Got Skills?

Pardon my blatant use of jargon as an attention-grabbing device. I happened upon this list of top ten legal skills and it got me thinking.

According to About.com, the first skill a lawyer needs to make his or her own is oral communication. Four of the five listed sub-skills involve imparting information, while only one of the skills, tagging along at the end of the list, is effective or “keen” listening. In my opinion, the list is weighted in the wrong direction. Listening is paramount. I believe that active and effective listening must be precede any attempt to impart information.  How can you convey clear and concise ideas, communicate persuasively, advocate the correct position, or master legal terminology if you don’t have a grasp on the problem or the unmet need? This is a skill that I believe many lawyers are sorely lacking.

I like the next skill – written communication. It is my bread and butter. And I like how About.com organizes the sub-skills, assuming that primacy equals importance. First, master stylistic and mechanical aspects of writing. Next, master the fundamentals of grammar. Next, learn to write organized and effective prose. Finally, after all of the foregoing are absorbed, draft effective legal documents. I do not believe that you an accomplish the last skill on the list until you have a firm and steadfast grasp on the first three skills, although I might place grammar ahead of writing organized and effective prose.

Three. Client Service. This skill is applicable to all businesses and not just to the law. Client service should take precedence when operating a roadside lemonade stand to heading up a Fortune 500 company. You must remember who your clients are and what matters most to them. The About.com list places rainmaking at the top, which makes sense in a chicken-or-the-egg sort of way, but I believe that the servicing of existing clients is far more important than netting new ones. To me, customer service and customer communication are paramount and repeat business is gold.

Analytical and logical reasoning.  To an extent, this skill can be taught. However, I believe it is really more of a trait than a skill. About.com refers to this process as assimilating large volumes of complex information in an efficient and effective manner. The importance of logicality is not unique to the practice of law, but is particularly well utilized in our field. The more complex the problem, the more valuable the reasoning process becomes. Argument structure and inductive and deductive reasoning are of value in crafting legal arguments.  But I dare you to identify someone who wouldn’t be aided by an enhanced ability to persuade another of the value of their point of view. Heck, these skills would assist any person negotiating the trials of everyday family life.

No doubt about it – legal research is unique and vital to our industry. One must learn proper research techniques with an eye trained on emerging technologies and information management. One also must be able to analyze what is netted from the research. This analysis is aided by the logical reasoning skill outlined in the prior paragraph.  On the other hand, learning proper citation form, effective statutory interpretation and proper use of legal software are mechanical skills that can be absorbed easily with instruction. I also think that the list is missing something. I firmly believe that there is a creative component in the researching process. The best researchers understand this and employ creativity to their benefit.  Thus, I would recommend that About.com include creativity in researching, writing and argument crafting.

Skill six is technology. This includes facility with legal software, communication technology, electronic discovery, document management and litigation support, legal research software and the Internet. I have no argument with this one. I also accept that being a good lawyer requires developing tech know-now and making wise technology decisions. I am somewhat surprised to find this down in the sixth position. Even in my senior, near dinosaur state, I recognize that technology is racing forward at a rapid rate. Many lawyers who are failing to apprehend the evolution are being left behind.

The next skill is knowledge of substantive law. While I concede that this aids efficient practice in a chosen area, I do not rate this as a skill, but rather a convenience. A lawyer possessing the other skills can obtain substantive knowledge in any area of law. I would not necessarily trust the result of a lawyer who depends entirely on their own “substantive” knowledge of the law. Since no attorney can be an expert on every area of law or even every nuance in one area of law, I would rather have a creative, logical, thorough attorney with great skill in research and technology who is not afraid to dig deep into a new area of the law to acquaint themselves with the latest developments.

Time management is also a useful skill, not only for lawyers but for anyone faced with more than one task. If you have a strong work ethic and are able to multi-task, juggle priorities and meet tight deadlines, you will find success in any endeavor. The first cousin of time management, organization, also comes in handy in accomplishing any task, not just law-related pursuits.

Finally, occupying last place, my favorite “skill” is being a team player. Even solo practitioners are not alone: there are support staff, opposing counsel, clients and court personnel to negotiate. The three “C”’s are highlighted in the article: collaboration; coordination; and, cultivation. Being a team player means recognizing a common goal and sublimating personal needs to the good of the whole in reaching that goal. Working effectively and efficiently with others will only make a lawyer’s job easier.

I would add to this list a willingness to be open to new areas of law, technology and practice. I have seen many lawyers fall into a “rut” and lose that elasticity that new lawyers seem to have in abundance upon exiting law school.  I am unsure whether it is human nature to become “set in our ways” or an evolution unique to the law practice.  I believe that the best lawyers can roll with legal and social change, are willing employ creativity to solve emerging issues and are ready to reinvent themselves and their practices to address emerging needs. In the process, the listed attributes can only help.

The Pen Is (Now) Mightier Than The Sword

Ooooh, this is just so cool. I posted a while back about my love affair with the Wacom Bamboo which is a little pen tablet hooked up to my laptop that helps me maintain an illusion of a connection to my analog beginnings. This new toy brings the digital interface even closer to that original quill-scratch-on-birch-bark experience. Enter Pulse, the SmartPen, from LiveScribe.

 

PC Magazine has the following description of this amazing little tool:

Essentially a writing implement with a small computer wrapped around it, the Pulse Smartpen uses a camera (just under and behind the pen) and custom paper with millions of microdots to capture every stroke and notation. The real magic, though, is that the pen simultaneously records every sound and connects the resulting audio to the captured image. All the captured material is timeline based, so turning back to any page in your notes and tapping the pen on a word will restart your audio at the precise moment your wrote that word.

The beauty of the audio feature is that you can make sure that you got your notes right by clicking on the word to restart the audio and measure what was actually said against what was written.

David Pogue at The New York Times reports that the Smartpen employs a process similar to another favorite product, Microsoft’s OneNote. The difference is that OneNote records while you type, while the Smartpen records while you write. For some challenges experienced by the user, check out Pogue’s article linked above.

The pen comes in a 1GB and a 2GB version and one one book of the special paper.  You can buy additional books for approximately $5 a piece, in a pack of four. The pen also comes with a docking cradle and a sheet of controls that include, among other tasks, navigation and replay and volume. Software is downloaded from LiveScribe’s website. The pen has proprietary headphones for private listening and sports a small LED screen on which you can even watch simple animation. The 2GB model can hold about 100 hours of audio , which can then be downloaded to your PC. The only downside is the inability of the software to permit effective organization or indexing of the loaded pages. I imagine this will be rectified as newer software versions are released.

I can think of dozens of applications in the business world in general and the legal world in particular for such a device.

Did I also add that it is a ball point pen?  Gee, what will they think of next? I really can’t wait.

It’s A Goooooooooooooolllllllllddddd!

Yesterday, in Beijing, the U.S. Women’s National Team made history by snatching the gold medal away from heavily-favored Brazil with a final score of 1-0 from an overtime goal from midfielder Carli Lloyd. The U.S. Team was missing several key players, including their star striker Abby Wambach to a broken leg in a “friendly” match against Brazil one month ago.

It was nothing short of heart-stopping to watch. The 18 women that make up our national team worked together as a seamless unit and applied every ounce of their grit, determination and championship qualities to deny a stunningly crafty offense at every turn.

As a major fan and as a regular player of the sport, I have always said that I would rather have a team then a superstar or two. The support for that claim was apparent yesterday when a team denied the best and arguably second best female strikers in the world, Marta and Christiane. And it was even more exciting to watch American keeper Hope Solo “put her money where her mouth is” by repeatedly making tremendous save after tremendous save and shutting the Brazilian offensive machine out.

At the end of the match, it was clear from the faces of both the gold and silver medal winners that this game had nothing to do with money and everything to do with pride.

Thanks, girls, for making us all proud! Thanks for showing us what being a champion is all about!

RSS Feeds and You

Aaah. the reinsuring “clunk” of the morning Gazette, pounds of newsprint folded twice, lovingly wrapped in plastic and hurled at your front door with all the velocity a 12-year-old arm can muster. Part of the morning routine, right along with that big cup of Joe.

But the news doesn’t stop at 6 a.m. And what do you do if you want to get it fresh at 1:45 p.m.?  Sure, you could wait for the evening edition, but that means you will have to get up out of your easy chair, leave your home and perambulate to the local newsstand. While the cardiovascular benefits are obvious, the time drain is unavoidable. And it’s still not fresh. Plus, you have to weed through all the print you have NO interest in and, ultimately, you have to recycle all that paper.

Enter RSS. “Really Simple Syndication.”  “Ready For Some Stories” (which actually is RFSS, but who’s counting). Whatever you want to call it, RSS is a mechanism by which you can arrange to have the information you are interested in obtaining delivered fresh to your computer as it is generated 24 /7 without that clunk on your front porch.

Most websites have the ability to deliver RSS feeds, so you can “subscribe” to whatever feeds you are interested in receiving by clicking the little symbol:

Sure, you can get the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, BBC Front Page or whatever mainstream news source you are longing for. But for me, the real beauty of RSS is in the ability to search out sources with a more narrow focus but greater depth of information, such as blogs or industry-specific sites, and arrange for that information to come to you, rather than you go searching for it when your research need arises.

What exactly is RSS good for? Well, tons of things. Rather than list them all here, check out this list by Tim Yang which is quite exhaustive. My favorite is this one (although I would substitute something else for girlfriend):

Ditch Your Girlfriend

Get your girlfriend to download an RSS reader, get her to subscribe to your very special feed only for her. Post some items you would normally write to her via email. Do this for a couple of weeks, then drop the bad news. Expect the subscription circluation to drop off at this point.

Which brings up another important point: you can create your own RSS feeds to distribute timely “news” to your own subscribers. This can include your colleagues, your co-workers, your peers, your CLIENTS. Yes, you can get with the tens and start delivering your own content by RSS rather than more traditional email newsletters.

What do I use them for? I primarily employ them passively, rather than actively a la the example quoted above. I use a free program called FeedDemon from Newsgator. It is a desktop RSS reader, as opposed to a web-based reader, such as Google Reader. I like my program, which is loaded on both of my two computers and which updates and synchronizes from either unit. I searched out my favorite news sources and subscribed to them through FeedDemon. When I open FeedDemon, the items are automatically updated. I have lots of options for customizing how the information is presented. If I leave the program running, new entries show up in a little box down in the corner of my screen, just like my new email. You also can download podcasts through this program into your iPod or Windows Media Player. You can skim the shorts and read only what you want. You can “clip” interesting entries and store them in a folder for later digestion. You can send entries to friends who might also be interested.

How do you find feeds? There are RSS search engines out there. Try NewsIsFree or RSSMad, a searchable RSS archive. FeedDemon comes with an RSS searching function, which I find to be easy to use but not the most comprehensive option available. If you are into finding your information with more pinpoint accuracy and filtering out the junk, try Kebberfegg, a keyword-based RSS feed generator. There also is FeedMySearch, which can turn your Google searches into tiny RSS feeds. You can also manipulate your RSS information with these more advanced tools, listed in an ABA Journal article by Tom Mighell and Dennis Kennedy here:

• Feedgit — this site allows you to create your own RSS feed from major news, blog, video, image, and other search tools.  Simply enter your keywords, select the type of RSS reader you use, and Feedgit generates an RSS feed from those keywords.  Just “subscribe” to that feed in your newsreader, and whenever your search terms appear on that particular site, you’ll be instantly notified.
• PonyFish — does your favorite site lack an RSS feed?  With PonyFish it’s not a problem.  Just plug in the URL of the site, click on the links you want to see when they are updated, and voila!  You’re creating RSS feeds where none existed before!
• FeedBlendr — Tom has a number of feeds that search different sites for the same terms.  Rather than have all of those feeds, Tom uses FeedBlendr to combine them into a single feed.  Now, whenever his search terms are mentioned at any of these sites, he’s notified through one unified feed.
• FeedRinse — those of you who are already using RSS may find that you get a lot more information than you anticipated.  FeedRinse can help with this, by applying a filter to your feeds.You can specify specific words or phrases (including profanity) that you don’t want to see, and FeedRinse sends you only the stories you’re interested in reading.
• ReminderFeed — you can also use RSS to remind you of important appointments, dates and deadlines.  ReminderFeed does just that, notifying you by RSS at the time you specify.
• Rasasa — if you’re on the road and don’t have access to your feeds, Rasasa can help.  It will forward your RSS headlines to your mobile phone if you’re offline, or to your IM or e-mail programs if you’re online.

If your website of interest does not have an RSS feed, you can try PonyFish mentioned above, or this little widget SendMeRss. Or try WotzWot here.

Yes, it certainly does have the outward appearance of information overload. But in reality, RSS is targeted information transfer and manipulation so that you can access the information you really want, when you want it and before you even need it. ‘Praemonitus, praemunitus” or “forewarned is forearmed”, as Don Quixote might say. Try it out for yourself, you might get hooked.

Technorati Tags: RSS,FeedDemon,NewsGator

Robert Ambrogi’s LawSites: New Site Collects Legal Software Reviews

Robert Ambrogi, over at LawSites, just published the following news-bit about a site called LitiReviews that collects reviews of legal software. While it is operated by a company that has its own case management software product, the site at least provides a convenient collection of reviews for a “one stop shopping” approach to investigatory purchasing. Thanks Mr. Ambrogi for the great resource! 

Robert Ambrogi’s LawSites: New Site Collects Legal Software Reviews

Technology Tools for Information Management | LLRX.com

Cheap is good. Free is better. This is a great list of technology “tools” that make some already good functions even better for not a lot of scratch. Check them out and see if there is something in here that can make your life a little easier. Thanks LLRX!

Technology Tools for Information Management | LLRX.com

Technorati Tags: technology tools,LLRX

A Treo For Pros!

I love it! A beautiful new offering from Palm, my mobile gadget of choice! Enter the Treo Pro:

I currently run a Treo 750 and this beauty has all the goods my 750 lacks. Some of the highlights: a flush touchscreen, WiFi, 2 megapixel camera, a nonproprietary (finally) micro USB sync and charge connector, a standard sized 3.5mm headphone jack, and a nicely-sized 1500 mAh battery. It runs Windows Mobile 6.1, which I think is just great for a business phone and enables the use of Office Mobile. The processor is beefier too, at 400 Mhz, and storage size is upgraded to 256 MB rom and 128 MB ram. It will also support up to 32 gb microSD cards. It comes with Adobe Reader and the Telenav GPS software that I am currently enjoying on my 750. I am not sure if the GPS receiver is built into the phone – with mine, you need to employ a separate receiver to use the GPS function.

You can get the lowdown all over the web. I got mine here from Treonauts, via email yesterday. It is nice to see Palm stepping it up a bit in the face of the stiff competition represented by the 3G iPhone and soon-to-be-available Blackberry Bold.

It also is nice to have some real news on a new Palm release after last week’s rapid excitement and nearly as rapid let-down brought about by the mythical new touchscreen Centro:

Isn’t it cute?

Technorati Tags: Treo,850,750,Centro,Treo Pro

Legal Eagles Know How to Tweet

What is all the flutter and flap about Twitter and why should lawyers care?

Twitter is a “micro-blogging” tool that you can take with you. While similar to SMS and blogging, it mimics your freshman creative writing course by giving you a topic upon which to expound. When you log on, you are presented with the question: “What are you doing?” Tweets are limited to 140 words or less, in keeping with our modern affinity for newsworthy sound bites rather than in-depth analysis. The idea is to update everyone, or anyone, willing to “follow” you, on all the minute details of your life as you relay them in near real time. According to the site itself, Twitter allows you to be “hyper-connected” with your friends and always know what they are doing. I think the service lends itself more to the mobile phone than to the desktop, or even laptop, computer, as a cell is better sized for adventuring and reporting while on the run. Oh, and did I tell you the service is free? Apparently, they haven’t “monetized” yet.

Why the fuss? According to Blogger pioneer Evan Williams, quoted in this Fortune article, Twitter is gonna be “really big”! As of June, 2008, Twitter had almost three million monthly users. That number doesn’t include mobile activity. Adam Lashinsky at Fortune talks about how “establishment” Twitter has become:

Other establishment types are getting down with Twitter. Barack Obama’s campaign (handle: BarackObama) has 51,620 followers and counting, who’ve requested updates on events. CNN distributes news alerts via Twitter, and JetBlue (JBLU) sends out customer-service updates. The CTO of Cisco (CSCO, Fortune 500), Padmasree Warrior, Twitters all day long. She recently took a moment to inform her 180 followers she was having “an aargh moment right now: forgot to pack my laptop power chord [sic].” Utility is in the eye of the betwittered.

Umm, Errr. O.k. That brings me to my second question, why should lawyers care? Apparently, many think they should. Here is some cross-pollination for you: attorneys in Linkedin’s Answer section talking about the effectiveness of Twitter as a marketing tool. Some feel it is effective for networking, while others use it to point to their blog or Facebook profile and, in turn, their websites. Steve Matthews has created a “Twitter-tracker” for legal types at his site legalvoices.com. I browsed some of the entries and I have to admit that the industry-related conversation was quite lacking. Apparently, even lawyers need a break from the law.

Matthews discusses Twitter’s value to lawyers as a marketing tool here. The value Matthews identifies is not so concrete and seems more a by-product of the catharsis of letting everyone know your most mundane thoughts as they bubble up. According to Matthews, Twitter shines as a tool for relationship-building, blog-to-blog discussions, link sharing and improved search engine rankings. All of these are good things.

With a bit of incredulity in her words, Law Librarian Connie Crosby notes that webinars and Twitter have joined and their offspring, the Twebinar, is now upon us. Having not yet personally experienced one, I cannot say how well the format works.  As they are out there, Twebinars should at least be included in the “potentially valuable” column.

Entering a more tangible realm, Kevin O’Keefe provides four personal examples of how Twitter has enhanced him professionally. You can’t argue with firsthand experience. O’Keefe also provides the following three general examples of how Twitter can expand your professional prospects:

You can benefit from Twitter in three ways, that I see today. First, a way to socially network with people, some of which networking may lead to work, speaking engagements, and the like. Two, a means to amplify your message, i.e., spreading what you what you may be blogging, writing, or speaking on. Three, if you blog, you are going to get news from other bloggers whose content you may want to reference in your blog or work.

Although not personally a Twitter-er, Jordan Furlong talks about the benefit of Twittering your clients:

1. GPS tracker. Clients who want to get hold of their lawyer don’t get much help from an out-of-office autoreply e-mail. But a Twittered status update — “Going into motions hearing @ 10:15, incommunicado till 11:30″ or “Leaving office to visit client @ 2:40, in meetings from 3:30 on” — provides clients with more information than “I’m away from my desk.” Better yet, it allows the lawyer to issue “blackout period” notifications — “I’m unavailable at these times for this reason” — which I like because it could help restore to lawyers even a small degree of control over their accessibility (cf. the expectation of 24/7 reachability, above).

2. Bulletin newsbreaker. Say a significant court decision affecting your client’s industry has just come down, or a key competitor has just issued a revised profit forecast. You could e-mail the news, and hope the client happens to be looking at her overloaded Inbox at that moment. You could blog it, if you owned a blog and had time to post something and were anywhere near a web interface. Or you could take 60 seconds to punch out a 140-character tweet to your client Twitter users, and thereby gain the full breaking-news benefit. Do this a few times and your client will start tracking your tweets for need-to-know news, and how cool would that be?

3. Link recommender. It almost seems as if TinyURL, the invaluable little site that transforms long, unwieldy web addresses into six-character TinyURL suffixes, was designed years ago with Twitter and its strict character limits in mind. Quite regularly, a lawyer comes across an article that would be of interest or utility to a client, but most times those links go unforwarded, are bundled into a newsletter, or maybe form part of a series-of-links blog post — no immediacy and not a whole lot of impact. Instead, try Twittering a recommended item (with a TinyURL hyperlink) to your client once a day, and if it’s good-quality stuff, your client will start to look forward to your daily dose of twitter recommendations.

Echoing my refrain from my earlier Facebook, Linkedin and virtual law discussions, it would be shortsighted of any professional in this fast-paced, technology-driven world to ignore the latest, greatest communication fad. Worms to the early birds who can figure out how to use these tools to their fullest advantage, and maybe have a little fun at it too.

In Lashinsky’s words:

Birds twitter. Their tweets may be meaningless to you, but they presumably mean something to other birds. And therein lies the latest flight of fancy dreamt up by ambitious entrepreneurs hoping to strike it rich.

Technorati Tags: Twitter,Tweets,Lawyers,Twebinar

More Music, Law and Judicial Humor

I previously paired music and judicial opinions in this entry.  Then I surveyed the use of humor in judicial opinions in this entry. John Browning, a partner in the Dallas office of Gordon & Rees, LLP, efficiently combines all three – music, humor and judicial opinions – in his article Legally Speaking – Lyrical Law in the August 12th issue of the The Southeast Texas Record. I would paraphrase the article for convenience, but it wouldn’t do Mr. Browning’s treatment “justice” (oops, a little of my own humor).

Seriously. I envy judges who are appointed to their positions and can break up their arid writing with the occasional oasis of levity. I cannot even tell you how many times I have stayed my typing fingers mid-pun in the course of writing a memorandum, brief or other “formal” document for a client. In law school and in my early years as an associate, I was admonished to keep the humor out for fear of creating the wrong impression. Thank goodness there are now blogs in which we pent-up technical writers can shed the mantle of formality and lay down the laughs. If it is good enough for Judge Learned Hand and Chief Justice William Rehnquist, it should be good enough for us all!

Technorati Tags: music,humor,judicial opinions

Pretty Soon, We Won’t Need People

Remember a couple of posts ago where I discussed the difference between a virtual lawyer and an eLawyer?  I made some assumptions about the virtual lawyer that apparently aren’t all that true in every case. My assumption was that a virtual lawyer is a flesh and blood attorney practicing law in the real world, albeit sans the confines of the brick and mortar office . The true virtual lawyer apparently lives as an avatar and is a member of the SL Bar Association.

People are connecting on-line in a variety of ways. According to the Legal Technology section of the ABA Journal, legal dinosaurs are going to have to adjust to the virtual practice of law in this Brave New World that is increasingly relying on blogs, social networks and virtual communities. The results of a survey presented during a recent ABA Tech section talk are telling: as stated by the speaker Nick Abrahams, “if you’re over 35, you’re the loneliest person on Facebook because only 1 percent of workers in that age group are using it.”  Contrast this with 25 percent of workers between 25 and 35 and one-third of workers under 25. Abrahams suggests that embracing rather than blocking access to these networks makes more sense as it avoids the risks of disenfranchising the growing percentage of workers using such sites.

Back to the SL Bar Association. SL stands for Second Life, of which many WordPress readers and contributors likely are well aware. For those of us just emerging into the glow of this concept, it helps to have a definition, such as this one from Second Life’s own web page:

Second Life® is a 3-D virtual world created by its Residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by millions of Residents from around the globe.

From the moment you enter the World you’ll discover a vast digital continent, teeming with people, entertainment, experiences and opportunity. Once you’ve explored a bit, perhaps you’ll find a perfect parcel of land to build your house or business.
You’ll also be surrounded by the Creations of your fellow Residents. Because Residents retain intellectual property rights in their digital creations, they can buy, sell and trade with other Residents.
The Marketplace currently supports millions of US dollars in monthly transactions. This commerce is handled with the inworld unit of trade, the Linden™ dollar, which can be converted to US dollars at several thriving online Linden dollar exchanges.

Is it me, or does this all sound just a bit fantastic? The SL Bar Association has its own networking site with 52 members.  The home page has its own Virtual World Law News and there are even virtual courses, such as one for Trademark Infringement in the Virtual World or one for Internet Legal Research, held at a virtual address, but giving actual CLE credit. The real and the unreal collide when you attempt to navigate to the SL Bar Association’s office – you need to click the “teleport” link. 

SL has also been used in the real world as a tool to support a legal research class at the Nova Southeastern University Law School. According to the article by Rob Hudson linked above, SL was used as an interactive exhibit for the students of the issues arising and agencies involved in international law. The class also attended a lecture in the SL world held by a member of the European Union Parliament. Finally, a student employed SL to present, in avatar form, a legal research project he was required to complete but could not present in class on the scheduled date.

Why do lawyers get involved in SL? Carolyn Elefant posits that SL serves as a creative and entertaining release for lawyers, who get to create legal systems and courts. Other lawyers represent SL residents in legal transactions and court battles in exchange for Linden dollars. Still others form their virtual firms in SL with links to their real world law firms in the hopes of generating actual U.S. dollars. Ahh. There’s the marketing angle.

Then there is the clash between real life lawyering and virtual lawyering: In May 2006, U.S. attorney Marc Bragg brought an action against SL’s creator, Linden Lab, claiming it had unfairly terminated his SL account and confiscated his property portfolio, barring access to land or other investments. The causes of action include conversion, fraud, unjust enrichment and breach of contract and the case is continuing.

Needless to say, navigating new frontiers brings thorny problems regarding ownership, ethics and boundaries. It will most certainly be interesting to watch. Or maybe even to jump into.

Technorati Tags: SL,Second Life,Facebook,virtual lawyer