Law Librarian Blog

Round-Up of State Practitioner Blogs

Boston Bankruptcy Lawyer Blog
http://www.bostonbankruptcylawyerblog.com
http://www.bostonbankruptcylawyerblog.com/index.xml
Provides opinion on bankruptcy law news, matters and reports in Massachusetts. Published by The Law Office of Neil Burns.

Illinois Estate Planning & Elder Law Blog
http://www.illinoisestateplanningandelderlawblog.com
http://www.illinoisestateplanningandelderlawblog.com/index.xml
Covers estate planning law news, opinions and matters in Illinois. Published by Wilson & Wilson Law Offices.

Indiana Injury Law Blog
http://www.indianainjurylawblog.com
http://www.indianainjurylawblog.com/index.xml
Covers injury law reports, cases and opinions in Indiana. Published by Theodoros & Rooth, PC.

Indiana Medical Malpractice Lawyer Blog
http://www.indianamedicalmalpracticelawyerblog.com
http://www.indianamedicalmalpracticelawyerblog.com/index.xml
Reviews medical malpractice cases, reports and news in Indiana. Published by Garau, Germano, Hanley & Pennington, PC.

Maryland Divorce Lawyer Blog
http://www.marylanddivorcelawyerblog.com
http://www.marylanddivorcelawyerblog.com/index.xml
Provides insight on divorce law news, reports and opinions in Maryland. Published by Sliverman, Thompson, Slutkin, White LLC.

Pennsylvania Workers' Compensation Lawyers Blog
http://www.pennsylvaniaworkerscompensationlawyersblog.com
http://www.pennsylvaniaworkerscompensationlawyersblog.com/index.xml
Examines workers' compensation law news, matters and reports in Pennsylvania. Published by Michael O'Connor & Associates, LLC.

Arizona Supreme Court Holds Metadata in Public Records is Public

The Arizona Supreme Court holds that metadata in an electronic document which is also a public document is part of that document and can be examined by the public.  David Lake is a Phoenix police officer who alleged employment discrimination against Phoenix in federal court.  He also filed a public records request for notes kept by his supervisor documenting his work performance.  Lake received the paper copies and wanted the electronic versions, including the metadata included in those electronic copies.  He thought that some of these documents reduced to paper may have been manipulated by backdating or other tricks that the metadata could reveal.

Document metadata comes in many forms.  For Microsoft Word, the metadata is viewable by going to File and selecting properties.  In Office 7, it's hidden away but still accessible.  For an open document, click on the Office Logo button in the upper left hand corner of the screen, select prepare, and then properties from the next menu that opens.  That will give some information.  Just above the properties bar there is a drop down menu for Document Properties which opens up another choice, Advanced Properties, which when selected will bring you to the same information you can find in earlier versions of Word in two simple steps rather than the five here.  Got that?  The information under the Statistics tab shows things like date created, date modified, date accessed, date printed, the number of revisions, who saved it last, and total editing time.  Someone editing a document such as in the Lake case can manipulate the metadata in some respects.  The easiest way is to simply copy text from an old document into a new blank document as the metadata is only carried by individual files.  The old metadata is wiped out.  New document, new metadata.  Note this, faculty and students in plagiarism cases.  It takes a bit more deviousness to manipulate the system clock on a PC to affect the time and date stamps in creating and editing documents.  That's something Lake's supervisor probably did not do.  Then there is the possibility of getting to the text that is edited out by invoking the various undo delete features.  The Microsoft Help File for Word 2007 has this handy information.  The start of the help sequence reads as follows:

Inspect documents for hidden data and personal information

If you plan to share an electronic copy of a Microsoft Office Word document with clients or colleagues, it is a good idea to review the document for hidden data or personal information that might be stored in the document itself or in the document properties (metadata (metadata: Data that describes other data. For example, the words in a document are data; the word count is an example of metadata.)). Because this hidden information can reveal details about your organization or about the document itself that you might not want to share publicly, you might want to remove this hidden information before you share the document with other people.

This article explains how the Document Inspector feature in Microsoft Office Word 2007 can help you find and remove hidden data and personal information in your documents.

* * * *

But I digress.  The Arizona Court noted that the public records statute doesn't actually define what in fact is a public record, but notes through court decisions and other statutes there is a broad public right to inspect those records which are relevant to government business.  It also noted that the metadata does not exist separately from the main document.  One exists because of the other. 

¶ 13 ... It would be illogical, and contrary to the policy of openness underlying the public records laws, to conclude that public entities can withhold information embedded in an electronic document, such as the date of creation, while they would be required to produce the same information if it were written manually on a paper public record.

¶ 14 We accordingly hold that when a public entity maintains a public record in an electronic format, the electronic version of the record, including any embedded metadata, is subject to disclosure under our public records law.

I have a feeling that Arizona public entities are going to place more emphasis on understanding how metadata is embedded in word processing documents from now on.

The case is Lake v. City of Phoenix, No. CV-09-0036-PR (October 19, 2009).  And in a related note, see this story in CNET about how Google handed a redacted PDF to the FCC about Google Voice that was quite electronically unredacted.  Google Voice has 1.419 million users, something we weren't supposed to know, among other facts.  [MG]

Mindless Ageism at Indy Law

"[M]indless age discrimination now threatens to force out my dean (who is doing a fine job) despite assurances given when he was hired three years ago that he would not be subject to [Indiana University's] age limit" writes Indy Law prof Gerard Magliocca on Concurring Opinions in Flagrant Age Discrimination at Indiana University. Apparently Indiana University President Michael McRobbie has decided to strictly enforce a largely dormant policy that deans must step down from their administrative positions at 65. Age discrimination? Probably not. Under ADEA, covered employers are not prohibited from forcing bona fide executive or high policymakers to retire once they are 65 years old but Magliocca doesn't provide details on the assurances given to the Indy Law dean when he was hired --  who made the assurances, in writing?

Employers can take less adverse actions such as demoting or transferring bona fide executives instead of sending them out to pasture by way of forced retirement. One would think that is what will happen in this case if IU enforces this mindless ageism policy. The current dean would probably return to the teaching faculty if that is what he wants to do. Alternatively, there are plenty of law schools who will be looking for talented deans with proven track records and who don't give a damn about the age of applicants.

Magliocca writes "[even if President McRobbie and IU are not violating ADEA] I think the President’s behavior is shameful and sends a clear message to campus that senior faculty are not welcome." IU President Michael McRobbie was born on Oct. 11, 1950. Do the math and mark your calendar for his forced retirement announcement. [JH]

Supreme Court Sluggers

Is your library one of the happy ones who got the first in the "Supreme Court Sluggers" trading card series from the Green Bag?  A great addition to the bobbleheads in the Green Bag's bag o' tricks.  The first card features Justice John Glover Roberts (Pitcher) with all the relevant stats -- as Chief Justice, I think we can assume he's in the starting rotation for the Supremes and particularly valuable for the team in October!

Check it out here.

[gvd]

Friday Fun: LLB's PSA for Halloween, Zombies in Plain English

From the creative staff at Common Craft. [JH]

FBI's Domestic Investigations and Operation Guide

The New York Times is reporting that the FBI's interpretation of the Bush Administration's 2008 domestic intelligence-gathering rules was recently made public when the Bureau's 269 page Domestic Investigations and Operation Guide (Dec. 16, 2008) was released in response to a FOIA lawsuit. "The disclosure of the manual has opened the widest window yet onto how agents have been given greater power in the post-Sept. 11 era" according to Charlie Savages' Loosening of F.B.I. Rules Stirs Privacy Concerns. The New York Times has published the entire guide here. Hat tip to beSpacific. [JH] 

OASPA's Webinar of Q&A Session With Five Open Access Publishers Now Available

The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association's Oct. 20, 2009 webinar of a question-and-answer session with five open access publishers is now available. Actually, one participating publisher follows a mixed-access business model. Hat tip to Digital Koans. [JH]

A Quick Shout Out for Legal Informatics Blog

Contemporary research in legal informatics is way beyond my small brain capacity. I sort of get it generally. Hell, two former physicists drummed the fundamental principles into my head at the University of Chicago Graduate Library School but that was then and this is now.  As for now and blogging about contemporary developments, the field isn't beyond Robert Richards' intellectual chops. Robert, who also contributes to LLB, covers the discipline on his Legal Informatics Blog. Take the RSS feed to stay informed. [JH]

In Celebration of the Card Catalog

As reported in LJ, the University of South Carlolina celebrates and says goodbye to their card catalog in great style.  Although it has not been added to since 1991, the catalog stayed on the floor in the open stacks.  This year, the nearly four million piece card catalog is being retired in favor of more space for students, though some parts of it will be recycled.  For example, the music school will take part of the physical catalog to store cassette tape boxes.  Apparently, card catalog drawers are the perfect size for cassette storage. Who knew? (Though I thought they went the way of the card catalog ages ago.) 

Instead of just chucking the cards that populated the 3,168 drawers, the Librarians turned the occassion into a year long series of events designed to recognize the contribution of the card catalog in the transformation of knowledge.

Some of the events include the Card Catalog Boat Race and, my personal favorite, Card of the Day which features a new card each day with some annotation to but it in context.When I visited, the new card was, ironically, Russell Eugene Bidlack's 1970 publication: Typewritten Catalog Cards: a manual of procedure and form with 300 sample cards. 

The current celebratory event is called "What you can Make With Card Catalogs."  There are four catagories: Functional (serves a purpose), Foundational (building models), Fashionable (wearable), and Free Form.  You have until November 30th to register your entry!  I'm thinking about a card catalog turkey for Thanksgiving Day. (VS)

Brooklyn Law Deals (Badly?) With Illegal Downloading

Above The Law is reporting on the Brooklyn Law School's reaction to its ISP informing it that students were (horrors!) illegally downloading copyrighted movies and television shows via its wireless network.  Brooklyn was notified by their ISP to that effect.  The first statement was a blanket email to students noting that the school was investigating the charges and once names were ascertained, the individuals would be turned over to copyright holders for enforcement.  The student response was, ah, mostly negative.  The school sent a second message out saying after consulting the language of the DMCA that it would inform the students in question to cease their activity but not turn over the names to copyright holders "[o]utside of the legal process."  Above The Law reproduces student comments on the incident which reflect the range of understanding or lack thereof on the legal consequences of downloading copyrighted material.  Last I heard, the everybody does it defense didn't work in an infringement action.   

The phrase that seemed to escape most attention was "outside the legal process."  The RIAA has said that it swore off lawsuits except those that were in the pipeline at the time of the announcement.  They are money losers.  The MPAA hasn't reached that point yet in its mentality and it has concerns that its product will get cannibalized through file sharing.  (See this articlein CNET for an analysis suggesting the MPAA should think past the litigation stage.)  So, if I understand this situation, Brooklyn Law will do an internal investigation, collect names, inform the students that they know what's going on with the wireless network and that is that?  I'd see this as an open invitation to the MPAA to file John Doe suits and try to subpoena the results of that investigation.  The school and potentially its ISP would have the names of the downloaders and what constituted an illegal download.  I can't say they would be successful, but a move like that would certainly send a message.  The school would have no choice (court order, after all) if the MPAA was successful at getting the names revealed.  I think Brooklyn should have conducted its investigation without any public announcements and gone straight to the individual students if warranted.  This is not going to end with the backtracking on enforcement.  [MG]

What's Driving Up Law School Costs?

Not the ABA's Accreditation Standards according to the GAO's Higher Education: Issues Related to Law School Cost and Access (Oct. 2009) report though the GAO reports that "officials at some ABA-accredited schools said that ABA accreditation standards related to libraries may impose costs because they find the standards do not clearly describe the required size and organization of library collections" and the ABA standards may limit potentially lower-cost approaches by developing predominantly electronic libraries and delivering courses online.

Factors increasing law school costs according to the GAO survey of 22 of the 221 ABA-accredited and non-accredited law schools appear to be changes in the approach to legal education, increased competition for students and faculty, and spending intended to improve U.S. News Law School rankings. They include:

• Increased student support–e.g., academic support, career services, and admissions support.
• Increased emphasis on hands-on clinical experiences, smaller skills-based courses and more diverse elective courses to compete for students.
• Offering higher salaries to attach better faculty.
• Enhancing U.S. News Law School Rankings which are determined in part by such cost-related factors as per student expenditures, student-faculty ratio, and library resources.

The GAO also reports that recent decreases in state funding are seen as a contributor to rising tuition at public schools.

Hat tip to Brian Leiter's Law School Reports, The tail wags the dog, again. See also Leiter's Per Capita Expenditures is the Tail that Wags the US News Ranking Dog (citing Chapman law prof Tom Bell's How Top-Ranked Law Schools Got That Way, Pt. 1. Here's the links to Part 2 and Part 3 of Bell's detailed analysis of the US News Law School Rankings.) [JH]

Google Experiments with Social Search Feature

Google Social Search is an experimental feature that helps you find public web content from people in your social circle, when you're signed into your Google Account. Official Google Blog post announcement. Your social circle starts with your Google profile, if you have one, and includes your Gmail chat buddies, your Gmail contacts and people you are publicly connected to on other social sites. Details on how Google builds your social circle in the How Social Search Works video displayed below.

Social Search results appear at the bottom of the Google search results page, in a section labeled "Results from people in your social circle." Results from Google Social Search will include public content from your social circle including the following:

• Websites, blogs, public profiles, and other content linked from your friends' Google profiles.
• Web content, such as status updates, tweets, and reviews, from social services that your friends have listed in their Google profiles.
• Relevant articles from your Google Reader subscriptions.

Here's a Social Search demonstration from Google Labs.

Go here to join the Social Search experiment, if interested. See Stephen Arnold's Beyond Search blog post for risks associated with this type of personalized search. [JH]

Legal Writing Institute Workshop for Adjuncts and New Legal Writing Professors Set for Dec. 4

The Legal Writing Institute is conducting a one-day workshop for adjunct professors and new legal writing professors on Friday, December 4, 2009, at The John Marshall Law School (Chicago) and St. John’s University School of Law. Registration for the one-day legal writing workshop is $100 in advance (or $120 at the door). You can register (and pay) by mail or online at one of the following two websites.

Chicago:   https://www.regonline.com/lwi-workshop-chi
New York City:  https://www.regonline.com/lwi-workshop-nyc

Download LWI New Teachers Workshop Agenda and Registration Form

Hat tip to Barbara Gellis Traub, Interim Director and Head of Reference and Instructional Services, Rittenberg Law Library, St. John's University School of Law. [JH]

APA Style Manual Publisher Will Replace Bad Copies of the Sixth Edition

If anyone had not noticed, the sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Associationis laden with errors.  The first printing goes beyond mere typos and includes errors in style rules and examples.  Whoops. This departure from correctness has caused one uproar from the academics who rely on APA for their publications.  The publisher reaction caused another.  It posted corrections to its web site and refused to provide updated copies to those who had purchased the first printing.  That didn't sit well with the customer base, some of whom clamored to shift to the Chicago Manual of Style. 

The APA has relented and has announced it will replace copies from the first printing with corrected editions.  Law faculty and students, of course,  are drilled with the Blue Book:  A Uniform System of Citation(one of the loosest standards for identifying bibliographic information in comparison to other styles, I might add).  However, with many faculty branching out to social science and other non-legal publications, the APA corrected standards may affect some of their work as well.

This leads me to the top ten laws of the Internet, courtesy of the Telegraph U.K.  The paper has compiled a somewhat humorous slant on the realities of engaging the Internet based on truths and truisms of the experience.  Number four is Skitt's Law which is described as:

Expressed as "any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself" or "the likelihood of an error in a post is directly proportional to the embarrassment it will cause the poster."

This seems to affect the APA story in one sense.  In comments to the original story on Inside Higher Ed, one commentator states:

In reviewing the links provided today (Thanks to Inside Higher Ed!), there is another error! On the "Errors in Examples" the second correction in Chapter 2 on Page 41 notes to "include departmental affiliations paragraph..." HOWEVER, the sample downloaded from APA with corrections does not include this in the sample paper provided. What happens when even the corrections are incorrect? Can you say THIRD EDITION?

As useful as this information is (and it is), the proposed next set of corrections would be more accurately described as the third printing of the sixth edition.  Now someone help me find the unintended error in my post, though I note that I am held to the "good enough for government work" standard.  The other 'laws" identified by the Telegraph are here.  [MG]

Grading Google's Acquisitions

Like the Cookie Monster, Google has acquired or taken an equity interest in over 50 companies since 2001. See Wikipedia's chronological list. Silicon Alley Insider grades many of Google's acquisitions. High marks for many acquisitions such as "A+" for Applied Semantics, which cost $102 Million (source of Google's AdSense program), "A" for YouTube ($1.65 Billion), but not all, e.g., "D" for FeedBurner ($100 Million). Hat tip to Boston College law prof Brian JM Quinn's M & A Law Prof Blog post. [JH]

Do Law Schools Still Need Academic Law Librarians to Support Faculty Scholarship in This New Cash-Strapped Digital Age?

Ah ... well, yes they do according to Duke's Richard Danner in his forthcoming article Supporting Scholarship: Thoughts on the Role of the Academic Librarian, 39 Journal of Law and Education __ (April 2010) [SSRN]. But even if current faculty think otherwise, someone qualified still has to be in the building to teach legal research skills to the next generation of law prof scholars, namely today's law students. [JH]

Can IP Law Accomodate Individual Branding?

If our traditional intellectual property system can be explained as being based on individual authors who look to corporate entities to mass produce and distribute their works, then advancement in digital technology means that individual authors can and indeed have taken on these corporate roles for production and distribution of their works and also for copyright and trademark protection of their work. In Individual Branding: How the Rise of Individual Creation and Distribution of Cultural Products Confuses the Intellectual Property System [SSRN], Thomas Jefferson School of Law prof Deven R. Desai argues that the current intellectual property system is not well equipped to address this transformation by providing copyright and trademark protection without upsetting the balance between creators and users.

The article "seeks to map authors’ new interests as a way to show where the intellectual property system can meet these new needs or where it must change. Given the speed with which technology and this type of production evolves," writes Desai, "the law may not best way to manage many of these interests at all." [JH]

UVa Law School Launches New Public Service Program

UVa Law School will launch a new law and public service program for first- and second-year law students starting with the upcoming spring semester. Talk about just-in-time curricular deployment. From the Cavalier Daily:

The program “is designed to offer a select group of students the opportunity to receive intensive and appropriate training that will prepare them for a career in public service,” said Jim Ryan, the faculty director of the new program.

Securing entry-level positions in public service currently is very challenging, said Yared Getachew, assistant dean for public service at the Law School. “Students in the program would be able to offer prospective employers additional indicia of demonstrated commitment to public service, as well as training and preparation to take on work immediately after graduation,” he explained.

[JH]

If bosses shouldn't "friend" their employees, should profs not "friend" their students?

Lawyers tell employers that "friending" their employees on Facebook (or any other social media network) is a sexual harassment suit waiting to happen.  That's according to this story in the National Law Journal:

Managers sending friend requests to staff via Facebook, Twitter and other sites constitute a growing trend in the workplace. And it's one that needs to stop, the lawyers stress, because online relations between boss and employee can trigger or exacerbate a host of legal claims, including harassment, discrimination or wrongful termination, as well as touch off cries of favoritism if the boss friends only a select few subordinates.

Does the same advice hold true for professors vis a vis their students?  Most definitely, at least with respect to students currently enrolled in one's class.  Aside from laying the ground work for a sexual harassment claim, a professor who "friends" select students risks demoralizing and alienating the rest of the class many of whom are highly sensitive to perceptions of teacher favoritism.  Moreover, initiating a friend request inappropriately crosses the professional boundary between professor and student; our job is to teach them, not to be their buddies. 

On the other hand, once the student is no longer in your class it's generally acceptable to friend them so long as it's the student, rather than you, initiating the request.  A fortiori, it's ok to reach out and friend students once they've graduated although I still prefer my own rule of thumb which is to never "friend" a student (former or otherwise) unless they ask first. 

(jbl)

Social media use at work - what employers do and don't allow

Blogmaster Joe Hodnicki had previously posted a story alluding to a recent survey by the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics ("SCCE") of approximately 800 compliance and ethics professionals in the private, public and non-profit sectors to find out which employers have policies governing employee social media use at work and what they cover.  Here are the results complete with graphs courtesy of cnet.com

"Of the companies questioned in the survey, 34 percent said they have a general employee policy that addresses all online activity, including the use of social networking, both on and off the job. Only 10 percent said they have a policy specifically geared toward social networks."

(Credit: Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics)

More than half of the individuals said their company has no active system to monitor employees using social-networking sites. Around 32 percent said their company acts only when an issue is discovered.

(Credit: Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics)

"Of all those surveyed, 24 percent said an employee in their company had been disciplined for inappropriate behavior on a social network, while 37 percent did not know. The percentage was higher in the nonprofit sector, noted the survey, with 33 percent reporting an employee."

You can read the rest here via cnet. 

(jbl)