FSU College of Law Research Center Blog

Is There an iCrime Wave

The Urban Institute in Washington D.C. has issued the report: "Is There an iCrime Wave."

The recent increase in violent crime defies easy explanation, and many hypotheses have been put forward for debate. In this brief, we propose that the rise in violent offending and the explosion in the sales of iPods and other portable media devices is more than coincidental. We propose that, over the past two years, America may have experienced an iCrime wave.

See a summary here.
The report is here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

PreCYdent

PreCYdent is a new legal research search engine.  Try it out here. 
Read an in depth interview with PreCYdent's Tom Smith on Law Librarian Blog here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

The University of Google

Joe Hodnicki had an interesting post on Law School Innovation on the book The University of Google: Education in the (Post) Information Age.  Here's an excerpt:

Angry, humorous and practical in equal measure, The University of Google is based on real teaching experience and on years of engaged and sometimes exasperated reflection on it. It is far from a luddite critique of the information age. Tara Brabazon celebrates the possibilities of digital platforms in education, but deplores the consequences of placing funding on technology and not teachers. In doing so, she opens a new debate on how to make our educational system both productive and provocative in the (post-) information age.

Read the whole post here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

What's Your Google Reputation

Be careful what you post on the web.  Having damaging information online might be a deal breaker when applying for a job.  A recent report indicated that 83% of job recruiters used search engines to learn about job candidates, while 43% of recruiters indicated that they had eliminated somebody based on what they found online. 

eWeek Careers has a Special Report on this which includes tips on how to improve your Google reputation.  Here's one example:

2. Join  The easiest way to improve search results for your name is to join online networks and add to conversations in prominent places. LinkedIn, a business-oriented social networking site used for professional networking with more than 10 million users and a high page rank, is an easy place to start.

"My business blog and LinkedIn profile are both in the top ten on Google for my name, even though it's a relatively common name. Honestly, it didn't take that much work to accomplish this," Peter Meyers, president of User Effect, focusing on Web site usability, told eWEEK.

Read the whole report here. 

Posted by Jon Lutz

The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority

An interesting article, The New Metrics of Scholarly Authority by Michael Jensen, is in the June 15th, 2007 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education.  The article discusses the impact of the Web 3.0 standard on academic publishing.

It's available here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Legal Digital Audio Content

AudioCaseFiles describes itself as the leader in AudioCaseFiles.  From their website:

AudioCaseFiles provides law school students with digital audio recordings of the legal opinions they read to learn the law (patent pending). The company was founded on the principle that auditory delivery will enhance and supplement the law school learning process. We currently have hundreds of popular cases and are in the process of continuing to record the most frequently requested cases. Please check the site frequently.

The Company distinguishes itself from other study guides which detract from the law school learning process by spoon feeding students black letter law by offering content that challenges students to thoughtfully engage in the same analysis that reading requires. However, the key advantage that ACF affords is portability, as students can listen to the cases they are required to read for class while in the car, at the gym, or at home.

The Company also believes that it can save students money by allowing them to selectively download the cases they want and need for only .99 cents. Students are no longer deluged with the useless, irrelevant, and sometimes harmful information coming from study guides and can focus on learning and knowing the important cases emphasized by their professors.

Try it here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Ten Great Apps for the Treo Mobile Lawyer

An interesting article on the Treo 700p is on www.law.com:  Ten Great Apps for the Treo Mobile Lawyer by Richard M. Georges. Here is just one of the 10 great tips, number 4:

If I absolutely have to look at my office network server to see what my secretary has changed in the calendar or contacts list, I can use the next program on my list, EZRemote. This great little program has a host program that sits on any computer attached to the Internet, and a client version that runs on the Treo. Just click connect, and you're looking at a resized version of the network desktop. It's sometimes tough to view the desktop on the small screen, but, in a pinch, you can actually control any computer remotely using the built-in 3G connection of the Treo.

See all 10 tips here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Internet Research, Uncensored

Computer scientists use social networking to help foreign scholars bypass their governments' Web filters.

From the March 23, 2007 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Read the article here.

Posted by Jon Lutz

Email paranoia?

The U.S. attorney general doesn’t send e-mails—and he’s not alone.  From government to business, many powerful people are choosing not to use email.  President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, CEOs and others do not use email.  Is this due to a desire not to leave an electronic trail?  Are they simply too busy to spend time emailing?  While it's true that senders of email should be careful about what they send in email, it makes little sense to make a blanket decision not to use such a powerful business tool.  Think before you click is still the best course of action.

Posted by Faye Jones

Law School Curriculum: What is technology's role?

There's an interesting article in the November 8, 2006 National Law Journal, The Law School Curriculum: What is technology's role?  Here's an excerpt:

Professor Charles Nesson, a pioneer in the use of technology in legal education and a founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, is teaching an experimental class called "CyberOne: Law and the Court of Public Opinion." He's talking to students about how to make an argument not just to a judge, but to a global audience. As he puts it, CyberOne is "a course in persuasive, empathic argument in the Internet space." Students are figuring out how to use blogs, podcasts, wikis, online video and virtual worlds to build their cases inside and outside of the courtroom. It's out there-both figuratively and literally, as it's also being taught in Second Life, a virtual world. Then again, Nesson is usually onto something when he's out there.

These experiments may well lead to greater use of technology in law school classrooms. But the broader question lingers: Can technology play a transformative role in legal education at a systemic level? At the Berkman Center, in partnership with LexisNexis, we've begun a research project this fall to survey lawyers and law faculties about what they think on this front. By the end of the year, we expect to publish the results and highlight some of the most promising ways forward. We don't yet know where this study will lead, but it's pretty clear that the answer doesn't lie in law schools starting to teach technology-specific courses. After all, a smart young lawyer can figure out how to use a new e-discovery software package in a few hours.

Read the entire article here.

Posted by Jon Lutz