This and That in Court Technology – December, 2015

We talk about saving websites as PDF's, an IT administrative position announcement, another judge reprimanded for social media use, police body cameras infected with a computer virus, LexisNexis acquisition of Lex Machina, and more...

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Saving a Website as a PDF Document

Broken links are a pain.  It is one of the weakest parts of our Internet world, especially for judicial legal work that may use a page or website as a reference.  Looking into this I found one can save an entire website as a PDF document.

Some article and tool I found on the subject were:

• Mozilla Archive Format  using “BullZip PDF Printer"
• Acrobat Pro
• VeryPDF Free Entire Web Site to PDF Online Converter
• An commercial application, 7-PDF Website Converter

Please also share in the comments below if you have seen others or have another approach?

Assistant Circuit Executive for Information Technology Position Announced

The Office of the Circuit Executive for the Eleventh Judicial Circuit in Atlanta, Georgia, is accepting applications for the position of Assistant Circuit Executive for Information Technology.

The Assistant Circuit Executive for Information Technology is an upper-level management position reporting directly to the Circuit Executive and the Deputy Circuit Executive, and exercising broad supervisory and administrative responsibility.

Applications are due by December 28, 2015.  The full position description and application instructions in PDF are available by clicking here.

Minnesota Judge Reprimanded for Social Media Use

In the “findings of fact”, Senior status judge Edward W. Bearse the Minnesota Board on Judicial Standards found:

“Judge Bearse publicly posted comments on his Facebook page concerning cases to which he was assigned as a Senior Judge. Judge Bearse states that he believed that his Facebook posts were available to approximately 80 family members, friends and members of his church, but in fact they were available to the public.”

The full findings of the Board can be found in PDF at:
http://www.bjs.state.mn.us/file/public-discipline/1517-news-release-and-reprimand.pdf

LexisNexis Acquires Lex Machina

Via press release on November 23, 2015:

“LexisNexis® Legal & Professional today announced that it has acquired privately held Lex Machina, Inc., creator of award-winning Legal Analytics®, a next-generation technology platform that transforms how law firms and companies excel in the business and practice of law. 

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Lex Machina, based in Silicon Valley, delivers a Software as a Service platform that helps lawyers predict the behaviors and outcomes of different legal strategies by mining, tagging, categorizing and enhancing millions of Federal court dockets and documents. The technology allows lawyers to make strategic, data-driven decisions and develop winning litigation strategies using competitive intelligence on opposing parties and counsel, track records and key decisions by presiding judges, as well as reveal trends by case outcomes. 

“Data and analytics are integral to the future of the practice of law and the addition of Lex Machina solidifies the LexisNexis position as a leader in providing analytic decision tools for legal professionals,” said Sean Fitzpatrick, managing director of North American Research Solutions at LexisNexis. “We are excited to welcome a company at the forefront of innovation, and we plan to leverage our extensive resources to bring the benefits of Legal Analytics to lawyers everywhere.”

The full press release is available online at: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/11/prweb13096119.htm

Police Body Cameras Came with Computer Virus

We learned from this article on the Network World website that an old “worm” called Conficker showed up on new policy body cameras.

“The body cams were Martel Electronics Frontline Cameras with GPS, which are “sold and marketed as a body camera for official police department use.” Martel said of its “elite video cameras” meant for police departments… 

iPower is working on a cloud-based storage system so police departments and government agencies can store and search body cam footage. After plugging an infected body cam into a PC, it naturally attempted to spread to other machines on the iPower lab network as well as to make “several phone home calls to Internet sites.” iPower tried to report the vulnerability to Martel, but Martel Electronics has yet to officially acknowledge it. Although it was first submitted to Virus Total six years and 10 months ago, iPower submitted Conficker again.”

The $6,000 Lie Down Desk

For fun… the opposite of the standing / walking desks:
http://www.businessinsider.com/desk-lets-you-lie-down-while-you-work-2015-11