Paul Jacobson

Category: Legal

  • A very common Markdown spat

    I came across Hilton Lipshitz’s post titled “Standard Markdown” in my feeds that interested me. As you probably know, I use MultiMarkdown routinely and it has changed how I work. MultiMarkdown, of course, owes its origins to John Gruber’s original Markdown project and expands on the original syntax. I followed the link to the Standard Markdown link in…

  • When lawyers don't take each other's demands seriously

    The Lawyerist’s post titled 9 Epic Responses To Legal Threats is a must-read for lawyers and people who aren’t really fans of lawyers. My favourites are numbers 4 (Jack Daniels) and 9 (West Orange). Here is a taste of the West Orange reply: Oh, and just to play along, had you intended for your letter…

  • The secret, drunken origins of legalese

    There are times when I wonder if the language used in legal documents is an offshoot of the English language conceived in a drunken but well-meaning haze …

  • My curated #OscarPistorius Twitter stream

    Update (2014-03-03): I’ve embedded the eNCA video feed too: Tracking one of the hashtags being used for the Oscar Pistorius trial is going to be overwhelming pretty quickly so I opted for a Twitter list which I have added a number of journalists and select profiles to instead. This might be helpful. Let me know…

  • Wolfram Language for legal frameworks

    I just watched the demo video for the Wolfram Language and although I don’t understand a fair amount of what was demoed in the video, I wonder how this could be applied to legal frameworks? It’s a symbolic language and integrates with a vast amount of knowledge and recognises plain language queries in addition to…

  • Lawyers leading the indoctrinated public along a meaningless path

    Something that has been bugging me lately is how everyone seems to think about risk in terms of specific legislation, the most popular one these days being #POPI (in other words, the Protection of Personal Information Act). It’s not that I’m irritated that non-lawyers know more about legal developments. On the contrary, it is terrific…

  • Advice for new lawyers about passion

    I receive emails from young lawyers and law students asking me for advice on how best to enter the profession and focus on Internet/digital legal work, from time to time. I generally give the same answer and when I received an email from an aspiring lawyer recently, I thought I’d publish part of my response…

  • Budgeting for a deferred disaster

    If you don't have budget for essential legal work (like good contracts), you are budgeting for deferred disaster. — Paul Jacobson (@pauljacobson) August 12, 2013 I’m not sure if it is poor form to quote your own tweets in a blog post but I feel like I keep repeating myself when it comes to important…