LAWYERSCHILE EL MUNDO INTERNACIONAL DEL ABOGADO

Rodrigo González Fernández y un grupo de egresados de la Facultad de Derecho de la Universidad la Republica en Chile ha decidido poner al alcance de todo el mundo de la profesion legal importantes materias en Ingles para ir practicando el trabajo en materia de Tratados internacionales y que nuestra profesión estará en primera linea. Invitamos a todos a opinar, debatir, participar activamente.Es el primer blog legal en inglés de latinoamerica.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

FROM LEGAL BLOG WATCH

Are Tort Reformers Going After the Wrong Target?

New York personal injury lawyer Eric Turkewitz takes a critical look at a lawsuit by numbers kingpin-cum-Rikers Island inmate Raymond Marquez, alleging that the New York City Department of Corrections' indoor smoking policy caused Marquez's bladder cancer. Despite the fact that Marquez had smoked for thirty years before quitting around the mid-1970s, his lawsuit attributed his cancer to the second hand smoke that he endured between 1998 and 2001 while awaiting trial at Rikers Island for a crime for which he was subsequently acquitted. On Friday, a jury returned a verdict in favor of the City.

Turkewitz comments:

When I first heard about the litigation, it sounded like a dog, and I don't know any reputable personal injury firm that would have taken it. And as it turns out, the suit was brought by the plaintiff's son, who happens to be a local attorney.

Because most reputable lawyers would have -- and indeed did -- decline this case, Turkewitz argues that it's unfair for the City to make the case a poster child for "ridiculous lawsuits" as it has done in recent press releases.

Turkewitz makes an interesting point. Some of the most notable examples of litigation-gone-wild -- such as Roy Pearson's $65 million pants suit against the dry cleaners or the $54 million suit against Best Buy for losing a woman's computer in the repair shop -- were brought by pro se litigants (though Pearson is a lawyer). In many pro se cases, or cases where a plaintiff is represented by a friend or a relative, it's often because most sensible plaintiffs' lawyers turned the cases down. For that reason, is it fair to use cases that no lawyer would have taken anyway as an example of what's broken in the tort system or as a basis for criticizing trial lawyers?

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Posted by Carolyn Elefant on May 14, 2008 at 10:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Vista Won't See the Light of Day at Most Law Firms

It's been about two years since Microsoft launched Vista, a Windows-based operating system that has been so poorly received that even Wikipedia devoted an entire entry to "Criticism of Windows Vista." Because of its many problems, Vista is being bypassed by many large corporations, reports Rick Georges at Future Lawyer.

As for law firms, this is one case where their complacency in adopting new technology plays to their advantage. Georges writes that "until someone makes [law firms] adopt it, Vista will not likely see the insides of a majority of law firm computers." Thus, most law firms will be spared the headaches that other users have experienced with Vista.

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Posted by Carolyn Elefant on May 14, 2008 at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Web Users Would Support Code of Conduct

Though blogging, Web 2.0 applications, and user-generated content sites represent the still-wild, untamed frontier of the Internet, most users would not resist efforts to settle the laws of this territory. According to a story in the Guardian, nearly half of Internet users would support a voluntary code of conduct for bloggers and online commentators, according to a survey by DLA Piper. The survey revealed that currently, roughly 75 percent of Web users who have posted comments on blogs and news sites had no understanding of laws governing libel, defamation or intellectual property that might potentially apply to their conduct on the Web.

At the same time, while 46 percent of Web users were receptive to a voluntary code of conduct, users' current actions suggest otherwise. At present, only one third of Web users surveyed actually read the legal liabilities in the terms of conditions of Web sites that they use. And 14 percent have had content removed from a site due to violation of applicable terms and conditions. Bottom line: While Web users may say they want a code of conduct, in practice, few obey the rules in place now.

Do you support a code of conduct for Web users? And if so, what features would it include?

(H/T to ABA Journal.)

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Posted by Carolyn Elefant on May 14, 2008 at 08:23 AM | Permalink

Consulten, opinen y escriban
Saludos
Rodrigo González Fernández
DIPLOMADO EN RSE DE LA ONU
www.Consultajuridicachile.blogspot.com
www.lobbyingchile.blogspot.com
www.el-observatorio-politico.blogspot.com
www.biocombustibles.blogspot.com
Renato Sánchez 3586
teléfono: 5839786
e-mail rogofe47@mi.cl
Santiago-Chile

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Tuesday, May 13, 2008

FROM LEGAL BLOG WATCH

Can Flextime Create Work-Life Balance if Lawyers Aren't Comfortable Using It?

In theory, benefits like extended maternity leave, part-time options and telecommuting are the hallmarks of a robust and effective law firm work-life balance initiative. But as it turns out, in practice, less than half of eligible attorneys feel comfortable availing themselves of these options, at least according to the results of this survey jointly sponsored by Above the Law and Lateral Link. Of the 1 ,669 respondents, only 45 percent of women and 18 percent of men said they would feel comfortable asking to go part-time after having a child, while 39 percent of women and 25 percent of men would feel comfortable asking for an extended unpaid leave. Finally, roughly one third of respondents of either gender said they would feel comfortable asking to telecommute after having a child. At the same time, most lawyers -- two third of men and 59 percent of women -- did feel comfortable leaving the office at 6 p.m. to be home with children and then continue to work remotely.

My guess is that lawyers are comfortable with leaving earlier because they could do so on an ad hoc basis, rather than through a formal law firm program. Thus, they would not suffer the same stigma that they might if the firm were required to make a special accommodation, as it would with initiatives like telecommuting or part time work.

It seems that even in these supposedly more enlightened times, the "parent track" doesn't run parallel to the partnership track. As Ellen Ostrow suggests in this piece, unintentional biases still remain within the workplace -- and that for retention programs to succeed, firms must develop mechanisms for preventing biases from influencing judgments and behavior. (H/T to Women Lawyers Back on Track.)

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Posted by Carolyn Elefant on May 12, 2008 at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Blawg Review #159

Blawg Review #159 is up at The Whistleblower Law Blog, sponsored by the law firm of LaBovick and LaBovick. Blawg Review #159 includes interesting picks such as the greatest pro defense decisions from the Drug and Device Law Blog and this update from Lowering the Bar on a brewing copyright battle between the state of Oregon and some of the legal Web sites that publish its statutes online for free. And if links like these aren't enough incentive to draw you to Blawg Review #159, perhaps you'll be enticed by the opportunity to reacquaint yourself with some of your favorite nursery rhymes which are interspersed throughout.

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Posted by Carolyn Elefant on May 12, 2008 at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bike Couriers Riding Off Into the Sunset

First, it was the typewriter. And now, another former sine qua non of law firm practice -- the bike courier -- faces endangered species status in this Internet-enabled paperless era.

The Providence Journal reports on how e-filing is impacting the bike courier business in Rhode Island and nationwide. Back in 1999, the state had about 480 couriers and messengers, but that number dropped to 400 -- down nearly 20 percent -- by 2006. The state's trend aligns with national statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor, which show a decline in couriers and messengers from 134,370 in 1999 to 105,070 in 2006.

Not surprisingly, Walter J. Marshall, the Boston-based regional economist for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, attributes the decline to the emergence of electronic communication and e-filing. In Rhode Island, both U.S. Bankruptcy Court and federal district court have been using e-filing for the past few years. Even the Secretary of State's office began accepting corporations' annual reports electronically in August 2007, and is now considering extending the electronic filing program to nonprofits and limited liability companies. Indeed, thus far, the state courts remain the only hold-outs, though they are expected to implement e-filing by 2011.

In the meantime, courier services, which rely heavily on court filings and law firm business, are coping with the changes. One company, Dash Delivery, lost 30 percent of its business when the Bankruptcy Court went electronic and another 25 percent when the federal district court went online. The company continues to deliver important documents, as well as charging documents in criminal cases and initial complaints, which are still filed in paper form. And it is diversifying, now delivering blood samples and medical files for hospitals.

Do you or your law firm still rely on messenger services and bike couriers? Will there always be a need for messenger services -- or will we see their ranks continue to decline?

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Posted by Carolyn Elefant on May 12, 2008 at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sports Law Is a Tough Game to Enter

Transitioning from a conventional law practice to work as a sports agent can be a tough game for lawyers, as discussed in this Fulton County Daily Report story profiling several Atlanta lawyers who attempted to make the play. For one lawyer, Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore partner Von DuBose, a gamble on Michigan State University defensive end Ervin Baldwin paid off. After months traveling across the country to watch Baldwin practice and play, and counsel him on handling media interviews, the Chicago Bears drafted Baldwin, allowing DuBose to continue to build his sports agent business. On the other hand, personal injury and criminal defense lawyer Mawuli Davis, who focused his efforts on representing basketball players, never found an opportunity to represent a player in a major league deal. Without a client to build on or the funding needed to pursue clients, Davis "decided to cut his losses and stick to traditional legal work."

Given that the sports agency business demands high up-front costs to lure clients, one might think that the field would be dominated by deep-pocked, mega law firms. But the truth is that very few agents work for the Am Law 200:

"Being an agent doesn't work with big firm economics," said Brandon Witkow [a sports agent lawyer]. Big firms bill by the hour, but the vast majority of sports agents receive a percentage of their clients' salaries, Witkow said. Also, a big firm lawyer working as an agent can't bill for the countless hours he'll spend doing tasks that are standard agent fare. "You incur a lot of time as an agent preparing pitch packets for clients, traveling to meet team general managers and to summer camps," Witkow said. "Those are costs that can't be directly passed on to the client."

A few large firms, including Bryan Cave, Dow Lohnes, Stinson Morrison Hecker and Williams & Connolly have a sports agent practice. And some firms, such as Covington & Burling or Proskauer Rose have sports law practices, representing the leagues or teams rather than acting as agents for individual players. Indeed, by representing individual players, these firms would conflict themselves out of their ability to represent the big corporate entities that can afford large firm rates. As a result, despite the initial start up costs, the sports-agent field continues to remain dominated by small shops or solo practices.

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Posted by Carolyn Elefant on May 11, 2008 at 09:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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* World Renowned Philosopher Slavoj Zizek on the Iraq War, the Bush
Presidency, the War on Terror & More *

Part two of our wide-ranging discussion with Slavoj Zizek, the philosopher,
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* Headlines for May 12, 2008 *

Oxfam: Burma on Brink of Massive Public Health Catastrophe
Junta Blocks & Delays Aid Supplies to Burma
Climate Change Group: Cyclone Is a Sign of Things to Come
GOP Convention Coordinator Resigns Over Ties to Burma¹s Junta
Obama Gains Support of 21 Superdelegates
After 1,000 Killed, a Ceasefire Is Reached in Sadr City
US-Backed Iraqi Troops Launch Attack in Mosul
Report: Blackwater Won¹t Face Criminal Charges for Civilian Deaths
Price of Oil Reaches New High: $126 Per Barrel
Environmental Activist Sentenced to 20 Years in Prison
NYPD Disciplines White Officer Who Stopped Black Commander

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Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Emergency evacuation as Chile volcano spits lava

By Esteban Medel

CHAITEN, Chile, May 6 (Reuters) - Crackling with explosions, Chile's Chaiten volcano began spitting lava on Tuesday following its first eruption in thousands of years, and Navy warships were deployed to evacuate nearby residents in the southern region of Patagonia.

Chaiten erupted last Friday, sending a towering plume of ash into the sky that has since coated the surrounding area of southern Chile and reached into neighboring Argentina.

The settlement of Chaiten, six miles (10 km) from the volcano, looked like a ghost town on Tuesday. Aside from a small contingent of Navy sailors and a few journalists, only dogs, chickens and horses remained standing in the ash.

Explosions and loud groaning noises resounded from the crater of the 3,280-foot (1,000-meter) volcano, which had been dormant for thousands of years.

No lava flow has yet been detected down Chaiten's sides, but Chile's National Emergency Office said the volcano was spitting bits of molten rock and that remaining civilians and troops were being evacuated across a fjord.

"The situation has changed suddenly," national emergency official Rodrigo Rojas said in an interview. "Today the volcano is erupting with pyroclastic material on a different scale."

The towering ash cloud was clearly visible from the southern town of Puerto Montt, where many desperate evacuees were being sheltered.

"I am very worried to have left my house, my pet, my animals behind. All I want is for this to be over," said Carola Perez, a 22-year-old housewife evacuated to the town.

The government ordered the evacuation of a 30-mile (50 km) radius around the volcano -- which lies some 760 miles (1,220 km) south of the capital, Santiago -- including two dozen people who had refused to leave their homes and animals.

It appealed to anyone still on remote farms in the area to leave.

Military personnel, police and journalists were being ferried to join dozens of civilians already aboard warships waiting in the fjord off Chaiten. Around 4,200 people, nearly the whole population of Chaiten, have already been evacuated.

Sparsely populated Patagonia is the southernmost swathe of Latin America that cuts across Chile and Argentina and is home to towering snow-capped peaks, some of them volcanoes, glaciers and log cabins, and is a gold mine for dinosaur fossil hunters.

DENSE CLOUD OF ASH

Luis Lara, a government geologist, said he did not expect a catastrophic collapse of the Chaiten volcano, but that a cloud of dense, very hot material could coat the surrounding area.

"This produces a more complicated scenario," Lara said. "A dense cloud of pyroclastic material could move down its slopes, and that causes much more damage (than a spray of lava)."

"The entire volcano will not (collapse), but the eruptive column could, and that is sufficient material to be displaced down its sides and into areas nearby," he added. "Lava flow would not reach Chaiten, but hot fragments, ash and gas could."

A second town, Futaleufu, has also been coated with ash and is being evacuated. The area is some distance from Chile's vital mining industry farther north.

Some of Futaleufu's 1,000 or so residents have already crossed into neighboring Argentina, where some areas have also been showered with thick ash and where flights and schools were suspended.

Argentina is not evacuating residents from the worst-affected zones, instead advising them to stay indoors.

"It's a horrible situation. Sometimes it goes all dark and it doesn't stop raining ash," said Cecilia Rimoldi, a resident of the southern Argentine tourist town of El Bolson.

The ash is more than 6 inches (15 cm) thick in some places near Chaiten, contaminating water supplies and coating houses, vehicles and trees. Thousands of head of cattle are being moved out of the area.

Chile has the world's second most active string of volcanoes behind Indonesia. It is home to 2,000 volcanoes, 500 of which experts say are potentially active. Around 60 have erupted over the past 450 years.

(Additional reporting by Antonio de la Jara in Puerto Montt, Monica Vargas, Manuel Farias and Juana Casas in Santiago and Jorge Otaola and Walter Bianchi in Buenos Aires; Writing by Simon Gardner; Editing by Kieran Murray)

MÁS INFORMACION; PINCHA AQUI

http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/KKAA-7EE4PM?OpenDocument&rc=2&emid=VO-2008-000056-CHL

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Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Roundup: Legal News Worth Noting

LAWYERSCHILE:

Roundup: Legal News Worth Noting

Lawyer denies infiltrating State Farm database. Former federal prosecutor denies wrongdoing in Katrina case.
Skycaps and waiters find a legal champion. Clients call Boston lawyer Shannon Liss-Riordan "Sledgehammer Shannon."
O'Connor to hear cases as visiting judge to Hub court. Retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor sits in at the 1st Circuit.
Lawyers would rather fly than download PGP. Has anyone told them about encryption?
China and Russia still piracy hotbeds. So says the U.S. trade representative in the annual policy agenda and report on IP protection.
Judicial candidates seek right to free speech. Project aims to help them participate in voter guides.
Lawyer sanctioned with order to write bar journal article. Judge gives lawyer six months to "publish or perish."
Ohio attorney general's office considering new e-mail policy. Follows reports of "overly informal, sometimes profanity-laced workplace."

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on April 29, 2008 at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Scalia's Write Hand Man

For all the buzz surrounding the 60 Minutes interview with Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, one might overlook the fact that this was not his only interview. For example, NPR's legal affairs reporter Nina Totenberg broadcast a three-part interview with Scalia this week. (Part one, part two, part three.) And in the May issue of the ABA Journal, reporter Richard Brust has his own sitdown with Scalia, who is joined in the interview by Bryan A. Garner, co-author of the reason for all these interviews, their new book, Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges.

Garner made a cameo appearance in the 60 Minutes piece, but the ABA Journal interview gives him more of his due. Garner, after all, is the guru of legal writing, the man The New York Times once called, "the persnickety stylist for a linguistically challenged profession." The author of several books on legal writing, he runs LawProse, a company that trains lawyers to be better communicators, and is editor in chief of Black's Law Dictionary. His collaboration with Scalia grew out of his earlier project, in which he interviewed eight of the nine Supreme Court justices about legal writing and advocacy and posted the interviews online.

The ABA Journal interviewer talks to Scalia and Garner together and also provides an excerpt from the book and a podcast of the interview. When asked about the legal writers he most respects, Garner answers, "My own heroes there are Charles Alan Wright, author of Federal Practice and Procedure; I love the writing of Grant Gilmore, the great Yale law professor; and Lon Fuller, the Harvard philosopher of law."

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on April 29, 2008 at 09:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Of Virgins and Christians and Net Neutrality

Whatever your position on net neutrality, you have to admit, the debate is getting weird. Witness two items making the rounds of the blogosphere, one tying advocacy for net neutrality to a presidential candidate's supposed denigration of Christians, and the second involving an advocate's promise to deflower every virgin who joins her campaign.

For the first item, we turn to the conservative news blog Redstate, which recently posted a story under the headline, "Obama and Google's Mutual Adviser: Jesus is gay, wears a diaper, and gets run over." The "mutual adviser" in question is none other than Stanford Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig, who Redstate says "really could care less that so many of us revere Jesus." Its evidence is a video, Jesus Christ: The Musical, showing Jesus dancing down a street, lip-syncing to the Gloria Gaynor disco classic "I Will Survive," before being hit by a bus. Given that Lessig supports Barack Obama, Redstate reasons, this somehow links the candidate to denigration of Christianity. More to the point, it proves ... well, something about the net neutrality debate. (Read the post for yourself and try to decipher exactly where it comes down.)

Of course, Lessig had nothing to do with producing the video. Rather, as Ars Technica explains, he showed the video during a recent lecture he gave at Google about copyright and "remix culture." The maker of the film, Javier Prato, is being sued by the owner of the rights to Gaynor's song, and Lessig showed it to illustrate the tension between fair use and intellectual property. In his own response to Redstate, Lessig writes, "It will be interesting (in a root canal kind of way) to see how far or deep PC-ism runs in this society."

As if testing that very point, another supporter of net neutrality legislation has launched the Web site and campaign, Save the Internet ... Don't Stay a Virgin. Belgian Tania Derveaux is doing her part for net neutrality by issuing this promise: "I will make love with every virgin who defends the Internet." Here is how she explains it:

Net neutrality is paramount to safeguard free speech and innovation on the Internet. With only one arguably negative side-effect: an unusual amount of today's Internet users are virgin. That's a problem I intend to solve. In history, man has always waged war for freedom. Now it's time to obtain our freedom with love.

Before leaping to proclaim your support for net neutrality, be sure to review Derveaux's terms of service, which, among other things, requires proof of activity in defense of net neutrality and limits the encounter to "no longer than 30 minutes." Derveaux is spokesperson for the Belgian activist group I Power, and this is not the first time she has offered sexual favors in exchange for activism, MSNBC reports. In 2007, she ran as I Power's candidate in the Belgian general election, with a promise of 40,000 jobs, with "jobs" suggesting relief both economic and of another sort.

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on April 29, 2008 at 09:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The American Lawyer Launches New Site

Tomorrow brings the release of the Am Law 100, The American Lawyer magazine's annual ranking of the nation's largest law firms by revenue. This year, the release will also bring the official launch of the magazine's redesigned Web site. While much of the new site is already up and running, tomorrow's debut is slated to feature extended coverage of the Am Law 100 rankings, including Web-exclusive charts that will project firms' profitability through 2025. An announcement last week gave this overview of the site:

The new site will feature daily news coverage of the legal business, including breaking news reporting on developments at the world's leading law firms, and on the lawyers and professionals working in and with those firms. News will be spotlighted in The Am Law Daily, focusing each day on topics related to 'The Firms,' 'The Talent,' 'The Work,' 'The Management,' 'The Score' and 'The Life.'

Online subscribers and registered users will receive a free daily e-newsletter highlighting top stories. A second e-newsletter, focused on litigation news, will launch in June. The site will also feature full access to each month's print issue and a searchable content archive of past issues. Current issues and the site archives will be available free to registered users until July 31.

Depending on when you are reading this, you may still be able to catch today's free webinar in which Aric Press, editor-in-chief of The American Lawyer, will give a preview of the Am Law 100 results. The 15-minute webinar is at 3 p.m. Eastern time and requires advance registration.

The American Lawyer is, of course, owned by ALM, which also owns Law.com and the blog you are reading, Legal Blog Watch. For anyone interested in reading more about ALM's future, in print and online, I recommend Rob La Gatta's interview with ALM's CEO William L. Pollak, published at the blog Real Lawyers Have Blogs. Among other points, Pollak says that the Web has leveled the field between journalists and readers:

In the pre-web era the paradigm was simple -- editors figured out what was important, presented it to the reader, and the reader took it in. Now, there is much more back-and-forth, and much more user participation in the process of news gathering and analysis. Journalists may still be subject-matter experts on various topics, and their voice may be one which readers still want to hear. But the journalist now has to listen and react to users in a more direct way, and can no longer assume that their word will be the last heard on a given topic.

Pollak also talks about RSS feeds, the Law.com Blog Network, and the future of ALM's print publications.

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on April 29, 2008 at 09:05 AM | Permalink |

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Friday, April 25, 2008

LEGAL WATCH BLOG

'Green' Trademarks -- A Sign of More Green From Environmental Businesses

How can you tell that environmental business is the next dot-com? Look no further than the number of green trademark applications filed -- nearly 300,000 in 2007, according to this story at Sustainable Life Media. Use of the word "green" dominated applications, appearing in 2,400. Other top usages included:

Clean : 900 applications, up from 800 in 2006
Earth : 900, up from from 550 in 2006
Eco : 900 applications, more than doubling in number from 2006
Organic : 700 applications, up 57 percent over 2006
Environment : 450 applications, up from 325 in 2006
Friendly : 180 applications, up 88 percent over 2006

As the story points out, the term "green" is not particularly distinctive and thus, many of the applications may not result in the grant of a trademark.

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Posted by Carolyn Elefant on April 24, 2008 at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Suing for China, the American Way

CNN is discovering the hard way that there's a major difference between Chinese and American visions of justice -- and restitution. As reported in Reuters, a group of Chinese lawyers have filed suit against CNN in Beijing, alleging that derogatory remarks by commentator Jack Cafferty violated the dignity and reputation of the Chinese people. During a discussion over the spate of recalls of goods manufactured in China, Cafferty termed Chinese products "junk," and added that "They are basically the same bunch of goons and thugs they've been for the last 50 years." CNN has since claimed that Cafferty was expressing an opinion of the Chinese government and not the people of China. The Chinese lawyers bringing suit sought the restoration of the Chinese people's reputation through publications and in the media and asked for 100 yuan ($14.31) in damages.

What a difference a forum makes, however. Today, Reuters reports that a Chinese primary school teacher and a beautician have filed a suit against CNN in New York over Cafferty remarks. As damages, they are seeking $1.3 billion in compensation -- $1 per person in China. (In case you're wondering whether $1.3 billion in the United States has the same purchase power as 100 yuan in China, it doesn't -- according to this item, 500 yuan is the price of a dog).

I'm not sure how the Chinese primary school teacher and beautician have standing to sue on behalf of persons in China, given that they don't live there. But who cares about technicalities when reputation is at stake? Ironic, though that those outside of China appear to place a higher value on damage to the reputation of the Chinese than those living in the country.

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Posted by Carolyn Elefant on April 24, 2008 at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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'Armenia: April 24 -- Genocide Memorial Day'

'Armenia: April 24 -- Genocide Memorial Day'
by Onnik Krikorian

Yesterday marked the 93rd Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide and the deaths of approximately 1.5 million Armenians in Ottoman Turkey. Often described as the first Genocide of the 20th Century, the Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin invented the term in the 1940s with the Armenian and Jewish Holocausts in mind.

Every year on 24 April, a date marking the roundup of Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in what is now Istanbul, Armenians commemorate the massacres and deportations worldwide. In Yerevan, this is particularly the case with hundreds of thousands marching up to the Tsitsernakaberd memorial overlooking the capital to lay flowers and pay their respects.

This year was no different, but as my Caucasus Knot describes, the event started the night before with a candlelight procession by youth affiliated to the nationalist Armenian Revolutionary Federation -- Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D) holding their own march.

[T]housands of young Armenians affiliated with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation — Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D) assembled in Yerevan's Liberty Square before embarking on a now traditional candlelight procession to the memorial overlooking the capital. Of course, this being the most nationalist of commemorative events, the Turkish flag was doused in petrol and set alight first. Interestingly, but not convincingly at all, Armenian Public Radio

You may view the latest post at
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2008/04/25/armenia-april-24-genocide-memorial-day/

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Thursday, April 24, 2008

LEGAL WATCH BLOG

SI ERES LITIGANTE CHILENO EN EEUU LEE ESTE BLOG

Survey Ranks West Virginia Courts Worst

Congratulations to West Virginia. It's spot stands secure as the worst state in which to be sued. So says Lawsuit Climate 2008, the annual ranking of state liability systems published by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform. West Virginia ranked 50 out of 50 for the third straight year, according to this announcement, and "has languished near the bottom of the rankings" since they began seven years ago. At the top of the list, as it is every year, is Delaware, described as "first among all fifty states in the fairness of its litigation environment."

The survey is conducted for ILR by the market research firm Harris Interactive. Harris asked nearly 1,000 in-house counsel and senior corporate litigators to evaluate up to five states in which they were familiar with the litigation environment. Based on their responses, Harris added up the scores and assigned each state a ranking. The five states with the most favorable litigation environments for business, the survey concluded, are:

Delaware
Nebraska
Maine
Indiana
Utah

The five worst (starting with number 50) are:

West Virginia
Louisiana
Mississippi
Alabama
Illinois

A state's ranking, the survey notes, may not reflect the "nuances" of its various courts. "For example, several studies have documented very high litigation activity in certain county courts such as Madison County, Illinois and Jefferson County, Texas, revealing that these counties have 'magnet courts' that are extremely hospitable to plaintiffs."

Over at opposing counsel's table, the American Association for Justice called the report "phony" and "propaganda." "U.S. Chamber's goal is to make sure people can't get justice in the courtroom, especially against the corporations that finance this front group," said AAJ CEO Jon Haber. AAJ has put together a response to the ILR report, The Truth About the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Further reading: Chamber survey on state 'legal climates' draws flak from plaintiffs' attorneys.

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on April 23, 2008 at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jet Maker Subpoenas Blog Critics

In the latest case of corporation-versus-blog, the manufacturer of a line of "affordable" jets is seeking to uncover the identity of persons who posted critical comments on an aviation industry blog. Eclipse Aviation has served a subpoena on Google Inc. seeking to out the identities of more than two dozen people who have posted anonymous comments to the blog Eclipse Aviation Critic NG, which is hosted on Google's Blogger service.

According to the aviation-industry news site AINonline, the president and CEO of the Albuquerque, N.M., company, Vern Raburn, claims that lies posted by the anonymous commentators have irreparably damaged his company. But AINonline adds that "the blog hasn't been far off the mark on several occasions," indicating that some of the anonymous posters could be Eclipse employees.

Meanwhile, the operator of the blog, Shane Price of Dublin, Ireland, tells another industry news site, AVwebBiz, that he is "feeling left out" because he was not personally named in the subpoena. He says that Google told him it would give Eclipse the requested information unless it is notified by May 9 that the anonymous posters intend to fight the action. According to news reports and comments on the blog, the posters do, indeed, intend to fight the subpoena and will file a motion to quash in the Santa Clara, Calif., Superior Court where it was filed.

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on April 23, 2008 at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Is This Law Firm Ad Unethical?

The Nixon Peabody quarter-page ad that appeared recently in the Wall Street Journal showed a thoughtful-looking man above the headline, "I need lawyers who are more concerned about managing my risks than their own." Below that, the body of the ad said, "If your lawyers seem more concerned about enumerating your options than helping you choose among them, you might wonder whose interests are really being served."

The ad "really disturbed me," writes legal-marketing professional (and self-described contrarian) Bruce W. Marcus at his blog The Marcus Perspective. Why? Because he sees it as an example of the kind of dirty-tricks advertising that characterizes political campaigns seeping into the legal profession. Most law-firm advertising is bad and appears to be written by agencies that are clueless about the legal profession, Marcus contends.

But this one looks like it was written by someone trained in political dirty tricks advertising. Does the advertising law firm really thinks it has to insult the profession to make its point? Does it really need to put down other lawyers, as if they were opposing candidates in an election campaign?

The ad may raise ethical questions, Marcus believes, "but even before that is a question of professionalism and taste. I would be surprised if half the profession doesn't feel sullied by this ad."

The very tag line that concerns Marcus appears prominently on the Nixon Peabody home page and the firm's series of print ads is displayed elsewhere on the site. Marcus's comments point to a quandary firms face in their advertising. They are ethically prohibited from directly comparing themselves to other firms unless the comparison can be substantiated factually. At the same time, as competition among firms grows more intense, they must somehow distinguish themselves from the lawyers across the street. Of the four ads shown on the firm's Web site, only the one Marcus describes strikes me as getting too close to crossing the line. With a little rewriting, the ad could have made the same point with a bit more subtlety.

What do you think? Do these ads read like a dirty-tricks campaign? Or do they make legitimate points that fall short of comparisons?

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on April 23, 2008 at 09:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Like a Grunge Concert, Only With Lawyers

Lollapalooza made its debut in 1990 as a farewell concert for Jane's Addiction and gathered steam over the following years as a touring festival of grunge and alternative rock music. Given that grunge had its roots in Seattle, home to Nirvana and Pearl Jam, it is only fitting that Seattle should host the not-so-alternative lawyer version of Lollapalooza, a/k/a Lawyerpalooza.

That's right. Tomorrow at 5:30 p.m., various lawyers will shed their suits and briefcases, pick up their guitars and drumsticks, and demonstrate to Seattle that the legal profession rocks. Rock bands drawn from Seattle law firms will perform at The Showbox, all to raise money for elementary school music programs in the city. Performing will be bands No Rules from Karr Tuttle Campbell, HalfTimes from Robert Half Legal, Perkins Coie from (how'd you guess?) Perkins Coie LLP, Morris Can Fly from Lane Powell PC and McNaul Ebel Nawrot & Helgren PLLC, Ruby's Basement from Groff Murphy PLLC, Dave DeCordoba from Ryan Swanson & Cleveland PLLC, Garth Olson from Schwabe Williamson & Wyatt, and Eric Laschever Group from Stoel Rives LLP.

This will be the sixth Lawyerpalooza. It was founded by "a group of friends in the Seattle legal community who just wanted to stretch themselves creatively and have some fun." Among them were the lawyer members of the band The Big Lubersky, who are not performing this year but promise to be on hand to "poke good natured-fun at their fellow law-oriented musicians." Tickets to the event are $20 and anyone outside the Seattle area can contribute a donation through the Web site. Several businesses are also providing support: Robert Half Legal, Iron Mountain, Avvo and Dorsey & Whitney. As grunge icon Kurt Cobain might have said, "Come as you are" -- but lose the tie.

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on April 23, 2008 at 09:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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Wednesday, April 23, 2008

fron legal watch blog

Blawg Review Gets a Second Life

Benjamin Duranske hosts Blawg Review #156 this week at his blog Virtually Blind. Duranske writes about the law and its relation to virtual worlds such as Second Life at his blog and in his new book, Virtual Law: Navigating the Legal Landscape of Virtual Worlds, published by the American Bar Association. And since not everyone has as firm a grasp as Duranske on all this virtual stuff, he structures this Blawg Review as a set of questions and answers about virtual law. Here is your chance to learn all about avatars, 3D networked environments and "swamps of sexual content," all while catching up on the best in the week's blog posts.

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on April 21, 2008 at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Stickin' With My Suit, Goshdarnit!

The Internet Bubble and Casual Fridays were just the start of the slippery slope that led us to the wrinkled knit shirt of a mess we're in today. Not like the good ol' days, says Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice partner Pressly M. Millen, writing in The National Law Journal, when a suit was a suit and "colors ran the gamut from gray to blue." Today, he says, few law firms have the stomach to tell young lawyers that they should dress like lawyers. But Millen is bucking the trend and sticking to his suit:

Now, I often find myself the only one in the room -- and, sometimes, it's a big room -- who's dressed the way lawyers used to dress. But I've decided I don't care anymore. When I go to the doctor or dentist, he or she better be wearing a white lab coat. The meal tastes better somehow when the chef wears a white coat, apron and toque. I feel good when my auto mechanic is wearing a jumpsuit with his name stitched on the pocket.

My suit is my uniform. Like the robe and wig of the English barrister, it marks me off from the rest. I'm comfortable with that. And every morning I'll wake up and put on my uniform, just like that barrister's wig, with no complaints.

Of course, in those good ol' stuffed-shirt days, no respectable law firm would feature a bulldog and doghouse on the front page of its Web site, as Womble Carlyle does, let alone have a Web site. Yes, times have changed. But when it comes to meetings with clients or adversaries or other such occasions, I agree with Millen that lawyers should dress like lawyers.

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on April 21, 2008 at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Metadata: Read at Your Own Risk

Mining for metadata in documents received from opposing counsel is unethical, says a new ethics opinion from the New York County Lawyers' Association. "A lawyer who receives from an adversary electronic documents that appear to contain inadvertently produced metadata is ethically obligated to avoid searching the metadata in those documents," the opinion concludes. The opinion is notable for its disagreement with a 2006 American Bar Association Ethics Committee opinion that reached the opposite conclusion, permitting review of metadata in documents opposing counsel sends electronically. Instead, the NYCLA ethics committee sides with the New York State Bar Association, which found that a lawyer may not ethically use technology to "surreptitiously examine" electronic documents.

This Committee finds that the NYSBA rule is a better interpretation of the Code's disciplinary rules and ethical considerations and New York precedents than the ABA's opinion on this issue. Thus, this Committee concludes that when a lawyer sends opposing counsel correspondence or other material with metadata, the receiving attorney may not ethically search the metadata in those electronic documents with the intent to find privileged material or if finding privileged material is likely to occur from the search.

The opinion adds two caveats. First, it does not apply to e-discovery, where documents may contain metadata "that by agreement may be viewed by attorneys in the course of litigation." Second, it does not prohibit a lawyer from investigating metadata for purposes other than "to uncover attorney work product or client confidences or secrets."

For example, if a lawyer is facing a pro se litigant and suspects that a lawyer is nonetheless drafting the pleadings for the pro se litigant, the lawyer who searches the properties to see whether a lawyer has drafted the material is not likely to uncover attorney work product or client confidences or secrets and may not be intending to uncover such material because a pro se litigant does not have the attorney work product protection.

The opinion emphasizes that attorneys who are sending electronic documents to their adversaries have the responsibility "to take due care in appropriately scrubbing documents prior to sending them." But when an attorney neglects to scrub a document, opposing counsel may not "take advantage of the sending attorney's mistake and hunt for the metadata."

[Hat tip to Legalethics.com.]

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on April 21, 2008 at 11:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For BigLaw, Change is Good

At his blog Adam Smith, Esq., Bruce MacEwen reports from Georgetown Law School's symposium on the future of the global law firm, where an international assemblage of academics and law firm leaders considered global competition, ownership and capital structure, ethics and professional values, cultural dynamics and related issues. If he were to boil down the theme of the two-day conference to just one word, MacEwen says, it would be "change."

Lawyers are notoriously poor at coping with change. ... Yet change is in our futures, like it or not. More than once the observation was made that from the invention of the Cravath System around the turn of the 20th Century through about 1985, the profession looked remarkably stable, but that the last 20 years have seen revolutionary changes and the next decade promises further departures at least as radical as those we've just experienced.

If change is the theme for global firms, it is also the mantra of firms here in the United States, according to an article by Leigh Jones in today's National Law Journal. "Change is a good thing," Dechert chairman Barton J. Winokur tells Jones. In this case, the change taking place is the reshuffling under way in large law firms "as they move lawyers out of faltering practice areas into those that are less vulnerable -- or even thriving -- during the economic slump." But if change is good, it can also cause "some jitters" among the lawyers going through it, as a Thacher Proffitt & Wood partner told the NLJ.

Where is all this change leading? MacEwen writes that he has never before attended a conference at which "so many readily admitted to so few answers." But he is not concerned by that, believing that experimentation is at the core of entrepreneurship. "As I said in a prior life as CEO of a dot-com, 'mid-course corrections are my middle name.'"

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Posted by Robert J. Ambrogi on April 21, 2008 at 10:

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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Our Climate Numbers Are a Big Old Mess

by Patrick J. Michaels

This article appeared in The Wall Street Journal on April 18, 2008.

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resident George W. Bush has just announced his goal to stabilize greenhouse-gas emissions by 2025. To get there, he proposes new fuel-economy standards for autos, and lower emissions from power plants built in the next 10 to 15 years.

Pending legislation in the Senate from Joe Lieberman and John Warner would cut emissions even further — by 66% by 2050. No one has a clue how to do this. Because there is no substitute technology to achieve these massive reductions, we'll just have to get by with less energy.

Patrick J. Michaels is senior fellow in environmental studies at the Cato Institute and professor of environmental sciences at University of Virginia.

More by Patrick J. Michaels

Compared to a year ago, gasoline consumption has dropped only 0.5% at current prices. So imagine how expensive it would be to reduce overall emissions by 66%.

The earth's paltry warming trend, 0.31 degrees Fahrenheit per decade since the mid-1970s, isn't enough to scare people into poverty. And even that 0.31 degree figure is suspect.

For years, records from surface thermometers showed a global warming trend beginning in the late 1970s. But temperatures sensed by satellites and weather balloons displayed no concurrent warming.

These records have been revised a number of times, and I examined the two major revisions of these three records. They are the surface record from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the satellite-sensed temperatures originally published by University of Alabama's John Christy, and the weather-balloon records originally published by James Angell of the U.S. Commerce Department.

The two revisions of the IPCC surface record each successively lowered temperatures in the 1950s and the 1960s. The result? Obviously more warming — from largely the same data.

The balloon temperatures got a similar treatment. While these originally showed no warming since the late 1970s, inclusion of all the data beginning in 1958 resulted in a slight warming trend. In 2003, some tropical balloon data, largely from poor countries, were removed because their records seemed to vary too much from year to year. This change also resulted in an increased warming trend. Another check for quality control in 2005 created further warming, doubling the initial overall rate.

Then it was discovered that our orbiting satellites have a few faults. The sensors don't last very long and are continually being supplanted by replacement orbiters. The instruments are calibrated against each other, so if one is off, so is the whole record. Frank Wentz, a consulting atmospheric scientist from California, discovered that the satellites also drift a bit in their orbits, which induces additional bias in their readings. The net result? A warming trend appears where before there was none.

There have been six major revisions in the warming figures in recent years, all in the same direction. So it's like flipping a coin six times and getting tails each time. The chance of that occurring is 0.016, or less than one in 50. That doesn't mean that these revisions are all hooey, but the probability that they would all go in one direction on the merits is pretty darned small.

hy is the news on global warming always bad? Perhaps because there's little incentive to look at things the other way.

The removal of weather-balloon data because poor nations don't do a good job of minding their weather instruments deserves more investigation, which is precisely what University of Guelph economist Ross McKitrick and I did. Last year we published our results in the Journal of Geophysical Research, showing that "non-climatic" effects in land-surface temperatures — GDP per capita, among other things — exert a significant influence on the data. For example, weather stations are supposed to be a standard white color. If they darken from lack of maintenance, temperatures read higher than they actually are. After adjusting for such effects, as much as half of the warming in the U.N.'s land-based record vanishes. Because about 70% of earth's surface is water, this could mean a reduction of as much as 15% in the global warming trend.

Another interesting thing happens to the U.N.'s data when it's adjusted for the non-climatic factors. The frequency of very warm months is lowered, to the point at which it matches the satellite data, which show fewer very hot months. That's a pretty good sign that there are fundamental problems with the surface temperature history. At any rate, our findings have not been incorporated into the IPCC's history, and they probably never will be.

The fear of a sudden loss of ice from Greenland also makes a lot of news. A year ago, radio and television were ablaze with the discovery of "Warming Island," a piece of land thought to be part of Greenland. But when the ice receded in the last few years, it turned out that there was open water. Hence Warming Island, which some said hadn't been uncovered for thousands of years. CNN, ABC and the BBC made field trips to the island.

But every climatologist must know that Greenland's last decade was no warmer than several decades in the early and mid-20th century. In fact, the period from 1970-1995 was the coldest one since the late 19th century, meaning that Greenland's ice anomalously expanded right about the time climate change scientists decided to look at it.

Warming Island has a very distinctive shape, and it lies off of Carlsbad Fjord, in eastern Greenland. My colleague Chip Knappenberger found an inconvenient book, Arctic Riviera, published in 1957 (near the end of the previous warm period) by aerial photographer Ernst Hofer. Hofer did reconnaissance for expeditions and was surprised by how pleasant the summers had become. There's a map in his book: It shows Warming Island.

The mechanism for the Greenland disaster is that summer warming creates rivers, called moulins, that descend into the ice cap, lubricating a rapid collapse and raising sea levels by 20 feet in the next 90 years. In Al Gore's book, An Inconvenient Truth, there's a wonderful picture of a moulin on page 193, with the text stating "These photographs from Greenland illustrate some of the dramatic changes now happening on the ice there."

Really? There's a photograph in the journal Arctic, published in 1953 by R.H. Katz, captioned "River disappearing in 40-foot deep gorge," on Greenland's Adolf Hoels Glacier. It's all there in the open literature, but apparently that's too inconvenient to bring up. Greenland didn't shed its ice then. There was no acceleration of the rise in sea level.

Finally, no one seems to want to discuss that for millennia after the end of the last ice age, the Eurasian arctic was several degrees warmer in summer (when ice melts) than it is now. We know this because trees are buried in areas that are now too cold to support them. Back then, the forest extended all the way to the Arctic Ocean, which is now completely surrounded by tundra. If it was warmer for such a long period, why didn't Greenland shed its ice?

This prompts the ultimate question: Why is the news on global warming always bad? Perhaps because there's little incentive to look at things the other way. If you do, you're liable to be pilloried by your colleagues. If global warming isn't such a threat, who needs all that funding? Who needs the army of policy wonks crawling around the world with bold plans to stop climate change?

But as we face the threat of massive energy taxes — raised by perceptions of increasing rates of warming and the sudden loss of Greenland's ice — we should be talking about reality.

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