Previewing Blawg Review #4
Apr 28, 2005 Noticias
Law & Entrepreneurship News is a collaborative weblog project involving Professor Gordon Smith and students at the University of Wisconsin Law School. Their purpose is to provide links and commentary on recent developments relating to law and entrepreneurship.
This group blawg tracks judicial, legislative, regulatory, transactional and scholarly developments related to a wide variety of business topics. Each subject area is the primary responsibility of one of these outstanding student editors, who researches and writes the blog entries.
Blawg Review #4 is a special opportunity for your best blawg post this week to be featured on a weblog that is widely read in the business blogosphere, as well by the legal community. Earlier this month, Law & Entrepreneurship News hosted a great Carnival of the Capitalists.
How do these law students manage all this business law reporting and analysis and still have time for exams? This exceptional blawg has a real live research advisor, Bonnie Shucha, who is “paid to be an information detective” - that means helping find answers to law students research questions. According to her online profile, Bonnie particularly likes the challenging ones that require her to dig into those information crevices that only librarians know. And, in addition to working on Law & Entrepreneurship News, Bonnie maintains WisBlawg, a blog about legal research and internet news and information with an emphasis on Wisconsin.
As well as collaborating on Law & Entrepreneurship News, Professor Gordon Smith writes extensively on the Conglomerate law blog. A very strong supporter of Blawg Review, Professor Smith will also be hosting Blawg Review #5, at Conglomerate. More about that, and cheese, next week.
GSA API Docs added to Code.Google.Com
Apr 28, 2005 Noticias
We’ve added three documents to our repository here on Google Code, each having to do with the Search Appliance. All three can be found off the APIs list. These documents specify:
Appliance Search Protocol: This allows customers to work with the search results from the appliance.
Feeds Protocol: This allows customers to write a custom connector to feed data into the appliance.
Authorization Protocol: This allows a customer web service to authorize users to access specific documents for searching in real-time, leveraging their existing security and access control environment.
These were previously accessible to appliance customers but we wanted to move them onto Google Code.
J’s Scratchpad - Wooo Hooo!!!!
Apr 28, 2005 Noticias
Guess who linked up to the VLLB today? J’s Scratchpad indeed!
For those not familiar with this blog, some of the best and even handed insight into new Library trends can be found in the words of j Baumgart. If you’re still filling out your dance card, this is a must have.
If I ever get around to ranking my ‘Top 10′ Library trend blogs, this site will be in there. I’m obviously a huge fan… this is very cool. Thanks J!
Infamy or Praise
Apr 27, 2005 Noticias
We get either infamy or praise around here, as you know, and frankly we much prefer the latter. So, we’d like to thank everyone who lets their readers know where to find the best damn carnival of blawg posts every Monday.
The number of law bloggers showing support for Blawg Review is encouraging, and there are more joining the project weekly, as you can see from the links in the sidebar. What’s most impressive is the quality of the participants, and the creativity of the bloggers who are getting involved with this project.
We’d like to share one law blogger’s exceptional announcement of Blawg Review, Episode III: Blawg of the Sith. This is a sequel to Blawg Review II: The Wrath of Coleman and the announcement of the premiere of Blawg Review.
Let me say, Colin Samuels really gets it. And we really appreciate the high praise from this slithering reptile who has caught everyone’s attention with his excellent writing.
Visit his blog often, and give Colin some well-deserved link love.
VALA Topics Profiles Gillian Crabtree!
Apr 27, 2005 Noticias
Long time member of the Vancouver law library community, and ‘instigator’ (to steal some hockey jargon) of the VALA KM Subsection, Gillian Crabtree is profiled in the spring edition of the VALL Topics Newsletter.
It was very nice of Gillian to co-credit me with authorship of the initial KM subsection article. Note to the VALA editors - Matthews … 
And while I’m on the topic of the VALA KM group, I’m expecting many of you ‘local folk’ to come out to the 2nd Annual Joint VALL/VALA Luncheon Meeting. Gord Holley is going to be bringing his bag of tricks and teach us how to Sell, Sell, Sell!!!
Rumour also has it that future MLS candidate, and celebrity to many of us, Drew Jackson might show up.
What’s up with Instapundit?
Apr 26, 2005 Noticias
An anonymous host of Blawg Review writes:
What’s up with Instapundit? He hasn’t linked to any of your “Blawg Reviews.” I sent him an e-mail a while ago. Why does he link to every carnival except the blawggers’ carnival?
Some readers think they know what’s up. Glenn Reynolds is the anonymous Editor ‘n’ Chef of Blawg Review, and he’s just playing dumb.
There’s evidence everywhere you look, they say. Even before the launch of Blawg Review, the Editor was gratuitously thanking Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, for his support. Talk about slipping the tongue. This is pretty sloppy when you think about it.
We’d like to thank Professor Bainbridge and Professor Reynolds, the Instapundit, in advance, for their help in nurturing this concept for the legal community that blawgs, as they have so generously for our carny brothers, Carnival of the Vanities and Carnival of the Capitalists.
But wait a sec, that doesn’t prove anything. That could just as easily be evidence that Professor Bainbridge is the anonymous Editor ‘n’ Chef. After all, he’s the one more likely to make such a clever allusion to culinary skillz. Hold on there, just a minute, wouldn’t Professor Bainbridge have mentioned his wine blog? And there’s no way Stephen Bainbridge would give Glenn Reynolds two links, and himself only one, in the same sentence. Nah. So, if Professor Bainbridge isn’t the anonymous Editor ‘n’ Chef, who might be?
Now, because of all the ignoring, a lot of law bloggers are asking, “What’s up with Instapundit?” He’s a lawyer isn’t he, a law professor, a card-carrying member of the profession? Yes, we know it’s hard for our hosts to understand why he doesn’t mention their Blawg Review—we’re all flummoxed.
But let’s be clear about one thing. Glenn Reynolds is not the anonymous Editor of Blawg Review. That’s an official denial. But your Editor dares not protest too much, or point a finger in the direction of Professor Bainbridge because he, too, hasn’t linked to Blawg Review. Who’d believe it?
End-to-end Knowledge Management
Apr 25, 2005 Noticias
As many of you know, I’m always on the lookout for practical applications of KM in law firms. One resource I came upon recently was the blog of Tom Collins, a retired lawyer and KM Consultant. Tom’s blog is pretty good (especially if you dig into those archives), but what intrigued me was the diagram on the homepage of his consulting practice, Advocacy 2100, LLC:
If you take a closer look (click on the image to see a larger version), you’ll see some very practical examples of work processes that occur in law firms each day. When the experts start talking about codified knowledge, this is what I envision… The other part I like here is the ‘loop back’. When KM is working well, a firm will have some excellent routines (and capturing technology) in place to gather the various ‘outputs’ in the diagram above. No ‘loop back’ equals no KM.
I’m usually not a big fan of diagrams or charts, but I think Tom’s makes a lot of intuitive sense.
Bloggers Win on Appeal
Apr 25, 2005 Noticias
Leave to appeal to a broader audience was granted for the posts of thrity-five law bloggers, who all came out winners in Blawg Review #3 under the capable case management of Appellate Law & Practice. Okay, enough with the legal puns, go read the current issue of Blawg Review, and decide for yourself.
Previewing Blawg Review #3
Apr 21, 2005 Noticias
On Monday, Blawg Review will be hosted by a group of federal law clerks, appellate lawyers, and law students. Some are members of the Federalist Society, others of the American Constitution Society.
But the only agenda on their group blawg, Appellate Law & Practice, they say, is to post summaries of recent appellate decisions. If there are any hidden agendas, they might only be gleaned from blog comments.
The cases discussed on Appellate Law & Practice present an interesting mix of fact and law. Case in point: “Did they really love each other when they got married? Another IJ remand.” This recent post raises some important points of law, but the discussion about immigration judges really heats up in the comments thread, where an anonymous commenter takes on the anonymous blogger:
The disdain for IJs reflected by your post is common among law snobs.That disdain (among law snobs) is exacerbated by the fact that the federal courts only see the decisions where an immigrant is denied relief. It is further exacerbated by the fact that when a published opinion is deemed necessary, it is usually because the IJ made an error in applying the law, and vacatur or reversal is necessary.
In short, “The more you know . . . ” and all that jazz.
The appellate law blogger answers in kind:
Yes, we are law snobs. IJs are lawyers. In fact, most of them were “law snobs” before they were IJs, as they would all make fun of immigration lawyers in private practice. Now, when they get a chance to operate on their own with some (unfortunately minimal) independence, they demonstrate that they can’t take their job seriously.
Zing! There’s more said worth reading, but you get the idea—they don’t hold their fire at Appellate Law & Practice.
And here’s where it gets really interesting for us. The feisty folks at Appellate Law & Practice are accepting submissions now for their Blawg Review. Send in your best post this week. Or, surprise your friends and colleagues by sending in something great from their law blogs.
Making Law Firm KM Smaller
Apr 20, 2005 Noticias
I’m willing to admit, firm wide sharing is incredibly difficult to encourage. In many cases, the problem gets proportionately worse as the firm’s size increases. So how does one encourage knowledge sharing if Altruistic Information Sharing Doesn’t Happen? (thanks to Rees Morrison for getting me thinking…)
One of the big challenges, in my mind, is to break down the sharing process so it means something for the Lawyers involved. One of the reasons it’s difficult to get contribution to a firm wide ‘black hole’ KM collection is that Lawyers have no connection to it. Forgetting the value proposition for a moment, unless you can forge an affinity between a lawyer and the collection, getting any type of contribution is going to be difficult.
Creating this connection can be as easy as letting Lawyers keep track of the content they find valuable or useful (what a concept!). Or, try to promote sharing as a benefit to meaningful or functional groups - be it by practice area, or a more interesting concept, connecting those with a common topical interest.
Content collections which are grouped or classified will retain contextual meaning, and will still be accessible by global firm wide KM searches. Topical or group oriented collections can also make for more interesting browsing, and potentially encourage a ‘collection connection’.
At the very least, if you create a collection holding area for a niche topic which matches a particular lawyer’s interests, you may get an opportunity to showcase your services. Also, encourage your lawyers to partner with you on the content collection - to help seed it, and to help encourage others to contribute - Every content collection needs a champion!
Some of the best collections are already in existence, but need to be found (no need to create a connection here!). Want proof? Go into any Lawyer’s office and look around. Do you see any personal binders of precedents or articles? The truth is, Lawyers are every bit the collection builders Librarians are, and I don’t think they’re hiding content. The issue is trying to get them to collect openly and beyond personal use; and that’s an easier sell when they’re part of the process.
