Handling Questions: A Presenter’s Guide

OK, you have gotten through the body of your presentation satisfactorily. Time to relax, right? Nope. There is one hurdle left: The question and answer period. This is when some presenters wilt and others shine. With a few tips, some experience and a modicum of intestinal fortitude, you can shine every time. Jerry Lawson’s extensive experience as a speaker is put to good use in this article as he provides best practice advice for each stage of your presentation.

Subjects: Communication Skills, Communications, Presentation Skills, Training

IPCC climate report: Profound changes are underway in Earth’s oceans and ice – a lead author explains what the warnings mean

Humans are unequivocally warming the planet, and that’s triggering rapid changes in the atmosphere, oceans and polar regions, and increasing extreme weather around the world, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns in a new report. The IPCC released the first part of its much anticipated Sixth Assessment Report on Aug. 9, 2021. In it, 234 scientists from around the globe summarized the current climate research on how the Earth is changing as temperatures rise and what those changes will mean for the future. This is a conversation with climate scientist Robert Kopp, a lead author of the chapter on Earth’s oceans, ice and sea level rise, about the profound changes underway.

Subjects: Environmental Law

Machines Learning the Rule of Law – EU Proposes the World’s first Artificial Intelligence Act

Sümeyye Elif Biber is a PhD Candidate in Law and Technology at the Scuola Sant’Anna in Pisa. In 21 April 2021, the European Commission (EC) proposed the world’s first Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA). The proposal has received a warm welcome across the EU as well as from the US, as it includes substantial legal provisions on ethical standards. After its release, the media’s main focus laid on the proposal’s “Brussels Effect”, which refers to the EU’s global regulatory influence: EU laws exceed their “local” influence and become global standards. With the AIA, the EU has the potential to become the world’s “super-regulator” on AI. More than the Brussels Effect, however, the emphasis should lie on the EU’s intention to explicitly protect the rule of law against the “rule of technology”. Despite this expressed goal, the normative power of the regulation to ensure the protection of the rule of law seems inadequate and raises serious concerns from the perspective of fundamental rights protection. This shortcoming becomes most evident across three main aspects of the AIA, namely in the regulation’s definition of AI systems, the AI practices it prohibits, and the preeminence of a risk-based approach.

Subjects: AI, Big Data, Civil Liberties, Legal Research, Privacy

Robots are coming for the lawyers – which may be bad for tomorrow’s attorneys but great for anyone in need of cheap legal assistance

Imagine what a lawyer does on a given day: researching cases, drafting briefs, advising clients. While technology has been nibbling around the edges of the legal profession for some time, it’s hard to imagine those complex tasks being done by a robot. And it is those complicated, personalized tasks that have led technologists to include lawyers in a broader category of jobs that are considered pretty safe from a future of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence. As Professors Elizabeth C. Tippett and Charlotte Alexander discovered in a recent research collaboration to analyze legal briefs using a branch of artificial intelligence known as machine learning, lawyers’ jobs are a lot less safe than we thought. It turns out that you don’t need to completely automate a job to fundamentally change it. All you need to do is automate part of it.

Subjects: AI, Courts & Technology, KM, Legal Marketing

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, August 21, 2021

Privacy and security 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 security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Protect Yourself From Abuse: How to Find and Remove Stalkerware on Your Phone and PC; 10 Ways to Protect Your Personal Information; How to protect digital citizen identities through identity management; and Which Social Media Platforms Are Banning the Taliban?

Subjects: Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Email Security, Privacy, Social Media, Viruses & Hoaxes

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, August 15, 2021

Privacy and security 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 security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Here’s How Amazon Third-Party Sellers Reportedly Hound Customers Who Leave Bad Reviews; Microsoft Edge’s ‘Super Duper Secure Mode’ Does What It Says; The Ethics of Data: Anonymity Vs Analytics; and Apple Can Scan Your Photos for Child Abuse and Still Protect Your Privacy – If the Company Keeps Its Promises.

Subjects: Congress, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Email Security, Encryption, Information Management, KM, Legal Research, Legislative, Privacy, Search Strategies

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, August 8, 2021

Privacy and security 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 security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: How to Defend Yourself Against NSO Spyware Like Pegasus; NIST revises flagship cyber resiliency guidance; Researchers Say They’ve Found a ‘Master Face’ to Bypass Face Rec Tech; and Ransomware poses threat to vulnerable local governments.

Subjects: AI, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, KM, Legal Research, Social Media, Telecommuting

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, July 25, 2021

Privacy and security 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 security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: Protect your smartphone from radio-based attacks; New emergency weather alerts set to begin in July – here’s what they mean; Accused Capitol Rioter Forced to Unlock Laptop With Face Recognition; and Connecticut pushes cybersecurity with offers of punitive damage protection.

Subjects: Criminal Law, Cybercrime, Cybersecurity, Environmental Law, Gadgets/Gizmos, Legal Research, Privacy, Technology Trends

It’s not just bad behavior – why social media design makes it hard to have constructive disagreements online

Good-faith disagreements are a normal part of society and building strong relationships. Yet it’s difficult to engage in good-faith disagreements on the internet, and people reach less common ground online compared with face-to-face disagreements. There’s no shortage of research about the psychology of arguing online, from text versus voice to how anyone can become a troll and advice about how to argue well. But there’s another factor that’s often overlooked: the design of social media itself. Amanda Baughan and her colleagues investigated how the design of social media affects online disagreements and how to design for constructive arguments.

Subjects: Communication Skills, Communications, Social Media

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, July 18, 2021

Privacy and security 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 security, often without our situational awareness. Four highlights from this week: YouTube Algorithm Recommends Videos that Violate the Platform’s Very Own Policies; State Data Privacy Bills Growing More Widespread; NIST Outlines Security Measures for Software Use and Testing Under Executive Order; and State Data Privacy Bills Growing More Widespread.

Subjects: Blockchain, Civil Liberties, Cybercrime, Cyberlaw, Cybersecurity, Legal Research, Legislative, Privacy, Technology Trends