Episode 15: Spindle Law, Fastcase for iPad, Cameras in Court

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Submitted by Laura Bergus on Monday, 12 July 20109 Comments

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Episode 15: Spindle Law, Fastcase for iPad, Cameras in Federal Courts, Weather class actions, and more.

Introduction

Josh is still studying for the barzam, and was happy to find this post on ATL.
Do Legal Geekery podcast listeners know about Woot and its various awesome subdomains?
Josh got to try out the Fastcase for iPad app and wrote a review. We still ♥ Ed Walters.

In The News

The weather has been brutal in many parts of the country this summer. Why not join a class action against it? Thanks to Venkat for the tip on this 2nd Circuit case and this 5th circuit case to hold power companies accountable for global climate change. (See Massachusetts v. EPA for some context/background.)
Does the 6th Amendment argument still work for the Federal Courts ban on cameras in the courtroom? Laura thinks this is total crap.

People Smarter Than Us

Some arty former law students set out to convince the world that art and law can mix. Check out The.Law.Review. and submit your creative stuff. (And see @mglickman’s Twitter background for the badass cthulhu drawing we reference.)
Laura talks with David Gold, CEO and co-creator of Spindle Law, a crowdsourced legal research tool that presents the law as one giant, Blue Book-formatted outline. Spindle Law takes the contributor-driven genius of LII Wex and adds a layer of practical utility that could be every student and associate’s dream come true.

You’re Doing It Wrong

We know Laura likes to knock on government websites (see her SCOTUS site redesign fury over at Lawyerist). But her frustration with the FCC website might be a little over the top. Josh says the world has yet to create a database less functional than that of the USPTO. If you should ever need to view pages of the actual FCC Record, though, Laura found a decently-searchable database at the University of Northern Texas’ library archive of the FCC Record.

Love For Our Geeks

Check out @skuhagen’s new blog at ScottKuhagen.com.
Special thanks to @richards1000 for his excellent finding, tweeting, and retweeting of all things relating to law, legal communication, legal education, law librarianism, knowledge management, etc. He is the author of Legal Informatics Blog.
@mglickman (yep, the cthulhu artist, above) is a legal geek in both the thinks-deeply-about-substantive-law sense and the knows-too-much-about-technology-for-his-own-good sense. Laura says he has a good sense of humor, and he gets points for being both law student and dad at the same time. He blogs at Point & Glick.
Is there any lawyer as balanced and friendly as @vbalasubramani? Not that we’ve found. He blogs at Spam Notes and occasionally at Eric Goldman’s blog, and Josh believes Venkat is a stringer for the Seattle Times…
Our friend @ouij is smart. And knowledgeable. Did we mention smart? Scary smart and not afraid to show it on his blog.
Josh gives a special shout-out to @aeolianharp. Fate, racquetball, and Learned Hand all feature in the story of how they met.

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Please send questions, ideas, comments, and complaints by email to podcast /at/ legalgeekery /dot/ com or via Twitter (@legalgeekery and/or @lbergus). Thanks for listening!

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9 Comments »

Tweets that mention Episode 15: Spindle Law, Fastcase for iPad, Cameras in Court -- Topsy.com said:

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by VBalasubramani and Robert Richards, lbergus. lbergus said: Legal Geekery Podcast #15: Spindle Law, Fastcase for iPad, Cameras in Court, much more: http://bit.ly/lg15 @legalgeekery [...]

- 12 July 2010 at 1:20 pm

ouij said:

Thanks for the shout-out guys! Just to correct the record, though: I was NOT EIC of my L.Rev.–that honor belongs to one who is worthier of the title. I did serve as Assoc. Ed.–making me something more like a platoon sergeant or shift foreman.

Reply to comment

- 12 July 2010 at 3:52 pm

mglickman said:

Like I said on twitter, thanks for the kind words.
Laura, you’re not far off the mark – I ended up creating the majority of it during class, to the delight of the students sitting behind me.

Reply to comment

Laura Bergus Reply:
July 12th, 2010 at 7:40 pm

@mglickman,

Reply to comment

Laura Bergus Reply:
July 12th, 2010 at 7:44 pm

You’re welcome! T-shirts, I tell you. :)

Reply to comment

ouij Reply:
July 12th, 2010 at 7:46 pm

@mglickman, +1 to t-shirt idea. Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.

Reply to comment

- 12 July 2010 at 5:38 pm

Peter Tillers said:

Thanks for the nice words about Spindle.

I am the editor of the evidence module. We would love to have contributions by students. And if you don’t want to contribute, take a gander anyway. The evidence module might be a useful way to review the law of evidence for exams. And it should be quite useful to law firm associates (writing legal memoranda and briefs.

Reply to comment

Laura Bergus Reply:
July 14th, 2010 at 8:11 am

Thanks, Peter! We’ll check it out and continue to spread the word. I haven’t taken evidence yet and plan to look through the Spindle Law materials before and during the semester to help get my head around it. Very cool.

Reply to comment

- 13 July 2010 at 10:57 pm

Review of Banner & Witcoff Patent and Trademark iPhone App said:

[...] a few short weeks ago, I was podcasting with Laura and complaining about the PTO’s awful search engine and database front-end. If you’ve ever had to navigate the PTO website, I already know that [...]

- 13 August 2010 at 11:05 am