Year: 2016

Outsourcing your marketing activities

Outsourcing generally makes the media headlines when a multi-million pound government contract hits the buffers, and we all moan when having to deal with an overseas customer contact centre where the quality of the phone line and the quaint accent of the operator combine to leave us frustrated rather than delighted. In the legal sector, […]

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Blogs of use to lawyers

This is a personal selection of blogs which I feel are of use to lawyers, derived from my 100 Best Legal Blogs page where links to all the blogs will be found. See also Nick Holmes’ Lawfinder: Blogs which catalogues over 400 law blogs with associated feeds; and, as to what makes a good blog, see his […]

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My Social Media: Sir Henry Brooke

Continuing our series by lawyers on how they use social media for professional and personal development. I have always been intrigued by the possibilities which electronic communications might open up for judges and lawyers. 30 years ago I led for the Bar in discussions with BT about the usefulness of an early email system called […]

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Bring Your Own Device: an introduction

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) refers to the growing trend of employees using their personal laptops, smartphones and other communications devices in the workplace or elsewhere for work-related purposes. The related Bring Your Own App (BYOA) is essentially the software version of BYOD, where an employee uses personal (often cloud-based) software for work purposes, which […]

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Working with data

Back in 1979 Apple published what is regarded as the first “killer app”, the spreadsheet program VisiCalc (a contraction of “visible calculator”), which turned the microcomputer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a serious business tool and prompted IBM to launch their PC. VisiCalc’s mantle was soon wrested from it by the superior Lotus […]

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Legal Web Watch April 2016: Never mind the quantity

This article first appeared in Legal Web Watch April 2016. Legal Web Watch is a free monthly email service which complements the Internet Newsletter for Lawyers. To receive Legal Web Watch regularly sign up here. We all know the term “clickbait”: content, especially that of a sensational or provocative nature, whose main purpose is to […]

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Delia’s legal web picks April 2016

This article first appeared in Legal Web Watch April 2016. Legal Web Watch is a free monthly email service which complements the Internet Newsletter for Lawyers. To receive Legal Web Watch regularly sign up here. The following items have been selected from Delia Venables’ “New” page. Legalex Show is on May 11th and 12th If […]

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Building LEAP as a global legal software company for small law firms

Richard Hugo–Hamman of LEAP Legal Software interviewed by Delia Venables Q1. Tell me a bit about the history of LEAP. LEAP was started by our founder Christian Beck in Sydney in 1992. His father David Beck was a solicitor who was trying to automate his conveyancing practice with an early Mac, writing his own system […]

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ODR: no longer just an alternative

Since ODR began to be discussed, developed and applied, which was as long ago as towards the end of the last century, it has commonly been thought of that there was an invisible “A” in the acronym so that ODR really referred to Online Alternative Dispute Resolution. That was understandable given that all instances of […]

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What is the blockchain?

A blockchain is literally a chain of blocks of data recording transactions, connected using digital, cryptographic signatures. Confusingly, blockchain technology is often referred to simply as “Blockchain” (with cap B) or as “the blockchain” (with the definite article prepended). No doubt this usage stems from its initially unique and most widely-known application as the technology […]

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Unblocking the resale of digital goods

An edition of the Economist last November was uncharacteristically effusive about the blockchain. On the cover, it called it “The Trust Machine”, and said that it is a technology that “could change the world’. In a lead article, it explains that the “blockchain lets people who have no particular confidence in each other collaborate without […]

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Lawbore: legal education made fun

Law is a very book-heavy subject; there’s no escaping it. Our students come out of university with a law degree and a bad back. Despite progress with e-books, the students’ fond reliance on textbooks and the publishers’ inability to find a pricing model that works has meant that most students can be found studying with […]

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