Topic: legal
6 points of Mandatory Continuing Legal Education. How could I resist, especially with some one else paying.
Actually it sounds like the legal version of accountancy, or maybe weeding, but no it was a very enjoyable hob nobbing with the partner from Turnbull Hill, and the Clayton Utz senior associate or probably partner. As the google graphic shows today, online data bases actually have their lighter moments (a Dr Seus theme shown here but not likely to endure):
We discovered that moi can still mix it with these guys after all those years of activist grovel: The police prosecutor dude from up Grafton way who knew about some of the real bad guys in Underbelly 2 back in the day. The union lawyer taller than Nick Seddon (the formidable contracts lecturer at ANU law school, again back in the day - last usage we promise).
And the cream was our lecturer, hippie zen style Colin Fong complete with nifty ringtail possum hair style. This intrepid guy knows his precedent data bases. Subscription or free source? Even does a bit of open university social capital in Western Sydney. This guy was too cool for law, and yet here he was out of the big firms giving back to the grassroots, well in my case at least.
So there I was 10 minutes late, pumped up by cycling in sub tropical rain, clammy wet shorts and shirt hanging out, clasping change of clothes and bag , sheepishly walking into a room of sharp female lawyers. The backbone of the legal service industry in fact. Talk about gender imbalance. (Which reminds of an old girlfriend now "acting solicitor general of NSW" I notice on one of those mid life nostalgic web surfs - but that's another story: That's what you get for 20 years of public servant grovel - quite an achievement to be sure. Still pondering how one could work for 'them' or something as ephemeral as a mortgage.)
Then one by one the other guys arrived. 5 in succession for the next 2 hours or more. All late and not a blink of shame. Disorganised? I commented to the refugee from CCH reference service:
"What does this say about the blokes?"
"I'm saying nothing" came the very knowing reply.
Perhaps this recent MCLE experience also explains the vivid dream last night turbo charged by fresh air and hard yakka: Attending moot court arriving late, empty room then surrounded by raucous students and referred to as son of the surgeon general - go figure.
Back in reality Colin The Cool got me to ask for consent for the sufficiently anonymous photograph angle above and write this report "in the next week?". Yes, except the schedule got a little misplaced. There's that bloke thing again. So now here it is full of Hawkesbury fresh air to kick it along. I told him I would need to spice it up with some newsy angles like:
- how judges control which cases get an official report (a PR factor of bias in there?), no doubt of interest to the right wing baiters of plaintiff lawyers and so called activist/undemocratic judges as per USA experience. Reports involving sleeping judges, or perverse outcomes get censored as "unreported"? Combine this with our direct knowledge of the assiduous Media Monitors account with the NSW Judiciary and you know this 3rd arm of the executive care about their PR. On the other hand the monitoring helps prevent breaches of sub judice;
- Good online research by the Big Media and journalists generally should help better deal with the Right to Know agenda explained here recently: Suffocating in a state of secrecy | The Australian 14 Feb 2009;
- how some companies hide their presence in law reports via use of an agent's name (tsk tsk Coca Cola Amatil, Land & Environment Court, just look for David Kettle Consulting Land & Enviornment Court of New South Wales);
- saucy law reports covering Errol Flynn's sex life, "its all there" apparently;
- topical legislation this month to give more property rights to same sex couples etc. Must be the same legislation front page of the Sunday Telegraph yesterday about property claims for mistresses. A big topic at News Corporation it seems;
- that someone can make alot of money doing a progressive update of Family Law precedents because a comprehensive guide doesn't really exist.
One exercise task involved finding the technically accurate name of the recent federal government Stimulus Package: "Which one?" was my smart *rse question, no. 1 or no. 2? Funny that I was the only one cued into current affairs who actually noticed the ambiguity. " It doesn't matter" - which was true for the exercise involved - came the unintentionally profound response from Mr Cool. He meant package no. 1 but indeed neither according to orthodox economic analysis will make a jot of difference to the sad sorry synchronous global economic downturn. Thrift people, thrift. Get with the programme.
Other useful tips we noted in addition to the text book "A practical guide to legal research" Milne, Tucker Lawbook 2008, and loose leaf study notes explaining "Boolean" and "proximity operators":
- Pandora held by the National Library keeps a record of old websites:
- Google can't search some data bases like phone numbers, you have to go to the online White Pages/Yellow Pages, then search
- There is an "invisible web" of other data for those who know how
- Austlii is a critical tool not least "advanced search" of discrete data bases, "Noteup" for referencing by other reported cases, along with Comlaw and legislation.gov.nsw.au for status of legislation, and then parlimentary websites for status of bills.
- Austlii are fibbing (lawyers fib?) when they claim they reproduce the CLR's (Commonwealth Law Reports to you common folk) which carry the High Court of Australia historical case reports. They are similar but not the same because they do not carry the case summaries apparently as per the old CLRs. Also in this modern age the court publishes their own reports in what's knows as "media neutral" form, that is undiluted by any publishing house. Gone are the days when a judge could say "I can't hear you" for quoting the unauthorised case report using say the ALJR instead of the CLR publishing house. It's all online direct from the HCA and other courts.
- If you are in the money there are subscription legal data bases Lexis Nexis, CCH and Thompson, Law Book online (phew).
- As well as industry journals like Lawyers Weekly which may be free. Similarly The Australian carries google searchable legal industry articles every Friday in their press. As does the Australian Financial Review which is overpriced both online and press.
And Cool also took us back to the first "bulletin board" case of the delightfully named Justice Ipp in 1994 in Western Australia, which was about the internet before it was called the internet: It was only because librarians get together and hobnob that it was indexed under internet and is accessible to online precedent searches today:
That WA case Rindos v Hardwick has resonance today and has influenced thinking world wide: Take this 1994 article extracted onto the web here:
This article is reprinted with permission from the June 13, 1994 issue of The Nation [USA] magazine. (c) 1994 The Nation Company, Inc.....Individuals, however, are still responsible for their own words communicated through cyberspace. The first trial for libel by e-mail--held in Australia--concluded with a substantial fine being imposed on the offending e-mailer. In that case, an anthropologist fired by the University of Western Australia sued another anthropologist, claiming he had been defamed in a computer bulletin board message. The case went to the West Australian Supreme Court, which ruled in April that libel in cyberspace is actionable. David Rindos, who has a doctorate from Cornell University, was dismissed last June because of insufficient productivity. A supporter of Rindos posted news of the firing on the DIALx science anthropology international computer bulletin board; many colleagues e-mailed their support for him, but Gil Hardwick, an anthropologist working in the field in Western Australia, posted a message criticizing Rindos. According to Justice David Ipp, it declared that Rindos's career was based not on academic achievement "but on his ability to berate and bully all and sundry." The message also contained "allegations of pedophilia," in the words of Rindos's lawyer, and falsely implied that sexual misconduct had some bearing on his firing by the university. Twenty-three thousand people around the world have access to the bulletin board on which Mr. Hardwick's message appeared, and most of them are professional anthropologists and anthropology students. "The defamation caused serious harm to Dr. Rindos's personal and professional reputation," Justice Ipp declared. "The publication of these remarks will make it more difficult for him to obtain appropriate employment.... The damages award must compensate him for all these matters and vindicate his reputation to the public." Although it's easier to win a libel case in Australia than in the United States, the same circumstances here would produce the same result, according to Martin Garbus, an attorney and a libel law authority. The Internet is not a free space when it comes to libel; it is subject to the same libel law as any publication. In the Australian case, the libelous message had been posted on a bulletin board available to thousands; but even individual email messages can cause legal problems. The day is not too distant when an e-mailer will find himself or herself in court, perhaps in an employment discrimination suit, for a statement uttered only in a single e-mail message. E-mail messages, like other written communications, are discoverable in legal proceedings, according to William Parker, director of the office of academic computing at the University of California, Irvine--they can be subpoenaed and presented as evidence in court. And that's only the beginning: It turns out that your old e-mail is not necessarily gone just because you deleted it. At my campus of the University of California, and probably at most universities as well as private corporations, backup copies of most e-mail messages are retained on tape as part of the nightly backup of the main computer. Ollie North was unable to destroy evidence of the Iran/contra cover-up because the White House maintained a backup copy of the e-mail system on which he had plotted his crimes. Erasing his hard drive and shredding his paper copies didn't help. Most e-mailers are as vulnerable today as North was. Parker's advice: "You should not say anything via e-mail that you would not say publicly."
Which takes us to our next MCLE outing in mid March - Media Law and Defamation. Can't wait.
