May 4th, 2006
Any excuse to visit San Francisco is a good one, as long as the San Andreas fault holds together for another couple of years. My excuse this week is the annual conference of the Information Technology Law Conference, aka ITechLaw. In past years, it has generally been held in such East Coast locations as Washington and Orlando; but they’ve branched out to San Francisco this year, and it looks like Chicago will be the host city for 2007.
As you can tell from the title, this is a conference that brings together people who are interested in the intersection of the law, and all manner of computer-related technologies. The speakers and attendees are, for the most part, lawyers; but they’re highly computer-literate, so much so that it’s sometimes scary. In my work as an expert witness in the past few years, I’ve had a number of occasions to work with (or against) men and women who have Master’s degrees in computer science from such universities as Carnegie-Mellon, MIT, and Stanford, plus a law degree from equally prestigious institutions. Whatever your opinion of lawyers might be, you’d better erase the part about their using quill pens and foolscap for writing their briefs.
The “tracks” of this conference will give you a pretty good idea of what the techno-savvy lawyers are focusing on these days:
- Open Source Software: the newest opportunities and issues
- Internet Security 2006
- Outsourcing: Doing it Right Every Time
- Hot Copyri8ght Issues in the Digital World
- Changing Face of Telecommunication
- Privacy and Practical Tips for the International Business
- Mergers and Acquisitions in the IT WOrld
- Current Issues in Online Marketing
- Combatting Computer Crime
- Contentious Issues in World Regulation of the Internet
- Software Litigation
There are also a couple of keynote presentations: this morning’s topic is “The Future of Internet Securities IPOs: A Business and Legal Disruption on Wall Street,” by William Hambrect, the CEO of VC firm W.R. Hambrecht & Co.
I’ll blog more about the individual sessions over the next couple days. In the meantime, check out the ITechlaw association itself. If your company is involved in, or affected by, high-tech patents, intellectual property issues, computer crime, litigation resulting from failures of large, complex IT projects, someone from your organization should be here.
January 13th, 2007 at 2:13 pm
I am interested in using the principles of wikinomics in attracting expert reports in a litigation. I am involved in a fire loss lawsuit (40M) that raises many interesting issues. I would like to know if anyone has tried this approach or have some suggestions for doing this.
January 14th, 2007 at 2:38 pm
Robert,
That’s an interesting suggestion, but I haven’t heard of anything being done in this area. Having written a couple dozen expert reports myself over the past decade, I’m more familiar with the legal environment where everything is kept very confidential and secretive until the report is actually filed. But perhaps for certain categories of class-action lawsuits it could work … anyway, it will be interesting see if anyone else has some suggestions in this area.
Ed