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Inside Legal Blogs [By Jeff] This week’s biggest infotainment news item, the Brangelina baby, may have legal ramifications for some bloggers. For unknown reasons, the news that the celebrity couple had a baby sparked a major media event. There was nothing noteworthy about the baby itself, other than having two Golden Globe nominees as parents. The baby had such prenatal buzz that People cut a multimillion-dollar deal to be the exclusive distributor of the official baby pictures in the U.S. It wasn’t long before starry-eyed bloggers got ahold of the photographs and plastered them across the blogosphere. Baby-crazy Web surfers could save the $4 and just check out the baby pics for free at the LiveJournal gossip blog. So, of course, legal action was threatened, this time by Hello! magazine, the exclusive distributor of the baby photos in Europe. And, of course, this will only increase the profile of the blogs who posted the pictures. The real victim in all this is Wilford Brimley, who sold the exclusive rights for the photos of his bunion-removal surgery to Us Weekly, only to have the story dropped in favor of another Brangelina baby headline. In other bloggish news, the 9th Circuit Court
This week, Tales of a Public Defender
recently cited a blog post by one Sean Sirrine, a
Investigator offered up a blog post about
Formerly Known as F/K/A claims the system
first-year law student, in a dissenting opinion.
using MySpace, blogs, and other websites
will allow attorneys to bilk clients who don’t
You can see the blog post that the court cited
to conduct investigations into witnesses and
understand how to assess the worth of a
here. While some have claimed that blogs
victims. Tales of a Public Defender Investigator
lawyer’s service. Carolyn Elefant of Inside
aren’t scholarly enough to merit citation from
analyzes the ethical implications of culling
Opinions finds the whole thing too complicated.
a judge, law blogger Eugene Volokh has said
investigatory info from the MySpace pages
For now, the biggest advocate of value billing
that it is about time that law blogs receive the
of adults and juveniles. While investigators
is Ronald J. Baker, who claims that one-third
credit they are due. Volokh, however, has some
owe it to their clients to conduct the most
of small firms have already implemented the
reservations about the practice of judges citing
thorough investigations possible, attorneys
system.
online sources. This particular citation refers
must adhere to the code of ethics. In defense of
to Sirrine as a member of the bar, though he
using personal websites to gather investigatory
Police in Los Angeles County have violated
is a law student. This sort of slipshod fact-
info, the PDI blog mentions the case of the
the attorney-client privilege by recording
checking is problematic with these types of
Woodland, CA, teacher who was arrested for
attorney-client consultations and handing the
citations, as people tend to get lazy when
having sex with an underage male student
tapes over to opposing counsel, according to
dealing with online resources.
and how the teacher’s MySpace page led to
Public Defender Dude’s blog. The blog relates
her apprehension. The NSA also utilizes such
the tale of the Pasadena police, who recorded
resources, monitoring the information people
a conversation between two co-defendants
post about themselves on the Internet. With the
and their lawyer in which one co-defendant
blogosphere growing exponentially, there is no
implores the other to take a plea bargain
limit to the amount of info people are willing to
deal. The tape was damning evidence in
Mega-firm Baker & McKenzie has egg on its face after an incident involving a preemptive cease and desist letter and a popular weblog. Attorneys from Baker & McKenzie fired off an aggressive cease and desist letter to the website Boing Boing on behalf of firm client Infront Sports and Media, copyright holder for FIFA World Cup soccer matches. The letter said that the firm would be monitoring the site for unauthorized broadcasts of soccer matches. Boing Boing posted the letter on its site, responding that it had no intention of broadcasting soccer matches. The faux pas prompted many other bloggers, such as
LexBlog and Human Law, to hold Baker & McKenzie to ridicule. Though some praise the firm for actively protecting its copyright clients, others see the letter as a major public relations blunder. PAGE
reveal about themselves online.
now-defunct law blog formerly known as
their trial. Public Defender Dude sees this as another example of eroding civil liberties.
Several law bloggers and business analysts
Another public defender blog, Defending Those
have come out in support of a new mode
People featured another story involving cops
of billing clients known as value bidding.
seemingly overstepping their boundaries.
Proponents of value billing say it’s fair and
Check the link to see video of a prosecutor’s
preferred by clients. Rather than billing a
daughter being manhandled by police after
standard rate for billable hours, under the
being hauled in on a noise disturbance charge.
value billing system, clients pay more for positive outcomes and less for other results.
And finally, you can click here for exclusive
Supporters of the new system claim it is a
photos of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s baby.
more sound economic structure than the contingency-fee system. Value billing has its detractors, however. David Gialcone of the