The High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University and the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Institute at UC Berkeley School of Law have teamed up on a new site, DoctoredReviews.com. The site was formed to provide consumers with information about medical contracts that purport to censor or prevent negative patient reviews online. If you have been presented with one of these contracts, this site is a great resource to understand your rights. It’s an interesting legal issue, where HIPAA intersects with Section 230 and the First Amendment.
According to DoctoredReviews, doctors are using a company called Medical Justice to source the “anti-review” contracts. Medical Justice bills itself as “Relentlessly Protecting Physicians from Frivolous Lawsuits.” They offer a variety of services, including those designed to “Prevent Internet defamation.”
As Courtney wrote in her year-end review, one of the big trends of 2010 was the emergence of social media and its integration into the work of legal professionals. While I’m sure many of our readers may already have a blog, a Facebook page, LinkedIn Profile or Twitter account (to name but a few of these types of tools and platforms), many folks may still feel a bit unsure how this all works. For that latter group, we’re going to post articles on Onward throughout the year that provide basic social media “how-tos” and resource links to help you get started. This post is going to focus on Twitter and also briefly cover Justia’s Twitter community Legal Birds – a place we hope that those of you who are already in the social media mix might join up and participate in.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, but there’s still time to get terrific gifts for lawyers and clients. Here are some of our favs:
The Apple iPad — It’s sleek, small, and über cool. It holds nifty free legal apps like Fastcase to find state and federal statutes and cases and Oyez’s PocketJustice that let’s lawyers listen to Supreme Court oral arguments. When your attorney friend is done raging at opposing counsel’s latest outrageous offer to their client, the attorney can vent his or her anger by playing Angry Birds or Star Wars Falcon Gunner. Plus, it makes them (and everyone they meet) think that they’re a swell lawyer, right?
Adopt a Volume of the Federal Reporter — No, we’re not crazy (at least not all the time)! For $1,200, you can actually make a tax-deductible donation to Public.Resource.Org to support scanning a volume or two of the first series of the Federal Reporter of the United States in the name of your favorite lawyer or law firm. The donation is to help them “adopt” a volume of federal case law from 1880 – 1924 that is now in the public domain.
Free Law – Justia truly believes that the law belongs to the people. It was created for us, by us. That is why we are thankful for Law.Gov, the brainchild of passionate Government open source advocate Carl Malamud of Public.Resource.Org.
Google – We are thankful for Google and its continued support of free law by awarding the non-profit Public.Resource.org a $2 million grant to jump-start the Law.Gov initiative. The grant was one of five awarded to Google Project 10^100 winners, a contest to help as many people in the world as possible.
Facebook – We are thankful for Facebook because we really like making friends. 🙂
Twitter – We are thankful for Twitter. We love tweeting about the law like little birdies 🙂
The High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University and the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Institute at UC Berkeley School of Law have teamed up on a new site, DoctoredReviews.com. The site was formed to provide consumers with information about medical contracts that purport to censor or prevent negative patient reviews online. If you have been presented with one of these contracts, this site is a great resource to understand your rights. It’s an interesting legal issue, where HIPAA intersects with Section 230 and the First Amendment.
