Buscando Host Gratis

Announcing The Summer of Code

May 31, 2005 Noticias

We’re very excited to launch our newest initiative, the Summer of Code. This program aims to help students enter into the world of Open Source software development. This Summer, allow Google to help you hone your skills on real problems with real programmers. Return to school with some real experience under your belt and some cash in your wallet. By working with some of the most important organizations and foundations in Open Source we think we’ve put together a program that benefits Open Source, students and computer science. Read more about it and consider taking part!

Adam Smith, Esq.

May 31, 2005 Noticias

a blawg reviewed by Regan Morris at Lawcrossing

Bruce MacEwen is the host of Adam Smith, Esq., a legal blog focused on the economics of law firms. LawCrossing speaks with MacEwen about his life in the “blogosphere” and his dream to be part of a world where law firms are managed like major companies.

Bruce MacEwen started his Adam Smith blog—which can be found at www.bmacewen.com/blog—at the start of 2004. As he is an attorney, businessman, and consultant, MacEwen’s passion lies in the business of law, and he holds the belief that big firms need to hire more professional managers. He felt there was a gap in the so-called blogosphere. While there were many legal blogs, there were none focused on the business and management of law firms.

MacEwen, 47, started a dot-com company during the technology boom to connect Am Law 100 firms with Fortune 1000 companies. While his company didn’t survive the NASDAQ crash of 2000, MacEwen’s faith and interest in technology did.

“I was interested in blogging in general because I thought it was a fascinating new technology platform,” he said. “But I wasn’t at all sure that I’d like it, and there’s always the dangerous reality that you might not have anything to say. So I started in stealth mode. I only told my wife.”

It turns out MacEwen did have something to say. He went public a few months later, by emailing his site around to other legal bloggers. Now, MacEwen gets about 30,000 readers per month.

MacEwen, who lives in Manhattan, said the blog has opened up many professional doors for him and made him a more critical thinker and reader. Instead of skimming a legal article, he now focuses more intently, always thinking of the blog and if he could add something for his readers. MacEwen’s ultimate goal is to work as an executive director of an Am Law 100 firm. When not writing his blog, he works as a business and legal consultant.

“The blog has been shockingly successful in terms of getting my name out,” he said. “But it’s really just part of trying to establish a reputation for somebody who thinks long and hard about these things.”

MacEwen has plenty of strong opinions, which is key to writing a good blog, or at least one people want to read. MacEwen thinks big law firms too often promote great attorneys with little management experience instead of hiring managers. Great attorneys often do not make great managers, he said.

The 100 biggest American firms should be run more like similarly sized corporations, MacEwen said. Many of the Am Law 100 firms are $500-million companies. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom does more than $1 billion in business a year.

“If you compare how they’re managed to a similarly sized corporation, it’s almost a shocking gap. So what I’m really passionate about is bringing more professional management to law firms,” he said. “Lawyers tend to think that they can do everything. Typically, the people who rise to the top in a law firm partnership rise to the top because they’re incredibly good at serving their clients and they’re very good judges of human nature, but it doesn’t mean that they think about management issues.”

MacEwen started his career as an associate in several (now-defunct) New York firms before moving to Wall Street, where he specialized in securities law. He spent 10 years with Morgan Stanley/Dean Witter, where his interest in business increased. He earned 98 percent of an M.B.A. at night through New York University (the remaining 2 percent is the result of an unfinished dysfunctional group project).

MacEwen also has strong opinions about a sacred cow in the legal profession: the billable hour. It may be good for the firm, but not necessarily for the client. MacEwen thinks law firms will move away from the billable hour kicking and screaming.

“Sophisticated clients really are beginning to demand that law firms price their services based on value received as opposed to what the billable hour represents, which in my mind as an econ major is the cost of production,” he said. “And the clients have not yet tightened the screws enough on this issue. The firms won’t change it; the clients will be required to change it.”

MacEwen, a marathon runner and opera lover, said he never had a 20-year goal to become executive director of a law firm, but that all of his experiences converged into his passion for law and business, which is why he enjoys writing the blog so much. Because he is an expert in securities law, it took him a few years to discover that his real passion was management, not practicing law.

“If you haven’t found what you’re passionate about, you better keep looking,” he said. “Because if you’re operating at 90 percent because you’re lacking passion, I promise you there’s somebody down the hall operating at 120 percent because they’re in the zone. And I hate to tell you, they’re going to win.”

MacEwen dedicated his blog to Adam Smith because he was an intellectual hero.

“He’s obviously the Godfather of capitalism. He published The Wealth of Nations in the remarkably fitting year of 1776, and it’s a book that if you re-read it today—which I have recently—it holds up brilliantly,” he said.

MacEwen said he updates the blog when he feels he has something important to say or report, not necessarily every day (although he does often update the site daily). The blog has resulted in numerous professional contacts, and MacEwen is now collaborating with a professor at Indiana University Law School on a course on the business of law firms, one of the few such courses in the nation.

MacEwen said the legal-blogging world is a very generous and helpful group—more than a dozen legal bloggers recently met in New York. He said he hopes he sees more attorney bloggers in the future.

“Lawyers are articulate, opinionated people who can typically express themselves fairly well, particularly if they’re not writing in a technical context,” he said. “I think the intersection of the blogosphere and the legal landscape is a marriage made in heaven. Lawyers sell knowledge, and blogs are all about knowledge.”

IBM Blogging Guidelines

May 30, 2005 Noticias

Blogging has been on a bit of a slow pattern for the past few weeks. A couple of intensive projects have diverted my attention… I should be able to explain in a bit more detail later this summer.

One interesting tidbit that caught my eye recently… IBM’s James Snell has blogged about & provided access to Big Blue’s Blogging Policy & Guidelines. The guidelines are pretty much common sense, but add to the growing literature in this area. The part that did catch my eye, was IBM’s published stance on its Intranet site “encouraging all 320,000+ employees world wide to consider engaging actively in the practice of “blogging”.

If even a fraction of those employees take their employer’s offer… Wowza! Talk about building the online brand. There won’t be a product or topic in the IBM realm that won’t be covered by an IBM Employee’s spin. I guess it’s a good thing they’ve got those guidelines.
On a less cynical note, I was just contacted via email by yet another legal KM’er. My informal network has now expanded to 4 continents in 6 months. Goes to show - when it comes to blogging, don’t discount the value gained behind the scenes.

New Gmail Feed Types and A Python GDS Plugin

May 28, 2005 Noticias

I’m very happy to announce that the Gmail team has made a nice tweak to their atom feeds, you can now pull feeds based on Gmail label. For instance, if you have a label named “lkml” related to your favorite mailing list and you want to know when something is posted there, you can simply subscribe to https://gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom/lkml. More info can be found in the Gmail help center.

Also, we have a new project that we’re releasing. This is the first API example we’re releasing here on Google Code. In keeping with our love of Python, we are releasing the Kongulo Google Desktop Search plugin. Kongulo is a spider for GDS that makes it easy to crawl sites behind your firewall. Our hope is that people might use it as a template for implementing new plugins for GDS. The Kongulo Python source can be found on SourceForge.

Happy Coding!

Previewing Blawg Review #8

May 25, 2005 Noticias

Mike Cernovich will host Blawg Review #8 at Crime & Federalism next Monday, so we’d like to give you a bit of a preview here.

A graduate of Pepperdine University School of Law, Mike served nine years in the National Guard and Army Reserves, where he graduated from Officer Candidate School and served as an Executive Officer at an aviation unit. His military record and academic background are impressive.

Mike has also studied trial advocacy under some of the greatest trial lawyers in the country; he graduated from Gerry Spence’s Trial Lawyers College Regional Seminar, and Gerry Spence’s Trial Lawyers College Advanced Regional Seminar, and he just passed the California Bar Exam. So he’s well prepared. Don’t let his easy going, friendly manner fool you—he’d love nothing more than to beat the shit out of you in court.

Long before Mike Cernovich started making a name for himself in the blawgosphere, he was familiar to many blog readers as Federalist No. 84, under which pseudonym he wrote a very helpful guest post titled “Turning a Blog Into Your Blawg: Fourteen Steps to Finding Your Voice in the Blawgosphere.”

Mike started off as a solo blogger at Crime & Federalism before taking his own advice and adding a permanent co-blogger, Norm Pattis, an accomplished criminal defense and civil rights lawyer, and a writer. In a recent guest post on Evan Schaeffer’s Legal Underground titled “Weblogging with a Co-Blogger: Are You Ready to Take the Plunge?” he offered this advice to bloggers:

If you’re familiar with your friend’s writing, then blogging with him or her should be appropriate. You’ll have a feel for your co-blogger’s style and quirks. My permanent co-blogger, Norm, is a bit irreverent: his topic of choice is making hamburgers from sacred cows. Guest-blogger Sandefur is uber-cerebral, and his posts are generally long. Both styles differ from mine, but I’m glad to have them.

I had read their previous writings and thus knew what to expect. They’re both tough-talking and controversial. Which is something someone who seeks to avoid controversy needs to know before the blogging relationship begins.

Mike says his favorite aspect of blogging is meeting people across the country. “Blawgging is like throwing a bottle with a note in it into the ocean. You never know who’s going to find you, or who you’re going to meet.”

If you’d like to get one of your recent blawg posts included in Blawg Review #8 on Crime & Federalism, get your submission in early this week. Mike is really looking forward to introducing some great law bloggers to his regular readers.

Sentencing Law & Policy

May 24, 2005 Noticias

a blawg reviewd by Mike Cernovich

By the way, happy birthday to Professor Berman’s Sentencing Law & Policy, which turned one last week. Berman rarely sings his own praises (and, I guess when your blawg is as good as his is, there’s no need to draw attention its author; the thing speaks for itself). So I’ll do it.

Berman, a sentencing law expert, began blogging right as Blakely came down. Though there were many blawgs before his, few blawggers had his talent; and none had his timing. Indeed, if memory serves me, several state and federal judges cited to his Blakely-related commentary, making his blawg the first one cited in a published opinion. When he broke an exclusive story, the U.S. Supreme Court tipped its hat. Given that blogs are still avant-garde, those nods were doubly special.

If it’s true that luck is the intersection of opportunity and ability, Berman is the luckiest blawgger. Happy Blawgday, and please, keep it up.

Previewing Blawg Review #7

May 18, 2005 Noticias

“If the facts are against you, argue the law. If the law is against you, argue the facts. If the law and the facts are against you, pound the table and yell like hell.” - quoted by an Illinois native, Carl Sandburg, in The People, Yes (1936)

Jeremy Richey’s Blawg adapts this apocryphal trial lawyer’s advice to a young litigator in the tagline of his blog: When I’m not pounding the books, I’m pounding the law, the facts, or the table.

Jeremy’s a law student (rising 3L) at SIU School of Law, future litigator, blawger, and instigator of the vast right-wing conspiracy. And he’s hosting Blawg Review #7 on Jeremy Richey’s Blawg next Monday. This is a great Blawg Review opportunity for red-state lawyers, wingnuts, and instapundits with law degrees who’ve been holding out—waiting for a sensible conservative blawg to submit a post. It just doesn’t get any better than this, does it?

As a young law blogger, and regular commnenter on Evan Schaeffer’s Notes from the (Legal) Legal Underground, he’s taken notes from his blawgfather and has learned how to craft an entertaining yet credible blog by writing honestly.

Jeremy admits to being part of a student organization called the Christian Legal Society (”CLS”).

Our CLS group is part of the national CLS organization. The national organization’s rules preclude unrepentant sexual sinners–including fornicators, adulterers, and homosexuals–from becoming members or assuming leadership roles, but these individuals are certainly welcome to attend any meeting.

If you think that sounds like fun, and even if you don’t, there’s more good stuff here. Some of the special features of Jeremy Richey’s Blawg that we’ve come to look forward to are The Weekly Pounding (actually, it’s not really as painful as that sounds) which he blawgcasts, The Ideal Law Building, Legal Myths, and something he affectionately calls The Feisty Scalia.

Jeremy writes about his personal experiences at law school, and he’d be the first to tell you it sucks getting yelled at by a law professor. There’s always good stuff like this at Jeremy Richey’s Blawg, and now he’s dressed it all up with a snazzy Wordpress blog design.

If I could select one of his especially creative posts to share with law blog readers here, it might be this:

DEAR IDEM

Dear Id.,

I have never said this to a Latin word or phrase before, but I love you. You see, there is nothing I hate more in the world than putting citations into proper Bluebook form. This is mainly because the Bluebook is a confusing monstrosity that should be shot and put out of its misery. Or at least if someone did in fact shoot it, I would be put out of my misery. But you, Id., you make my life a little easier. I really have a hard time putting in to words how much you mean to me. Let’s just put it this way: If the Bluebook ever took you from me, I would never again write a legal paper of any sort. Now that’s love my dear Idem, that is love.

Love,

Jeremy

And the comments to that stirring post show us that Jeremy knows how to engage his readership.

So, perhaps the best way to sum up Jeremy Richey’s Blawg is to share the comments of one of his regular readers, Matt Schuh, who noted recently, “Jeremy, I’ve gotta give you credit; I’ve always (as long as I’ve read it) enjoyed reading your blog, but you’ve definitely made some real strides in your blogging the last month or so. I don’t know what it is, but keep up the good work.”

Blawg Review #7

Holdin’ Down the Fort

May 16, 2005 Noticias

For those of us not in St. John’s Nfld at the Canadian Association of Law Libraries conference, a big thanks to Connie Crosby for allowing us to keep up at home. If you haven’t been following, Connie’s been sharing her experiences this week at CALL. And a darn fine job she’s doing … Keep them photos coming Connie!

And for my fellow CALLeagues who are (like me) holding down the Fort… Boy it looks cold, cloudy & foggy in those photos.

Previewing Blawg Review #6

May 12, 2005 Noticias

next week’s host previewed by Evan Schaeffer

Can technology make trial lawyers better? That’s the promise of David Swanner’s South Carolina Trial Law Blog, which boasts this tagline: “Using Technology to be a Better Trial Lawyer.” There you’ll find useful trial tips, often from the perspective of a plaintiffs’ lawyer, and helpful posts about practice management issues for all lawyers.

Dave is a plaintiffs’ attorney in Myrtle Beach, who started his practice in 1994 straight out of law school. His practice is devoted to "personal injury and workers compensation cases." You can learn more about Dave and his practice on his "about" page. Did you know he was a qualified Hungarian and Arabic linguist for the Army, and was an interrogator in the Army for seven years before he went to law school?.

As a trial lawyer myself, I can personally attest that Dave really knows his stuff when it comes to technology and trial law. In fact, since Dave started his South Carolina Trial Law Blog, I’ve considered it a cousin to my own Illinois Trial Practice Weblog. I love pointing my readers his way—he always offers such good advice—so I keep a link to his weblog handy in my blogrolls. If you’d like a sample of Dave’s advice, take a look at the guest post he wrote for Notes from the (Legal) Underground: Twelve Ways Technology Can Make You a Better Trial Lawyer, and visit his blog for more.

It seems you can always count on David Swanner for good stuff, so we’re really looking forward to the next Blawg Review being hosted at his South Carolina Trial Law Blog. If you’ve written an interesting post recently that you’d like Dave to include in his review of the best and the bravest of the blawgosphere, just follow the submission guidelines and file your pleadings before the limitation period expires.

Stay of Execution

May 10, 2005 Noticias

a blawg reviewed by Josh

I love Stay of Execution, a blog by Scheherazade (Sherry) Fowler, a “young lawyer, a sailor, an extrovert, and an insatiably curious woman living in Portland, Maine.” I came across her site (I think through Jeremy’s Weblog) shortly after I decided to go to law school, and I’ve been reading ever since, though I admit that from time to time I would think about deleting her. After all, sailing doesn’t interest me, and there aren’t many posts directly applicable to law school. I never followed through, though, and now I’m hooked.

Stay of Execution is great because it manages to connect with the reader so effortlessly. Sherry’s writing is full of personality. She seems thoughtful, confident, truthful… I admire her outgoing, easy way with people. I want my readers to feel like they know me.

Really, I don’t know why I have her in the “blawgs” section. Since I’ve been reading, the law-related posts have been scarce, and now that she has a blog focusing on her professional activities, I doubt that will change. Maybe I should make up a new category, but for now I’ll leave her in “blawgs”, if for no other reason than to remind myself that it’s possible for lawyers to be such cool people. Something to aim for, I guess.