Just a quick note, over at Gabe’s Guide, I’ve posted a bunch of links on LegalTech - New York, as well as a few of the snowpocolapse here in D.C. Still trying to dig my way out over here.

Lazy Sunday Links 2.7.10: The LegalTech Aftermath/Superbowl Sunday/Snowmageddon, Edition [Gabe’s Guide]

At LegalTech, I had a chance to attend a panel with some very interesting speakers on the “future” of law.

During this panel, a question was posed to a person — we’ll call him “David L.” — on whether law students are feeling better about the market now as opposed to six or twelve months ago. His answer: yes, but perhaps not in the way you might imagine. Students are feeling better because they’ve become resigned to their fates, which has actually been quite liberating. After all, “Why stress about your career when you’ll be just lucky to have one?”

Another resignation to fate was taking place right before my eyes, one that went almost completely unnoticed among those in attendance: the end of the current BigLaw Partner-Associate (Cravath) Model.

More after the jump.

When we reviewed Morrison & Foerster’s new website yesterday, a commenter advised us to check out the firm’s career page for those who think they might have “that MoFo mojo” (in the words of the firm).

The commenter was amused by MoFo’s comparing new lawyers to pigeons, and its advice on how to avoid being “@$%#@! Pigeonholed.” We were amused, though, by its assessment of “what makes a whole lawyer” and how to be successful as a new associate at MoFo.

If you’ve ever felt like Biglaw just saw you as a beast of burden, MoFo confirms it, using a cow to illustrate the various cuts of a good lawyer:

Intellectual curiosity is important and is, sensibly, the flavor found in the cow’s head. What does MooFo ascribe to the rump?

At LegalTech, Thomson Reuters celebrated Tuesday night’s announcement of acquiring the Minneapolis based SuperLawyers with all kinds of bells and whistles. Unfortunately the ringers on the bells were defective and the whistles were meant for dogs. No one from Thomson at LegalTech was prepared to really discuss anything regarding the SuperLawyers pick-up.

“Oh, that’s a Westlaw thing, you should go talk to Westlaw,” one Thomson rep told me. Unfortunately the Westlaw folks were giving me the same blank stares.

Not to say that LegalTech wasn’t an overall success. More after the jump.

Morrison & Foerster has fully embraced the moniker MoFo. And now the firm appears to be embracing a WTF theme for its website.

MoFo rolled out the new website recently. Tipsters say the new site took years and many dollars to create. The design budget is rumored to be $1 million. (We’ve asked the firm to comment on the cost, but it has not responded.)

The site, however, doesn’t look like a million bucks. Multiple readers have checked it out and sent us emails like this one:

It looks like someone hacked their site, or that they delegated web design (and authorship) to a 13-year-old kid learning HTML. Truly dreadful.

Most Biglaw websites are pretty staid. MoFo is seriously rocking the Biglaw boat with this redesign. There are mind games, sound effects, and optical illusions. We give you a tour after the jump.

After taking a a shot to the chin on news of Lexis Nexis’ new partnership with Microsoft, Thomson Reuters (the parent company of Westlaw), has announced that they are acquiring SuperLawyers.

This literally just broke tonight, and like most things in my life I am a bit perplexed on this. I would assume this would be a feature of their Westlaw component, but it very well could be it’s own separate entity. Also, there are some potential conflicts. Would a firm that is a heavy subscriber to Westlaw or Thomson services tend to be more “super” than firms that don’t.

More details should come out tomorrow, so I will try to keep you updated.

It’s almost as if Westlaw (Thomson Reuters) had a crystal ball before this year’s LegalTech. From the get-go, they brought out the razzle dazzle in announcing their new WestlawNext. Before you could even enter the exhibit hall, they had music, giant television screens, and people running around with MacBook Airs showing off their new product. Hello smoke, meet mirrors.

However, all the fanfare failed to temper LexisNexis’s big announcement: a legal research partnership with Microsoft. From the ABA Journal

The competition for your legal research dollars just got a little more intense today as LexisNexis unveiled at LegalTech in New York its newest offering: a partnership with Microsoft.

Lexis will now be integrated into Microsoft Office products, allowing users to do legal and general research directly while working in Microsoft Word, Outlook and SharePoint. Users, who must have a Lexis subscription, need only click on a Lexis tab in the ribbon of utilities available in Microsoft Office 2007 and the forthcoming 2010 version to start researching, Shepardizing cases or even gathering information from Bing or Google search engines. There is no need to navigate separately to the Web and log on to Lexis or a search engine.

So the salvos here at LegalTech have been launched. Will Westlaw have to “Google-ize” themselves as well, or (dare I say) “Twitterize”? Let’s not forget about Bloomberg’s entry into the fray with BLAW. Who knows, maybe they will attempt legal research on Foursquare. Kidding, kidding.

One thing is for certain, the battle continues…

It has been a whirlwind of a day here at LegalTech, and I still have a few meetings to go. I was going to live blog the panel where David Lat was speaking, but couldn’t get a signal, even with a Verizon internet cartridge. The irony is not lost on me being at a legal technology conference.

Lots to blog about, but the one thing I will say right now, this event is much bigger than last year. There is also a different vibe. People seem to have much more enthusiasm. Last year the mood was much more mundane, probably because everyone knew the economy was in the tank. The higher level of activity is a positive sign for anyone working in the legal industry.

I will try to write up a summary of the day’s events tonight or early, early in the morning. Right now I am off to two more meetings and then “B-Discovery,” which is a happy hour for e-discovery professionals. The “B” in B-Discovery stands for “Bar,” go figure. However this is the largest B-Discovery of the year and likely to draw over a thousand people. It will be held at Touch Night Club.

More later…

Hello to everyone out there in the legal blogosphere! My name is Gabe Acevedo, and I was thrilled and honored last month to be asked to blog at LegalTech New York for Above The Law.

To give a little background on myself, I am an attorney based out of Washington, DC, and have been a part of the e-discovery industry since I was first licensed in 2003. However, what I am most known for is a little blog I call “Gabe’s Guide to the e-Discovery Universe.” My blog is informative, but I also try to keep light and humorous whenever possible. I think the legal technology industry—or maybe just the legal industry in general—can always use a little hilarity every now and then.

An opening salvo from LegalTech after the jump.

There is an excellent new product on the market. A tipster reports:

A machine that turns your JD into something useful. Or, what to do with all those resumes “on file”. Or, the next cost cutting measure. So many possibilities…

Remember when K&L Gates decided to go with cheap toilet paper in their office bathrooms? Well, this seems like an elegant solution.

But I’m not sure that we’ll be seeing this device at Legal Tech next week.

Earlier: K&L Gates to Nickels and Dimes

Over the holiday weekend, reports came pouring into the ATL inbox about the most expensive iPhone app currently on the market. It costs $1,000 and is aimed at legal types, specifically those who want to be lawyers in California. From PCWorld:

BarMax: California Edition, available now in the iPhone’s App Store for $999.99, is a study guide for the California Bar Exam. Harvard lawyers oversaw development of the app, which weighs in at 1 GB and includes outlines, lectures, a study calendar, and real questions and essays from previous exams. The only comparable app available now is from BarBri, but you must be enrolled in the company’s $3000 to $4000 classes to use most of the features.

According to TechCrunch, the man behind the app is Mike Ghaffary, a JD/MBA ‘06 Harvard grad. Ghaffary was just recently admitted to the California bar himself, in December 2009.

He says he came up with the BarMax app idea while studying…

Shortly before 5 p.m., the Supreme Court ruled against broadcast of the Proposition 8 trial, currently taking place in San Francisco. The Court split 5-4, with the majority setting forth its reasoning in a 17-page per curiam opinion. Justice Breyer dissented, joined by Justices Stevens, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor.

You can read the per curiam opinion and Justice Breyer’s (excellent) dissent over here. Analysis and commentary, from Lyle Denniston and Chris Geidner, can be accessed at SCOTUSblog and Law Dork.

(We’ve already told you how we feel about this issue. In addition, about 80 percent of you support broadcast of the Prop 8 trial.)

Prop 8 Court TV blocked [SCOTUSblog]
SCOTUS Blocks Broadcast [Law Dork]

Earlier: Cameras in the Prop 8 Courtroom: Why Not?

A disclaimer: we’re not sure how we feel about Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the federal constitutional challenge brought by superlawyers Ted Olson and David Boies to Proposition 8, California’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage. We are somewhat sympathetic to Jonathan Adler’s position: gay marriage makes perfect sense as a policy matter, but the constitutional case is less clear. (We suspect that Elie may be more supportive of the Perry litigation and its ultimate objective; see here.)

We do know, however, how we feel about cameras in the courtroom: we are strongly in favor of them. For more, see our Washington Post piece. The right to an open and public trial is guaranteed by the Constitution, and understanding what’s going on in our courts is a crucial part of democratic self-governance.

The standard for closing a courtroom to the public is very high, and justifiably so. We the People should be allowed to know — and to hear, and to see — what is transpiring within our courts. After all, these are our laws being interpreted, our rights being adjudicated, and our taxpayer dollars at work.

And in this age of videoconferencing, YouTube, blogging, and Twitter, the distinction between physical and virtual attendance of court proceedings is becoming increasingly artificial. If we can read reporter Dan Levine’s real-time tweets about the Prop 8 trial, or if we can read blog posts published during breaks about what just transpired in open court, why shouldn’t we be able to watch the proceedings ourselves, in livestreaming video? Or, if we can’t watch real-time video, why can’t we watch video posted online after the fact?

This is why we are so disappointed in the Supreme Court’s decision to kill, at least for now, efforts to broadcast the Prop 8 trial. This is why we strongly support the efforts of Chief Judge Vaughn Walker (N.D. Cal.), who is presiding over the trial, and Chief Judge Alex Kozinski (9th Cir.), who is spearheading a Ninth Circuit pilot project providing for cameras in the courtroom, to offer some wider broadcast of the proceedings (whether on YouTube, an official court website, or even just to federal courthouses outside San Francisco).

More discussion, plus a READER POLL, after the jump.

As 2010 gets underway, a couple of law schools are taking steps to keep students from accessing the internet while they’re in class. This would be a pretty mundane and much expected story, if we all lived in China.

The most extreme attempt by a law school to captivate an audience comes from Villanova Law. Professors there on a case-by-case basis have been banning the use of laptops in class. That’s right, some professors are going totally old school and forcing their students to take handwritten notes, just like students did in the 1800s. A tipster puts Villanova’s attempt to turn back the clock this way:

There seems to be a growing movement at Villanova Law to ban laptop use in class. Last year, an entire section of 1Ls was not permitted to use laptops and both a contracts and crim law professor in another section banned them as well. Now a Con Law professor teaching 2Ls has banned them for Con Law 2 this semester. In general, the professors doing this complain that students who use laptops in class tend to surf the web or gchat/IM rather than pay attention, which distracts both themselves and classmates around them who look at their screens. As a result, these professors claim that class discussion is harmed. I can’t dispute that logic, but I do think laptops in class benefit many students. Personally, I take extremely thorough notes in class because of my laptop and only surf the web when some jackass makes an asinine point just to hear himself speak, so the laptop is a tremendous educational tool for me.

I had a very good professor who once said: “If you are more entertained sitting at home after you’ve already paid to attend my class, the fault lies with me.” Why don’t more professors internalize this basic truth? Professors — professors whose high salaries are made possible by the students they teach — should be able to be more entertaining and informative than “the internet.”

Shutting down the ‘net, even to the point of outlawing laptops altogether, isn’t going to make students pay attention. Trust me, students are capable of zoning out in any number of ways. Ever heard of a doodle?

Luckily, Villanova’s acting dean, Doris Brogan, tells us that the bans are the actions of a few professors who are experimenting, not the stated policy of the law school.

The news from Dean Brogan, and a look at Albany Law School’s draconian test run, after the jump.

Because when you want to argue against average Americans having access to a basic civil right, you want to make sure nobody sees you doing it. From the Associated Press:

The Supreme Court is blocking a broadcast of the trial on California’s same-sex marriage ban, at least for the first few days.

The federal trial is scheduled to begin later Monday in San Francisco. It will consider whether the Proposition 8 gay marriage ban approved by California voters in November 2008 is legal.

The high court on Monday said it will not allow video of the trial to be posted on YouTube.com, even with a delay, until the justices have more time to consider the issue. It said that Monday’s order will be in place at least until Wednesday. Opponents of the broadcast say they fear witness testimony might be affected if cameras are present. Justice Stephen Breyer said he would have allowed cameras while the court considers the matter.

Whatever. I’d be more worked up about this, but I’m still waiting for FIFA to realize that there is a thing called instant replay. Old people, organizations, and institutions tend to react really slowly to obvious technological changes.

UPDATE: After the jump, SCOTUSblog opines on why the Court mandated the delay.

As Quinn Emanuel folks are well aware (“CHECK YOU EMAILS”), there are many employees out there who are expected to be chained to their work at all times. The BlackBerry goes to bed with you, and not just because of its vibrate function. Sometimes the bedroom talk makes its way onto the BlackBerry.

Such was the case for Jeff Quon, a SWAT officer in California. He was fired after his lieutenant read hundreds of steamy text messages sent from Quon’s work pager. Quon sued the police department, arguing that the search of his texts was a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights.

Funny, we didn’t know SWAT officers even knew that there was a Fourth Amendment.

Now SCOTUS will be weighing in on privacy rights for personal communications on work-issued devices. Emily Bazelon sketches out the case’s path to One First Street over at Slate:

In June 2008, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed with [Quon]. He had a reasonable expectation of privacy, the court said, given what his supervisor told him about paying for extra messages — the department’s “operational reality.” The court also found that there were other, less intrusive ways for the police chief to figure out whether Quon was frittering away his time: Warning him ahead of time to quit sending so many messages, asking him to count the characters himself, or asking him to cross out the personal parts before the department reviewed them.

This ruling, by Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw for a panel of three judges, implicitly recognizes that company pagers and e-mail accounts often turn into personal ones.

Should Quon be protected against the eyes of the boss, and in this case the law, reading the responses to “What R U wearing?”

It’s almost 2010. 2010! The future is here!

So where, pray tell, are my freaking robots? When I was a kid, I was promised robots that would clean my house and prepare my meals and submit to my sexual perversions. Yet here we are, well into the 21st century, and there is not a robot slave to be found. What a ripoff. I’m so angry I feel like going back in time and killing John Connor.

I want my robot helpers, now. But the WSJ Law Blog and the San Francisco Chronicle tell me that I am nowhere near ready for the legal consequences of robots with access to home appliances and power tools. From the Law Blog:

A SF Chronicle story out Monday lays out the issue:

Robots have been an increasingly familiar sight in recent years, disarming explosives in Iraq, delivering mail in industrial complexes or bringing drugs to nurses in hospitals… .

As robots leave the factories and move into homes and businesses, there is going to be more and more interaction between regular people and increasingly more competent — and mobile — machines, said M. Ryan Calo, a residential fellow at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. And more contact always means more problems, and the U.S. legal system better be prepared, he said.

“These are devices that don’t have a predetermined usage; they’re not toasters,” he said.

“There’s a growing concern now about robot ethics, but what’s missing from those discussions is pragmatic lawyers thinking about what’s going to happen in the future.”

I’m sure that Isaac Asimov has already thought through this problem, but let’s look at what some lawyers have to say.

Here we have another lawsuit that is based on Nintendo’s Wii, the wildly popular gaming system for children that adults are strangely not embarrassed to love.

Sadly, this lawsuit doesn’t involve a grown woman making herself sick by refusing to urinate. Instead, we have a guy who needs to play as a space traveling princess in order to enjoy himself. Game Spot has the report (gavel bang: Overlawyered):

In the suit, the San Jose, California, gamer takes exception to a recent Nintendo Wii system update that disables access to unauthorized third-party programs like the Homebrew Channel. Specifically, the plaintiff is upset about losing the ability to use a program that would unlock the character Rosalina in Mario Kart Wii. Ordinarily, a player would need to have a Super Mario Galaxy save file on the system in order to unlock that character.

Cause of action? The gamer — and I use that term very generously, considering we’re talking about somebody who loves the Wii — says that Nintendo is ruining his pursuit of happiness.

Details after the jump.

Yesterday we reported on this announcement by Brooklyn Law School:

This semester we have received several warnings from our Internet service provider that copyrighted movies and TV shows are being downloaded illegally via our wireless network. The Information Technology office is now ascertaining who is doing this. Once we have names of the individuals involved, we intend to give them to the copyright holders for enforcement purposes.

This stance proved unpopular with BLS students, as well as ATL readers. In a poll, about 75 percent of readers answered “yes” when asked, “Should Brooklyn Law School do more to protect its students from being sued for illegal downloading?”

It seems that Brooklyn Law School has had a change of heart. Check out the email that went out this afternoon, plus selected reader comments, after the jump.

Apparently so. From a student at Brooklyn Law School:

Today we received this e-mail from the administration, which is causing quite an uproar among the student body.

The gist of it seems to be that, contrary to the practice of other schools, BLS will begin actively investigating [illegal] downloading and proactively providing names of people to media [companies] so [the individuals in question] can be sued.

I believe the typical practice at other schools (graduate and undergraduate) and institutions is to wait for a subpoena and either cooperate or fight the subpoena, not to go out of their way to inform on their students.

The total cost of attendance at Brooklyn Law for the 2009-2010 academic year, for full-time students not living with their parents (God forbid), is a shade over $66,000. Shouldn’t that buy BLS’s silence?

Or is the law school in the right here? Shouldn’t law students, i.e., future lawyers, know and follow the law?

UPDATE: Brooklyn Law has announced a change in this policy.

Read the email and take a poll, after the jump.