Prof. Cindy Guyer, Senior Law Librarian and Adjunct Assistant Professor Law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law, has been experimenting with incorporating infographics in her teaching to present information and knowledge visually, using graphs, flowcharts, timelines, and diagrams, which are components of instructional design.
Patrick J. McKenna is a highly respected lecturer, strategist and advisor to law firms. McKenna’s experience has taught him that the best performing teams have discovered to operate effectively they need to formalize what they should specifically be able to expect of each other as members. He calls these expectations the group’s ‘Rules of Engagement’, and in this article he articulates that to be effective, these rules of engagement must be clear, consistent, agreed to and followed. A challenging endeavor in any workplace, but critical to high performing and innovative law firms.
Homa Hosseinmardi and a group of researchers from Stanford University, the University of Pennsylvania and Microsoft Research tracked the TV news consumption habits of tens of thousands of American adults each month from 2016 through 2019. They discovered four aspects of news consumption that, when taken together, paint an unsettling picture of the TV news ecosystem.
Attorney Jerry Lawson is a legal tech expert with decades of experience delivering effective presentations. In this, the second part of a multi part series, Lawson shares insightful recommendations and techniques to successfully manage what can be challenging interactions with audience members during the course of a presentation.
Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Five highlights from this week: Cyber security 101: Protect your privacy from hackers, spies, and the government; Inside the Government Fiasco That Nearly Closed the U.S. Air System; My Instagram account was hacked and two-factor authentication didn’t help; Serious Warning Issued For Millions Of Google Gmail Users; and Report: Russian Botnet Can Spam Social Media on ‘Massive Scale’.
Jim Calloway is the Director of the Oklahoma Bar Association’s Management Assistance Program. He informs us about the range of legal services delivered by what have been designated as “primary-care lawyers.” From Calloway’s perspective, there is people law, and there is business/corporate law. Over the years, there has been a greater divergence in these two types of law practice focuses. He makes the case that increasingly, these are completely different types of law practices, with different types of challenges and processes. Calloway believes this is not only true but profound. He views it as profound because consideration of the differences should inform and impact the method of legal service delivery depending on the type of client.
Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and wide ranging ways technology is used to compromise and diminish our privacy and online security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Amazon Workers Can Now Keep Cell Phones at Work; Best Reverse Image Search Tool: Google, Bing, Pixsy, Tineye; Google adds more ways to remove yourself from Search results; and Shut Stalkers Out of Your Tech.
Author and blogger Dave Pollard addresses the incendiary global war of lies vs. truth, reminiscent of the MAD Magazine cartoon Spy Vs. Spy for those who of us who can recall the scenarios they played which remain eerily prescient. Pollard posits the most effective way to win and retain political power is by seizing the hearts and minds of citizens through a mix of propaganda, mis- and disinformation, and censorship. He continues, this is especially true now, living with a ubiquitous and unceasing firehose of often-conflicting information, and exploitative for-profit “social” media controlled by a handful of dimwitted and unstable western oligarchs.
Legal sector analyst Jordan Furlong writes that it’s taken two years of rolling pandemic lockdowns to shake us from our torpid habit of gathering together only to work alone. Over the next decade, a Stanford professor estimates, US workers will spend a quarter of their work time at home — “the number of person-days in the office is never going back to pre-pandemic average, ever.” This has obvious ramifications for corporate office space, employee well-being, and even climate change. But the workplace itself is ground zero for this change, and there will be enormous ramifications in this regard alone. Furlong’s thought provoking essay identifies critical choices that can be made that will result in better outcomes for law firms moving forward.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine, we keep hearing that this war is like no other; because Ukrainians have cellphones and access to social media platforms, the traditional control of information and propaganda cannot work and people are able to see through the fog of war. For these communications scholars and historians, Professors Katharina Niemeyer, Dominique Trudel, Heidi J. S. Tworek, Maria Silina and Svitlana Matviyenko, it is important to add nuance to such claims. The question is not so much what is “new” in this war, but rather to understand its specific media dynamics. One important facet of this war is the interplay between old and new media — the many loops that go from Twitter to television to TikTok, and back and forth.