Proctor in Admiralty

Shipping Podcasts from Coracle

Just learned about a site promoting podcasts about the shipping industry.  I picked up on shippingpodcasts.com, a Coracle website from a tweet promoting a podcast from Maritime Executive Magazine about armed guards on US Flagged vessels, following up on my post from yesterday.

Coracle, a UK based company offers online courses concerning the shipping and commoditiy industries.  The course offerings include introdcution to shipping, specific courses in port agency, legal principles of shipping and dry bulk and tanker chartering among others.  If anyone has taken one of the Coracle courses, please let me know if you found it useful.  

Tweeting Transportation and Logistics

Earlier this week I promised a post on Twitter in the Transportation and Logistics industry.  What follows is a list (in no particular order) of who I am following on Twitter that post regualrly on transportation matters.  Please let me know who else you are following and follow me on Twitter @marcmarling.

@freightforum

@tradewindsnews

@lloydslist

@jtweed

@shipbroking

@clar_key

@csaynor

@eyefortransport

@orwellais

@logisticsnews

@ajot

@primaryfreight

@tweetgistics

@transportcargo

@jonesact

@joc_updates

@cruiselaw

@maritalk

MLA - A Week in Review

I am just back from Maritime Law Association of the United States meetings in Washington DC last Tuesday and New York, Wednesday through Friday.  A couple of general observations and then a few specifics:

1. Almost every committee meeting seemed to include piracy on its agenda.  I did not attend the Fisheries Committee meeting but would not be supprised if they did likewise!  The Website and Technology Committee discussed some of the technologies used to combat pirates.  (Kevin O'Donovan, please send me the link to the information you presented so I can link to it here).

2. The main focus of the General Meeting on Friday morning was to debate the MLA's position on the final version of the so-called Rotterdam Rules.  For the uniformed, The Rotterdam Rules is the common name for the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Carriage of Goods Wholly or Partly by Sea, which does not have a good acronym.  These rules are designed to bring the law current with commercial practice and to help restore the concept of international comity with regard to maritime transportation.  The meeting began at 9am but debate on the Rules did not begin until after 11 so the crowd was really thinning out by the time the final votes on questions came up.

3.  I will be assuming the chair of the Website and Technology Committee and want to bring in new speakers and discussion topics.  Your thoguhts and suggestions are always welcome.

4. In an effort to gauge the technological savvy of maritime practitioners, I inquired of many members as to whether they use Twitter - most of them looked at me like I was a twit.  Check out this post from Carolyn Elefant as to whether lawyers should using Twitter and how.  In the meanwhile, I am searching out maritime related tweets and will post a list of maritime sources on Twitter later this week. 

Legal tech, tips and training guru

My friend Adriana Linares is blogging about Legal Technology tips at I Heart Tech.  I have known Adriana since she consulted and trained at my old law firm, and helped bring us from a world of Wordperfect and Groupwise to the Microsoft Office suite.

She is smart, talented and cute - not to mention, she knows her way around a computer.

Her posts have included useful tidbits including, free software for syncing files across multiple computers - here and a free desktop viewing tool, here.

Add her feed, you will not be disappointed.

By the way, thanks to Tom Mighell at Inter Alia, for bringing Adriana's blog to my attention!

New Mediation Blog

I saw my former partner Bobby Glenn, of Hunter Maclean at the Welcome Reception for the Maritime Law Association of the United States fall meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona.  He advised that he had started An Advocate for Mediation, a blog devoted to mediation and other forms of alternative dispute resolution.

Bobby is well suited to be blogging on this topic.  He has been heavily involved in the development of ADR usage and has served as the Chairman of the ADR committees of the State Bar of Georgia and the MLA.  He is often called upon to mediate complex cases and has developed an excellent reputation for getting the parties to resolution. 

I highly recommend checking out An Advocate for Mediation.

MLA Hurricane Katrina Message Boards

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Maritime Law Association of the United States (the "MLA")has set up two message boards on their website.  One is devoted to news of MLA members in affected areas and one with offers of assistance for those affected.   

If anyone knows how to repost the message board on this Blawg, please advise as I am happy to do  so.   If anyone wants to post information here regarding MLA members, offers of assistance or anything else of use to the maritime legal community dealing with this crisis, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone coping with this tragedy.

- Marc

The Maritime Homeland & Port Security Blog

I came across a blog that has been around for awhile but which I had missed until now.  The Maritime Homeland & Port Security Blog written by the folks at Wave Dispersion Technologies, Inc.  (WPT).  WPT develop products based on a technology they call WhisprWave which they describe as follows:

Since it's founding in 1995, Wave Dispersion Technologies, Inc. (WDT) has been developing the WhisprWave® floating articulated breakwater technology to afford erosion control protection to shoreline beaches, coastal marinas, anchorages, and other areas subject to destructive or nnoying erosionary wave / wake forces. The potential uses for the WhisprWave® Technology have, over the last few years, expanded far beyond its stricly environmentally focused beach and sand erosion protection beginnings to encompass marine port security and global antiterrorism applications.

You can read more about the WhisprWave technology here.  The Port Secuirty Blog is filled with interesting posts concerning the Department of Homeland Security and port security initatives in the US and abroad.

WPT also authors the Coastal Erosion Blog, which might be of interest to some.

"Brown Water" Blog and Resources

Check out Michael Odell Walker's Brown Water Blawg, a new blog devoted to martime law concerning inland waterways or "Brown Water" as opposed to "Blue Water" or ocean related maritime law.  Michael is also the author of MOW, Esq. - as he explains it:

A blog about the practice of law in Paducah and Western Kentucky, the Arts in Paducah, and the Paducah and the Western Kentucky area generally.

In Brown Water Blawg, Michael has already posted numerous links to valuable resources including the Tulane Maritime Law Center (here) and Charles M. Davis' website (here) among others.  Be sure to check Brown Water Blawg regularly!

Tom Peters' 100 Ways to Succeed

Thanks to Jim Calloway for his post which introduced me to Tom Peters and his 100 Ways to Succeed/Make Money.  The first 50 ways are available on the Tom Peters Blog and on the Change This blog - an interesting blog itself.  I should have recognized Tom's name from In Search of Excellence, but I had to check out his site to make the connection.  I must be living under a rock.

The tips are practical and could and should be used by anyone who gets out of bed and puts their pants on one leg at a time.   Check them out.

Blogging behind the wall

Discussions abound regarding knowledge management and the use of technology to make the information more readily available.  One of my partners recently attended TechShow 2005, and came back talking about blogging behind the firewall, but could not elaborate much on the concept. . . there is a great post from Feedmelegal referencing an article this seems to discuss this concept more fully.  It include this quote which sums up the concept:

"A well-designed blawg can serve as a critical document-management tool for organising and archiving legal information. The very act of trading relevant links and useful ideas electronically, via blog posts and reader response, captures crucial matter-related content automatically, rendering it searchable and browsable. ... the firm acquires a valuable, annotated repository, user-friendly and equally accessible to individual lawyers, internal practice groups ... and organisational departments ... . Not incidentally, both productivity and information exchange increase through better time management and resource allocation."

Imagine creating a blog within particular practice groups, or even across more general areas such as what might affect all litigators or all attorneys in a firm who work on an industry team - if you have such things.  Keeping it behind the firewall, allows for the freeflow of ideas, and the trading of a firm's collective brainpower for the purpose of others within the firm.  If everyone who uses it can post, maintenence is essentially non-existent (very important as it would not be used if it was time consuming to maintain or add a post.)

This could prove to be a more profitable use of blogging within the legal community than as the form of communication with the outside world.