Apologies: We’ve been having a lot of problems accessing
our webserver over the past fortnight, making it very difficult
for us to post, respond, or even see this weblog. Software
from the folks at Userland/Manilla keeps identifying us as
potential Spammers — and Userland won’t help the Harvard
webserver fix the problem! If you know the f/k/a Gang, you
know this is causing major agita.
Now that you’re here, please browse: Besides this homepage,
archives, and our reaction to being chosen “Creative Law Blog”
by Blawg Review.
winter fog
everyone crowds around
the mime
winter fog
i stub my toe
on the snowman
winter fog
even the snowman
requires a disguise
wind chill zero
outside the high school
not one jacket zipped
potluck
Metadata Meshugass: The Florida Bar Board of Governors
doesn’t like metadata — the hidden data you generate whenever you use
a document program like Word or WordPerfect, including all the changes
you have made in a document (see. IL Trial Practice Weblog and linked
materials; via Legal Underground) At their meeting in December, the
Board announced its “sense” that mining that information from your
oppoent’s documents is unethical. The Board therefore submitted two
questions to the Professional Ethics Committee of the Florida Bar:
The first is whether it is unethical for a lawyer to mine metadata
from an electronic document he or she receives from another party.
The second is whether an attorney has an affirmative duty to take
reasonable precautions to ensure that sensitive metadata is removed
from an electronic document before it is transmitted.
have a point. As Prof. Yabut commented over at Legal Underground: a) it does
sound unethical for lawyers to be peeking into their opponents’ e-waste-baskets
merely because they have the technological ability to do so; and b) lawyers do
owe it to their clients to take measures to prevent such spying to the extent
possible. Some tech-savvy lawyers might think they are providing cutting edge
legal services by mining metadata. It seems to me they are cutting ethical corners
and that definitive statements from Professional Reseponsibility Committees on
this topic would indeed be helpful would be helpful. [update: David Hricik at Legal
Ethics Forum agrees, Jan. 16, 2006.]
Where does john-e-come-lately weblogger The
Wall Street Journal get off giving its new law-oriented
weblog the generic name Law Blog? Next thing you
know, they’ll be trying to trademark the name. So far,
there seems to be very little content that would be of
interest to those (like myself) who are indifferent to the
action on Wall Street and in Wall Street law firms. If
and when I refer to this new weblog, it will be as WSJLawBlog.
Talk about mountains out of molehills and hyper-critical, ivory-
towered academics, check out this post by Prof. Bainbridge. (“Media Bias?
NYT Headline Refuted by Own Story,” Jan. 5, 2006). I’ve said it before: when
it’s one of his pet peeves, Prof. B. loses all sense of objectivity or proportion.
“snowflakeS”