Biden Picks Lawyers Tasked With Undoing Trump Ethics Legacy; Bloomberg Law, January 11, 2021

 Courtney Rozen, Dean Scott, Bloomberg Law; Biden Picks Lawyers Tasked With Undoing Trump Ethics Legacy 

"President-elect Joe Biden named more than 20 lawyers to his White House counsel’s office, where they will help the new president revise ethics standards and put his imprint on the federal bench.

The attorneys draw on expertise in civil rights, health, and environmental law, all topics that Biden has also said will be focal points in his administration."

If AI is going to help us in a crisis, we need a new kind of ethics; MIT Technology Review, June 24, 2020

Will Douglas Heaven, MIT Technology Review; If AI is going to help us in a crisis, we need a new kind of ethics

Ethics for urgency means making ethics a core part of AI rather than an afterthought, says Jess Whittlestone.

"What needs to change?

We need to think about ethics differently. It shouldn’t be something that happens on the side or afterwards—something that slows you down. It should simply be part of how we build these systems in the first place: ethics by design...

You’ve said that we need people with technical expertise at all levels of AI design and use. Why is that?

I’m not saying that technical expertise is the be-all and end-all of ethics, but it’s a perspective that needs to be represented. And I don’t want to sound like I’m saying all the responsibility is on researchers, because a lot of the important decisions about how AI gets used are made further up the chain, by industry or by governments.

But I worry that the people who are making those decisions don’t always fully understand the ways it might go wrong. So you need to involve people with technical expertise. Our intuitions about what AI can and can’t do are not very reliable.

What you need at all levels of AI development are people who really understand the details of machine learning to work with people who really understand ethics. Interdisciplinary collaboration is hard, however. People with different areas of expertise often talk about things in different ways. What a machine-learning researcher means by privacy may be very different from what a lawyer means by privacy, and you can end up with people talking past each other. That’s why it’s important for these different groups to get used to working together."

The Open COVID Pledge: What Is It and Is It Right for You?; The National Law Review, April 14, 2020

Theresa Rakocy, The National Law Review; The Open COVID Pledge: What Is It and Is It Right for You?

"Enter one possible solution: The Open COVID Pledge. A group of scientists, lawyers, and entrepreneurs developed the Open COVID Pledge to encourage businesses and research facilities to make their intellectual property available for use in the fight against COVID-19. The idea behind the Open COVID Pledge is to allow open sharing of intellectual property and technology to end the pandemic without the need for timely and costly licenses or royalty agreements. The initiative comes at a time when researchers and companies alike are surging ahead with ways to combat and end COVID-19. In its Press Release, the individuals behind the Open COVID Pledge explain that the license is needed because “enabling individuals and organizations across the world to work on solutions together, without impediments, is the quickest way to end this pandemic.”...

As COVID-19 continues to spread worldwide, with the number of new cases each day still increasing in most countries, research and the development of new technologies to combat and eradicate COVID-19 has blossomed. As discussed in an earlier post, countries and companies are looking for ways to contribute, with many now making available and expanding access to their intellectual property. The balance between access and protection of intellectual property, however, is delicate."

A Facebook request: Write a code of tech ethics; Los Angeles Times, April 30, 2019

Mike Godwin, The Los Angeles Times; A Facebook request: Write a code of tech ethics

"The question isn’t just what rules should a reformed Facebook follow. The bigger question is what all the big tech companies’ relationships with users should look like. The framework needed can’t be created out of whole cloth just by new government regulation; it has to be grounded in professional ethics.

Doctors and lawyers, as they became increasingly professionalized in the 19th century, developed formal ethical codes that became the seeds of modern-day professional practice. Tech-company professionals should follow their example. An industry-wide code of ethics could guide companies through the big questions of privacy and harmful content.

Drawing on Yale law professor Jack Balkin’s concept of “information fiduciaries,” I have proposed that the tech companies develop an industry-wide code of ethics that they can unite behind in implementing their censorship and privacy policies — as well as any other information policies that may affect individuals."

Webinar: Understanding Patent Basics: Law Librarians Bringing Added Value June 28, 2017, 2pm ET

Webinar

Understanding Patent Basics:

Law Librarians Bringing Added Value

June 28, 2pm ET

As a law librarian you serve a wide array of lawyers so you may not have a background specific to patent law. Many law librarians feel they could be more productive if they could better communicate in patent attorney "speak" and may feel awkward in asking for definitions of basic patent terminology.

As part of our efforts to offer on-going support to law librarians, LexisNexis IP Solutions is offering a crash course in basic patent concepts to help you better communicate with your colleagues.

Join us for this informative webinar which will demystify patent terminology and review basic concepts. The presenters will discuss:

• Common terms in patent law, such as "What is a provisional patent application?"
• What patents lawyers are looking for in terms of help from their law librarians relevant to common concepts.
• Why research related to each of these terms, or concepts, are important in the area of patent prosecution.
• Q&A to answer those questions you have been meaning to ask.
  
  Sign up today! We will provide slides from the webinar to all registrants.
  
  The presenters are Amantha Allen, User Experience and Professional Development Manager, LexisNexis^® IP Solutions and Megan McLoughlin, Product Director, LexisNexis PatentAdvisor® 

Ethics, Quants and Cold-Calling; Bloomberg, May 25, 2017

Matt Levine, Bloomberg; 

Ethics, Quants and Cold-Calling

"Ethics.

I used to be a lawyer, and lawyers have a code of ethics. Now I am a journalist, and journalists have a code of ethics. One thing that strikes me about these codes is that they are opposites. Oversimplifying massively, the basic rule for a lawyer is that your obligations are to your client, and you have to act in her best interests, even if that is against the interests of accuracy; legal ethics is then mostly a set of exceptions to this principle. Oversimplifying massively, the basic rule for a journalist is that your obligations are to the public, and you should be accurate even if that is against the interests of the people you talk to; journalistic ethics is then mostly a set of exceptions to this principle. In both cases the exceptions are huge and important: You're not supposed to lie to the public as a lawyer, or mislead your sources as a journalist, etc; none of this is meant to be any sort of ethical advice. But if someone says to you "oh yeah I murdered someone," as a lawyer, your baseline expected response would be not to tell anyone; as a journalist, your baseline expected response would be to tell everyone.

Obviously these opposite rules make sense in their respective contexts; the role of a lawyer is different from that of a journalist, and each profession's ethics are well adapted to doing their jobs usefully. Still it is weird to think of them as "ethics." They are both functional systems adapted to the work of their professions, not absolute moral-ethical rules handed down by a higher power. Keeping a murderer's secret is not absolutely ethical for humans, and disclosing that secret is not absolutely ethical for humans; each is ethical or unethical depending on its social context."

The F-word is making more frequent appearances in appellate opinions; ABA Journal, 8/29/16

Debra Cassens Weiss, ABA Journal; The F-word is making more frequent appearances in appellate opinions:

"Do you call it the F-word? Use asterisks instead of some of the letters? Substitute the word “expletive”? Or write it out in full?

Appellate opinions are more frequently choosing the last option, Law.com reports."

Blog Gives Superheroes and Supervillains Their Day in Court; New York Times, 12/21/10

John Schwartz, New York Times; Blog Gives Superheroes and Supervillains Their Day in Court:

"...[A] new blog and the interest it is generating shows that there are people who look at an epic battle between superheroes and supervillains and really, really want to know who should be found liable for the broken buildings and shattered streets.

Those people now have a blog called Law and the Multiverse: Superheroes, supervillains, and the law. Kicked off on Nov. 30, it addresses questions like: “What if someone is convicted for murder, and then the victim comes back to life?” And whether mutants are a legally recognizable class entitled to constitutional protection from discrimination."