Legal Research with weblogs? We're not there yet, but there is reason to ponder how to make this occur says Denise Howell in her post on Back Linking, Forward Looking. Weblogs and judicial decisions seem fairly unrelated. But maybe not. She proposes that the following be considered:
Courts and legislatures agree on standards for publishing and linking to opinions and statutes electronically, including a means of linking to distinct portions of an opinion or statute;
Legal citation services capture all the discussion-specific links in subsequent primary legal sources, as well as other sources using the standards, and exercise editorial discretion to weed out what they deem unimportant or extraneous..
I agree. I think that we will need to see standards for "pinpoint citing" develop, which is what Rick Klau talked about awhile back in this post. The legal profession needs to do a better job of processing information. The web is cheap to publish to, cheap to access, and available to a lot of people (at this point I would think that just about all lawyers, judges and legislators have extensive access to it). Access to the law should be free. Right, Rory?
11:58:32 AM
People need leeway - saieth David Weinberger, who explains how the legal system affords leeway. The question is whether, as people digitize more stuff, the law will continue to afford such leeway. My guess is that in the hyper-precise digital world we'll need even more leeway. It's like REM sleep. You don't know you need it until someone deprives you of it. Then you quickly start to act irrationally.
11:40:27 AM
"Web accessible information" doesn't mean it's "public information" - or does it? Reuters obtained earnings information from a public web site, but apparently from a part of the company's web site that was not supposed to be accessible by the public. The story is here. Looks like lame security to me, but I suppose that doesn't foreclose legal action. A lot of sites have this sort of lame "security" so I expect that this won't be the only lawsuit like this.
10:52:58 AM
The Billable Hour is often an unproductive hour - great N.Y. Times article on the bane of the defense lawyer's practice. Best quote in the article? "Why not leave no stone unturned if you are charging by the stone?"
10:42:33 AM
