Denise Howell is a seasoned appellate and intellectual property litigator based in Los Angeles. Denise writes one of the first and most popular law-related blogs, Bag and Baggage, coined the term "blawg" and helped pioneer podcasting for lawyers. Microcontent obsessed since 2001, she is frequently quoted in the media on legal issues involving intellectual property and technology law. "Sound Policy" is Denise's show at IT Conversations, and it's also what she hopes results from the briefs she submits to court. Email Denise at dhowell@gmail.com.
Dennis Kennedy is a computer lawyer and legal technology expert based in St. Louis, Missouri. An award-winning author, a frequent speaker and a widely-read blogger, he has more than 300 publications on legal, technology and Internet topics, many of which are collected in his e-books. Dennis has been described as someone who knows almost every rock song in existence and, more importantly, how they apply to technology and law. Email Dennis at his gmail address.
Tom Mighell is Senior Counsel and Litigation Technology Support Coordinator at Cowles & Thompson in Dallas. He has published the Internet Legal Research Weekly newsletter since 2000 and blogged about the Internet and legal technology at Inter Alia since August of 2002. With Tom's singing, Ernie on guitar and Dennis' encylopedic knowledge of rock music, we may have the beginnings of a good band, if this whole blog thing doesn't work out. Email Tom at tmighell@swbell.net.
Marty Schwimmer left a partnership in the largest trademark practice in the world and founded Schwimmer Mitchell, a full-service IP micro-boutique in Westchester County, New York, where he represents owners of famous and not yet famous trademarks. He founded The Trademark Blog, the first IP law blog and the one with the most pictures. He is the first to come in and the last to leave in his firm. Email Marty at marty@schwimmerlegal.com.
Ernest Svenson practices law with a mid-sized law firm in New Orleans, specializing in business-related lawsuits. Most of his practice takes place in federal court, especially the Eastern District. He is best known for his weblog Ernie the Attorney, which he started as an experiment. Like many experiments it got out of control. Nevertheless, he continues to practice law and, occasionally,
to seek enlightenment. Email Ernest at esvenson@gmail.com.
About this blog
Between Lawyers provides just-in-time group commentary on the issues
raised when technology, culture and the law intersect. We take you
behind the firewalls and conference room doors to show you how
experienced lawyers deal with these issues and help you prepare for
the new challenges we all face. For more, see our introductory post.
The untold story of this blog is that the Between Lawyers authors spend more time gabbing with each other via email than posting to the blog. During one of our recent quite extended email conversations, we decided experiment with and open up those discussions in a Facebook group so that friends/readers can also play along.
Shortly before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, we at the Between Lawyers blog got together via conference call to do a test for what we thought might become a Between Lawyers podcast. Events intervened, the sound quality disappointed us, and the project got put aside. We will probably will never release the recording. It was a test, after all, and some of the topics are well out-of-date at this point.
I was listening to parts of it last night and found a 45-second clip of it that I really liked. I tried to clean up the recording and equalize the voice levels. I like the clip because it has all five of our voices on it and it nicely captures some of the rapport that the five of us have and the sense of humor we all share. The clip is from a point about two-thirds of the way through the recording and we had gotten comfortable with the format.
In the clip, Denise tells the story of Jorn Barger, who coined the term "weblog," and the "economic rewards" that it brought him as mentioned in this Wired magazine article. We. of course, cannot resist speculating on whether Denise will end up in the same place as a result of coining the term "blawg."
I hope you enjoy the clip (download here as mp3 (approx 750K)). It's short and it will give you a different view of the five of us.
If you like the clip, let us know. We still toy with the idea of creating a Between Lawyers podcast from time to time.
In one of our occasional posts on what goes on behind the scenes at Between Lawyers in which we open the door on how lawyers really discuss legal issues of the day, here's the very learned discussion that ensued:
Dennis (note that Dennis did not realize that Denise had already posted on this topic):"Here's an interesting list on IP extremes [from Mother Jones mag], but when you read the blurb about John Cage below, it makes you wonder whether Marty might have been the lawyer in the case."
The blurb: "FOR INCLUDING a 60-second piece of silence on their album, the Planets were threatened with a lawsuit by the estate of composer John Cage, which said they’d ripped off his silent work 4’33”. The Planets countered that the estate failed to specify which 60 of the 273 seconds in Cage’s piece had been pilfered."
Marty: "I've never heard one of Cage's actual pieces. Are they 'dead air' or is the point that you hear the ambient noises (musicians sitting quietly)?"
Dennis: "Well, 4'33" is an anomalous work in Cage's canon - an intellectual witticism and a response of sorts to critics who thought his music was so darn weird. The answer to your question on the piece is, therefore, "yes." The intention of the silence would be to force you to reconsider what music, sound, silence and performance really are - a riff on Magritte's "Ceci n'est pas une Pipe" painting. It's kind of one trick pony, though, because you can only do something like that once. In its context, then, the lawyer's response to the lawsuit is the perfect artistic response and, in my mind, perhaps the artistic zenith of the legal profession in the last however many hundreds of years. Another contemporary analogy, of course, would be Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. Excuse me, while I go crank that up and meditate on these artistic thoughts. Just my two cents."
Marty: "I guess my question really was, how did Cage's lawyers know that it was Cage's silence at all? Agreed that it is a truly great response."
Denise: (who noticed that neither Dennis nor Marty had been aware of her post on the topic) "Given that I blogged the Mother Jones List on BL, PLEASE blog at least some of the delightful context set forth in these emails there as well. (And don't be callin' ME no one trick pony, because there obviously are no limits to how many times I can persuasively urge you/all to "blog it.")"
Denise Howell
Dennis M. Kennedy
Tom Mighell
Marty Schwimmer
Ernest Svenson
