A very interesting development. From Google:

As many of us recall from our civics lessons in school, the United States is a common law country. That means when judges issue opinions in legal cases, they often establish precedents that will guide the rulings of other judges in similar cases and jurisdictions. Over time, these legal opinions build, refine and clarify the laws that govern our land. For average citizens, however, it can be difficult to find or even read these landmark opinions. We think that's a problem: Laws that you don't know about, you can't follow — or make effective arguments to change.

Starting today, we're enabling people everywhere to find and read full text legal opinions from U.S. federal and state district, appellate and supreme courts using Google Scholar. You can find these opinions by searching for cases (like Planned Parenthood v. Casey), or by topics (like desegregation) or other queries that you are interested in. For example, go to Google Scholar, click on the "Legal opinions and journals" radio button, and try the query separate but equal. Your search results will include links to cases familiar to many of us in the U.S. such as Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education, which explore the acceptablity of "separate but equal" facilities for citizens at two different points in the history of the U.S. But your results will also include opinions from cases that you might be less familiar with, but which have played an important role.

We think this addition to Google Scholar will empower the average citizen by helping everyone learn more about the laws that govern us all. To understand how an opinion has influenced other decisions, you can explore citing and related cases using the Cited by and Related articles links on search result pages. As you read an opinion, you can follow citations to the opinions to which it refers. You can also see how individual cases have been quoted or discussed in other opinions and in articles from law journals. Browse these by clicking on the "How Cited" link next to the case title. See, for example, the frequent citations for Roe v. Wade, for Miranda v. Arizona (the source of the famous Miranda warning) or for Terry v. Ohio (a case which helped to establish acceptable grounds for an investigative stop by a police officer).

As we worked to build this feature, we were struck by how readable and accessible these opinions are. Court opinions don't just describe a decision but also present the reasons that support the decision. In doing so, they explain the intricacies of law in the context of real-life situations. And they often do it in language that is surprisingly straightforward, even for those of us outside the legal profession. In many cases, judges have gone quite a bit out of their way to make complex legal issues easy to follow. For example, in Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court justices present a fascinating and easy-to-follow debate on the legality of internment of natural born citizens based on their ancestry. And in United States v. Ramirez-Lopez, Judge Kozinski, in his dissent, illustrates the key issue of the case using an imagined good-news/bad-news dialogue between the defendant and his attorney.

Mogo has a reputation for producing accessories that neatly fit in other gadgets. A few years back I had a Mogo mouse that fit in the PC card slot on my laptop computer and charged while it was tucked away. Mogo has now figured a way to make a bluetooth earpiece fit in to an iPhone case so you never have to worry about losing it. Just don't lose your iPhone.

A few weeks ago I was traveling with my wife and kids and we were paying for Internet access in our hotel room. We all had our own laptops, iPod touches, etc. that we wanted to check from time to time, but because of the way our Internet connection was set up, we had to use just one computer and wait our turn. If we had the Sprint MiFi 2200, that might not have been an issue. The little gadget has the dimensions of about three stacked credit cards and uses Sprint's broadband mobile wi-fi service. Up to five users at a time can access the Internet through the device. I do have a few concerns about it such as

- how slow will the connection be if a few people are accessing it at the same time. Sprint's broadband access is not as fast as cable or DLS wi-fi and dividing up the bandwidth further could be noticeable.

- the price of $300 is a lot for the device and you're stuck with a two-year contract

- the monthly price of $60 is not cheap and you're limited to 5 gigabytes of bandwidth, something that can easily be reached if you want to use the gadget to watch television or movies on your computer.

Still, if devices like this become more commonplace, business travelers should be happy.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers says the worst of the recession is over for law firms.

My friend Micah Buchdahl writes in the National Law Journal that it's time to revisit the arcane rules that govern the legal profession. He concludes

What exactly am I advocating here? Let ambulance-chasing lawyers run amok? Isn't that the real image and concern behind these arcane rules? Open the floodgates with distasteful and unprofessional billboards, Web sites and commercials? No — just let law firms market the way nearly every other business does. There are state and federal regulations that address consumer fraud and misleading claims. Let them deal with it. Many lawyers and law firms are trying to survive and prosper. The very people who should be helping them should start thinking about not being obstacles to their ability to earn a living. (Some) people are smart. They know the difference between a commercial and the news. I think they can figure it out.

My friend Mark Tamminga has a great article in the latest issue of Law Practice, the magazine of the ABA's Law Practice Management Section. The article talks about a product called iLane which links via bluetooth with your Blackberry or iPhone and reads your emails to you when you're driving. It also allows you to reply to your messages via voice and it reads your calendar reminds aloud as well so you don't accidentally miss something important. The price is still too steep for most - more than $500, but the technology is cool and will probably prevent some accidents.

I had the honor of serving on the judges' panel for this year's College of Law Practice Management Innovaction Awards. The winner was announced today and I think you'll agree that the honoree really is deserving. Here are the details from the COLPM web site:

Israeli legal organization, New Family is the 2009 recipient of the coveted InnovAction Awards from the College of Law Practice Management while New York-based legal services provider Practical Law Company, Inc. received the first-ever InnovAction Honorable Mention Award.

For the fifth year, the InnovAction Awards have recognized outstanding innovation in the delivery of legal services, demonstrating to the legal community what can happen when passionate professionals, with big ideas and strong convictions, resolve to create effective change.

Meet our 2009 InnovAction winner!

New Family Organization
Family, Justice and Law initiative

Irit Rosenblum broke fresh ground defending a universal right to family as intrinsic to the practice of law. Rosenblum pioneered a new sphere of legal rights surrounding the family based on the conviction that the rights to marry, divorce, have children, bequeath and inherit assets, and conduct family life are human rights and must be attainable to all regardless of faith, nationality, sexual orientation or status. She founded New Family to fill a critical gap in the practice of law in Israel: to attain the right of every individual to establish a family and to exercise equal rights within it. For the 2 million people in Israel who are subject to discrimination due to family status, New Family’s achievements have been invaluable.

In addition, for the first time, the InnovAction Awards offered Honorable Mentions to entries that have taken an existing innovation in the practice of law, transformed it in a unique and valuable way, and made it better than before.

Here is our very first InnovAction Honorable Mention:

Practical Law Company, Inc.
Creating Efficiency for business lawyers

Practical Law Company (PLC) is changing the way business lawyers work. It employ attorneys with significant experience practicing with the world’s leading law firms and legal departments (e.g. Davis Polk, Skadden, Pfizer, Sullivan & Cromwell) to provide practical, up-to-date resources that help business lawyers practice more efficiently and provide greater value to clients. PLC provides the practical, generic level of information needed by all business lawyers that allows them to get up to speed quickly, stop reinventing the wheel and focus on client and firm specific work. It launched its first US services in December 2008 to wide market acceptance. PLC began in the UK in 1990.

The five InnovAction judges were greatly impressed by the groundbreaking ideas in the submissions from law firms and companies in the United States, Canada, and the Middle East", said Jordan Furlong, editor of the Canadian Bar Association's National magazine and chair of the 2009 awards program.

The 2009 InnovAction Awards will be presented on Saturday, September 26, 2009 at a special session during the 2009 Futures Confernce held in conjunction with the Annual Meeting of the College of Law Practice Management in Denver, CO. Please visit www.innovactionaward.com for more information.

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