As someone who went solo in the practice of law back in 1994, then decided that legal tech was FAR more interesting, I like their perspectives.
I’ve been watching the growth of their blogs and reading them for quite some time, and I think they’ve both hit upon a communication style and have the reach to make them worth bookmarking.
OK, what I mean is that there are blogs that are worth bookmarking, and others which you can always find through blogrolls. Bloggers run in crews, so one gateway to the crew of Elefant and Leibel really only requires one bookmark.
My suggestion is that before you bookmark (or, even better add a blog to your Morning Coffee [hmmm name changed!]), you take some time to check out the blogroll. See if another blog in their crew speaks to your issues. if so, book mark that one.
For example, I separate them into these groups because if a blogger has bookmarked something, why should I? So, I often read blogs of Kevin O’Keefe’s clients, I bookmark at source, because I can always find his clients from there.
That and LinkedIn.
OK, so one comment that really made me want to blog is the perspective that people who go solo MUST have the proper outlook on their venture.
You’re not doing it because they’re something wrong with you. You’re not doing it as a placeholder until you can get a “real job.” You’re doing it because it suits you, you’re excited about it and you want to provide great service to clients in a new way.
Right now, they’re talking about not needing a year’s savings to do it. That’s funny. Other than the independently wealthy, and certainly in my case, a few month’s savings was more like it.
A law practice doesn’t require a year’s savings, it requires a client.
The one caveat, however, is that were I straight out of law school, I would NOT suggest opening up a firm. Why? Because there are plenty of older people out there who need your help and who can give you guidance. Confederate with an older lawyer and your practice will move along much faster.
I won’t recap the entire webinar, except to say that legal technology has indeed changed everything. This is the truth behind my early criticism of the argument that legal technology would allow BigLaw to obliterate small firm practitioners.
It kinda goes against the grain to recommend this, but in this case, I think a commercial “university” might be worth doing.
I’m in love with H5 and not just because of their killer website and name that has more cowbell than I can handle, but I also am having special moments with Cataphora.
In the run up to the Sedona Conference, I’m taking another look at legal tech from the perspective of what lawyers really need and I’m pretty sure that the teeny weeny email application I’m writing (prototype due out at the end of the summer) is on the right track.
That being said, Cataphora really does have the right approach and are FIXING IT! “It” being the way search and retrieval of meaningful content is and ought to be done.
So, understand their mission, if you choose to accept it (and you should):
Defining principle
Cataphora’s success and very existence are based upon one defining principle. This arose from a conceptual breakthrough that was simply stated, yet proved to be radical in its practical effects. This idea was that, in order to truly understand a document, you have to know about the circumstances in which it arose. In other words, you have to understand its context.
The negative
Ok, they’re a bit … oh, I don’t know whiny and snarky,
Trustworthiness is a core value in the legal marketplace and at Cataphora. We strongly recommend examining all vendor claims carefully. One way to do that is by looking at how their website used to look. The Wayback Machine makes that easy – just go here and enter the URL for the vendor in which you are interested.
I mean, really! Who CARES what a website looked like in the Wayback Machine?! Is this really part of the E-DISCOVERY dog/pony show to which unsuspecting clients are subjected? Didn’t think so.
If that’s the standard, then most legal tech projects would be doomed, because when some of us were using computers in litigation, some others of us were still in high school counting spots. And, of course, some others of us were practicing law and making googobs of money (ahem!). Besides, an appearance on the Brewster Kahle show is not really an indicator of algorithmic quality. It just means you’re lucky, really smart or have your own private Tardis.
OK, so I don’t think Cataphora folks are lucky. I think they’re really, really smart. Buuuut, it’s not exactly rocket science. Maybe it was 10 years ago, but not any more. Ever looked at Digg Labs?
I’ve read both, but now I’d better look at the pictures, because this is one area where I’m pretty sure there’s so much out there now that these patents may not hold much water. Not a huge fan of business method patents anyway, but when they involve stuff that seems to be open-sourced to the hilt, it gives me pause.
I could be so incredibly wrong, so I’ll take another look, but at first blush, what they write about on the site seems right out of Collective Intelligence, a book I keep next to the bedside, cuz I’m that much of a dork.
Back to the Positive
But, Elizabeth Charnock, the founder of Cataphora is a much bigger dork, said with all sorts of love, so I think worship might still be in order.
they “get” the wisdom of letting computers do what they do best. And, computers don’t really care whether you have 1 or 2 terabytes. Which means that you can leave your data unculled, and the computer will keep chugging along.
Not only that, but once the data has been marked as “non-responsive,” it can still be used for all sorts of things. Like weighting. And, making your useful dataset searching smarter. Wanna know how? I bet you do!
Call me! No, really: call me.
So, let’s get real: [ bold statement ] there’s absolutely NO real reason to cull ESI ! [ /bold statement ]
I found this really HYSTERICAL presentation the other day entitled The Real Cost of Privilege Review ( and here) and all it did was make me think of lollipops. Read it and weep.
I want to know who out there is wasting soooo much money…so I can sign them up as clients, because this sort of process is so yesterday, even your 10-yr old could probably re-engineer it to get better and more cost-effective results. I mean, hasn’t anyone ever played pick up sticks???
So, why am I adamant that people stop culling? Because it’s like trying to speak French without any understanding of grammar.
To be more precise, I’m advocating that lawyers stop culling at the first tier, as if their lives depended upon a massive reduction in terabytes. I’m suggesting that culling ought to be done by the computer, and that valuable metadata (in a really, really board sense) ought to be retained until the end of the project. I’m intimating that the document corpus is a body and it’s integrity depends upon the entirety of its members.
Cataphora is the first and only provider to develop deep analytics (not mere data statistics or simple email widgets) that give insight into the facts expressed by the ESI dataset. True analytics can (among many other things) detect individual and organizational “heartbeats” and de facto organizational substructures, evaluate typical versus anomalous behavior, assess consistency and variation in an organization’s processes, and detect patterns of data deletion.
If you’ve got lawyers doing the culling and searching, here’s yer sign: you’re going about it the wrong way. It’s like taking a hachet to an old growth forest of oak with no appreciation for the vital role played by acorns.
I say, hire yourself a legally-trained person who knows about taxonomies and understands the difference between DATA, INFORMATION and ARGUMENT.
Lawyers, do not. Not unless they’ve taken “Data 101.” They usually work bass ackwards and try to squeeze everything into theory, instead of first trying to understand what they’ve got.
This is where Cataphora’s mission is key: understand the forest before you start cutting trees.
Thus, sayeth the Mighty Snarker, thereby ending-eth the lesson!
And, yes, I’ve practiced law,–corporate, criminal, legal services, international, state, federal, appellate…blah, blah, blah! And that, more than any other reason, is why doc review is just fine by me.
And, yes, like many others, I do doc reviews because I have an ulterior motive. Eh…I want to master the Art of the Doc Review.
Do I worry about finding a job? Sometimes…but then again, there aren’t that many experienced Japanese business fluent U.S.-licensed attorneys willing to do document reviews. So, eh, I feel pretty OK with my little contribution to international dispute resolution.
Do I particularly care about who will win the case ? Nope. Not my job.
Do I stay up late at night worrying about my metrics? Nope! If they tell me to slow down or change the way I code, I will.
Do I miss making lots of money? Duh! But, there are other things in life and getting paid to dork out on doc review software while moving the mouse now and then sure beats *working* for a living!
No…I’m one of those oddballs who does the Time Warp inside my head every time a new Japanese Document Review listing hits Craig’s List…more on that later.
State of Document Review
Ok, so what is the State of Document Review?
First, I would say that in terms of hiring lawyers to do the work…that’s almost near the end. But, there’s a shift that will happen that will save a few…more on this later.
Between technology and outsourcing, American lawyers will soon be completely ghettoized to the point where it makes no sense to continue to pay bar dues.
The question is whether the firms will continue to support the downward spiral in document review wages…and whether attorneys will continue to accept them after the markets pick up and clients get litigation happy feet once again.
If the ABA and other organizations step in with a stimulus package (“Document Review is The Practice Of Law”), that will slow the hemorrhage, but that’s about it. New lawyers already have nowhere to go and they’re not, therefore, as able to stay competitive when the rent man comes calling.
The professionalization of document review, in my mind, therefore, is a good thing. But, only if the rates go back up.
Oh sure, we’ll always have small firms that can take on the big firms when they need taking on, but like that partner from Heller said recently,
What worries me is that there are so many people out of work now…what are they going ot do in the short term when teh rainmaking was down to partners like Kim adn they never got the chance to build their own client base?
Second, my prediction is that law as we know it in America is going to be re-imagined in a major way. It has already started with Obama’s transparency program. There’s nothing the big firms, solo practitioners or the ABA can do about it, because contrary to popular opinion, law is NOT rocket science. In fact, there’s very little science involved: it’s mostly method. And, computers are very, very good at methods.
Which brings me to my final point for now…
Third, it’s the technology, stupid! There are some VERY cool companies and products out there that are making legal tasks magnificently easy. There’s cutting edge work being done in document review, which will have a trickle sideways effect on the rest of legal practice. Just you wait and see!!
I HAVE! And, it’s still effin’ brilliant, because it has given people permission to conceptualize data-related tasks, sort of like one of those massive firecrackers on July 4th that keeps going and going until the next one and you never get a break in the action, so you’re never sure where one ends and another begins.
[ Oh geeze. Do NOT google firecracker images. Just don't. ]
Throw in a few lines of Bekkerman and the implications are not even 1/2 fulfilled, as far as law is concerned. So, colleagues of mine: hold onto your hats!
Companies with CRAP interfaces better hold onto their lunches, though, because companies like H5 and Mimosa are taking things to the next level.
These companies truly rock. Why? Because the stuff they’re doing is me + $10 million dollars. What’s not to like?!
Richard Susskind’s New Book
Richard Susskind’s new book “The End of Lawyers?: Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services” is making the rounds, and it’s a must read.
I wrote all sorts of notes on his last ones, which I’ll upload when I get the chance since at least one volume is over there on the shelf, but chances are, the foreward on the new book will have something like “Oh, well, Yes, I *did* write a book on legal technology several years ago…but this is the book you should now read.” So, why not start there and I’ll drag up the other stuff later.
To be honest, on the whole, I thought his original model was…er…eh…not all that brilliant. I actually said so in a presentation I gave to the PHP Works! conference in Toronto and got away with it, because PHP5 was much more exciting than legal software.
In other words, the programmers there didn’t give a sh*t about legal software as a service (as it is now called) even though I jumped up and down and said how cool legal tech could be delivered over the Internet…I think some of them were just happy to see a girl who wasn’t there just for lunch [sigh].
It was a good presentation…not it wasn’t…but it wasn’t the worst I’ve ever seen. Anyway, no sense being embarrassed: I’ll try to find at least the PDF of the slides and post it. I think I sent it to M. Susskind way back then, so I might as well stand by it!
Maybe Susskind’s work was seminal,–but then again, lots of things are seminal. That doesn’t make them right. I guess the main problem I had was that it was what I’d call “top down analysis.” I’m pretty sure I also thought the economics was off, because in my experience, the differentiator for big firms was not the technology (rapidly being brought to the average attrney), but the ability to marc=shall resources to GET THINGS DONE by throwing bodies and consolidating influence.
But, who am I? Nobody. So, get the book and judge for yourself! Oh, and read the review by the Adam Smith, Esq. Blog for an idea of what you’re getting into.
Then, come on back and argue with me!
Not much use to those of us in the trenches envisioning the tools that lawyers could use. See, the problem with any book about legal technology is that it’s old before it makes it to the bookshelves.
And, in the early 2000s, it would have been old before the final edit, because things on the ground were moving at the speed of a Yahoo yodel.
So, I’ve two books to read somehow in the next few months (hopefully I’ll get a BRIEF…a few weeks is all I want… breather between projects).
Then, we can have a nice chat about the “State of Document Review.”
Something to think about, that goes beyond the issue of multi-byte data ( a problem that can be solved ).
Law is a process of communication that reflects and re-inforces what is and is not “OK.” Even though we have only a few major systems of law (Anglo-American, Civil, tribal, communist, etc), the complexity of law is why “lawyer” can stand as it’s own as a profession. As lawyers, we interpret the interpretations of culture, thereby recreating culture in an infinite loop.
So, as we think about the relationship between law and the semantic web, we see just how hard it is to develop cross-cultural ontologies. It’s hard, because defining what a group is, is one of the functions of “culture,”–that is, it’s one of the things that separates cultures.
One aspect of the Obama Administration that I most look forward to, is the manner in which Obama has that conversation with the nation, and the way in which a broader ontological approach to policy and international relationships takes hold.
In fact, both Michelle Obama and Barack Obama come from the legal elite, which means that the conversation will show a balance of the populism which characterized his communication throughout the campaign, as well as the “pragmatism,”–a form of foundational conservatism.
Finding a way to reconcile tomatoes and tomah-toes is what this article is aboot/about:development of multilingual ontologies “New Method For Building Multilingual Ontologies That Can Be Applied To The Semantic Web.”
Solutions like Nstein’s and others can help to reduce the expense of human tagging or even introduce tagging where there’s been no human available to perform this task. Utlimately, costs can only be reduced to zero and businesses rely on revenues and profits for success. Nstein is cognizant of this fact and tries to point its customers in the right direction – for example, once a publisher’s content has been tagged it can be tailored to produce a feed based on a person, place, or thing. For some publishers this can represent a new and very welcome revenue stream. Another example is a common trait of NLP technology, which is the publication of additional content links that are related to the primary article on a given page. Again, some publishers will find the resulting performance an improvement over their current state of affairs.
21 May, 2008
Bono, U2 lead singer and anti-poverty activist to receive Honorary Doctorate from Keio University
Bono will also deliver a lecture to Keio students
Keio University will confer the Honorary Degree of Doctor of Law, honoris causa, upon Mr. Paul David Hewson, who is known as Bono, in recognition for his work in the fight against poverty and AIDS in Africa. The Ceremony and a lecture will be held on Tuesday 27 May from 16:20. Please cover this story. Please note that this release is embargoed at 6 pm 27 May 2008. (Japan standard time).
1. Conferring the Honorary Doctorate of Law Bono has been involved in the fight against poverty for more than twenty years. Both as a musician with U2 and in his lobbying of international leaders, he has worked to raise awareness and promote effective political action to eliminate extreme poverty and disease, especially in Africa. Through his music and his activism Bono has helped to deliver results for the poorest people in the world. He will continue that work during his visit to Japan during Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) conference and in the lead-up to the G8 in July. Bono is co-founder of the ONE Campaign, which has more than 2.4 million members engaged in the fight against poverty. Keio University, which was established 150 years ago in 1858 under the principal of dokuritsu jison (independence and self-respect), has aspired to establish a true “ public realm” of civil society, independent of the bureaucracy. Keio has continuously nurtured leaders of civil society. In recognition of Bono’s outstanding leadership as an activist who appeals to our human conscience in the fight against global poverty, Keio University confers on him the honorary degree of Doctor of Law.
I’m not sure if grade inflation is responsible, but I’m pretty sure that a history of 20-plus years as a rock star, social networking genius and entrepreneur won’t help on the Multi-State.
Too bad every video of his acceptance speech seems to have been pulled from the web!
Anyway, the legal profession (even if it’s just honorary) is all the better for the addition of one more … eh… member.
Today, “The Mighty Snarker” ( as I have recently been dubbed )..:o))…went back to the Michigan Bar website and with an abundance of curiosity started clicking around to see what was new.
What I found was a section on “Practice Management Resource Center.” Again, with an amount of curiosity that directly contradicts my list of objectives for the day, I started clicking.
It took a long time to find anything.
Now, were I not obsessed with taxonomies and findability these days, I might continue clicking for quite a while, happily doing my lipsticked-pig-rooting-for-truffles act and wondering what my $350 plus pays for every year.
But, what I found was an outdated site that still uses cold fusion pages.
COLD FUSION PAGES!
Lawyers are busy. Their staff are busy. So, it shouldn’t take 6 (and yes, I counted) clicks to get to a PDF of the Business Plan Outline, with three of those clicks on a teeny tiny little plus sign.
I know why I can’t take cold fusion pages: they’re relics. But, I have a fondness for the State Bar of Michigan. So this isn’t a snark, so much as a plea on behalf of my brethern and sistern: fix it!
Here’s what I’d do in three acts:
Give the user a choice on how to view the content, –then just give it to them in 3-clicks or less by replacing the Russian doll model with visible lists. Pull out the Checklists and Guidelines, List and Articles. Make them top level items.
Combine the downloads section together with the lending library and legal software sections
Add the “latest content” to the home page and/or text it out to the people who use it
Occasionally, I stick my head up and actually read the articles that discuss the role of technology in the litigation process.
Having thought about this stuff on the small scale for a LONG time, it’s always kinda fun to see people state the BLEEDING OBVIOUS…so very cogently and thoughtfully. I am SO no one to be commenting on the proclamations of “legal technology experts,” but what the hell. Here goes.
So, today, I read this great article by Ralph Losey that fails because it continues to put the responsibility for the morass of e-discovery where it doesn’t belong : with lawyers. I am a well-trained lawyer, but I solidly disagree that lawyers are equipped to be “in control” of the technical tools of their trade to the extent that one should suggest they ought to be.
In my view, the best practice is to learn how to delegate, and to know how to run a project properly. Do it “Serenity” style (the Firefly version, not the prayer) and allow people to do what they do best.
The objective should be to free the lawyer to be a lawyer, — not to saddle the lawyer with things about which they know very little.
Anyway, Losey begins with the problem:
…Runaway e-discovery costs are making it too expensive and uncertain to try cases. Litigants, especially large companies, are driven to ADR or forced to settle at inflated prices just to avoid e-discovery.
[ <snark> What he doesn't say is that lawyers don't like ADR because 1) it works and 2) they're not willing to give up the gladiator mentality that characterizes lawyers from the first day of law school to the day one leaves the profession well-fatted or depleted...to follow your bliss growing exotic mushrooms in the wilds of Montana (disclaimer; if this is you, well, own it if the shoe fits. I don't know you, I just made this up for the extreme example). [taking a breath]
And, sooooorry, but it annoys me when people say things like “driven to ADR” as if it wasn’t there first. Stop hiring the problem as your neutral and you’ll get better results.</snark> ]
Ok, so what’s my source of disagreement? Surely, Losey is right about many things,and most importantly, the firms are gonna listen to him, so it’s important to support the voice of reason.
But, the new e-discovery rules are not the problem. Neither is the explosion of legal tech around compliance with e-discovery requirements. A computer really doesn’t care whether you have terabytes or petabytes of data, once you help it along by create batching and running several processors in tandem. You don’t even have to go to India to get economies of scale. The software issue is that people false expectations about what a computer can do when it is not given the right data.
I could talk about lots of points of contention in legal technology, but the main problem that this article rasies for me is the highly rebuttal presumption that lawyers are the ones who ought to control legal technology. Love the emperor metaphor, but, to me, the question isn’t the Emperor’s nudity, but whether that will be replaced with a Bob Mackie dress:
Losey doesn’t really admit that lawyers like to feel they know everything. He doesn’t really seem to take issue with law firms trying to write software and call it “best practice.” Which is probably why people will listen to this advice.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that even the best lawyers DON’T know everything. Ok, they know law. Or, maybe they specialize in breaking law for their client’s benefit. Either case is fine by me, –because that’s what the profession is trained to do.
But, what they DON’T know is how to build taxonomies or do true concept search. They DON’T know how to write good software and they DON’T know how to turn digital data into useful information (design).
Anyway, this is how he puts it:
To put it bluntly, most of us trial lawyers are not fully competent to practice law in today’s digital age of terabytes of potential evidence.
“Bluntly”? What this assessment doesn’t do is take on the mistaken notion that “practicing law” includes mastering technology. I challenge the aggrandizement of the legal profession and the refusal to parse problems into legal and non-legal issues so the best solution can be devised for the client. Most lawyers approach problems with a pocketful of hammers. <resumption of snark>Which is why they can’t handle ADR properly done and revert to ADR-as-litigation, increasing client consternation instead of allaying their concerns.</resumption of snark>
What I would like to see instead is the active development of the legal tech community to support lawyers, with the assurance that they are equal partners in the search for client justice. The non-profit world provides a great example with the ProBono.net project. Having worked with small start-ups such as Pika Software, I know that open source tools not only work, can be rapidly developed and deployed with a minimal amount of support.
Sedona is a great conference with great publications,–but so far, it remains the preserve of the white shoe firms. I’d love to go without having to be a member of the legal elite. [Maybe I can get in as a diversity attendee... substitute "geek" for "gay" and I think I've got all the minority bases covered! Hee hee! ] At any rate, open this puppy up and let’s get some diversity in the realm of what makes for good legal technology by integrating the views of geeks, as well as gurus.
“Protodigital” ? This is really kinda silly:
This failure of many litigation decision-makers to think beyond the protodigital is having catastrophic consequences for the ability of our civil justice system to deliver the just, speedy, and inexpensive determination of ANY action. (bold font retained)
It’s really just another way of saying certain people really oughta retire and let the new generation come on through and do things differently. People don’t like change, because it reduces their ability to command. When lawyers give up the obsessive need to control, then the profession will be better off. Did Obama micromanage his tech team,–the results show clearly that he did not.
So, while I definitely agree that the inquisitorial system, for all its merits, won’t work here, that doesn’t mean lawyers still need to run the entire show.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of lawyers and paralegals involved with e-discovery today, typically those involved only occasionally or on a part-time basis, do not have the skills and deep knowledge required for economical e-discovery.
Yup. That’s because document review is NOT legal representation. But, doc reviewers are hired as if it is.
Further, (and I feel a bit of the snark coming back here), I just took a Project Management course with this amazing instructor, who within the space of about 5 minutes made it clear that project management is a critical skill for the next century. She also, without naming law in particular, demonstrated why most litigation projects fail: lawyers are NOT good project managers. Because good project management is a skill nt taught in law school:
In fact, the skills that make a good lawyer are antithetical to leadership, and team leadership in particular. Those skills that make some of us worth $150,000 to start also make us TERRIBLE at communicating a well-considered litigation plan, although clients who use project management skills every day are starting to demand that lawyers get with it.
Ok, so maybe this is somewhat Oedipal: my Dad was a project manager and it took me __ years to figure out not only that anything worth doing was worth doing well but that anything worth doing wel required planning as a “project.” “Fail to plan, plan to fail.” Which is why I pulled my sites and am re-engineering (yet again) the software projects I create from the ground up. For the last time … until I hand it off to someone else! The benefit of coding things myself is that I know what I don’t know. But, it also means that when I delegate, the vendors chosen won’t being able to waste my money.
What I say is: give the client flippin’ critical path analysis! Give the client a Gantt chart and show them that a ridiculous position is going to cost them money. This should be standard ops, –not the preserve of the firms that charge $500 an hour. It’s not about metrics on the backend, but proper planning on the front end. I think that’s where Web 2.0’s obsession with “metrics” came at the expense of proper planning. But, you can’t DO Web 3.0 without it, so there’s a fair bit of a correction going on.
So, to keep this from turning into…well, a sermon…go read Losey’s Sermon of Protodigital Transcendence …and see whether it resonates. In my book, so long as lawyers are in control of things they have no business trying to run (on conflict of interest principles), these suggestions aren’t going to do any good.
Here are four things I think make sense (some of which are stated in the Losey article):
1) Form a relationship with a legal technology consultant with project management training independent of your firm. You need someone to call out the weedy pigeons and turnips.
2) Designate an attorney in your firm to be the point person for a legal tech team. Don’t get silly and try to write your own software. Rather, work with vendors so that they can make software that makes sense, instead of stitching together disparate applications to make the sale.
3) Work the ABA and local bar associations to open source the tools of the trade to technical mashups: legal opinions, court briefs, discovery orders. Transparency in the profession will create better opportunities for quality lawyering.
4) require project management training for all attorneys as CLE.
Still here. Still studying semantics. Or, more precisely, engaging in semantics.
Found this quote from this thoughtful blog entry by a guy named Kashori in 2005, in response to a query about how to redesign my databases so that they can evolve and communicate with other applications:
The comparison of semantic web and database technologies brings up this question in my mind. In the absen(c)e of the close coupling of designers, developers, users, and applications that is found in successful database implementations, what do the semantic web technologies offer in the way of establishing a shared view of the cor(r)espondence between the data and real world?
I don’t know if it would be great to be able to directly query Google with the phrase “how to redesign my databases so that they can evolve and communicate with other applications”, but I did try it and was rewarded with an ample amount of Google poo. I’m sure they’ll have it licked in a few years, but meanwhile, I like the hunter-gatherer approach, because I learn stuff along the way.
The problem in a nutshell is that that the typical database is built for a specific application and has a controlled vocabulary reflective of the application. This means it usually doesn’t play well with various other data descriptions found in the wild. There are ways to find it, and indeed Microsoft makes it relatively easy to figure out which XML elements exist in a document. The problem is that you can’t access them all easily.
Clearly the short term solution has been to build APIs, but I’m thinking that it would be better to re-build my databases from scratch NOW, rather than suffer from inordinate bloat later. In other words, I think it makes sense to try to pull as much residual semantic logic as possible OUT of the database and shift it to closer to the user using a combination of maximizing the value of HTTP requests and scripting modules that can be re-factored more easily (a combination of PHP and JQuery, for the most part).
So, short of building bridging tools and paying intermediaries to figure this out after building one’s own little silo, the problem remains of how to structure relational tables so that they are not only fast on the join, but play well with others from the start. I figure it’s all in the potty training.
The interesting thing, is that this project has an effect on everything from the page design to how I implement JQuery. I’m going to have to scrimp, because I can’t learn everything Neo-style (“Tank: Hit me!”…nope, didn’t work!), but the goal is to at least know what I can and then build my own domain-filled NeverLand with the idea that it WILL be a nice, normal fun place to be with as few hidden dangers as possible.
I’m thinking that it means thing-fying as much as possible. Google clearly has it, but I’m pretty dang sure their method is proprietary. So, like everyone else on this side of VC cash, I’m going to roll my own. The difference is, that as the article suggests, I’m going to do my best to conform to whatever standards exist, leveraging the intelligence and degrees of people who paid to go to university to study this stuff.
The reasons to do this are obvious:
1) if you use data from open sources, it will be easier to integrate if you reduce items to their lowest common denominator and store them that way
2) if you do the crunching repetitively, it’s always going to be better to save the result on the server in XML or html, so tha reduces the need to pul on the database
3) I can’t think of anything else to do.
In the meantime, thanks to Kashori for these resources:
There is a highly informative article about the responsibilities of lawyers when it comes to “unsolicited” information received from potential clients.
On the web, lawyers are sent information everyday that could lead to a conflict of interest. The most common case would be the one in which both parties to an accident shotgun an email to all lawyers on-line giving detailed information about the same accident.
In the past, a lot of men’s support groups told their members to interview a lot of lawyers with the sole objective of preventing the wife from later retaining that lawyer. I’m sure it still goes on, but the better lawyer will interview people FIRST for conflict, then for details.
The woman who inadvertently revealed her extramarital affair to her husband’s divorce lawyer used an electronic form on the firm’s Web site to submit information about the case, noted the California State Bar’s ethics committee. In order to proceed, she was required to consent electronically to certain terms, including an agreement that no “attorney-client relationship” or “confidential relationship” was formed.
It’s not so easy on the web, because people seem to lose all sense of self-protection when e-mailing lawyers on the web. I’m sure it’s because they simply don’t know and it would never occur to them that someone else got there first.
So, what is a lawyer to do, when the wife of a client sends an e-mail admitting that she’s a compulsive gambler, and asks for his help in getting a quickie divorce so she can marry the guy she met in Vegas the week before?
Some points of notice to people designing advanced web tools for lawyers that involve incoming clients:
1) Build in a system of electronic intake triage.
Don’t just warn the potential client using boilerplate legalese. Make it interactive by asking the person to identify all other parties and then have that display FIRST, before the e-mail content appears. Do this in all e-mail forms exposed to the public. Heck, do it on the intranet too! You never know when a disgruntled, but not-quite-clued-in employee will write asking about how he can get out of a non-compete agreement.
But the committee decided that those disclaimers were inadequate, and that the lawyer could not represent the husband. The committee said they were “not in sufficiently plain terms to defeat the visitor’s reasonable belief that the lawyer is consulting confidentially with the visitor.”
The committee noted that a disclaimer stating, “I understand and agree that law firm will have no duty to keep confidential the information I am now transmitting to law firm,” would have eliminated any reasonable expectation of confidentiality, allowing the lawyer to represent the husband in spite of the wife’s admissions of adultery.
This is SUCH A SIMPLE SOLUTION!
What you want is documentation of the information and of the fact that it was NOT viewed by counsel. This is a way to help lawyers keep their current clients and prevent mandatory withdrawal. No lawyer wants to withdraw prematurely from a juicy case.
I think this is also the main reason paralegals get a first crack at information. If the paralegal hears it, it’s not as big a taint on the lawyer.
2) Inform the client from the second s/he walks in the electronic door NOT to divulge incriminating information UNTIL they have a written representation agreement.
Prudent lawyers will build in a back door for clients they find they don’t want (I call it the “yeah, I punched my boss” or “it’s just a white lie, –no one will know” client). Further, most bars require a written services agreement in order to secure the right to payment anyway.
There are many services out there (one I’m building included) that will help triage cases for lawyers. Details later.
3) Always ask clients to identify immediately whether they have received or filed court papers of any kind.
Give up the legalese, simply ask: did you get any court papers or anything that LOOKS like a government paper about this??
Then ask again.
Then politely inquire the crumpled paper sticking out of the back pocket, that has the words “SUMM…” written on it, but partially obscured by ketchup.
There are ways to do this electronically. Not that hard to think about.
Does your software package do any of this? Let me know! Leave a comment!
Thanks for the post,–this is an area I am very concerned about and am blogging the issue of Law 2.0, so I’d really love to hear what you think about it. You can see my thoughts at two places: Mullen on Law 2.0+ (for technical web 2.0 + law) and Illegal Patterns (for litigation issues).
I agree that web 2.0 is a reality, but web 2.0 technology is barely scratching the surface with the Avvo site. What they’ve done is impressive, but it’s really a value-added legal directory. What I’m looking for is a substantive approach of taking public data and using it to actively help clients understand and participate in the LAW, not just having a sense of who lawyers are. There’s where real change will occur.
A rating system is helpful, but does it reduce litigation (generally seen as a good thing)? Does it help consumers avoid legal pitfalls? Not really. I prefer the Nolo approach, but also find that Avvo is adding value,–it’s too early to tell yet where that value will truly be. The cool thing about web 2.0 is that it’s a lot easier to turn on whatever dime they need to in order to provide significant value to the legal market.
How many Digg clones really add value? It’s not easy to do, but they’ve made a valiant effort and I’m sure we’ll see many more of the same in the next year as techies figure out what to do and how to do it.
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