I got an invite to join Texas Bar Circle from the State Bar of Texas, of which I am a member.
The service is a product of affinitycircles.com The invite states:

The State Bar of Texas is excited to introduce Texas Bar Circle, a new networking tool. Texas Bar Circle is a secure online social and professional network exclusively for licensed Texas attorneys – the first network of its kind by a bar association.

Texas Bar Circle helps you find colleagues with similar interests, hobbies, or professional aspirations and communicate with them in a number of simple, secure, and valuable ways.

Once you log in and join Texas Bar Circle, you can:
Network with other Texas lawyers about career and business opportunities
Re-connect with old classmates and friends
Share photos and blogs in a secure environment
Share information or seek advice by messaging your network
Hear about events going on in your area put on by members you know
Start groups to stay in touch with attorneys in your area
And much, much more!

I guess that the idea is for attorneys to network without having to worry about clients (or potential clients) seeing all of their personal info. I’m not sure what the advantage really is over something like Facebook, which has a ton of privacy settings allowing for a great deal of control over your profile. I joined, and will report about it more in the future.

the site is intended to serve as a forum for referrals, discussion of professional issues and information-sharing

I actually use the ABA’s excellent email discussion list SOLOSEZ for this kind of information gathering. But discussion lists are somewhat limited, and it will be good to see if LawLink can develop into the kind of community that makes SOLOSEZ such a wonderful resource.

Three are based in Glasgow. They include Carina Healy, an intellectual property lawyer who leads the life sciences team. Her responsibilities include further developing Dundas’s growth in IP work in this and other key industries.

The head of IP for Dundas is Laurence Ward, who is based in the Glasgow office.

Dundas and Wilson recently sponsored the Scottish Enterprise Life Sciences Annual Dinner 2007 in February in Edinburgh.

James McGregor takes this up in his 2005 book on doing business in China – One Billion Customers. Lessons From the Front Lines of Doing Business in China. McGregor, a former Wall Street Journal China bureau chief, former chief executive of Dow Jones in China, former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, investor and consultant on China, knows how business is done in China.

In his review of corruption and bribery, I can’t help but wonder about the big law firms that are also moving into China. Are they too engaging in bribery to get cases? Advising foreign clients on how to bribe to get things done? I would hope not, but I’d like to hear about the front lines of the law business in China as well.

From the story, Burness Chairman Philip Rodney mentions:

Colin and I developed a ground-breaking database that is capable of marshalling enormous amounts of information for big commercial cases.

Or at least I had the idea, and Colin put it into practice.

I can’t help but wonder about the details of the database, and how it gets used in practice. Big commercial disputes, especially patent disputes, can involve literally warehouses of information (at least in the US, and I can’t imagine that it’s too different over here). When glancing through legal employment section in the US, one can always see adverts for contract attorney work just doing document review in  the discover phase of these cases.

Maybe if it is a really useful tool, they could leverage their own IP? Of course, you wouldn’t want to give the competition a leg up…

For those of you in and around Austin, EFF-Austin’s next general meeting will be on 15 February at Cafe Caffeine, 909 W. Mary St. at 6:30pm. The talk will be on net neutrality.

In competition law news, the FTC is forcing Rambus to licence its memory chips for DRAM. [InfoWorld].

Via CIPP, The Beatles and Apple have settled their long-running trade mark dispute. You could now get your Fab 4 via iTunes. [Reuters]:

You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We’re doing what we can

Revolution

Also via CIPP, the UK Government is launching IP audits for small businesses in an effort to get them to capitalise on their IP more. [FT.com]

EFF (no, not the Austin one…) is opening an office in Brussels — Erik Jossefsson, former president of FFII Sweden will be the lead person. [EFF Press Release].

Via Michael Geist’s BNA Internet News, New Jersey is cracking down on smokers who have been avoiding taxes by buying their smokes online. One man received a 10, 426 USD ( pounds) bill — after he quit smoking. [Newsday].

Link

I haven’t been following Scottish firms too closely, but it seems to me there is quite a bit of expansion and acquistion going on just now in the Scottish market. The article mentions that Murgitroyd acquired competitor Fitzpatricks last year and thus brought up their numbers of attorneys to 47 — quite large (by US standards) for a boutique legal practice.