15 December 2005 (Thursday)
i fear for my job
Peninah alerted me to the newly-minted WikiLaw, whose purpose is "to build the largest open-content legal resource in the world." It's been posted about on Lifehacker, where the comments already reflect some of my misgivings about the ambitious new project. I'm generally in favor of having a well-informed and self-reliant public, but there are reasons that some of us went to highly-specialized "professional schools." This all leads me to wonder...can you get malpractice insurance for a website?
"can you get malpractice insurance for a website?"
One can only hope so for Wikipedia's sake, given that they might be hit with a class-action suit.
Just FYI, I don't think this (WikiLaw) is connected to Wikipedia.
School is over-rated ... didn't you see
Good Will Hunting?
I think the site is pretty clear that it's informational and not giving advice (preventing themselves from being sued for practicing law without a license?). I would expect to see some good stuff on it, and some wacked out legal theories. As with anything else written by the anaonymous public, YMMV,
The Internet can be a good resource to look up raw information. But, lawyering is partly a creative profession, so, I don't think lawyers can be replaced by machines any time soon. Americans replaced by lower-paid Indians and Chinese, maybe. But not machines.
