The U.S. District Court in Massachusetts is among 14 federal courts participating in a pilot project allowing cameras in the courtroom. I am moderating a panel this week that will look at this pilot project, and also contrast it with the experimental OpenCourt digital-access project under way in Quincy District Court. Also on…

Almost a year ago, I wrote here about the major upgrade in the works for the Casemaker legal research service. At the time, I was given a demonstration that previewed the new interface but I was not then able to…

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court today announced approval of a new SJC Rule 1:19 governing Electronic Access to the Courts. The new rule replaces the former rule, which governed cameras in the courts, and extends it to recognize changes in technology and journalism since the original rule was promulgated. Notably, the rule is designed to…

[Note: Since March 1995, I have written a syndicated column, legal.online, that has run in various legal and bar periodicals. After 17 years, I’m calling it quits. Below is my final column, which I sent to editors last month. Many of the columns are archived here. I will continue to write my bimonthly…

Judge William G. Young

At the recent annual meeting of the Massachusetts Bar Foundation, U.S. District Judge William G. Young, in accepting the Great Friend of Justice Award, delivered a thoughtful and impassioned speech decrying the decrease in jury trials in the federal courts. Trial by…

International law firm Duane Morris had a problem. Some of its key staff were not very good at presenting, either internally or to clients. One was told that her speaking “needed to be more fluid and less analytical.” Another experienced “extreme anxiety at the thought of presenting her ideas to the…

Lawyers and predictive coding are like kids around the swimming hole — no one wants to be the first to dive in for fear the water is cold or it harbors scary creatures. But once someone takes the lead, dives in and declares the water fine, everyone else is quick to follow.

That is why…

If you are attending ABA Techshow this year, I invite you to join Jeff Lantz of Esquire Interactive and me for a Taste of Techshow dinner Friday evening, March 30. Our venue will be Rhapsody, where the menu is “inspired by fresh Italian flavors and local, seasonal ingredients,”…

I’ve written several times about the Fastcase app for the iPhone and iPad, both of which let you research cases and statutes for free directly from your mobile device. This week, Fastcase rolled out Mobile Sync,…

With just a month to go before ABA Techshow — which takes place in Chicago March 29-31 — the deadline for early-bird registration has been extended to this Friday, Feb. 24. After Friday, all registration fees will increase by $200. A full list of fees is available…

Recently, I wrote about announcements (here and here) from two cloud-based practice management applications, Rocket Matter and Clio, that they had added document assembly…

Onit just may be onto something. At LegalTech last week, the company revealed that it is moving in a new direction, away from a single, soup-to-nuts process-management platform in favor of a new line of task-specific apps, each designed to address a specific business process. It rolled out a series of apps that address legal,…