hugh's blog

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Kathleen Caldwell IM'd me from the TIG Conference in Austin and extracted a promise that I'd revive the Elder Statesman blog. My problem is that I think too much about what I want to say to be a good blogger. I am working on a couple of longer postings, but in the mean time, here's a short one:

I admit that I look at the Pine Tree Legal and NTAP websites most every day. Other than that, though, the only website worth checking regularly is BoingBoing.net, the directory of wonderful things. It almost always has something worth knowing - usually many things worth knowing.

At Pine Tree Legal Assistance we are great believers in the first amendment and the free exchange of ideas and information. We encourage people to copy, re-use and redistribute in the low-income community the self-help material on our website. It troubles us to have to even claim intellectual property rights in our stuff, let alone enforce it.

Nevertheless when people use our name or our work to mislead our vulnerable client population it raises our sense of outrage.

My most recent technology column for the Maine Bar Journal (Something About Technology) is called

I write a "Something About Technology" column for our state Bar Journal. It's fun. It isn't too much work - only four issues per year. It creates a good relationship with our State Bar Association. Although the column isn't always about legal aid technology, it often is, and it almost always makes at least some reference to legal aid. It's a good way to keep our work in the minds of the private bar. I think we should take more advantage of these opportunities. Many state bar journals are anxious to find good, well written, entertaining content.

At the risk of embarrassing my friends, or, rather, with the certain knowledge that I will embarrass my friends, I want to say how deserving NTAP, and in particular, Gabe, Becky and Steve, were of the Innovations in Equal Justice Award they received at the Equal Justice Conference last week. It was a real honor and privilege that the folks at the ABA and NLADA asked me to present the award. NTAP is the most important vehicle that brings technology innovation to the legal aid community.

Now that I'm a blogger, I thought I'd spend a little time trying to figure out it's all about. It turns out that most bloggers spend much of their time talking about other blogs. I spent a little time looking around for blogs I thought might be interesting to our community and came up with these. I'd love to hear what other blogs people in the community find interesting.

Steve Gray created this Elder Statesman blog for me. I'm not completely sure how to use it other than to express my opinions from time to time. I do find I have a lot of opinions.

I'd like to start by thanking Steve for providing me with the Elder Statesman tag. I've been trying for some time now to come up with an appropriate way to repay him. If anyone has any ideas you can provide them here, or send them to me off blog.