated pref­er­ence between West­law and Lex­is­Nexis… you might be in law school.
    • If you have run the exact same search through both… you are def­i­nitely in law school.
  • If you think a para­graph feels naked with­out the word “how­ever” or the phrase “in regard to”… you might be in law school.
  • If you have ever been asked a ques­tion which has no cor­rect answer… you might be in law school… or you might just be married.

Published on 09/30/2009 8:21 am.
Filed under: blawg Tags: , , ,

IP Clinic, a retrospective

In case any­one who reads this blog is unaware, I’m a non-traditional law stu­dent. I work full-time and attend classes in the evening. The nor­mal time­line for evening stu­dents at my school is 4 years until grad­u­a­tion; I’m an impa­tient type, so I opted to take a full course load each sum­mer as well. This deci­sion — not nec­es­sar­ily good for my san­ity — cuts down the time it will take me to grad­u­ate by 2 full semes­ters (roughly one year).

Now that that’s out of the way, allow me to get to the point: I par­tic­i­pated in my schools Intel­lec­tual Prop­erty Clinic this sum­mer. For­merly based in an incu­ba­tor (it has since moved to a school cam­pus), the clien­tele ranged from authors to web-based busi­ness to bio-engineers to finan­cial audit­ing con­trac­tors.
Details »

Published on 09/24/2009 9:47 am.
Filed under: blawg Tags: , , ,

I’m back

First of all, I’d like to thank every­one who con­tacted me about my blog being down.
I was in the midst of upgrad­ing Word­Press when I real­ized that I had no idea what I was doing. After finally fig­ur­ing out how to com­plete the upgrade, I no longer had time to do so.

Until now.

For the incred­i­bly few of you who occa­sion­ally glance at this blog, I hope to start post­ing again soon.

Published on 09/22/2009 10:38 pm.
Filed under: blawg

“P” is (not) for Privacy…

I finally got around to actu­ally read­ing the deci­sion in State of Wis­con­sin v. Michael Sveum instead of view­ing all the typ­ing heads. (On the blog cir­cuit they’re all typ­ing heads, not talk­ing heads.)
At first glance, I felt that the court came to the dif­fi­cult but cor­rect deci­sion — after all, we do drive in pub­lic. I was going to go my merry way when I real­ized that the deci­sion still both­ered me, so sat back and tried to think it through.
Details »

Published on 05/11/2009 12:48 pm.
Filed under: blawg Tags: , , , , , ,

Take the client and run

Car­olyn Elefant’s recent post on her blog asks the ques­tion, what should we do with the small and solo firms who are behind the times and don’t even seem to be aware that there are times to be behind? In short (don’t believe me, go there and read it your­self) she sug­gests that we should lend a help­ing hand to the technologically-stunted for the sake of their clients.

I’m not con­tent to let the old firms sim­ply rot and die off if they take clients down in the process.

Details »

Published on 04/01/2009 6:49 pm.
Filed under: blawg Tags: , , ,