Many people apparently want to know more, so here is a synopsis of what this free tool can do. GrexIt works on the principal that vital information is often custom-crafted for each client, then buried in client communications. The application attempts to solve the problem by breaking down your messages by phrase, concept, even by word, then reorganizes those elements into a searchable knowledge-base. GrexIt’s performance has been documented by such high-profile blogs as GigaOm, TheNextWeb, and ReadWriteWeb. Check it out yourself and let me know if you like GrexIt.
Scott Rothstein ran what appeared to be a wildly successful law firm but turned out to be a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme. Prosecutors asked District Judge James Cohn to execute a vast forfeiture plan last month seeking ill-gotten gains in the form of cash, real estate, and other goods. Meanwhile, the lawyers for Herbert Stettin, the Trustee overseeing the estate of Rosenfeldt Adler (Rothstein’s law firm) feel the Government’s reach is too broad and that something should be left over for their client to administer. “I know the intersection of federal forfeiture law and federal bankruptcy law is a treacherous one,” said Paul Singerman, the Berger Singerman partner heading the trustee’s legal team. He said forfeiture laws were designed to take race cars away from drug dealers, but “this is not that type of case.” Not so long ago, prosecutors put the bad guys away, and bankruptcy attorneys and receivers recovered money for fraud victims. But the Justice Department has expanded its mission in the past decade, and the federal docket is littered with actions such as U.S. v. One Ancient Egyptian Wooden Sarcophagus or U.S. v. $13.9 million from Wachovia. When asked whether any money will be left, once prosecutors are done with claims from fraud victims, to pay creditors of the firm, Singerman responded, “We absolutely believe there will be.” Right now, however, not a lot of money has been recovered on the bankruptcy end. Singerman told U.S Bankruptcy Judge Raymond B. Ray in April that only about $3 million has been recovered by the trustee. What makes Singerman so optimistic, however, is negotiations with bankruptcy litigation targets, such as Banyon Income Fund, which claims a $775 million investment in Rothstein’s fake settlement financing scheme, and attorneys at the firm who received bonuses or loans. Singerman has told Ray that a settlement with a major player is forthcoming, and Banyon would be a juicy target. Stettin might be looking for any money Banyon received back from the Ponzi scheme, Tew said, but the Fort Lauderdale investment company reportedly lost $300 million and positioned itself as the leading creditor. << Read the Full Story >>
The O’Bama administration has demonstrated a surprising commitment to cloud-based or SaaS computing with Apps.gov; the portal that makes cloud-based services such as Google Apps available to federal agencies. The extent to which agencies will take the administration up on its challenge is open to debate: making technology available is not enough to change government culture. But the fact that the administration was willing to to put its money where it’s mouth was says a lot. Overall Apps.gov seems like a worthy follow up to such innovations such as Congress.org and the steady march of appellate court opinions available in RSS-friendly .xml format. Suddenly I have hope for the future of government.
Once more the Old Gray Lady has demonstrated how old and gray she is; this time by publishing this piece about lawyers who post on blogs, Facebook, or Twitter, could risk a reprimand or censure from oversight authorities like the Bar or State Supreme Court.
I know what you’re thinking. Could anyone at the Times actually think this was news? But be fair. If you lived in a time warp, you too might think that bland observations like this one amount to journalism:
Sean Conway found himself hauled up before the Florida bar, which issued a reprimand and a fine for one of his blog posts. But as an officer of the court lawyers like Conway face special risks. Their freedom to gripe is limited by codes of conduct.
The rest of the article is equally insightful. My theory is that the author swiped every single point in the piece from the blogging policies I developed in 2004. Way to stay cutting edge NY Times.
Prism Legal‘s Ron Friendman liveblogged (a/k/a real-time blogged) Richard Susskind’s discussion of the future of the profession at ILTA 2009. Here are the Top 10 disruptive legal technologies on the list:
Document Assembly. Has already changed markets. Providing document assembly online allows for economies of scale. Charges and hours don’t have to relate, making this technology “disruptive.
Always on Connectivity. Lawyers can, and are expected to, be on call 24/7. Deal with it.
Electronic Legal Marketplace. Your value in the a frictionless marketplace. Clients can select legal services in the electronic marketplace and even choose to go with non-lawyer alternatives.
E-Learning. Law schools have long been falling down on the job. The Internet can revive learning with realistic simulations.
Online Legal Guidance. Interactive advice systems in the “latent legal market” (see Suskind, The Future of Lawyers). Sounds like self-guided document automation.
Legal Open-Sourcing. A la Wikipedia. Crowd-sourcing communities of interested individuals can result in better answers than throwing the problem to a single individual. Consumers more likely to talk to friend with similar problems than a lawyer.
Closed Legal Communities. See Legal Onramp. Clients and In House Counsel can pool legal information and check a common knowledge-base before consulting pricey outside counsel.
Workflow and Project Management. High volume, low value work can be made into off-the-rack solutions; making certain lawyers into de facto project managers. Project management requires significant training, but lawyers aren’t getting any. This is a disruptive trend because it highlights the fact that as efficiency increases, billable hours decrease.
Embedded Legal Knowledge. In the future legal knowledge will be built into compliance systems making the contributions of highly-trained counsel less necessary except for unusual assignments.
Online Dispute Resolution. Dispute resolution as a service. Services like CyberSettle versus time spent in Court or in the arbitration system.
Friday I stumbled on Recap and was impressed. How impressed? I downloaded it immediately and signed the online petition to make federal case-law available for free. Yeah – that impressed. Recap seems to have impressed some others as well; it has even enlisted top-shelf talent like the lawyer-activist-millionaires over at Justia (you might be more familiar with their last project, Findlaw).
How it works: Recap saves every document you view on PACER, adds meta-tags and other features, makes the item easier to find, and posts it to a central locale. The next time a user goes to PACER and wants that document, if it’s already been “liberated” then the user can download it free of charge.
Granted, you end up paying the 8 cents per page, which means that someone else gets a free ride, but the idea is that someone else could be doing the same and so on. Of course the fact that Recap exists begs the question of why we Americans must pay to view the fruits of our own justice system. Westlaw and Lexis figured out that answer a long time ago.
To use Recap you must use Firefox, the open-source alternative to Internet Explorer. But I suggest you download Firefox even if you don’t download Recap. It’s just a better browser.
Feedback: If you’ve used Recap or have an opinion sound off in our comment section or contact me, Hacker in Chief, at mhedayat@mha-law.com
