Technola : Public Interest Law & Technology Updates & Commentary : Matthew Burnett & Kate Bladow : Tech Advice for the Non-Profit Legal Sector

Tory Messina, Pro Bono Net's New York Program Coordinator, has accepted a position as the Cohen Fellow at the Toll Public Interest Center at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her last day is Friday, September 4.

So starting September 7, Pro Bono Net has an opening for a Pro Bono and Special Initiatives Coordinator, who will "spearhead pro bono recruitment campaign and support and maintain partnerships with nonprofit legal aid organizations in New York and nationally building legal resource web sites to serve pro bono, legal aid and human rights advocates." The position is full-time and based in New York, where people frequently bring in donuts and German chocolate. Applications should be sent to jobs@probono.net by September 25.

I'd be remiss if I didn't add that the person in this position gets to work with both Matthew and I as well as the rest of the great staff at Pro Bono Net and a lot of talented, knowledgeable people from legal aid and pro bono communities nationally.  - K

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assertTrue( ) documented an amazing trick: In Firefox, you can make any page editable. Granted, the changes aren't permanent, but with this trick you can make minor changes to a page before taking a screenshot, or you can show someone how edited text should look on the page without copying the page into another program.

All you need to do is copy this code into the address bar and hit enter:

javascript:document.designMode="on";void(0);

Then start editing.

In seconds, I can transform the IllinoisLegalAid.org Form Library from its original form into a shorter, cleaner version for a handout or presentation.

Original Form Library Page

Edited Form Library Page

To turn it off, reload the page (or get fancy with Greasemonkey). - K

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An octothorpe is the "#" symbol, which you might call "pound sign," "number sign," or "square." Evidently, in the 1960s, some Bell Lab engineers wanted to give the symbol a special name and started using octothorpe. As you probably already guessed, the name didn't really stick.

Thanks to Adrian Lurssen and Mark Nemeth for expanding my horizons. - K

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Just in case you've missed the flurry of recent training announcements, I've summarized them here.

Conferences

• International Legal Technology Association Annual Meeting. August 23-27 near Washington, DC. The Annual Meeting for members of the Association. Legal Blog Watch points out how people can participate remotely.
• Web of Change: Innovation and Collaboration to Transform Our World. September 23-27 on Cortes Island, British Columbia. Web of Change is a series of conferences that connects the foremost thinkers and do-ers in the growing community of social change and technology from across North America.You can apply for one of ten scholarships to attend.
• Online Nonprofit Technology Conference. September 16-27 online. It's the Nonprofit Technology Conference, except you don't need to leave your office to attend. Technola covered this conference in the post Online Nonprofit Technology Conference Announced.

Webinars

• NTEN Community Call: Broadband Access. August 26. Free for members. NTEN members can learn more and ask questions about the digital divide, net neutrality, and the national broadband plan.
• Disaster Planning: Backup, Backup, Backup! August 27. Free. TechSoup talks about the golden rule of disaster planning - backup.
• Public Interest Perspectives: An Introductory Training for Private Attorneys in Public Interest Placements. September 9. A free training for attorneys who are beginning volunteer public interest placements.

And I found that Beth J. Bates of Social Media Strategies and Tools Explained has collected information about several other webinars that are happening this week. - K

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Thank you, xkcd. - K

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I've looked and listened for people who love document assembly and who are talking about it online, but I haven't been very successful. Either I'm searching the wrong terms or they aren't talking about it. So while I've learned a lot about the Hot Docs film festival in Toronto, I haven't turned up many conversations about LexisNexis' HotDocs software.

Today, however, I was thrilled when I found a post from The Exari Blog that pointed me to Five Document Assembly Blogs/Legal Technology Blogs to Follow. I've added these blogs and the Exari Blog to my news reader and hope to see some good conversations.  - K

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This year the Management Information Exchange (MIE) and LSC’s Technology Initiative Grants Program (TIG) will be hosting conferences during the same week in January in Austin, TX. The TIG conference will take place from January 13-15, 2009 and the MIE National Conference for Legal Services Administrators will take place from January 12-13, 2009. Registration information for the TIG conference will be available in September. -M

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Hopefully every lawyer knows about Rule 6.1 from the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. You know, the one that starts

Every lawyer has a professional responsibility to provide legal services to those unable to pay. A lawyer should aspire to render at least (50) hours of pro bono publico legal services per year.

Lawyers have a lot of activities that they can choose to fill their 50 hours: direct representation, teaching legal classes, writing brochures or web site content for a legal aid organization, and so on.

However, while listening to Twitter, I came across Adrianos Facchetti, an attorney, who "Love[d] the idea that law blog fulfills pro bono requirement." An intriguing, yet slightly unsettling, idea.

Mr. Facchetti got several responses:

• I don't like that idea. My public interest lawfirm has to turn down 100s every month - maybe more. VOlunteer with legal aid. - sarahjessicaESQ (9:45 PM Aug 13th)
• The people who really need the pro bono work would likely not be able to find your blog. No pro bono credit for blogging. - LegalAdmin (9:46 PM Aug 13th)
• I don't think a law blog can rightfully fulfill pro bono requirement--cannot be legal advice (bar regs) or take place of lawyer. - trabernlaw (9:49 PM Aug 13th)
• Absolutely does NOT. Pro bono means for the COMMON good, not that of yr law firm or yr ego. - GoonrGrrl (9:53 PM Aug 13th)
• The problem w/ pro bono is that so many legal marketing consultants say establish a blog to drive business. How prove "good"ness? - BeelJDPhD (11:20 AM Aug 14th)

But Mr. Facchetti isn't the only person suggesting that blogging might fulfill this responsibility. Enrico Schaefer, an attorney from Michigan, wrote "Does Blogging Help Fulfill Your Pro Bono Obligation?", where he concludes that "blogging is perhaps the easiest and most effective way to reach the most people, providing information and assistance" and that "it performs an invaluable service to the scores of the people who simply need real information about a legal issue they are facing."

So I definitely agree that it's a good thing that attorneys blog about legal issues and provide legal information to clients and potential clients. But is it pro bono service? Is Kelly Phillps Erb doing pro bono work when she blogs about taxes? What about Bob Ambrogi and Carolyn Elefant when they post at Legal Blog Watch? What if an attorney did a guest post at Making Justice Real, Maryland Legal Aid Newsroom, or TRLA Press Center? I'm not sure. What do you think? - K

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Common Craft, a company that creates short videos to explain technical and non-technical topics, has released SharePoint in Plain English. Since I've never heard SharePoint mentioned in a presentation without someone in the audience getting a quizzical look on his or her face, I'm excited to see Common Craft cover this software. (For those that currently have that quizzical look, SharePoint is Microsoft's enterprise collaboration tool.)

If you enjoy this video, you should check out the others that I've mentioned before on Technola: What's Under the Hood?; How Not to End Up on a Phisher's Hook; Technology, Plain English, and Whiteboards; and Advocacy, Technology and Elections. - K

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Kate and I published a primer on social networking for poverty law advocates and organizations in the July-August 2009 issue of Clearinghouse Review Journal of Poverty Law and Policy. Here’s the abstract:

The emergence of social network websites as some of the most highly visited on the Internet presents an opportunity for poverty law advocates to leverage these networks to maximize the impact of advocacy work. To accomplish this, advocates must first understand what these networks are (including Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn), how they function, and what they offer to support communication and collaboration around advocacy. Guidance and concrete examples of how individuals and organizations can most productively engage with social networks assist advocates in making the most of these tools.

Our thanks to Jason Vail, Ilze Hirsh, and Michelle Nicolet at the Shriver Center as well as Liz Keith and Pam Weisz at Pro Bono Net for their suggestions and support. We’re also working on putting together a webinar on social networking with the Shriver Center in October. More details on that to come. In the meantime, please share your thoughts about the article in the comments. We’d love to hear your feedback. –M&K

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The Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton has just launched a new Firefox extension called RECAP that allows PACER users to help build an open repository of public court records (if you don’t use PACER, there is no reason to install this extension). Extensive coverage of the new add-on is available at ars technica, TechCrunch and cnet. -M

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It's Friday and the end of another long, full week. Perhaps a little inspiration is in order to help us get through the day?

Last night Corey asked me a great question.  "What a mantra that you often say to motivate yourself?"  I've always said, "Mistakes are our best teachers."  Many times people become mistake phobic and a mistake becomes a point of shame.  That's too bad because "mistakes" offer us a chance for reflection and improvement. - Beth Kanter, Are Mistakes a Bad Thing?

Have a good Friday and an even better weekend! - K

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Taxgirl AKA Kelly Phillips Erb is seeking guest bloggers for the taxgirl blog. The week of August 30, she'll feature posts from readers talking about what they would like to see changed with respect to taxes. Every post that follows the rules will get posted. And she hints that some high profile politicians may be watching to see what her readers think.

Wouldn't it be great to have some posts about the Earned Income Tax Credit, Low-Income Taxpayer Clinics, Innocent Spouse Relief, or other tax issues that affect legal aid client communities? Posts must be submitted by August 26. - K

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The Minnesota Legal Services Coalition has launched SomaliLawHelp.org, a new legal resource for the Minnesota Somali community. Somali-language resources on the site include “know your rights” materials on topics ranging from family law to immigration, a legal glossary, and links to courts and government agencies. The site is built using technology developed by Pro Bono Net and supplements resources available on LawHelpMN.org, which includes a Spanish site and resources in 14 other languages. Local coverage of the new site is available here. –M [Thanks, Jessica!]

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TechCrunch compared sixteen file sharing applications that are "Free, Fast, and Useful . . ." The best part of the article is a chart that outlines what each service offers, including how much you can store. Thanks to Dan Romero, a programmer at Pro Bono Net, for pointing this out. - K

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For those of you who program and are called upon to learn new languages quickly: Jumpstart Lab, an organization that aims to make computer science accessible for "normal" people, posted the course materials from their Ruby Jumpstart course. This includes their Ruby in 100 Minutes tutorial that quickly covers the basics of the language.

For those of you who don't program and have never heard of Ruby, it's a newer language that supposedly makes the programmer's job easier. It was influenced by several other programming languages, including my favorite, Scheme. If you want to try Ruby out and get a feel for programming, check out try ruby! for a quick tour. (Take the tour. If you haven't programmed before, it's a really neat, easy to see what it is like. Take the tour.)

Thanks to Digital Sista (AKA Shireen Mitchell) for pointing this out. - K

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Kenneth W. Davis writes a blog called Manage Your Writing, where he suggests weekly goals that his readers can use to improve their writing. His post from August 3 is especially relevant for those in the poverty law community:

. . . pay special attention to the results of your speaking and writing. Notice when you're understood and when you're not. Identify at least one communication strategy that works especially well for you.

What strategies have you come up with to make yourself understood, especially when it comes to website content, interactive forms, and other information that is being delivered online? - K

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On Twitter Maddie Grant pointed out a site that shows if any of several popular services are down: downrightnow. So instead of wondering if it's you or them and wasting time trying to figure it out, you can see at a glance whether Gmail, Twitter, Facebook, and several other sites are up or down. - K

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Every spring, the nonprofit technology community gets together at the NTEN NTC and spends several days talking about using tech for good. In April 2009, this meant that nearly 1500 people converged on San Francisco to talk about social media, crowdsourcing, fundraising, security, and more.

But NTEN knows that many people who wanted to come couldn't. Budgets are tight, and travel funds are limited. So this year, in addition to NTC, NTEN is holding the Online Nonprofit Technology Conference on September 16 & 17, 2009. Attendees won't have to leave their office to participate. They'll just need a phone, computer, and Internet connection.

The agenda is inspired by NTEN's book, Managing Technology to Meet Your Mission: A Strategic Guide for Nonprofit Leaders, and Ami Dar, the Founder and Executive Director of Idealist.org, will keynote the conference

Registration is $250 for members and $350 for non-members. (And an individual membership is $85. So if you aren't, become an NTEN member before you register.) - K

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I've come across several interesting stories about innovative uses for technology recently, and instead of letting the links gather dust, waiting for me to write a post about each of them, I'm collecting them here in one post and getting the ideas out to you.

• Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe released a Start-Up Tool Kit, which includes a Term Sheet Creator to help draft start-up and venture financing documents. Fans of the National Document Assembly Project (NPADO) will recognize that they've used LexisNexis' HotDocs Server to run the site. The ABA Journal covered this release: Orrick’s Free Term Sheet Generator and Forms Library Aimed at Entrepreneurs.

• Avvo, a site where the public can rate lawyers, has a forum where people can ask lawyers for legal advice and answers. While not new, it is new to me, and it's the first time that I've seen a site advertise that they are offering advice and not legal information, and actually give advice. KGO-TV San Francisco has a brief story on the Avvo site: Web site offers free legal advice.

• The Huffington Post profiled Holla Back DC in When Hollered At, HollaBack! Victims of street harassment (cat calls, groping, indecent exposure, and so on) can document incidents that range from inappropriate and sexist to terrifying. The site tracks and maps the location of the reported incidents, identifying where dangerous areas might be. Holla Back sites also exist for several other locations.

• In Minnesota, Day One Services is using software to track where open domestic violence shelter beds are. In one call, a victim can find an open bed and arrange transportation, if necessary. Day One hopes to take the program national, according to Software connects domestic violence victims with open shelter beds, an article in the Minnesota Post.

I can't be the only one finding these interesting stories. Any great stories about using technology that you've found lately? Go ahead and share them in the comments. - K

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The Office 2007 file format looks like an XML file but acts like a ZIP file. According to Microsoft:

The Office Open XML Formats are based on XML and ZIP archive technologies. The new file format in Microsoft Office Word 2007 divides the file into document parts, each of which defines a part of the overall contents of the file. You can easily create, change, add, or delete data in a Word 2007 file programmatically or manually.

Nifty, huh? You can create and edit a Word 2007 document without opening Word. If you don't want to create a document from scratch but do want to see what's inside, take an existing Word 2007 file with a .DOCX extension and change the extension to .ZIP.

The July 2009 issue of LJN's Legal Tech Newsletter points out that this both good and bad for law firm IT departments. The Office Open XML Formats let other non-Microsoft data be stored in the file. However, this increases the chance that metadata and other information will inappropriately be shared with others. To find out how to protect yourself, see how to remove hidden data and personal information from Office documents.

And if you haven't heard of metadata before or are looking for more information about legal and ethical issues, check out The Posse List's E-discovery: Metadata grows in legal significance. - K

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Last Friday, Justice Served announced the Top Ten Court Websites Awards for 2009. This year's winners:

• Superior Court of California, County of Orange
• Colorado State Judicial Branch
• State Court of Chatham County Georgia
• Singapore Subordinate Courts
• Superior Court of California, County of Santa Clara
• Courts Service of Ireland
• Iowa Judicial Branch
• Spokane County District Court
• US District Court, District of Maryland
• Alabama's Legal Information Network

The announcement on the Justice Served blog explains more about the competition, the judging criteria and what makes each of these sites outstanding. - K

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With thousands of law blogs, trying to find and read the best of the best posts on a regular basis can be daunting. But every week, the hosts of the Blawg Review, a blog carnival, do just that. They read, examine, and extract the week's best and then put them together in one post, usually with a theme. For example, this week Scott Greenfield of Simple Justice hosted the Blawg Review: #223 - Sphincter Rules. (Due to unusual circumstances, he wasn't exactly prepared or happy about being volunteered.)

To follow the Blawg Review, you can subscribe with a news reader, follow blawgreview on Twitter, sign up to have it e-mailed to you, or check back at Blawg Review each Monday. You can also help the hosts out and submit a post that you'd like to see included in the Blawg Review.

Not interested in law, but want to know where to find blog carnivals on other topics? Check out Blog Carnival, where you'll find carnivals that cover everything from taxes to math teachers to cats. - K

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Legal Services of Northern California announced today that the approved final evaluation report for The Findability Project is now available. (More information about The Findability Project is available from Technola at LSNC Launches "Findability Project" and LSNTAP Roundtable on Findability and the Google Search Paradigm.) - K

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Sitepoint, an online resource for Web professionals, put together a short guide to image file formats used on the Web. A great resource, this post contains a description of three file types (GIF, JPG, and PNG) and explains what each format is best for. - K

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Ugh, it's August, my least favorite month of the year. Why? Humidity. If July was for camping out in the hammock, August is for hiding out in the basement and trying to stay cool, at least in Baltimore. So for the next month, that's where you'll find me--in the basement catching up on my blog reading and writing. Will August heat be driving you inside, too? Why not use some of that time to check out Technola's top July posts?

• Examples of Social Networking Policies
• Get Legal Help Without the Cost
• Nolo Offers Free Foreclosure Survival Guide
• Have You Hugged Your System Administrator Today?
• This American Life Episode on Pro Se Litigants

If you have some extra time, I also suggest these posts.

• 22 Ways a Blog Can Rock Your Non-Profit's Social Media Campaign - John Hayden
• 3 Steps to Success on Facebook - Use It Today!
• Avoiding Data Conversion Hell - Idealware
• Gather Around the RoundTable - NTEN

Happy Reading! - K

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