"Web 2.0" tools abound - blogs, social networks, wikis, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, RSS feeds, and much more. Many of these tools are free. This session will show you how to use these tools to keep up-to-date, enhance your research and collaborative work, network with others, and even gather information related to cases.

1. WEB 2.0 FOR LAW LIBRARIANS:
EXPLORING THE PRACTICAL SIDE OF SOCIAL MEDIA
Kate Fitz
Sacramento Co. Public Law Library
March 14, 2010

2. WHAT IS WEB 2.0?
 Amorphous buzzword attached to any new
Internet phenomenon
 “A service that is being offered on-line that is
instantaneous and connective in some way”
 Core concept: Software and services that
enable easy publishing, reader/user
participation, and the re-use of data in many
formats
 “Participatory Internet” – social media

3. Index of Web 2.0 sites
EXAMPLES OF 2.0 SERVICES

4. WHY SHOULD WE CARE?
Twitter, social
networks, YouTube,
Flickr, blogs, online
communities
New ways to find information
on parties, witnesses and
even jury members
Blogs, podcasts,
RSS news feeds,
social bookmarking,
Twitter
• Tools for current awareness
• Tools to streamline online
research and retrieval
Wikis, concept
maps, collaborative
editing
• Easier collaboration with
teams, colleagues, experts
• Access to info from
anywhere with a connection

5. AGENDA
 Investigation and discovery
 What kinds of info can you find? Social networks, status
and location updates, photos/videos, reviews,
shopping…
 How can you use it? Background, informal investigation,
discovery, evidence
 Ethical and practical issues: pretexting, discovery,
authentication
 Current awareness and research
 RSS feeds, including blogs
 Mashups: Unfluence, Sacramento CrimeTracker
 Bookmarks – Delicious.com, iCyte.com
 Collaboration
 Overview of Wikis, document editing, project
management, more

6. INVESTIGATION AND DISCOVERY

7. INVESTIGATION AND DISCOVERY
Information from the social web
can play a role in criminal,
torts, workers comp, IP and
trade secret cases,
defamation, family law…
“As social
networking
websites continue
to take the world
by storm, there is a
plethora of helpful
(and hurtful)
information for the
savvy attorney.”*
*Social Networking and its Effects on eDiscovery
EDD Update, A joint project of Law Technology News and Law.com Legal Technology
http://www.eddupdate.com/2009/03/social-networking-and-its-effects-on-ediscovery.html1:40

8. SOCIAL NETWORKS
 Social Networking in Plain English
(Common Craft Store) 1:47 min
 Examples:
 MySpace – high school
 Facebook – college, young adults
 LinkedIn – professional networking
 Ning – private networks anyone can create
 Martindale –networking site aimed just at
lawyers
8
Social Networking: For Lawyers Only? By Robert J. Ambrogi
http://tinyurl.com/d362py

9. LINKEDIN: CONNECTIONS, GROUPS, MORE
9

10. MAKING CONNECTIONS
10

11. FACEBOOK - CASUAL
Brief updates, shared (tagged)
photos, little games and quizzes,
direct messages (replacing email),
miniblogs, live chat, calendars, more

12. FACEBOOK INSTEAD OF EMAIL?

13. MYSPACE – VERY CASUAL

14. SPECIAL-PURPOSE SOCIAL NETWORKS
Ning.com

15. NETWORKS JUST FOR LAWYERS
Social Networking for Lawyers (two parts) 05/2008 & 06/2008
Robert Ambrogi’s LawSites (http://www.legaline.com/lawsites.html )

16. SOCIAL NETWORKS FOR INVESTIGATION
“firm partner Joan
Malbrough said
she helped secure
shared custody for
a client after
finding his wife
had posted
sexually explicit
comments on her
boyfriend's
MySpace page.”
“Finding Treasures
for Cases on
Facebook”
National LJ,
10/15/2007
16
MySpace And Facebook Becoming Evidence In Court
CBS11tv.com
Feb 3, 2009
http://cbs11tv.com/local/MySpace.Facebook.Evidence.2.926231.html

17. FACEBOOK PRIVACY POLICY
 “Certain categories of information such as your
name, profile photo, list of friends and pages you
are a fan of, gender, geographic region, and
networks you belong to are considered publicly
available to everyone…”
 “You understand that information might be re-
shared or copied by other users.
“Certain types of communications that you send to
other users cannot be removed, such as
messages.”
http://www.facebook.com/policy.php
Revised 12/09/2009

18. VIDEO AND PHOTO SHARING
 YouTube (and Blip.tv and Truveo and
YahooVideo and Vimeo and…)
 Flickr.com (and Photobucket.com and
Picasa.google.com and…)
 Allow tagging, comments, responses
 What has your opponent (or your client)
posted?

19. TWITTER

20. WHAT CAN TWITTER TELL YOU?
•What have I said? “Tweets”
•Who follows what I say?
“Followers”
•Who am I following and what
have THEY said?

21. SEARCHING TWITTER…
 http://search.twitter.com/advanced
“enough people are
hooked on it that
Twitter has reached
critical mass. If
something big is
going on in the
world, you can get
information about it
from Twitter.” *
… perhaps not
the best subject
for a tweet?
*http://www.twitip.com/welcome-to-the-hive-mind-
learn-how-to-search-twitter/

22. OTHER WEB 2.0 SITES?
 Meetup: Find out what groups people join by
following them on Meetup, a social site that helps
groups organize meetings in real life
 Geni: Use this social network for organizing family
trees and genealogy records to confirm family ties.
 Retail: Amazon.com and eBay and Zappos and…
 Music: Pandora.com, Last.fm and…
 Professional: Slideshare and jdSupra.com and…
 Travel planning sites…
 More:
http://web24lawyers.pbworks.com/socialmediasites

23. INVESTIGATION AND DISCOVERY
 Fact investigation. Spokeo.com (!)
“These sites create a
virtual gold mine of
discoverable
information that may
have a devastating
impact on a business'
reputation or the
outcome of
litigation.”

24. SPOKEO SEARCH
This is a
sample (free)
search – paid
account
would link to
publicly
available info
from all these
sites
Services used by
katerfitz@yahoo.co
m
(that’s me!)

25. FORMAL DISCOVERY
 Locating, requesting litigation hold, subpoena
 Facebook will accept service by fax or mail
Attn: Security Department
1601 South California Avenue
Palo Alto, CA 94304
fax: 650.644.3229
Facebook requires a subpoena from California.
 MySpace requires personal service on its registered
agent:
2121 Avenue of the Stars, Suite 700
Los Angeles, CA 90067
MySpace requires subpoena originating in CA or
properly domesticated through a CA court.

26.  “Normally, when handed a civil subpoena,
such as in a divorce, infidelity or child
custody investigation, a service provider like
Facebook (or Hotmail or Google) will resist
disclosing the content of a user’s
communications unless and until the user
consents.”
 Subpoena Facebook: Locating Social Network Legal
Evidence (Electronic Data Records Law | How to Win
E-Discovery)
 Consent can be required via discovery

27. COUNSEL: WARN YOUR CLIENTS
“Given the pervasive use of Facebook and the
large volume of photographs typically posted on
Facebook sites, it is now incumbent on a party’s
counsel to explain to the client, in appropriate
cases, that documents posted on the party’s
Facebook profile may be relevant to allegations
made in the pleadings.”
Leduc v. Roman, 2009 CanLII 6838
(Superior Court of Justice, Ontario [Canada])
http://tinyurl.com/avq9e2

28. LIMITS ON 3RD PARTY DISCOVERY
 Subpoena can be used to establish ownership
of account, dates of creation and access, and
other background info
 Unfettered access would include access to info
which is not subject to discovery; instead use
request for production to plaintiff to obtain
relevant, non-privileged records from the
account. Mackelprang v Fidelity, 2007 WL
119149 (D.Nev) (D may not compel P to grant
full access to MySpace account)

29. EVIDENTIARY ISSUES
“…evidentiary issues involving privacy and authenticity that could keep the
information out of a courtroom. For example, it is possible that one could create a
Facebook profile in another person's name and use that account to send
incriminating messages. There also is the issue of whether content that has been
modified or removed from a profile during the course of litigation constitutes
spoliation of evidence.”
Social Networking Sites Look Like Plunder to Attorneys
Ethan J. Wall
Daily Business Review , February 20, 2009
http://tinyurl.com/b52gcu
“…the authenticity requirement is perhaps the most difficult obstacle for admissibility
… a proponent must present testimony about where the [social networking website]
data came from and who authored it.”

30. QUESTIONS?

31. RESEARCH TOOLS AND RESOURCES
 Current awareness
 Researching facts
or law
 Tools to streamline
online research and
retrieval

32. KEEPING CURRENT
News, commentary,
case updates, regulation
tracking, dockets…

33. BLOGS
 Many are free to
create
 Easy to create and
post
 Readers can
subscribe for
automatic updates
 Readers can
comment– popular
posts may spark a
dialog
Free blog sites
News and commentary
Personal interests
Organizations

34. LAW BLOGS OR “BLAWGS”
 Written by practitioners or scholars
 Regularly updated news, case reports, and
commentary on specialized topics
 Some offer regularly updated audio
(“podcasts”) that you can download to your
computer or iPod
 RSS feeds can deliver the news to you

35. SUBSCRIBING TO BLOGS
 Bloglines –
http://www.bloglines.
com/
 Google Reader –
http://reader.google.
com
 Microsoft Outlook 2007
(ex: http://tinyurl.com/
azqv58)
 Somewhere on the blog
will be a link to
subscribe
Subscribe
Blogs in Plain English (2:58 min)

36. Most, if not all,
blogs have a feed
link somewhere

37. You can even
subscribe to a blog
that lets you know
about new law blogs

38. PODCASTS AND VIDEOS
 Audio and video recordings delivered by an
RSS subscription to feed reader

39. GETTING YOUR RSS UPDATES
39
List of unread items – view
by headline or brief summary
List of
subscribed
blogs Click either
arrow to visit
original blog

40. FINDING BLAWGS
 ABA’s top 100 blawgs:
http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/
aba_journal_blawg_100
 There are also lists of blogs by category from:
 ABA: http://www.abajournal.com/blawgs/
 Blawg.com: http://www.blawg.com/
 Justia: http://blawgsearch.justia.com/category.aspx
 Law X.0 Taxonomy of Legal Blogs:
http://3lepiphany.typepad.com/3l_epiphany/2006/
03/a_taxonomy_of_l.html

41. EVALUATING BLOGS
 Consider update frequency – too often may
indicate shallow coverage, too infrequently
may indicate lack of commitment
 Check “about this blog” for info on author(s)
 Do they archive, tag, and/or categorize posts
to make it easy to find past info?
41

42. RSS – NOT JUST FOR BLOGS ANY MORE!
 Many websites offer to notify you of updates
via RSS
 Many news outlets offer RSS feeds for
breaking news
 RSS feeds have been created for particular
purposes – Cal. Supreme Court, Federal
Register, etc.
Useful feeds:
http://www.virtualchase.com/topics/law_rss_feeds.shtml

43. NEWS SOURCES
 http://www.lexmonitor.com/
“channels” let
you subscribe by
topic

44. COURT DECISIONS
Public Library of Law
http://www.plol.org/Pages/RecentDecisions.aspx

45. JUSTIA FEDERAL DOCKET SEARCH
45

46. SUBSCRIBE TO UPDATES OF YOUR SEARCH
46
Automatically learn
when a person or
company is sued in
Federal court

47. NEW PATENTS AND APPLICATIONS

48. FEDERAL LEGISLATION

49. FEDERAL REGULATIONS
“On this site
you can:
…Subscribe
to RSS feeds
by agency of
newly posted
FR notices”

50. FEDERAL REGISTER VIA RSS
RSS feed of new
regs from your
agency or on
your topic

51. CURRENT LAW JOURNAL CONTENT
 Table of Contents service
http://lawlib.wlu.edu/CLJC/

52. NEWS SITES OFFER RSS FEEDS TOO

53. Check out Sacbee.com:
www.sacbee.com/rss/
NOT JUST LEGAL NEWS…

54. CREATE YOUR OWN NEWS FEEDS
Yahoo! News feeds – articles from
many sources on your topics of choice

55. RESEARCHING FACTS AND LAW
 Blogs and news for
historical research
 Online databases
 Mashups

56. PRIMARY SOURCES ON THE INTERNET
 CA Case Law
 California Courts:
http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/
opinions/
 Findlaw :
http://findlaw.com/cacases/
 CA Statutes
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/
calaw.html
 CA Code of Regulations:
http://www.calregs.com/
 Fed/Other Case Law
 Altlaw: http://altlaw.org/.
 PreCyDent:
http://www.precydent.com
 Justia: http://law.justia.com/
 Fed/Other Statutes, Regs,
etc
 Code of Federal Regulations:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/
cfr/index.html
 Findlaw: http://lp.findlaw.com/
 Public Library of Law (by
Fastcase):
http://www.plol.org/Pages/
Search.aspx.

57. SECONDARY SOURCES ON THE INTERNET
 Washburn Legal Research on the Web: law
reviews – www.washlaw.edu/lawjournal/
 Google Scholar – http://scholar.google.com/
 Cornell LII “Wex” –
http://topics.law.cornell.edu/wex/
 Law blogs (“blawgs”) –
http://blawgsearch.justia.com/
 Findlaw Legal Subjects – public.findlaw.com
 Nolo’s “Nolopedia” – http://www.nolo.com
 California Courts –www.courtinfo.ca.gov
57

58. SEARCHING BLOGS
 General purpose search engines
 http://blogsearch.google.com/
“The goal of Blog Search is to include every
blog that publishes a site feed”
 http://technorati.com/search

59. SEARCHING BLAWGS - JUSTIA
http://blawgsearch.justia.com/

60. COMMUNITY-CONTRIBUTED RESOURCES
Free access to research papers, sample
documents, more
 SSRN (www.ssrn.com)
 Legal Scholarship Network
(www.ssrn.com/lsn/index.html)
 Scribd.com, JD Supra.com – store and
research documents

61. MASHUPS
 Remixing Data and Web Services
 Sacramento CrimeTracker:
http://www.kcra.com/crime/index.html
 Unfluence: http://unfluence.primate.net
 Votetocracy: http://www.votetocracy.com/
 Apps for Democracy (Washington, DC):
http://www.appsfordemocracy.org/
application-directory/
 Monopoly City Streets:
http://www.monopolycitystreets.com/

62. CRIMEMAPPING™
 Combines
Google
Map with
crime
reports
from
many
agencies
 Click pin
for details

63. STREAMLINE ONLINE RESEARCH AND
RETRIEVAL
Social bookmarking:
Delicious.com,
iCite.com

64. SOCIAL BOOKMARKS
 Instead of adding a site to your browser’s
“favorites” or “bookmarks,” add it to a
personal online archive
 Advantages:
 Access: from any computer since it’s not stored
online instead of in your browser
 Retrieval: Search your own archive by tag,
keyword or category to re-locate sites of interest
 Social: Search others’ archives to discover new
sites already chosen as worthy of a bookmark
Social Bookmarking in Plain English
(Common Craft Store) 3:25 min.

65. 65
Click
“tag”

66. SEARCH BOOKMARKS – YOURS AND
OTHERS
66
Find a user's picks
interesting? Consider
subscribing to their new
bookmarks!
Search by tag or
keyword

67. RE-USE BOOKMARKS AS CONTENT
67
Latest news –
automatically
updated
whenever I
bookmark a
site

68. BOOKMARKING, PLUS!
Mark,
copy,
save and
share
any web-
based
content
iCyte.co
m

69. ARCHIVE OF PAGES AND YOUR
ANNOTATIONS
Highlight, make
notes, comment,
save for later
“projects” –
categories of
bookmarks –
can be private
or public – you
can invite
others to share
“private”
projects

70. ICYTE SAVES THE CURRENT VERSION
Later, return to see your
annotations, highlights,
etc – even if the page is
no longer on the Web
Live view

71. SEARCHING YOUR ICYTE ARCHIVE
Search by the
tags you assign
Search the full
text of the
saved pages!

72. USING ICYTE BOOKMARKS ELSEWHERE
News feed
(RSS) of new
Cytes
Embed project
in another
website

73. EMBEDDED PROJECT
 Class wiki:
http://web24lawyers.
pbworks.com/iCyte

74. EXPORT AND SHARING OPTIONS
Exporte
d into
Word

75. COLLABORATION

76. COLLABORATIVE TOOLS USING WEB 2.0
 Wikis: knowledge management tool for
groups
 Collaborative documents: Writeboard,
Google Docs, Zoho
 Concept mapping: bubbl.us
 Online calendaring: Google Calendar, Yahoo
calendar
 Project and knowledge management:
Basecamp, Sharepoint
 Screensharing and online meetings: Adobe
Acrobat Connect, GoToMeeting.com 76

77. WIKIS
 Wikis in Plain English (Common Craft Store)
3:52 min.
 Wikis: not just Wikipedia! (knowledge
management tool)
 Create your own (public or private) and invite
editors to collaborate with you.
 Use for collecting case info among several
people; easily-updated procedures manual;
project planning; more
 PBWorks legal package
77

78. WEB 2.0 FOR LAWYERS WIKI
78
Just for this class!
http://web24lawyers.
pbworks.com/

79. COLLABORATIVE TOOLS IN DEPTH
 The Lawyer's Guide to Collaboration Tools
and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work
Together (ABA, 2008) KF320 .A9 K46
 Companion page:
http://www.lawyersguidetocollaboration.com/
 “The Case for Collaborative Tools,” by Lucie
Olejnikova and Jessica de Perio Wittman
http://www.aallnet.org/products/
pub_sp0812/pub_sp0812_PLL.pdf

80. THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING!
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