Somewhere along the line, I picked up the idea that a lawyer is always a “lawyer,” but should only be called an “attorney” in connection with representing a client. (“John went to law school and became a lawyer. He is now the attorney for an accused bank robber.)

At his blog You Don’t Say,…

In legal-blogging circles, Mike Dillon is known as the first Fortune 500 general counsel to launch a blog. That was in 2006, when Dillon was GC of Sun Microsystems. Earlier this year, Oracle acquired Sun. With Sun’s demise, so went Dillon’s blog (although the archives remain up).

With the acquisition over…

Last February, Law.com published my review of Bloomberg Law, in which I wrote, “Bloomberg’s biggest challenge may lie in convincing the legal market that it needs another high-end research service.” That is essentially the same conclusion reached by Wall Street Journal reporter Russell Adams, who writes about the service today in a piece titled,…

Promising a comprehensive legal research tool at an affordable price, a new legal research site, eLaw, launched yesterday.  Although the service provides access to case law and statutes for all 50 states, it is available only to attorneys in New York and New Jersey.

My guess is that the geographic limitation is because eLaw…

Had an e-mail this morning from someone trying to find out whether an attorney had ever been disbarred or disciplined. I knew that most states, including mine, now publish this information on the Web. But finding it isn’t always easy.

Thus, I was happy to come across this FindLaw page, Researching Attorney Discipline. It…

As I said here last week, Fastcase is preparing to launch an iPad version of its popular iPhone app. The iPhone app, which I first previewed in January, last week was named 2010 New Product of the Year by the American Association of Law Libraries.

Meanwhile, the iPad version of…

Our town’s bonfire just off the beach is even more spectacular than fireworks. (Click to open in larger window.)…

In 1886, the Supreme Judicial of Massachusetts ruled that, because every citizen is presumed to know the law, then every citizen should have free access to court opinions. See Massachusetts Law Updates for more.…

When I traveled to Russia in 2007 and met with court officials there, some courts were experimenting with posting their decisions on the Web. Beginning this week, what was formerly the exception will become the rule, as most Russian court rulings will be published online in their entirety, The Moscow Times reports.

The change is…

Bloggers rely heavily on maintstream news sources for topics. What obligation does a blogger have to give attribution to an original source? To what extent can a blogger use the content of a news story?

We explore these and related issues with New York Times sports reporter Alan Schwarz this week on the…

At least I can claim you read about it here first. The Fastcase iPhone app has been selected by the American Association of Law Libraries as 2010 New Product of the Year.  This is the app that lets you do full case law and statute research for free on your phone.

The…

The Phoenix is out today with media critic Dan Kennedy’s 13th Annual Muzzle Awards, honoring New England’s enemies of free speech and personal liberty. I’m honored that Dan credited me as a source. I want to point out, however, that he mistakenly says that my Media Law blog merged into this LawSites blog. My…