Tom Mighell and Dennis Kennedy have posted the latest episode #5 of The Kennedy-Mighell Report, in which they cover the recent ABA TECHSHOW, legal technology trends for 2007, current developments in electronic discovery, and their upcoming book on collaboration tools for lawyers.

Denise Howell has posted the latest episode of This Week in Law, which includes fellow regular Ernie Svenson. An earlier episode feature Between Lawyers' Marty Schwimmer.

Technorati tags: legal technology podcast electronic discovery between lawyers

• Defining community and loosely-joined individuals and interest groups
• Community goals and governance (or lack thereof)
• External innovation communities such as Procter & Gamble's and ownership issues
• Intellectual and liability concerns for company-owned or associated communities
• Whether an initiative similar to the Creative Commons movement has or is in the process of emerging
• Ownership issues and risk-minimization around products or services that emerge from external ideas
• Variations on open source licenses
• Individual rights and protections for community contributors and participants
• Anonymity and accountability
• Nefarious community exploitation: gaming, hacking, spamming
• Trust and reputation management
• The use of trademark law to use and manage community involvement; selective enforcement, the expansion of certification marks
• Insurance industry mechanisms and models
• Defamation
• Company-sponsored (and owned) communities, and the actions taken by participants who find the terms and conditions of such initiatives too draconian
• "Innovator's dilemma" management and patent strategy and the tension between old, successful products and those developed with help from outsourced customer communities
• Personal data ownership and the Attention Trust

In connection with our session at the the upcoming Community 2.0 conference, law professor Mike Madison and I will be hosting a public conference call on Monday, February 26 beginning at 1:00 p.m. PST, and we'd love your participation to help us hone in on the ownership considerations (IP; attention; identity), and issues of governance and liability, most critical to the creation, maintenance, and long-term health of business communities.  The call will be recorded and made available as a podcast from The Future of Communities blog.  You can join us as follows:

From Skype: +990008275785861

From a regular phone (long distance costs apply):
US: 1-605-475-8590

In Europe, call:
Germany 01805 00 7620
UK 0870 738 0763

The Conference Room Number: 5785861

Hope to chat with you then.

(Cross-posted to Bag and Baggage and Lawgarithms) 

[Update, Monday 2/26 @ 1:15 p.m.:] Unfortunately, we had problems with the conferencing service lined up to support this, so are having to reschedule. I'll post the new date, time, and call-in details once they're available, sorry for the delay.

1. Blog. I suspect that companies pursuing their own blogging initiatives in addition to implementing policies intended to cover unsanctioned employee blogs will run into fewer problems with employee mistakes or misunderstandings. This is because the management and culture throughout the organization is bound to better grasp the process and related security and compliance issues. IMO, the best "training" occurs by example and widespread use.
2. Breathe. As I've pontificated here before, there's a pretty good case to be made that blogs and their ilk are actually the least risky form of corporate communication. If a company adequately gets across the reasons it expects certain employee conduct with regard to external communications, confidential information, and technology use, blogs, etc. are at least as "safe" as email and the phone; in fact, because people are more likely to understand up front these technologies are designed to accomplish wide and persistent information distribution, people are more likely to approach their use with caution and respect.
3. Mix. Organizations need to make sure their P.R./marketing and legal arms are communicating about how employees should be relaying work related information to third parties or the world at large, and they need to have an open-eyed appreciation of all the ways people might be or are using technology to do so. Brace yourself: P.R. and legal goals just might compete. Management needs to understand those conflicts and decide what resolution best fits what they're trying to accomplish (and what the law insists they accomplish).

[Technorati tag: gonzo marketing]

In doing a quick search, I found court decisions holding both ways when dealing with similar accusations of 'extortion,' ... The legal issue would likely be whether the statements were actual imputations of a crime, or were 'rhetorical hyperbole,' essentially a statement of opinion, not of fact. The former could be considered libelous, while the latter could not.

Also notable is an observation from one of the plaintiffs' lawyers, Thomas More Marrone, about the amplification role the Web adds to the mix: "It's like a guy standing on a street corner talking to his friends except he's writing it down and disseminating it to hundreds, thousands, millions of people."

The moral, I suppose, is that if you're going to use an online medium to discuss others' potentially wrongful acts (and there's no getting around that a blog or podcast is an attractive place for commenting on disturbing conduct), a little attention to phrasing and characterization can wind up going a long way. (See also these discussions of the limited nature of the fair reporting privilege.)