In this episode, Dennis and Tom discuss the use (or potential use) of Facebook by lawyers, giving some potential benefits and risks, practical tips, and observations about their experiments in using Facebook. They also talk about how they use the Google Reader for RSS feeds and Google Docs and Spreadsheets for simple collaborations. They also talk about the other podcasts they listen to and how they listen to them.

It's a good introduction for lawyers and other legal professionals to these topics.

You'll find the podcast episode here and there's an archive of earlier podcasts.

It's also a good time to remind you to check out Denise Howell's podcast - This Week in Law - on which you'll find some of the authors of the Between Lawyers blog appearing from time to time.

And, for Facebook members, we invite you to join the Between Lawyers Facebook group.

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

I don't know anyone who does not admit to having similar problems when I press them, even though they seem to love their actual cell phones - the hardware, that is. What the heck are we all paying for?

Tonight, I found a podcast of a a presentation from Ed Zander of Motorola and here's the description:

Motorola Chairman and CEO Ed Zander says the ultimate cell phone would come back into the home–that is, it would be the only phone one would need. But that development seems far away for users in North America. “People always say to me, ‘I can go to China, and go to the Great Wall of China and make a better phone call than here in the United States,” Zander offered during his keynote interview with Gartner analysts Nick Jones and Ken Dulaney. “And it’s probably true,” Zander noted.

Zander is more polite than most people I know when they get started on this topic - here's a link to the podcast - http://www.podtech.net/?p=645. Check out his point of view.

What do the rest of you think of cell phone service in the U.S.? What are we getting for what we are paying? Is it reasonable to expect more? Or am I the only one this really bothers?

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.)

In the session, we covered most of the podcasting basics for lawyers from what they are and how you might use them to finding and listening to them to creating your own podcasts. We had a great audience and had a lot of fun doing the presentation.

We invite you to listen to this podcast and to check out episode 1 and to subscribe to get future episodes.

I'm personally not aware of any examples of this, but would appreciate it if people might let me know by way of a comment to this post or by email of any examples where this is now being done. Thanks.

It does make sense. If you are hiring a lawyer for his or her advocacy skills, wouldn't you ideally like to hear (or see) some examples of the lawyer in action? Event planners routinely ask for samples from prospective speakers.

Might a podcast be a way to create that kind of "sample of work" for prospective clients?

Something interesting occurred to me along these lines in the course of being interviewed by Debbie Weil for her podcast. Specifically, of all the various communication tools available to employees, whether while on the job or off the job or both, blogging may actually be the least risky and most innocuous from a corporate risk management standpoint. Consider first that people commonly assume phone, email, cocktail party, and/or hallway discussions are invisible, transitory, and/or confidential. Any one of those situations is thus fairly likely to involve remarks that the speaker, rightly or wrongly, does not expect to come back to haunt them in a public way. Then consider the extent to which public blogs, podcasts, and similar tools are conceptually different from the get-go. The accessible nature of the information put out by these means is part of of the compact. Except in the limited case of behind-the-firewall blogging or podcasting, people using these tools are much more likely to comprehend that a broad audience is possible (usually, desired), and to tailor their communications accordingly.

Remember our posts about brochures, telephones, golf, and public speaking?

Unlike a great deal of the reporting I read about the dangers and pitfalls of blogging, I have a hard time isolating any primary legal problems that inevitably go along with employees using communication tools of any sort. Instead, the potential problems are a direct product of the extent to which clear expectations have been set, and the extent to which a particular employee is oblivious or doesn't care. Though there are a host of situations whereby an employee's blog, podcast, photo, or video clip could conceivably subject an employer to third party liability — inadvertent disclosure of confidential or regulated information; harassment, discrimination, or other civil rights violations; false advertising or other unfair competition concerns; and much more — not only are none of them unique to online communications, but it seems to me those using such methods would be almost certain to appreciate that what they're doing is not "private."

Picture a world in which it was a newsworthy event every time someone was fired due to something said in an email or a hallway. Or every time company secrets were clandestinely or inadvertently shared over the phone or over drinks. You'd never hear about the dangers and pitfalls of blogging, because it would constitute such a small part of the overall "problem." (And we could all get back to concentrating on what's really important.)