During a recent trip to Washington, D.C., I discovered that the reflecting pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the National World War II Memorial had lost a bit of its luster. From inside the Lincoln Memorial, my gaze at the National Mall was interrupted by fencing, heavy equipment, and an empty pool. However, an aerial view of Washington, D.C. from…
As cliché as it sounds, “content is king.” It goes without saying that content is one of the key elements in creating an effective and well-optimized legal blog. However, with the internet being an open forum that allows all forms of content—some quality, some not—the search engines have attempted to become smarter. When users search the web, the search engines…
Last month, the Black Economic Council, Latino Business Chamber of Greater Los Angeles and National Asian American Coalition staged a protest at Google, demanding data on the racial make-up of its employees. The specific dataset sought by the protesters was the EEO-1 Report, which is filed by all employers with 100 or more employees or certain federal government contractors with…
For the current generation of college graduates, consulting Google for romantic, travel or career advice may seem like second nature. Should you go to law school? Sure, you can discuss your plans with your parents, friends, and professors. But, what does Google say? And, if you made that fateful decision to attend law school, how do you deal with that…
2010 was a busy legal year, especially for free law advocates. Here are some of Justia’s legal predictions for 2011: Lawyers and legal professionals will continue to embrace free law as fast as our Law.gov movement friends can crank it out. Free law will continue its dramatic growth, and Justia remains proud to support the efforts of Carl Malamud’s work…
Lately, I’ve been playing around with the Books Ngram Viewer from Google Labs. This experimental site displays how often searched phrases appear in publications scanned by the Google Books project over time. For example, open government really jumped in the 1970s. And, as you may have deduced, it correlates with the rise and fall of Nixon.
In light of Justia’s commitment to “free law”, we wanted to make sure to note last week’s announcement that Google, in partnership with the USPTO, now provides bulk access to current US patent applications and grants. As noted by Richard Jefferson in his “Science as Social Enterprise” blog, until recently the bulk data available to users was incomplete in that…
Internet legal privacy issues are getting a lot of attention these days. One federal law, the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (‘ECPA’), is facing many requests for changes, with apparent agreement on revising it. Continue reading
Hi Friends, Thanks Google for supporting free law … again :) Last year Google Scholar gave the world free USA case law (with internal page numbers) and now Google has announced the first recipients of its Project 10^100 grants, including Public.Resource.Org. To quote the Google announcement :) We are providing $2 million to Public.Resource.Org to support the Law.Gov initiative, which…
Hi Friends, Thanks Google! Google has put FREE US case law online in Google Scholar :) The US Federal case law database includes US Supreme Court opinions since 1 US 1 (pre – 1776), Federal Appeals opinions since 1 F 2d 1 (1924+), and many Federal District Court opinions from F Supp. Opinions from all 50 states are included since…