One can go back to when the issue of CALR was first much debated in the late 1970s, to view what some might characterize as a “luddite” response to the advent of very expensive online legal search but many of…
Posts Tagged ‘issue’
Is Vendor Software Consuming Law as We Have Known It?
04
Oct
No the title of this post is not referring to just online legal search although certainly the great unknowing about how some “upgraded” legal search engines work certainly is part of the issue. So, thinking about how much of our…
Providing Routine Legal Services to the "Masses" in the 21st Century, Part One: Internet-Based Legal Document Prep Services
09
Aug
Does LegalZoom’s business practices violate Missouri law which bars non-lawyers from preparing legal documents? Been wondering when we would see this issue presented in court. Now that Missouri federal judge Nanette K. Laughrey has set a trial date, August 22,…
Apparently the GPO Is Not Considered an Essential Government Service by Some Members of Congress
01
Aug
At least not if one views the issue in the context H.R. 2551, The Legislative Branch Appropriations Bill [Thomas]. Case in point, in response to the GPO’s request for $5 million to continue the development of FDsys, the House cut…
A Three Tiered World of Employed Law School Grads: Understanding The National Jurist’s Ranking of Best Law Schools for Standard of Living
15
Jul
The September issue of The National Jurist will publish its ranking of 135 law schools by a standard of living metric that uses median starting salaries, average debt payments, estimated federal and state taxes and cost of living adjustments for…
SCOTUS Justices on the Language of Law: Advocacy and Legal Writing (and by Implication Legal Research, Too)
30
Jun
On Legal Writing Prof Blog, Judith D. Fischer (Louisville) writes: The latest issue of the Scribes Journal of Legal Writing (Volume 13) is a gold mine of Supreme Court justices’ observations about brief writing and oral argument. Several years ago,…
Using The Internet For A Dual Attack Pro-Se Strategy
28
May
By: Rich Bergeron (www.suckssite.com, www.xyiencesucks.com)
You’re a fool in the judge’s eyes in most courtrooms before you even open your mouth if you don’t pay good money for the advice of a lawyer. If you represent yourself, you’re not paying into the system. To judges and opposing lawyers your attempts are considered laughable or hopeless. In many cases, if you go pro-se, it is almost a foregone conclusion that you’re fighting a lost cause. You have to go above and beyond the traditional approach to win in this climate.
Fortunately, there is an equalizer. It’s called the Internet. There are two important ways you can use the World Wide Web to win your legal scuffles.
First, you can use the Internet to put yourself through a rigorous, informal law school. There are law libraries available online and vast free resources. It’s all about how much time you want to spend on learning the nuances of the legal process. You will have to at least be proficient at crafting pleadings and understanding “courtspeak.” Being a Law & Order nut only goes so far in a real courtroom in front of a real judge. You may have to go as far as an appeal, which is almost a scientific process. Some things are beautiful in their complication. The law is complicated in a convoluted way, and it’s ugly and vicious to those who don’t know how to use it to their advantage. Educate yourself to the best of your ability on the legal process using the Internet to gain free access to valuable information and guidelines.
Register for a PACER System (pacer.gov) password as soon as you can. This database of all kinds of official court records can be crucial for finding hidden secrets about the opposing client and law firm. You can also follow the day-to-day activity in your own case there. This is a lawyer’s tool the other side won’t expect you to know about. If you can master your ability to comb this database for dirt on your opposition, whatever investment you make in the site (they charge 8 cents a page for downloads) will be worth its weight in gold.
Now that you are ready for a sound legal attack, you can move to the second prong of the Internet strategy: the promotional process. You can publish your court documents on sites like www.docstoc.com and www.jdsupra.com and then embed them on a blog or a social site created specifically to publicize your plight. You can even register a domain for a “Sucks Site” like the guy who created www.Taubmansucks.com did. That site opened my eyes to the possibility that you can shine your own spotlight on your case without having to rely on the media or politicians in high places to champion your cause. I registered several of my own “Sucks Sites,” and you can, too. Just go to www.godaddy.com and pick a URL name that’s catchy and inclusive of your issue or opposition. You don’t even need any real Web design skills. There is a great cookie-cutter program on GoDaddy.com you can use for as little as $5 for three months (WebSite Tonight), or you could just forward the domain to a, Google Blogger account, a MySpace page, or a Facebook page.
If you go for a protest site, just remember to keep your content factual and designed to bring attention to the issues of your case. Don’t delve into scandalous accusations or rumors, and don’t use abusive language. Explain the issue in an informative and educated manner, and research the law that is supposed to be working in your favor. Just tell the truth and let your voice be heard. In all your postings, name your opposition in the title and descriptions. Use words like corruption and injustice in the tags if that’s what you are experiencing. Be creative and don’t stop building links and content to further your goals.
You may not even have to spend more than a few nickels and dimes to get your message out (GoDaddy offers .info domain registration for .89 cents a year) and learn to fight for yourself in court. Meanwhile, your opponents will have to spend thousands upon thousands in legal fees if they utilize an attorney or law firm. At this point in my own ongoing legal matters, winning at long last will not be as gratifying as knowing the other side has already lost. Use this same approach, and you’ll find the power of free speech and human ingenuity combined with the global reach of the Internet is immeasurable.
Future of Legal Education
21
Apr
Last week I was privileged to attend a Conference on the Future of Education, sponsored by New York Law School and Harvard Law School. This conference was the third in a series on this subject. The purpose of this conference is to initiate a conversation among and between law schools on how to make legal education better, cheaper, and faster, as Dean of New York Law School, Richard Matasar frames the issue. Personally, I think that Matasar’s presentation on the problems and prospects for legal education was the best that I have ever heard.
The format for the conference was a series of presentations of very inventive proposals presented by teams of legal educators and other legal specialists, mostly academics, 12 teams in all.
As participants, we each had $1,000,000 to spend as if we were venture capitalist’s listening to start-up pitches.
The team that I was part of actually won the competition, by receiving the most "venture capital" dollars. Credit goes to Ron Staudt from Chicago-Kent Law School and Marc Lauritsen from Capstone Practice who did the heavy lifting on developing the proposal. The proposed project called for law students in clinical programs to be engaged in the development of "Apps for Justice" that could be used by legal service programs to provide tools for access to justice. The title of the project is "Learning Law by Creating Software" Click here for a copy of the proposal.
Marc and Ron receiving their $10,700,000 check.
David Johnson from New York Law School won second place for a proposal to create "legal apps" that are games that would be used to teach and learn. The "State of Play" Academy.
Click here for a link to many of the other proposals.
Scottish Legal Forms
02
Apr
Scottish legal forms ready to use. Scottish Acts of Parliment and free legal articles – Essential information for persons in Scotland with
a legal issue to solve.
LegalZoom is Considering an IPO
22
Mar
Apparently LegalZoom is in the early stages of planning an IPO, (going public), according to an unnamed source at VentureBeat. Employing more that 500 employees, and having raised over $45 million in venture capital over the last few years, LegalZoom is clearly the leading non-lawyer legal document preparation web site. This is a good example of a disruptive innovation in the delivery of legal solutions by a non-lawyer provider that continues to eat away at the market share of solo practitioners and small law firms.
Focusing on a market that is not served well by the legal profession, in the same way that Southwest Airlines first targeted people who traveled by bus, rather than by air because air travel was too expensive, LegalZoom is will undoubtedly figure out a way to move up the value chain, capturing even more complex business from law firms, without actually giving legal advice.
In the United States, because the definition of what constitutes the "unauthorized practice of law" is so vague. (perhaps unconstitutionally vague), it would seem that even though LegalZoom does not actually provide legal advice, it would be prohibited from assembling legal documents, even when the document assembly is purely software-driven.
The reality is that bar associations have a tough case to make against a non-lawyer provider when no actual legal advice is given. UPL statutes haven’t been truly tested on the issue of whether a non-lawyer can assemble legal documents without actually giving legal advice. In Florida, when the issue came up, there was a compromise between the bar and non-lawyer providers and non-lawyers can help a consumer complete court forms as long as no legal advice is provided. It gets murky when you move beyond courts forms, to more complex transactional documents such as a will, a living trust, or a marital separation agreement, even if the user is making the selection through a software driven questionnaire. Some UPL advocates, have argued that the selection of alternative clauses is still UPL, because a person had to "program" the clauses. There is some precedent for this position, but the State of Texas on the other hand, specifically excludes software driven document assembly from the "unauthorized practice of law., provided there there are disclaimers which state "clearly and conspicuously that the products are not the substitute for the advice of an attorney."
I think the risk portion of the prospectus will make for fascinating reading, particularly since in many states UPL is a felony. I can just visualize this language: "Investors should be aware that the company may be violating unauthorized practice of law statutes in many states, and as a result, if convicted, one or more executive officers may be required to serve time in the pokey."
In the interest of full disclosure, Epoq US, of which I am President, and which is the parent company of DirectLaw, also provides legal document preparation services over the web directly to consumers through a network of legal web sites So perhaps I should be worried as well.
