Articles Posted in Justia News

If you’re a regular reader of this blog or follow Justia on Facebook or Twitter, you may have noticed that in October we really picked up the pace on the Justia Law, Technology & Legal Marketing Blog. In the past, we used the blog to make announcements, cheer on fellow free law advocates, and occasionally talk about legal issues. This month, with a concerted effort and lots of whining about deadlines [me], we have been blogging daily, and covering a pretty wide range of issues and ideas. We’ve reviewed apps, movies, and judicial decisions. We’ve gone from Dora to DADT. We even got shout-outs from the Library of Congress and the ABA Journal.

Justia has launched a new legal portal for Mexico!

Justia Mexico provides legal information and resources for lawyers and consumers in Mexico. In keeping with Justia’s mission, these resources are all free, open, and shared.

The Justia Mexico portal provides access to Mexican Federal and State laws, including the Constitution of the United Mexican States, Codes, Laws, and Regulations.  The site also hosts legal information about the 32 Mexican States including State Constitutions, Codes, and additional government resources, such as demographic information. Justia Mexico allows pinpoint citations to the state codes. Currently, the Government only provides one PDF file for all of the laws in Mexico. Justia programmers have extracted the information from this PDF and broken it up into HTML text on our site. Now, users can quickly find and cite the specific section of code they need.

¡Justia ha lanzado un nuevo portal para México!

Justia México es un sitio web de recursos legales diseñado especialmente para los interesados en la legislación mexicana. Ofrece toda la legislación federal como la constitución, códigos, leyes, reglamentos entre otros documentos. También cuenta con recursos legales de nivel estatal, como las constituciones estatales, leyes y códigos, así como información estadística de cada entidad y links de interés hacia sitios gubernamentales.

Lo que hace al sitio de Justia México diferente de otros sitios, incluso los mismos sitios de gobierno, es la capacidad de navegar entre las leyes sin necesidad de descargar todo un archivo PDF. Esto es particularmente útil para investigaciones, o mejor aún para citar partes de la ley en blogs u otras paginas web, cosa que antes era imposible. Previo al trabajo realizado por Justia Mexico, la única forma consistía en hacer referencia al archivo de la ley completo (en formato PDF), en lugar de ir directo al punto del que se quiere hablar  con un link directo al artículo o sección de la ley.

Hi Friends,

The Virtual Chase, an online legal research website founded by law librarian Genie Tyburski, is now powered by Justia. The re-launched Virtual Chase features a new design, as well as additional online legal research and community resources for law librarians and other legal professionals.

Hi Friends,

Tom Bruce, Dan Nagy and Deborah Schaaf from the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School stopped on by for some meetings with folks on new free information projects. The LII gang met with us, Nolo, Stanford and FreeGovInfo.info 🙂 And there was a talk on privacy on the Internet with David Schellhase & Michael Blum moderated by Kevin Haroff. Here are some pictures of Tom in action making things happen…

Hi Friends,
Oregon’s Legislative Counsel Committee had a meeting this morning to discuss the copyright claim on the Oregon Revised Statutes. After taking legal counsel from Dexter Johnson, talking with Karl Olson, Carl Malamud, three Oregon citizens and myself, they unanimously voted to not to enforce any copyright claims on the Oregon Revised Statutes. This is great!!!

Carl Malamud presents Oregon Senate President Courtney the “Seal of Approval”

Hi Friends,

Dan, Cicely and I flew over Oregon and headed up to LexBlog Country in the great Northwest. We were there to do some interviewing of computer folks… but we also had some fun (Seattle/As game, Vancouver and more :).

Dan and Cicely ran the booth at Western Washington University. We met a lot of great people.

Hi Friends,

Last week, the State of Oregon Legislative Counsel Committee sent Justia a notice of copyright infringement and demand to cease and desist. In its letter, Dexter Johnson, the Legislative Counsel, asked us to remove a copy of the Oregon Revised Statutes stored on our servers (or pay a licensing fee) by April 30, 2008. The letter claimed copyright on many parts of the Oregon Revised Statutes:

[T]he Committee … claim[s] a copyright in the arrangement and subject-matter compilation of Oregon statutory law, the prefatory and explanatory notes, the leadlines and numbering for each statutory section, the tables the index and annotations and such other incidents as are work product of the Committee in the compilation and publication of Oregon law.

We are waiting… but will not wait too long.

Stacy, Dana and I went to the Contra Costa Bodybuilding, Figure & Fitness Championships on Saturday to cheer our friend Gino Eagle Johnson on in the Ultra Grand Masters category.

The Ultra Grand Masters is the division for those over 60. Gino is 70 years young and he won his class! Gino is a personal trainer at Gold’s Gym in Mountain View (where we work out :), and he plans to compete in the Nationals in Pittsburgh this July. What an inspiration!

Mr. Olympia Jay Cutler performed as the guest poser. He put on a great show posing and also talking individually to fans. Mr. Olympia shared the inspiring story of how he won the Olympia after being told he would never win it or compete professionally for that matter. Through hard work and determination he achieved his life dream.

Other Mountain View Gold’s folks also competed. Doug placed 2nd in the Grand Masters division. And Saraya placed 4th in her very first bodybuilding competition with a salsa-inspired posing routine.

There are more pictures in the extended entry.

Congratulations to all!

Peace,

Tim

:: Eye of the Tiger, Ultimate Survivor by Survivor