The Faculty Lounge

Facebook and Ex Parte Communications

Might a witness's post on a judge's Facebook page, wishing the judge a happy birthday, constitute an ex parte communication?  The South Dakota Supreme Court addressed that issue in an opinion handed down this week.  You'll find the opinion here.

(Hat tip:  South Dakota law prof Roger Baron.)

Some of Your Favorite Apps?

My thanks to Dan and the Faculty Lounge permabloggers for inviting me to guest blog.    In true faculty lounge style, I'd like to ask about your favorite apps.   I am a new convert to the iPhone, but so far, have largely ignored its promise to improve every aspect of my life through "apps."  

So, I am very slowly building a collection of apps.   I am teaching a Supreme Court Seminar this fall, and am enjoying the free Oyez Today App (by the good people at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law).  Several of my colleagues have the Black's Law Dictionary App; but at over $50.oo, I am happy to use the hard copy on my shelf.   (Do I really need access to a legal dictionary on the go?)   SSRN, however, has a free app, which I like.   And my IT librarian Deborah McGovern has recommended iAnnotate, which allows you to annotate a pdf document.  

What are your favorite apps for iPhone, Android or Blackberry?

Education and Anonymity

I'm taking a course online at the moment which is in the standard format of other online courses I've taken in the past - weekly assignments, discussion board for class conversation etc.  One interesting thing about this course, though, is that in the discussion area the instructor has requested people not to use their real names or at least not their full names ie so you can use a pseudonym or your first name, but not your whole name.  The idea is to preserve anonymity so people can feel free to say stupid things without anyone knowing who they really are.

This is an interesting thought re teaching more generally and I guess is one of the advantages of online forums.  We all know how frustrating it can be as teachers not to know whether or not the majority of the class is "getting it" when students don't want to raise their hand and ask a question that they think will make them look stupid.  I know we deal with this issue in various ways including offline emails with students who are prepared to ask the question privately but not in front of the whole class.  Some of my colleagues also use turning point clickers to do surveys throughout class sessions to see what percentage of the class is understanding the material (without identifying any particular students as getting answers "right" or "wrong").

Should we, as teachers, think more seriously about the benefits of anonymity?  Should we encourage pseudonymous/anonymous class discussions on discussion boards outside of class time more often?  Obviously, lawyers have to learn to stand up and speak in front of others as part of their professional development, but should there also be more room to anonymously make some mistakes and not look stupid?  I should also say that learning that we make mistakes and the world doesn't end is an important aspect of professional development too, but some students are initially more reticent than others to stand up and potentially make a mistake.

Listservs and New Law Profs

It's that time of year when new law profs are making book selections, pondering recitation and attendance policies, looking forward (with a range of emotions) to the first day of class in August, etc.  We posted some friendly advice for new colleagues last summer.  Here's the link.  And we've touted a primer on law school teaching, which might be quite useful to recent hires.

One of my new entry-level Campbell colleagues asks this question (I'm paraphrasing):  what lawprof listservs are available for the subjects that I'll be teaching?

If you've got suggestions, please drop them in the comments!  Thanks!

Law Firm Hiring: There's an App for That!

The Benesch law firm has just released an app for iPhones and iPads to notify recent law grads and lawyers potentially interested in lateraling to the firm of upcoming job opportunities.  It will be interesting to see if this mode of recruitment takes off.  And, if it does, will recent grads be downloading multiple apps from multiple firms or will some entrepreneurial aggregator come along and offer a service of aggregating all available law firm jobs and making them available in an app format that notifies potentially interested applicants of job availability?  Is this the future of legal recruiting?

PDAs on Parade...

A colleague asked me if I had any thoughts about the distracting use of PDAs (eg iPhones, iPads, Droids etc) during scholarly presentations.  I must admit I hadn't given it a lot of thought myself, but she had a recent experience in a small group presentation of her work where the entire front row appeared to be tweeting, checking email, blogging, gaming or whatever and she found it distracting and disrespectful to the speaker.  She wondered if it would be appropriate to ask participants at such presentations to avoid using these devices so obviously during a talk.

This is related to our discussions about uses of computers in classes, but it's somewhat different because audience members at talks are obviously a different group of people to students in class and are there for different reasons.  For example, it may be that someone going to a CLE presentation doesn't really want to be there so is happy to be distracted by other matters during the presentation.  However, if the attempt at being distracted is distracting to others (including the speaker), that could be a problem.

Has anyone ever asked people in this setting to put away their PDAs or to avoid conspicuously texting, emailing etc during a presentation?  [And I must admit just last week I was guilty of fidgeting with my Droid during a small committee  meeting much to the chagrin of the committee chair.  I was in fact trying to pull up the committee agenda on my handheld device because I had forgotten to bring a hard copy - but it looked to the chair like I was just rudely ignoring her and checking email or something.  I apologized later, but she still found it as distracting as if I had been texting or checking out my recent baby photos - which, of course, I offered to show her by way of apology at the end of the meeting!]

What's in Your Email Signature?

For a while, I've had colleagues suggest to me that I add a link to my university webpage and/or SSRN page at the bottom of my email signature.  I know many people now do this and some also include links to YouTube videos and other audio-visual materials highlighting their professional work.  I generally haven't included anything in my email signature other than my contact details because I figure anyone who is really that interested in me can easily Google me.  I guess this is because the only thing I ever seem to use other people's email signatures for is if I need their snail mail address to post something to them or their telephone number to call them.  I haven't really felt compelled to click on html links to SSRN pages or personal webpages myself.  So I wondered if others have thoughts on this.  I've been told it's a good advertisement for your school to include an SSRN page link in an email signature, but pretty much everyone has an SSRN page now so unless people are actually clicking on those links to find out what you've written (and where it has been placed and how often you publish etc), does it really serve any significant marketing function?  I mean, it's obviously not a big deal just to include it, but I do get rather annoyed at how long email signatures are getting these days particularly if you are having an email "back and forth" with someone and they haven't defaulted their email settings to not include the signature in a "reply" or "forwarded" message.

And obviously I know you can have more than one email signature and you can attach an appropriate signature for an appropriate audience ie one could use an email signature with a link to published works etc only when sending emails to people who might not otherwise know about SSRN (eg some practitioners who may not themselves post on SSRN) and use a different more streamlined email signature for other purposes.  But who really has the time to change signatures back and forth on a regular basis?

Laptop Use in Class: An "Arresting" Development

If you thought a student was using a laptop for other than a class-related purpose, might you be tempted to take action?

A few days ago, one professor did.  His story here.

Facebook Replacing Friends?

I just received an email from a friend of mine (let's call her Sue) who works at the same law school as another friend of mine (let's call her Angie).  I had asked Sue how Angie was doing, and she replied that she never sees much of Angie around the office but Angie is a prolific poster on Facebook and she catches up with her that way.  Now, I understand the allure of Facebook and particularly its ability to keep people connected despite geographical differences and otherwise busy lives, but I wondered whether in the absence of Facebook, people like Sue and Angie might have taken more trouble to physically see each other every now and then.  In other words, is it possible that Facebook is now replacing physical contact in relationships where people would otherwise have organized to meet face-to-face for lunch or coffee?  And, if so, is this a good or a bad thing? 

Using Electronic Health Record Systems

Has anyone been to the doctor lately and had the physician use a computer in the examination room?  This practice will become increasingly common as the nation transitions to use of electronic health record (EHR) systems, a change that will likely accelerate thanks to $27 billion in financial incentives that are part of President Obama’s stimulus funding.  The federal government’s goal is to computerize all Americans’ medical records by 2014, though this goal is probably unrealistic.

The hope is that health information technology will improve treatment outcomes, efficiency, and patient safety and significantly reduce costs.  Some interesting questions have emerged, however, as to whether the technology, in this relatively early stage of development, raises new medical malpractice concerns.  I have written extensively about this issue here.

Relying largely on paper records would be unthinkable in almost any other profession, and thus medicine seems to be trailing most other fields in adapting to modern technology.  However, EHR systems require clinicians themselves to enter data into the computer rather than to rely on clerical staff to do so.  As described in this compelling account, EHR systems create significant new work demands and take time away from other important forms of patient care.

These are interesting issues to think about in teaching health law or computer law courses as well as any time we visit a medical office.  I would welcome your sharing any negative or positive experiences you’ve had with health care providers who use EHRs.

Turning Your Handheld Device into a Credit Card Reader

Most of us use a credit card now and then when buying goods or services from a merchant. 

But what about a consumer-to-consumer transaction?  I'm guessing that most of us have yet to purchase or lease a credit card reader, prompting payment by cash, check, PayPal (if available), etc.

The current issue of Fortune magazine has an article on Jack Dorsey (of Twitter fame), who has developed a small rectangular card swiper that will plug into the audio jack of a mobile device.  You'll find the article here, with additional reading here and here, and a video story here.

I think the world is passing me by.  Thank goodness I have young, tech-savvy, children who can help me survive.

Distracted by Devices?

For those of you whose new year's resolutions had something to do with being less distracted by technology (PDAs, cellphones, Facebook etc), Chris Brogan gives some useful tips here.

Hyperlinking and Defamation in Canada

(Cross-posted from Madisonian.net)

With thanks to one of my Canadian students for forwarding this to me, it appears that the the Supreme Court of Canada will soon be deciding a case which will determine whether hyperlinks may constitute publication for the purposes of defamation law, such that a person who publishes a hyperlink would be potentially liable in defamation for defamatory content on the site to which she has linked.  Story here.

One interesting thing about the news report (that I hyper-linked to!) is that it notes that in the United States "hyperlinking is not considered publication".  I'm actually not aware that any American case has expressly decided this yet, although I'm not a defamation expert.  I know in cases like Perfect 10 v Google, courts have held that hyperlinking does not amount to copying content for the purposes of copyright law.  But does this answer the publication question in the defamation context?  It may be that the question is moot in the United States because many of those who hyperlink could be potentially covered by section 230 of the CDA if they are not regarded as being the "content provider" of the relevant information, although this analysis may have its limits depending on the facts.

Looking forward the Canadian decision on this one.

Webcasts vs Transcripts

Like many other law schools and other institutions, our school has in recent years made many of its public lectures and symposia available via webcast.  This can be very useful to keep a record of these events and make them more widely available to potential audiences who cannot be physically present at the events.  They can be particularly helpful in cases where there is no transcript or other publication related to the proceedings that will be published in a law review or other format.

However, I have recently heard people talking about whether webcasts are superior to transcripts or other printed publications such that they will ultimately overtake the need for text-based formats.  I wonder if this is the right way to think about it?  In my view, webcasts provide different benefits to text based accounts of proceedings and I don't think it should necessarily be an "either/or" question if it can be helped.

While webcasts capture a lot more information than text can, they are often lengthy and it is difficult to quickly skim through them and find a pertinent snippet of information.  People may be much more selective about which webcasts they watch than which text accounts (transcripts, blog summaries, law reviews) they peruse largely because it only takes a few minutes to skim through (or keyword search) a text account to see if there's anything relevant in the proceedings while it may take a lot longer to find out if there's anything of interest in a webcast.

It seems to me that a text based account of a proceeding may usefully supplement a webcast in that it can: (a) quickly help people discover whether the proceedings contain anything of interest; and, (b) direct the reader to the part of the webcast that is particularly relevant to that person's particular interest.

So I guess I would hope that people who produce records of lectures and symposias try to think about text based and other information processing formats as being complementary to each other rather than as alternatives.  What do others think?

What Happens When You Find the FBI's GPS Tracker on Your Car

Over at Wired there's an interesting story describing what happened when a 20 year old found the FBI's GPS tracker that was surreptititously placed on his car.  At right is a picture of the device courtesy of the Wired story.  Apparently the target of the surveillance brought his car in for an oil change.  The mechanic saw a wire sticking out from underneath the car and pulled out the device.  The target of the surveillance posted photos of the device on-line to find out what it was.  It turns out the device is an Orion Guardian ST820 an older model GPS tracking device.  Not surprisingly, it didn't take long for the FBI to show up at the target's door demanding their device back. 

The target of the surveillance is Yasir Afifi, a U.S. born citizen, business student and son of an Islamic-American man who died in Egypt last year.  The ACLU has jumped onto the case declaring to Afifi "This is the kind of thing we like to throw lawyers at."  According to the report, "Brian Alseth from the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington state contacted Afifi after seeing pictures of the tracking device posted online and told him the ACLU had been waiting for a case like this to challenge the ruling."

A very interesting story, well worth the read. 

 

Bad Marketing?

I receive emails now and then from the folks at Barnes & Noble.

This week I was informed that B&N is launching an electronic publication platform.  I'm not a techno-whiz, but I believe that the platform allows a would-be author, by electronic means, to disseminate a work that might not yet have found a traditional publisher.  Today I'm an unknown writer.  But via the B&N platform, I now have the opportunity to reach the masses and become the next Baldacci, Evanovich, Grisham, or Rowling.

A great idea, to be sure.  But I can't get past the trademarked name of the platform.  I'm taken aback, wondering if this is bad marketing.

Just me?  Or do you have the same thought, too?

Auctioning The Right To Use Laptops In Class

 Across the country, law professors and students are engaged in a tug-of-war over use of the laptops in class.  Many faculty feel that they're disruptive - both for individual users surfing the web and for other students whose eyes are drawn to ESPN in class.  They also believe that laptop use has the potential to undermine the law school pedagogy, turning active listeners into stenographers.

Students, on the other hand, feel both a desire and entitlement to use laptops.  Many feel that it enhances their educational experience - serving as both a more comfortable and effective method of note-taking.  They also argue that it makes outlining easier.  They answer the surfing complaints by noting the long history of crossword puzzling in the law school classroom.  

It seems to me that this is a manageable problem with a market solution.  Limit laptop use to the back rows of class - so that surfing students won't be visible to the students who dislike distractions.  And since the number of laptop seats are limited, auction these positions to students who value laptops the most.  But here's the twist.  Since laptops have real potential to be a social "bad", the currency of the auction ought to counter-act that bad.   What could surfing students do to counteract the effects of the laptop? More work, of course!

Imagine if a professor structured the auction as follows: students seeking these seats must offer to prepare short papers in addition to the final.  The minimum bid might be two extra papers, for example.  Thus, in a highly competitive environment, the winning student would write five short papers over the term - presumably on topics directly related to the course material.  Only highly motivated laptop users would submit these bids and any loss of education related to the laptop would be ameliorated by the papers.

What are the critiques - other than what some might see as the improper introduction of a market into the classroom?    One is that some students may in fact learn more, not less, with a laptop.   Three possible answers.  First,  these students  will learn even more with their additional papers.  Second, in any case, their laptop use has a cost to other students (in the form of distraction) which must be reduced.   Students who learn better with pen and paper do no exact a similar cost on laptop users.   More importantly, this plan is better than a flat-out laptop ban - it gives students a choice.  

Another critique is that students with disabilities may need laptops and should not have to do extra work.  The beauty of my plan is that these students can receive rear row seats for free (no additional papers) and their disability will be invisible to others - unlike classrooms with a laptop ban and one or two visibly accommodated students.

Of course, if the primary complaint is related to distracting surfing (rather than undermining the Socratic method), it might suffice to turn off the wireless.  However as we have discovered, once you uncork the wireless genie, she is hard to re-bottle - both culturally and, remarkably, technologically.  

  

mlb.com

What comes to mind when you see the domain name, mlb.com?

Major League Baseball?  That's who owns the domain name now.

Morgan Lewis & Bockius?  That's who initially registered the domain name.

For the story behind the transfer, which was announced on this date in 2000, click here.

Faculty Recruiting -- Where's the App for That?

This is the first year I'm on my school's appointments committee.  Wading through the AALS FAR forms is great fun for everyone involved.

But it's also quite a tax on the environment.  By the end of all of the distributions, there will probably be close to 900 or 1000 candidates (a guess, but probably not far off).  If every school has 3 people on their appointments committees, and most of them print out the forms so they can easily look through them, that's at least 270,000 pieces of paper used (assuming double-sided printing).  It can easily go up by the hundreds-of-thousands with more people on the committees, like the 6 we have here at Drexel.

That's quite a waste.

It seems to me, though, we now have technology to take a bite out of this waste.  The iPad seems perfectly designed for wading through FAR forms.  It's screen size would easily display one form.  I can imagine an app that would make wading through these single-screen forms a cinch.  A flick of a finger should go from one form to another.  A drop-down menu could let you search candidates by field.  A box somewhere on the page should let you make notes, whether it's a score for the candidate or something you want to remember about that person.  You could also easily underline or highlight parts of a page.  And following a link to the person's resume would be useful too.

I'm sure there are other neat ways that an iPad could help this process, but this minimal app would be a great way to go through FAR forms quickly, easily, and with little waste.

Anyone know iPad programming language?  I'll take 10% of the profits, you get the rest.

University Website

Via Brad DeLong, the University Website from xkcd: