Happy Halloween!

The following is an editorial I wrote for Osgoode Hall's student newspaper, the Obiter Dicta. Originally posted here.

 

An elementary school in Seattle recently reported that students were prohibited from dressing up for Halloween this year. The decision was implemented as a preventative measure out of fear that Halloween costumes could offend or upset students of different cultures, which came as somewhat of a surprise to me. As someone who doesn’t belong to a Judeo-Christian faith, Halloween was probably the only holiday that didn’t make me feel excluded growing up.

My friend who is currently attending teacher’s college confirmed that the Seattle school wasn’t just an anomaly. She said that her curriculum also taught that Halloween is not inclusive of all religions.

The cultural roots of Halloween are mostly attributed to Celtic and Christian influences. Many believe that Halloween has pagan roots originating from Samhain, a Gaelic celebration held on October 31st to mark the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. Samhain is also likened to a festival of the dead, being set at a time when the door to the Otherworld (the realm of the dead) is opened enough to allow spirits and other beings to come into our world. Feasts were held to appease souls of the dead and people dressed up in costumes to disguise themselves to harmful spirits.

The future of legal search

I've been a post-secondary student for almost seven consecutive years now so I feel pretty comfortable saying that I'm familiar with academic research. I did my undergraduate in social psychology which means that most of my research involved various databases that linked to journals my school had subscriptions to and Google. I liked using Google mostly because I already knew how to use it. I would sometimes search for articles on Google, find something I wanted, hit a paywall, and then search for the same article through my university database. Of course, I also came across Google Scholar which was often a lifesaver.

As I entered legal education, I still used university databases and Google scholar for articles but now I had to look for cases and for that we were taught how to use Westlaw and LexisNexis. Searching for case law is a little different than searching for articles. With articles, I could tell from a brief glance at the abstract whether it would be useful or not. Not quite with cases ... I had to consider its authority in regards to jurisdiction and level of court, what the dissenting opinion (if any) was, what qualifications were made, what the specific fact scenario was, which area of law it covered, which other cases it cited and how, and most importantly, if the case had been overruled. And there could be hundreds and hundreds of potentially relevant cases depending on which keywords I put in. As you might have guessed, going on Westlaw and LexisNexis was not exactly my favourite thing to do.

Palo Alto vs.Toronto weather

Palo Alto, CA:

Toronto, ON:

Normally, I would refrain from blogging about something as mundane as the weather but I'm so overjoyed by the beautiful sunshine and warm afternoons that I can't help expressing this to someone besides grocery shop clerks and bank tellers. 

It's hard to be in a bad mood here. It's almost always sunny (I've literally seen one day of rain here) and people have correspondingly sunny attitudes. There have been many studies on whether climate affects one's mood with contradicting results. While some concluded that the effect is small if not nonexistent, others found that whether does have psychological effects, particularly pleasant weather in the spring.

Interestingly, there's also no consensus on how weather affects productivity. Some argue that bad weather leads to low energy and irritability while others find that good weather is a distraction from work responsibilities. 

Well, whether I've been sufficiently productive is for my professors to decide but I'll take sunny California weather over variable cloudiness and showers any day.  

CodeHS and Code is Law

Yesterday, we went to the second instalment of Code Is Law* which is sort of an informal crash course on programming for beginners put on by Pieter Gunst, one of the co-founders of LawGives and a Fellow at CodeX. The last time I coded anything that wasn't a website was probably a decade ago when we learned Visual Basic in high school. I'm fairly certain VB became obsolete around the same time we gave up floppy disks. This time around, I'm going to be learning Javascript with the help of CodeHS, a StartX company.

*Aptly named after Lawrence Lessig's dictum in his book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace.

Jeremy does a pretty good job explaining how CodeHS works in the video above but the basic idea is that the website teaches programming with instructional videos followed by little exercises. CodeHS is great because not only does it teach you how to code, it teaches you how to think like a programmer (so you can pick up other languages), and how to code with style. I think if any professional ever looks at the backend of my websites, they'd be pretty horrified because my coding is all over the place so even if I forget all the javascript and just retain some good coding practices, I'll be very pleased.

Why is programming relevant to law students/lawyers?

1. Programming is about problem solving and using logic - two areas that all legal minds ought to be familiar with. Conditional if/else statements are essential both in law and in coding (and on the LSAT for those of us that still remember that small nightmare). Programming is good exercise for your brain.

2. As we move increasingly into a digital space, understanding the basics of software engineering is an asset in any field. People tend to think that law is an archaic discipline where men in suits sit behind large mahogany desks poring over stacks of documents. While the legal field hasn't been as technology-savvy as say, medicine, legal informatics is a rapidly growing area and chances are that lawyers can't avoid software engineers in the workplace for much longer. For more on this topic, see Richard Susskind's The End of Lawyers.

3. Software and information industries are rapidly expanding making intellectual property law the fastest growing area of legal specialization. I'm perhaps a little biased here but I think intellectual property and technology law is an exciting and flourishing field and this will continue to be true for a long time to come. Having a good grasp on the building blocks of technology i.e. code will thus no doubt be advantageous to a career in technology law.

Comparative advertising in action

As an unabashedly consumerist person, living in the States is kind of a dream. Not only is there a bigger selection of everything (I'm going to miss being able to order cherry coke everywhere), sticker prices and sales tax are both significantly lower than what I'm used to. We went to Portland, Oregon last weekend where sales tax is 0% - that's something you won't see in Canada.

Here's something else you won't see in Canada ... comparative advertising:

"Compare to Vaseline(R) Intensive Care(R) Cocoa Butter Deep Conditioning Lotion*"

Wanderings of Odysseus

Today is the last showing of Wanderings of Odysseus, which is the first half of Homer's epic The Odyssey, put on by the Stanford Summer Theatre. We went to see the show last week to add a bit of arts & culture to our otherwise law and technology -heavy schedules. 

Paul Baird as Odysseus

Courney Walsh as the Cyclops

Wanderings showcased minimalism at its best. I was impressed by how a small cast of six carried a 2-hour play. Each actor embodied multiple roles with the three males sharing the voice of Odysseus. They transitioned before our eyes by synchronizing lines and passing a symbolic object like a sash. It was very well done. They were all equally convincing and confident as Odysseus and illuminated different aspects of the character's personality. It was never confusing who was who.

The other thing that really impressed me was the set design and use of props. When we arrived at our seats, the stage was pretty much bare save for a few blocks. There were also almost no props - a rope here, a sheet there. But so much was done with so little. Everything came alive as the story unfolded and I had no trouble believing that a waving sheet was Poseidon's angry sea or that a few blocks were Calypso's seductive boudoir.

I hope to see more of Stanford's artsy side in the weeks to come. 

CodeX Legal Tech Start-Up Showcase

Today, we went to a CodeX Legal Tech Start-Up Showcase. The three companies that presented focused on leveraging technology to increase efficiency in legislation, the legal profession and user privacy. First up was Jason Hegland from Securities Litigation Analytics (SLA), which began as a faculty research project. Through the course of their research, SLA collected data on over 3,000 class action and SEC lawsuits, including information like who the parties of a suit were, the outcomes of the cases and what the settlement payments were. They're thinking that this data would be useful to D&O insurance companies for risk assessment (i.e. probability of a suit) and to law firms for settlement prediction modelling.

Next was Casey Oppenheim of Disconnect, an online privacy tool you can attach to your browser to stop 3rd-party tracking.* As we move more of our lives into a digital space, privacy becomes increasingly important. I really encourage you all to sign up for Disconnect, it's an easy browser extension to add on and if you use Firefox like I do, you can use Collusion which shows you exactly who is trying to track you and where they came from. 

*For anyone who isn't familiar with online tracking ... it basically works like this: When you're logged into Facebook - even when the tab/window is closed - when you visit other websites, Facebook is tracking you with a cookie in order to collect information about your web surfing habits i.e. they know when you're on a news website or online shopping or whatever else you do on the web. 3rd party tracking refers to when a website other than Facebook is tracking you after you visited Facebook. This is mostly for advertising purposes so that vendors can send you targeted ads.

Here's a screenshot of my interactive Collusion web (along with all of the websites I have open):

I think a major aspect of privacy issues lies in awareness. What really makes me uneasy about tracking is that I don't know who's doing it, how it's being done, and what the information is being used for. For me, there's no desire to go "off the grid" like I'm some cyberpunk rebel - I just want to know who's behind the curtain. I'm actually completely okay with websites collecting information like which blogs I follow to send me targeted ads as long as they're upfront about it. I like that Collusion shows you what's going on and gives you the option to whitelist websites that you're cool with. 

Disconnect is also working on a privacy icon project to help simplify website privacy policies which I think is a great idea. Hopefully they become as widespread as the Creative Commons licenses icons.

Last but not least, we had Aaron Greenspan** who founded PlainSite, a huge legal database that catalogues legislation, cases, companies and which law firms they retained, and judges and which attorneys presented before them. Despite Aaron's self-professed hatred of lawyers, PlainSite is useful for both attorneys and for laypeople to help understand and access the law.

**If that name looks familiar, this may be why.

Some photos from last week

The Oval

Rodin Sculpture Garden outside the Cantor Arts Centre

West Wing of the Green Library ... not exactly the most beautiful part of Stanford

SLAC Accelerator Magnets

My Picks from StartX Campus Demo Day September 2012

Demo Day is exactly what it sounds like - a bunch of startup companies give short presentations of their product/service in order to showcase their work to the media and to solicit users/investors/people to work for them. This particular demo day was for past and present StartX (and therefore Stanford) affiliates.

The event was very well-attended with over 1000 RSVPs and eventually a waitlist to get in. The room was full of curious students (with quite a few MBAs), fellow entrepreneurs, and interested spectators. The whole thing was livestreamed on the StartX website but unfortunately, I wasn't able to find a recorded version to show you now.

Both keynote speakers, John Lilly and Aaron Levie, were informative and very charismatic. Aaron Levie being 27 years old is simultaneously intimidating and inspiring.

Here's a photo of the room that John Lilly took on his smartphone, instagrammed, and then posted on his tumblr:

I can't remember how many startups presented - it must have been something like two dozen. They span across many different fields - social networking, fashion, travel, health, education, etc. As I was watching, I realized how difficult it is to start a successful company. Some ideas were great but something in the execution was off. Others were just too complicated or superfluous to really catch on with the general public without being mounted on a platform they already use. And then there were those that have already been done. 

Not that I'm an expert on tech innovation - I only jumped on the smartphone bandwagon two years ago and I still don't have a Pinterest. But sometimes, it's easier to evaluate the viability of an app or product from the layperson's point of view.

Without further ado, here are my favourite pitches of the day:

Watchup is an iPad app that generates a personalized video playlist from your favourite news channels. This is a great idea for those who like to catch up on current events over breakfast. This is one I would definitely use myself. It also reminds me of Zite, another app that I'm fond of.

Mindsumo is an experiential education platform that allows organizations to pose real world challenges to college students. Problems range from "Reduce traffic jams in US urban city centers" to "Reduce childhood obesity in your community". Winners are rewarded cash prizes, an invaluable experience, and networking opportunities. 

Pixelee is a tool that provides brand managers a way to collect user-generated photos, use them to promote their brand, and then analyze the photos to learn more about their customers. 

Appfluence created the Priority Matrix which is organizational software that manages your projects and responsibilities to let you know what to work on next. The Priority Matrix evaluates which tasks are most urgent and critical and creates a to-do list. I haven't tried this out yet but it looks promising.

Nutrivise is a nutrition app that creates tailored meal plans. Its best feature is probably the "NutriSCORE" which lists healthy meal options around you, right down to the ordering instructions. My only gripe is that considering how quickly restaurants pop up or go out of business and how often menus and/or ingredients are changed, I'm not sure this app will be able to stay up-to-date with its information. Ideally, I would like the NutriSCORE feature to be on an existing service I already use like Yelp or UrbanSpoon. Still a great idea nonetheless.