Year: 2008
MyNetworking
The word “networking” usually evokes those awkward moments at conferences when you’re standing alone in the crowd, sipping a coffee and wondering when to leave. That awkwardness comes from not having any known basis for politely introducing yourself. Even a single item of information about another person can be enough to show that you are […]
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Domaining is big business
There is a tendency to label anyone who is in the business of making money out of domain names a cybersquatter, and in the process to regard them as guilty of fast practice verging on the fraudulent. But is it appropriate to regard the growing body of entrepreneurs, known as “domainers”, whose livelihood turns on […]
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Will e-learning and KM merge?
Knowledge Management in the legal sector continues to suffer from three main problems: the frequent difficulty knowledge managers encounter in trying to extract the knowledge from the best practitioners; the need to keep things up to date, especially considering that legal knowledge is often most valuable in the most rapidly changing fields; the need to […]
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Data protection goes global
The ability to store and share data nationally and globally over the internet creates massive opportunities but also substantial threats. Data protection, once the concern of a small group of professionals, has become a major focus of politicians, company directors, the public sector and private individuals. Data and the databases in which information is stored […]
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A wake-up call to lawyers
Professor Richard Susskind is, as I write, no doubt completing the final draft of his forthcoming treatise, The End of Lawyers? to be published in June by Oxford University Press. More than 12 years ago he wrote its predecessor, The Future of Law. Then only a few of us had awoken to the internet; only […]
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Upwardly mobile
Mobile devices have impacted the legal profession as much as the rest of the business world. Many lawyers – particularly commercial lawyers – have the dubious privilege of carrying Blackberries, making them contactable almost anywhere. Those particularly fruity devices are so ubiquitous in the business world that they need no further introduction. The number of […]
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SharePoint – powerful and rather scary
SharePoint is multi-purpose software that can serve many business and IT roles. It can ease staff, and authorised third parties’, access to information, while maintaining its security and integrity. It can also enable individual and team collaboration and information sharing, thereby improving efficiency and productivity, and facilitating the production of high quality, consistent output. SharePoint […]
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Software as a Service – going mainstream in 2008
There are many words and phrases associated with Software as a Service (SaaS), including .net (dot net), hosted services, managed services, web-native, web services, browser based software, remote access software and outsourcing of IT. Whilst coming to the topic from somewhat different angles, all these phrases are really referring to the same central theme – […]
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Digital media and the law
“Law 2.0”, “digital media law”. Great tag lines but is it all “sound and fury”, signifying nothing new? After all, there are plenty of examples of how existing laws are being applied to the online world. Are the law and Web 2.0 an odd couple fated to be forever out of sync? Alternatively, are we […]
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Company Law Forum
Company Law Forum from LexisNexis is the first attempt at a substantial Web 2.0 site from a “mainstream” law publisher. It is intended to provide an environment for the legal and business community to share insights and discuss company law-related issues. It is free to access; registration entitles you to create a profile, publish opinions, […]
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Eleven years of Internet Law with Graham Smith
We do not generally cover books in the Newsletter but occasionally there are exceptions – and Internet Law and Regulation by Graham Smith and other lawyers at Bird & Bird, now published in its fourth edition, is an exception. Graham has been writing and editing editions of this book for 11 years and is one […]
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Legal research in England and the USA compared
I first need to tell you a bit about my own experience. I have worked in law firm libraries for 16 years, first with Nabarro (commercial work with an emphasis on property), then with Winckworth Sherwood (parliamentary, police, housing, ecclesiastical) and now with Sidley Austin (US, with the London office specialising in international finance). I […]
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