I am flattered by the interest and recognition that the basketball program has received. West Virginia University and the people of West Virginia have been great to me and my family. I will be the basketball coach at West Virginia next season and I look forward to continued success.
My guess is that legal blogs will partially fill the “practicality” gap between the legal academy and the rest of us.UPDATE:
I would guess that we would see big and small changes. For example, as video technology and the Net become interwoven, I see little reason to require witnesses to travel long distances to attend trials when they could as easily appear by interactive video. As another example, think about whether court reporters are needed given advances in digital audio recording. Digital audio recordings of trials can be provided over the Net, perhaps even in real time. Vendors located at any place in the world could access the digital audio over the Net and bid to provide transcriptions, presumably at very low prices. Such a system would obviate the necessity and exorbitant cost of employing a court reporter.
I tend to read law reviews in spurts. I think I am like most judges, I read them when I need them and can find something useful in them (which is not often). I don’t have favorites. Indeed, I find many of the “elite” reviews laughably beside the point.
The advantages are obvious: speed, availability, and topicality. I don’t see real disadvantages.
Incidentally, you ought to convince Westlaw and Lexis/Nexis to buy your blog list. They should think about listing blogs like they list law reviews. Then convince them to develop a really good search engine for blogs.
The legal blogger can sponsor ideas on current issues that can be reviewed immediately through the input of readers. The best serious blogs define a particular field of interest and inquiry and stay within that scope.Tags:
Assuming that legal blogs are now in their infancy, and that they will grow to have a long and fruitful life, I think that lawyers who ignore them altogether will do so at their peril.
The willingness to learn and relearn technology skills will be essential for mastery of new tech tools. The future will belong to the flexible.
I don't have the time or inclination to slog through many law review articles in my spare time.
Because of publishing realities, law reviews may appear hide-bound while legal blogs operate with free-wheeling immediacy.
On the other hand, without peer review, blogs can publish anything and suppress anything –- so caveat emptor.
I believe that the serious blogs do have a time advantage in raising issues, networking primary sources, and serving as a clearinghouse for additional discussion. Law reviews have the luxury of handling an issue in depth; however the time lag can be a negative when fast-moving matters are being considered. Law reviews are permanent; one does not have to worry about a broken link or missing achival material. Nevertheless, even if (and maybe because) they are ephemeral, legal blogs are fun to read. Most cut to the chase and many have a sense of humor -- a plus in my book.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: Effective May 1, 2006, Electronic Case Filing (ECF) will become mandatory in the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia. Members of the bar who are not registered ECF Users are strongly encouraged not to delay in registering for a training class as those classes are filling up quickly. Click here for more information.
LexisNexis, a leading provider of information and services solutions, File & Serve will provide the West Virginia Supreme Court with electronic filing of appeals, automated docketing and real-time online access to filed documents. File & Serve also provides direct links to LexisNexis legal citations, giving the court a more convenient approach for researching cases.
Although tax day has passed -- don't forget to check out Blawg Review #53 hosted by Professor James Maule at MauledAgain. Professor Maule offers blog "commentary on tax law, legal education, the First Amendment, religion, and law generally, with sporadic attempts to connect all of this to genealogy, theology, music, model trains, and chocolate chip cookies."
I think with a little creativity, building in RSS publishers inside our medical devices and health-IT systems such as EMRs and HIS would go a long way towards helping create more interoperable systems. Of course, content and messaging standards such as HL7 would not be replaced but would become the de facto standard of the payloads in the messages that RSS feeds could publish.Tip to Matthew Holt at The Health Care Blog for pointing out the article.
"Back issues—a year's worth. Every issue of Blawg Review is made up of outstanding law blog posts selected by a new host each week and presented in an entertaining overview for everyone interested in law.
Blawg Review is a peer-reviewed blog carnival. Unlike most other blog carnivals, which rely only on submissions of bloggers' posts, Blawg Review is the host's presentation of some of the best law-related posts each week from various sources, including those recommended by readers."
. . . But some hospital executives will find that when an attorney’s release of information (ROI) form lands on their desk, their EMR information will be lacking.Whether the Joint Commission comes calling, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is performing an audit of claims, or payers and the legal community are requesting a hospital to pull records for a specific case, provider organizations should be able to quickly access complete medical records, not just portions of the record, and send them out electronically with little or no administrative burden. . .
In her post Christina states:
. . . What now? Who needs to be told? Customers? Government regulators? You call in the lawyers, but they tell you they will need a day or more to figure out what the reporting obligations are.
The lawyers explain that there are more than 20 federal, state, and local laws and regulations that govern the reporting obligations, and some are quite different from others. New laws are being passed every month. The lawyers say the road ahead is perilous.
Then they make the traffic signal analogy to help you understand. They tell you to imagine you are driving down the street. At the approaching intersection, instead of just one traffic signal, there are three lights, each with a different instruction.
Should you stop at the red light? Slow down for the yellow light? Proceed under the green light? Needless to say, at this strange intersection, chaos reigns. There are confused drivers, anxious passengers, and angry cops. Here is an accident waiting to happen.
PATCHWORK QUILT. The lawyers' point? On the information superhighway, when it comes to the rules on privacy and data security, businesses are like the confused motorist at the intersection of mixed signals.
In the absence of a uniform federal privacy law, well-intentioned lawmakers and regulators from around the country have, in an episodic manner, created rules to address the growing misuse of personal information and the loss or theft of sensitive data files. The result is a hodgepodge of overlapping, conflicting, and occasionally incomprehensible laws and regulations. . .
While preparing a post summarizing the 2006 West Virginia health care related legislation, I noticed that the West Virginia Legislature website has added RSS feed features. It's great to see the staff at the Legislature add this feature. A quick Google search turned up the following summary by the National Conference of State Legislatures of state Legislatures using blog and RSS feed technology.
