Author Archives

    Bryan Sims

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    Case Law on Google

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    The big news that broke last week was that Google Scholar now allows you to search state and federal court opinions. The official announcement is here. I think this is awesome. In general, I believe that making information more available is a good thing. Making our laws freely available and easily searchable is a great thing, for both attorneys and nonattorneys.

    Now, I don’t think that Google Scholar is going to replace West or Lexis anytime soon. Although, like Carolyn Elefant, I have concerns for other providers of legal research. Carolyn explains:

    As I see it, Google’s free legal research services won’t put a dent in LEXIS or Westlaw, at least not for a long, long time,  Instead, they pose a threat to what I’ve collectively termed the “second city” providers like Versuslaw, Casemaker, FastCase or Loislaw.  Right now, most lawyers are able to access those services for free or cheap through deals with the bars – but will bars continue to support those subscriptions when there’s a robust free option available?  My heart goes out to these companies because they served as an oasis for solos when no other options, save the law library and manual research, existed.  Yet I don’t see all of them able to survive the Google onslaught.

    Of these, the greatest concern is likely for those companies whose market is primarily individual attorneys and individual law firms, rather than those companies that provide services to attorneys as a bar association member benefit. Nevertheless, I expect that Google Scholar will eventually affect the business models of these companies. Also, I would not be surprised if Google continues to improve their service and eventually draws a not insignificant portion of the West/Lexis customers away. Yes, there are those who use West and Lexis for their specialized databases. However, those who aren’t using the specialized databases may, in the near future, decide that it is not worth the amount being charged by Lexis and West.

    For other thoughts on this announcement, you can check out the rest of Carolyn’s post, as well as posts by Crime and Federalism, TechnoEsq, Lex Tek, Ernie the Attorney, Jim Calloway, and Rick Klau.

    [Update]

    Check out this analysis of the service from Law on My Phone.


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    Good Grammar is Important

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    I had a submission published on the blog of The society for the Promotion of Good Grammar. This was a sign in a parking garage where we parked when I went to a Jonathan Coulton concert recently with a friend. The worst part was that this was not an isolated sign. My friend and I saw at least a half a dozen signs in the part of the garage we were in.

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    What Does Google Know About You?

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    If you have ever taken a look at the vast number of products that Google offers (and this doesn’t count the stuff that is secretly in development) it is no wonder that some people believe that Google is on a quest to take over the world. I just hope that if that is the case, they are benevolent dictators.

    Anyway, if you use Google products and want to find out what Google knows about you, you need to check out Google Dashboard.

    To find out more about Google Dashboard, check out the video below (which, of course, is hosted on You Tube, which is owned by Google).

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    Simple Certified Mail

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    I do almost all of my simple administrative tasks myself. Mostly because I try to automate them to make the tasks simple and fast to perform. There is one thing, however, that I hate doing: certified mail. It is a pain to deal with and I always delegate that task to my assistant. I have recently discovered a new service that may make certified mail as easy to handle as other routine tasks. This service, called Simple Certified Mail, automates much of the process. Recently I was able to find out more about this service from Keith Pickholz, Marketing Director at Simple Certified Mail.  An interview with Charles Crutchfield, the founder of Simple Certified Mail appears below.

    What is SimpleCertifiedMail.com?

    SimpleCertifiedMail.com is an easy-to-use, web-based service that dramatically speeds up and simplifies the preparation and management of Certified Mail, which is a key process at many law firms. In fact, customers report 75% improvements in productivity when using SimpleCertifiedMail.com.

    Tell me more about SimpleCertifiedMail.com. Why is it better?

    SimpleCertifiedMail.com improves every step of the Certified Mail process.  Let’s start with preparing and sending Certified Mail.

    With SimpleCertifiedMail.com, there are no manual forms to fill out, or special forms to put through your printer. And there’s no need to apply stamps or use a postal meter. You simply login to our service, enter the recipient address, and select whether the item is being sent with or without Return Receipt (Electronic). SimpleCertifiedMail.com prints the address and the electronic postage, along with the appropriate Certified Mail bar codes (what we call a Certified Mail “label”) on standard paper from any printer. Everything you need to mail the item, and the whole process takes 30 seconds.

    Once you’ve printed the Certified Mail “label” you just slip the Certified Mail label, and your document, into one of the special window envelopes we supply for free, and drop in any mailbox. That’s it for mailing.


    Sounds like it saves a lot of time. But what about getting Proof of Delivery?

    Good question. Of course, the reason people use Certified Mail is to get signed Proofs of Delivery. SimpleCertifiedMail.com eliminates the old-fashioned green cards, what the US Post Office calls the PS3811. There are lots of problems with green cards: wondering whether they have been signed; waiting for their return; and then having to file the cards to make sure they don’t get lost. Ten years ago the Post Office developed a more modern system, called Return Receipt (Electronic) that returns the Signature and Proof of Delivery as a PDF file, and carries the same legal clout, but normally you have to go to the Post Office counter to request it for every single Certified Mail item.

    SimpleCertifiedMail.com plugs you right into Return Receipt (Electronic) without leaving your desk. When one of our Certified Mail letters is delivered, the Mail Carrier collects the signature from the recipient on a form, and it is posted as a PDF file on our web site the very next morning. So you get the signature immediately, you can print out the PDF; you can save it to your case file; and you can leave it on our servers where we maintain all your records for seven years.

    The rest of the interview appears below the break

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    Fabricating Evidence

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    I read a recent story at Wired’s Threat Level Blog in which the artist who produced the Obama Hope image admitted that he had lied and destroyed and fabricated evidence to support his claim. I am no expert in copyright or fair use law, however, I am pretty sure that the artists actions in lying, destroying evidence, and fabricating evidence did more damage to his case than any actual real evidence ever could.

    The blog posts explains:

    Fairey [the artist] had long claimed he based his abstract graphic rendition on a photo of Obama seated next to actor George Clooney. In court documents (.pdf) filed Friday, Fairey admitted he actually used a solo shot of Obama from the same event, and had destroyed and fabricated evidence to support his lie.

    A review of the linked to court documents reveals that the evidence he attempted to destroy were computer files. I am not sure when, but one of the days I think clients will finally understand that they cannot conceal their electronic actions. If the case is big enough or important enough, someone will eventually discover that electronic evidence has been tampered with. Moreover, in all likelihood the resulting sanctions or adverse inference instruction will probably do much more damage to the case than the destroyed evidence ever would.

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    Handling Fame

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    I am too young to have enjoyed Dick Cavett. Sure, I know who he is. However, I just never watched him on television.

    Now I get the opportunity to experience him a new with his blog at the New York Times. He writes about a variety of topics and I find myself enjoying his posts more often than not. His latest post focuses on fame, but touches on a variety of other topics as well, including being careful about what conclusions we draw about people.

    I know this has nothing to do with either technology or the law. However, I urge you to check out what he has to say.

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    At the ISBA Solo and Small Firm Conference

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    I have arrived at the ISBA Solo and Small Firm Conference. I have already ran into some friendly faces and am excited about the upcoming programs. I am speaking on both Friday and Saturday, but I have today free to enjoy the conference, attend some sessions and visit with friends that  I rarely get to see.

    I hope to see you at the conference.

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    Another Reason to Own Your Own Domain

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    A couple of days ago, I posted about why you should own your own domain and not use a free email service for your professional emails. 3 Geeks and a Law Blog has published a couple of posts on the ethical dangers of using a free email address. In the first, after reviewing the terms of service for Google and Yahoo, the author concludes:

    So beyond the security concerns, it appears that the use of popular, free email services for client communications is a violation of ethics rules since lawyers are revealing client information to a third party.

    If you didn’t have enough reasons for moving to a secure email address on a domain you own, you can now add “getting a letter from Discipline Counsel” to the list.

    In a more recent post, the author concludes with:

    The legal profession holds itself out as having higher duties of care when it comes to securing client information. I suggest that using free email services with a TOS like Googles’ runs counter to this professional responsibility.

    I think he has an excellent point.

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    A Cautionary Tale About Social Media

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    A recent Bruce Schneier post highlights the pitfalls that can accompany social media. I am not a social media hater. I have a Twitter feed, a Linked In page, etc. However, that does not mean that I just randomly add information to my page. Further, I do not add every contact that tries to add me. I think that, just as in all other walks of life, it makes sense to think about what information to make available. I think my internal policies are reasonable and server me well.

    If I were a fugitive from justice, however, I would probably have more stringent policies, such as not belonging to any social media sites.. Fortunately for the the US Department of Justice, not all fugitives, follow my advice. guardian.co.uk reports that the DOJ was looking for a criminal named Maxi Sopo. The DOJ believed he was hiding in Mexico, but could not find him.

    Several months later, a secret service agent, Seth Reeg, checked Facebook again and up popped MaxiSopo. His photo showed him partying in front of a backdrop featuring logos of BMW and Courvoisier cognac, sporting a black jacket adorned with a not-so-subtle white lion.

    Although Sopo’s profile was set to private, his list of friends was not. Scoville started combing through it and was surprised to see that one friend listed an affiliation with the justice department. He sent a message requesting a phone call.

    “We figured this was a person we could probably trust to keep our inquiry discreet,” Scoville said.

    Proving the 2.0 adage that a friend on Facebook is rarely a friend indeed, the former official said he had met Sopo in Cancun’s nightclubs a few times, but did not really know him and had no idea he was a fugitive. The official learned where Sopo was living and passed that information back to Scoville, who provided it to Mexican authorities. They arrested Sopo last month.

    Schneier comments:

    It’s easy to say “so dumb,” and it would be true, but what’s interesting is how people just don’t think through the privacy implications of putting their information on the Internet. Facebook is how we interact with friends, and we think of it in the frame of interacting with friends. We don’t think that our employers might be looking — they’re not our friends! — that the information will be around forever, or that it might be abused. Privacy isn’t salient; chatting with friends is.

    How right he is.