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TechnoLawyer / 8.20.2020 / *Author Is AALL Member*
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Introduction: The TechnoLawyer Top Products Awards are grassroots reader's choice awards that capture the zeitgeist within law firms.
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3 Geeks and a Law / 8.20.2020 / *AALL Members*
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Introduction: In the wake of George Floyd's murder, we have seen many firms expand and publicize their diversity efforts in the community. Many of these efforts are part of pro bono programs supported by individual firms. Brenna DeVaney, Director of Pro Bono Programs and Pro Bono Counsel at Skadden and the Law Firm Anti-Racism Alliance (LFAA) have a different approach-leverage the legal and technical expertise of law firms and legal vendors as a whole while working with legal services organizations and race equity advocates to battle systemic racism long-term.
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LISP/SR Blog / 8.19.2020 / *Author Is AALL Member*
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Introduction: I read Geraldine Cepeda's report on reopening, and I almost want to repeat part of her experience word for word--we closed in mid-March, and the Courts closed, too, except for essential hearings. We continued to provide help via phone and email, then the physical space reopened in June. However, unlike Guam and many other libraries, we didn't develop a reopening plan in phases, rather, we constructed one plan to keep staff, patrons, materials, and the physical space clean, safe, and open. Once we had this plan, we put everything in place, and then waited for the Courts to reopen. Here is our story.
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Introduction: The U.S. Supreme Court's "shadow docket" is coming in from the dark. The term refers to emergency orders and summary decisions that are outside the high court's main docket of argued cases and decisions. University of Chicago law professor William Baude is credited with coining the term "shadow docket" in a 2015 law review article, though the specialized docket has been around for decades. It's always been a thing and it's always been important, but it was something that only elite Supreme Court practitioners paid attention to," Baude tells the ABA Journal.
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Excerpt: It is possible to envision a wide range of ways that China--and other states, including the U.S.--could start to deploy law tech to help negotiate international agreements, adjudicate international disputes and unearth state practice that helps to create (or modify) international law. The U.S. government should start thinking now about what those applications might look like and how foreign governments might use them in ways that cut against U.S. foreign policy goals. [Full paper--High-Tech International Law--is free from SSRN with registration.]
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Motherboard: Vice / 8.18.2020
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Introduction: The California Department of Motor Vehicles is selling drivers' data to private investigators and bail bondsmen, according to an internal DMV document obtained by Motherboard. The document in all lists nearly 98,000 entities that have had access to some form of DMV data, including trucking companies and insurance firms. The revelation highlights how not only private companies are in the business of selling information but some government bodies as well, and has reignited calls for laws around drivers' data to be changed.
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Lansing State Journal [Lansing, Michigan] / 8.18.2020
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Introduction: Western Michigan University Cooley Law School will consolidate its two Michigan locations into one Lansing campus, closing its Grand Rapids campus next year. The move follows the closure of Cooley's Auburn Hills campus in Southeastern Michigan and a 21 percent tuition cut. Cooley once was the largest law school in the country with nearly multiple campuses and a peak enrollment of nearly 4,000 students in 2010. Since then, enrollment has fallen and the number of campuses has shrunk.
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Excerpt: While QAnon bubbled on the fringes of the internet for years, researchers and experts say it has emerged in recent months as a sort of centralized hub for conspiracy and alternative health communities. According to an internal document reported by NBC News this week, Facebook now has more than 1,000 of these QAnon groups, totaling millions of members.
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Infodocket: Library Journal / 8.18.2020
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Excerpt: Information about COVID-19 offered by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the White House, and state health departments failed to meet recommendations for communicating with the public, according to a Dartmouth study. The review of written web content during the onset of COVID-19 demonstrates that official information about the virus might have been too complex for a general audience. On average, government sources communicated about three grades higher than the reading level recommended by existing guidelines for clear communication. The research, which also analyzed international health web pages, appears as a research letter in JAMA Network Open, a medical journal published by the American Medical Association. [Full search paper is available for free.]
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The Harvard Gazette / 8.18.2020
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Excerpt: The project invites us to look beyond the accepted histories of the suffrage movement--beginning with the Seneca Falls convention in 1848, which is seen as the genesis of the movement even though women's activism had actually begun much earlier. It also looks beyond celebrations of the elite white "Founding Mothers" Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and toward the African American, Latina, and Indigenous women who would not be fully franchised for decades to come. At the heart of these efforts is the Long 19th Amendment Project Portal, an open-access digital gateway to archival collections, teaching materials, and scholarship that help to tell a more complex and inclusive story about gender and voting rights in America.
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Summary: [Host Ailsa Chang:] Politics and an infomercial all in one, but a state appetizer? I mean, really? Well, we had to fact-check that with an authority. [Megan Hamlin-Black, Rhode Island state librarian:] Rhode Island does have an official state appetizer. It's Rhode Island general law, Section 42-4-19, state appetizer. And it says, calamari is hereby designated as the official state appetizer for the state.
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The Conversation / 8.19.2020
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Introduction: A new format for compressing video, called Versatile Video Coding (H.266/VVC), at first glance might not seem to be the most exciting or profound change to influence humanity. But in a world where 4.57 billion people identify as active internet users, 3.5 billion regularly use a smartphone, 80 percent of global internet traffic is compressed video data and 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, data is more than binary numbers. Data--and video specifically--is now part of humanity's collective nervous system.
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Introduction: In the land of technology, two tricky truths exist: Spreadsheets are rarely attractive or enjoyable to read-and mobile apps are rarely cost-effective or easy to create. Well, a group of former Microsoft employees thinks those two statements are both related and reversible. And they've come up with an incredibly clever way to prove it. Their startup, Glide, lets you turn any Google Sheets spreadsheet into a real mobile app with absolutely no coding and shockingly little effort. [Glide has a free option.]
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Next Big Idea Club: Heleo / 8.18.2020
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Introduction: Every season, Next Big Idea Club curators Adam Grant, Susan Cain, Daniel Pink, and Malcolm Gladwell review dozens and dozens of upcoming books to identify the new must-read nonfiction titles.
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