SBM Blog

Have you downloaded the new SBM member app?

Have you ever needed to contact a Michigan attorney while on the go? Now you can easily find contact information for any Michigan attorney from your smartphone or tablet on the new SBM Directory App.

The new app includes direct access to the SBM online member directory, a directory of Michigan and U.S. legislators, and links to the latest digital issues of the Michigan Bar Journal, e-Journal, and SBMBlog. The app also has a text alert feature allowing app users to receive alerts, dues notice information, special event news and e-Journal alerts.

Download the new app for your iPhone, iPad or Android device by searching for State Bar of Michigan in the App Store or GooglePlay.

Posted by Samantha Meinke

You could win an iPad Mini by taking the Bar Journal survey

It has been 12 years since we have surveyed about the Michigan Bar Journal. Since then, more than 11,000 new lawyers have joined the Bar. The Publications and Website Advisory Committee thinks it's high time to reconnect with you and find out what you think of the Bar Journal. Be honest: tell us what's good, bad, ugly and/or anything in-between. We rely on your input to make sure the Bar Journal is a helpful publication to you. 

Click the link below to participate in our brief survey:

www.surveymonkey.com/s/8QS59CS

While you're there, don't forget to enter our drawing for an iPad Mini.

Posted by Samantha Meinke

Apps That Threaten BigLaw?

This story from the Los Angeles Times says the time has come:

Technology is creeping ever faster into the $200-billion U.S. legal field, shaking up an industry that has long been defined by tradition and dominated by white-shoe firms.

Online Disinhibition Effect

SBM Blog is grateful for a large readership that frequently lets us know that our efforts are appreciated. But you seldom let us know what you think via our comment section.  We are envious of blogs like Volokh Conspiracy that attract vibrant commentary, but worry about what we might be dealing with if the floodgates open. Is it possible to have an online comment policy that both promotes a sense of community and keeps the crazies out?  "The Psychology of Online Comments" in the New Yorker suggests it probably isn't, especially if commenters are allowed to comment anonymously:

One of the most common critiques of online comments cites a disconnect between the commenter’s identity and what he is saying, a phenomenon that the psychologist John Suler memorably termed the “online disinhibition effect.” The theory is that the moment you shed your identity the usual constraints on your behavior go, too—or, to rearticulate the 1993 Peter Steiner cartoon, on the Internet, nobody knows you’re not a dog. When Arthur Santana, a communications professor at the University of Houston, analyzed nine hundred randomly chosen user comments on articles about immigration, half from newspapers that allowed anonymous postings, such as the Los Angeles Times and the Houston Chronicle, and half from ones that didn’t, including USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, he discovered that anonymity made a perceptible difference: a full fifty-three per cent of anonymous commenters were uncivil, as opposed to twenty-nine per cent of registered, non-anonymous commenters.

Anybody surprised? Comment below.

Ethics Story: Out Of Sight. Out Of Mind. Out Of Country. Out Of Luck.

Slaw's "Cyber Crime Example of the Importance of Reconciling Your Trust Accounts Each Month" tells the story of the cybertheft of $1.5 million from a California escrow firm's trust account. According to a petition filed by the California Department of Corporations (DOC), thieves wired $432,215 to an account in Moscow on December, 2012, then more than $1.1 million in January, 2013, to an account in China. The funds were stolen from more than 100 escrow accounts. The escrow company reported the theft in February, 2013, two months after the first unauthorized transfer. It was able to recover the wire sent to Moscow, but not the funds wired to China.

Anonymity, Free Speech, And Wikipedia Profiles

This story from the ABA Journal reads like a pitch for a TV drama in development: "DC lawyer pursues suit to unmask authors who changed her Wikipedia page." Susan Burke, a personal injury lawyer whose work has involved suing the American military or military contractors, including Blackwater, and representing former detainees of Abu Ghraib prison in a suit against interrogators and translators, is suing to find out the names of the two pseudonymous editors who inserted false information into her Wikipedia profile.  National Law Journal (sub. req.) also has a story.

 

What Information Should The Public Have For Free, And How Easy Should It Be To Get It?

A website operated by an open-records advocate is being sued for copyright and trademark infringement for posting safety and technical standards developed by nonprofit groups. The standards, posted in their entirety, were incorporated by reference in federal regulations. The lawsuit against Public.Resource.org claims that the standards are costly to develop, and the cost is underwritten by sales of the content.  Public Resource says that the standards lost their copyright protection when they were incorporated by reference into government regulation.

Analyze and discuss.

HT: Geeks and a Law Blog

Add To Your Legal Research Worry List: Link Rot

Indiana Law Blog has been on top of this problem for weeks. The New York Times has just caught up, with Adam Liptak's Sidebar column, "In Supreme Court Opinions, Web Links to Nowhere." His succinct description of the problem:

Supreme Court opinions have come down with a bad case of link rot. According to a new study, 49 percent of the hyperlinks in Supreme Court decisions no longer work.

Fake Online Review Crackdown Snags Lawyers

The New York Times reports that an investigation by the New York Attorney General’s office of Craigslist uncovered dozens of companies looking to procure fake online reviews or offering to write them for clients, in violation of New York consumer law. The list of professionals snagged in the probe included lawyers, but no law firms are among the 19 companies that reached agreement with the attorney general.

Yelp Sues Law Firm For Posting Fake Reviews

The online consumer review company Yelp has sued a California law firm alleging that the McMillan Group bankruptcy firm posted a flurry of fake reviews after a negative review appeared on the Yelp website.  In legal-speak, Yelp is claiming breach of contract, intentional interference with contractual relations, and two counts relating to California’s false advertising statutes. Cincinnati.com reports that the McMillan Group previously won a $2,700 small claims award of $2,700 against Yelp, claiming that Yelp had coerced it into an advertisement contract in order to receive favorable reviews. But Yelp successfully argued that the firm’s case was covered by an arbitration clause in the terms of service.

H/T (fittingly): Legal Ethics Forum