Service of Process by E-mail? - yes you can under the federal rules, if everyone agrees to do this in writing. Rule 5(b)(2)(D) provides:
Delivering a copy by any other means, including electronic means, consented to in writing by the person served. Service by electronic means is complete on transmission; service by other consented means is complete when the person making service delivers the copy to the agency designated to make delivery.
Well, I can't wait until you don't need the other person's consent. But at least you can do it if you want. I wonder if an E-mail exchange satisfies the "consent in writing" requirement? You'd have to think that it does.
So then if you have service of process allowed by E-mail and people able to print letters to, say, PDF and also electronically sign them then...what? Well, there's a lot less paper floating around, getting lost in the mail, getting frumpled up in fax machines. Granted E-mail isn't foolproof either, but who's going to claim it's not substantially more efficient than mail or faxes?
4:22:11 PM
Blogging's influence on the judiciary - Remember the Bellesiles controversy? Michael Bellesiles is the guy who wrote Arming America, a study of the how pervasive guns were in colonial America. Bellesiles made a lot of the data up, and has since resigned his academic post. But preceding his resignation there was unmitigated and relentless criticism of his study in the blogosphere. Now it appears that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has amended one of its second amendment (i.e. gun) decisions to delete a reference to his now discredited book, as well as a reference to a law review article that he also wrote. Is this unusual for a court to amend an opinion just to delete citation references? I've never heard of it, but I'm not a legal honcho like Howard Bashman, and Glenn Reynolds who also think it's a bit odd.
I could never prove this, but I think that, what in past times might have been deemed a sleeping dog, is now woken up because of the blogosphere. In other words, I think the Ninth Circuit seems to be displaying heightened concern about the possibility that its decision will be criticized for references that in past times might not have drawn as much attention. Nowadays, attention gets drawn to a lot of things and quickly. That's not because our national press is working overtime.
4:02:00 PM
KaZaa busts a move - you know, in the realm of copyright litigation some might say that it pays to be bold. Apparently, that is the strategy here.
1:09:53 PM
Technological advances presage economic downturn - InstaPundit says this posting by Michael Rogers "seems to hit the nail on the head." He continues: "most people I know are pessimistic about the future of their professions, too, almost across the board. I wonder if it's caused by the phenomenon Brad DeLong identifies: better communications technology is creating more competition for people in a wide variety of fields."
I guess my question is what's going to happen to the legal profession? Basically, we sell an information service (i.e. specialized knowledge) priced in units of time. We know that there are too many lawyers already, and since law schools are cash cows we know that the steady re-supply will not be cut-off anytime soon. Isn't it inevitable that some of these young law people will start using technology to increase their advantage in a system that operates, supposedly, on the competition between information (i.e. he said the light was green, but we can prove it was red)? What will happen to the people who lag behind? Will it continue to be possible to charge high hourly rates for work that turns out to be done better with technology tools? Aren't market forces going to conspire to make it harder for more lawyers to charge so much money? Maybe not. I'm just not sure why.
