On April 18, in the largest simultaneous dismissal of cases in U.S. history, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court dismissed more than 21,000 low-level drug cases connected to the drug lab scandal that involved Annie Dookhan, a former chemist of a Massachusetts crime lab who admitted to falsifying evidence. After an investigation into Annie Dookhan…

The College of Law Practice Management is seeking nominations for its annual InnovAction Awards, which honor innovations in law practice management and the delivery of legal services.

Nominations are sought of lawyers, law firms, law departments, nonprofits, tech companies, students, and others worldwide who have invented something or successfully applied innovative practices to…

In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the memory hole was where government officials deposited politically inconvenient documents for destruction. From 2002 to 2009, the website The Memory Hole served the opposite purpose, rescuing government and corporate files from disappearance or obscurity.

The site garnered controversy in 2004, when it published photographs of the…

James Greiner, director of the Access to Justice Lab.

Imagine if doctors gave you treatments based solely on their gut instincts of what works, without any science-based evidence to back them up. We’d probably call that quackery.

But that’s exactly how the legal profession often operates. We adopt theories about how best to…

The CLE provider Lawline recently rolled out enhancements to its iOS app, adding the ability to view synchronized presentation slides as you listen to a program, to download the program’s written materials, and to add s0-called SmartNotes, which are notes that adhere to the point in the presentation where you added them.

Lawline first…

A year ago, I reported here on the announcement of a pilot program by the Legal Services Corporation, Microsoft and Pro Bono Net to develop state legal portals to direct individuals with civil legal needs to the most appropriate forms of assistance. After soliciting proposals from states to participate in…

Over on the right-hand panel, nestled in beneath the ads, is a subscribe box. If you would like to be notified by email of new posts on this blog, enter your email address there. When a new post is published, you’ll receive an email with a brief summary and a link to the full post.…

The beta version of GPO.gov’s new website.

Two federal government websites, GPO.gov and Congress.gov, have unveiled updates in recent weeks.

Most notably, the U.S. Government Printing Office has launched a completely redesigned version of its site. The new design, which was launched in a beta version while the former site continues to…

One week from today, on April 28 at 1 p.m. Eastern, I will be moderating a free, one-hour webinar, Litigation Tool Tips: A Holistic Approach to Litigation Technology, presented by the American Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Division.

The panel will feature the CEOs of three legal startups — Allegory, Casetext and

The Free Law Project, a non-profit dedicated to providing free, public access to primary legal materials, has announced plans to download all of the free opinions and order available on PACER, the federal courts’ system for electronic access to court records.

Although PACER charges fees for downloading case documents and dockets, it does…

Are you a lawyer-turned-journalist or a journalist with an interest in writing about legal issues? If so, then here’s the job for you.

The ABA Journal, the flagship magazine and website of the American Bar Association, is looking for a full-time legal affairs writer. And, although the publication is based in Chicago, the job…

When lawyer Robert P. Bigelow came out with his book Computers and the Law: An Introductory Handbook in 1966, he was so far ahead of his time that a reviewer of the book noted, “The effects of computers upon the legal profession are still basically unknown.” It was the first book on the topic, published…