Simple or Leaglese

The word Leaglese means

Leaglese: language containing an excessive amount of legal terminology or of legal jargon.
some examples are: herein, hereto, hereby, heretofore, whereas, whereby, and wherefore ; said and such (as adjectives).

Legal writing includes many words taken from different languages
Which includes terms derived from French (such as estoppel, laches, and voir dire) and Latin (both terms of art such as certiorari, habeas corpus, and prima facie; and non-terms of art such as inter alia, mens rea, and sub judice). These foreign words are not written in italics or other distinctive type as is customary when foreign words appear in other English writing.

Legal writing is a type of technical writing used by legislators, lawyers, judges, and others in law to express legal analysis and legal rights and duties. Its distinguishing features include reliance on and citation to authority, importance of precedent, specialized vocabulary or jargon, and a tendency toward excessively complicated grammar and overformality.

But there is a shift towards Plain Language over Legalese in todays corporate world in contracts, JVs, etc. The popularity of Plain language and the shift towards it cause now a manger in a company doesn’t need to consult a lawyer before making his move cause the language is simple and clear which saves time and not to mentiont lot of money. However lawyers understandly are not a happy bunch, more than the work which is being taken away from them, the fear the Dumbing Down of the legal writing, the fear cause the language is so simple it might not cater to their clients interest, misunderstandings are more likely to occur.

"Plain English emphasises meaning over rules and clarity over elegance"
Rosemarie Park

(Advocate)

I am all for plain language over legalese, but there has to be balance between the two. Cause the Legal writing has gone through number of changes in the last 40 years or so. Plain language may not fit everywhere, but at the same time interpreting every little detail into complex Legalese sentence also will not work. We can certainly do away with the terms mention above (supra) Herein, hereto, herewith, etc

Some replacements

Leaglese ----/---------- Simple
advert to -/-------------- mention
aforementioned -/-------- often best omitted
ambit -/-------------------reach or scope
approximately -/---------- about
a large number of -/------- many
for the reason that -/------ because
frequently -/---------------often
forthwith -/---------------- immediately
fundamental -/------------- basic
prior to -/------------------ before
provision of law -/---------- law
purchase -/------------------buy
was aware -/----------------knew

Diwali Wishes (Festival of Lights)

Heres' wishing everyone a happy and prosperous Diwali.

It the biggest festival celebrated by the Hindus. To know more about it go to this link

Lex Evangelist listed on Blawg

My Blog got listed on the the Blawg which maintaines good directory of Legal Blogs from around the world.

Draw Flowcharts, Charts, etc

DrawAnywhere is an online diagramming website, where you can draw, modify and share flowcharts and other diagrams, with the look & feel of a desktop application. It runs on any browser with Flash 9 installed. There is no need to download and install any custom software. It runs entirely on the web, and thus it is an always-on-access-anywhere solution. It meets all your diagramming needs without installing, maintaining and purchasing expensive software.

Main benefits

1. Draw Flowcharts, Process diagrams, Organizational charts and more.
   
2. Login from anywhere and modify your diagram.
   
3. Share your diagram with others.
   
4. Export your diagram as an image file (jpg, png etc) or a pdf file.
   
5. No software to download and install. You just need a web browser with Flash player

Opening up of Legal services in India

AS India slowly but surely opens up every possible sector to the foreign market, how can the legal services be left behind. For this an interactive session was called by the Ministry of Law on 17 September 2007, to which I also went the session lasted about two hours, in the end three groups emerged

1. Those in against

2. Those in favour
3. Undecided

Group 1 comprises of big law firms who hold substantial market share, and are not willing to give up .
Group 2 as imagine comprises of those firms who already are in MoU with foreign firms and are trying to strengthen their position.
And finally the Group 3 who comprises of those people who were undecided, really don’t care , there for free snacks.

After the session was conclude, all the view points were noted by the ministry, and they would come up with a draft within few months.

I guess as the world economies open up, and the competition comes to domestic market. Talking of legal services in particular one metaphor come to mind " Never to put horse behind the cart " Opening up of legal services should been taken in steps, so when the competition comes we will be ready to face them. At present lot of handicaps crumble the legal services. Let us take a look

Firstly, under the Advocates Act,1961 foreign firms and lawyers are not allowed to practice in India, It is a common misconception the foreign firms and lawyers will come and take over the litigation practice from Indian lawyers which as anyone who can read can see this is not the case as being made out.

Indian Partnership Act, 1932 bars law firms from having more than 20 lawyers, this limits a law firm to grow in size.

Limited Liability Partnership Bill, 2006 is still sitting to be passed in the Parliament, this act will provide a law firm to expand and compete globally.

A set of guidelines which will govern the activities of foreign firms and lawyers. For example in Singapore, foreign firms can only practice in banking and corporate areas of Singapore law.

Given above reasons it is now for the government to act upon them and show us the door and we will walk through it whatever the outcome.

On-line Translation services

If you have text or a web site in a foreign language and want to know what it means in English, try Free Translation
or
Babelfish.
They are freebie too.

Have you erase your data completely ?

A University of Glamorgan study found more than half the hard drives they saw still contained sensitive information.
It is feared some of the information could be used by criminals.
The Information Commissioner's Office, which monitors data disposal, has said it will be tough on any organisations breaching the Data Protection Act.

The study examined 105 hard drives which had been purchased on internet auction sites and was able to access 92 of them.

The data recovered by the university team included staff passwords and national insurance numbers, a template to print a university degree and even detailed information about school children.

Researchers found 57% of the readable disks contained data which allowed the original owners - ranging from organisations in the leisure and financial services industries to a number of universities - to be identified.

A fifth of the disks contained financial information, including sales receipts and profit and loss reports.

But as with every problem there is a solution, Here is one that will securely erase a single file, a folder, or an entire hard drive:http://www.softpedia.com/get/Security/Secure-cleaning/Eraser.shtml

Free PDF tools

I have found this site that offers you tools to edit your pdf file as you like.
PDFill PDF Tools are FREE PDF Toolbox to Merge, Split, Reorder, Encrypt, Decrypt, Rotate, Crop, Reformat, Header, Footer, Watermark, Images to PDF, PDF to Images, Form Fields Delete/Flatten/List, and PostScript to PDF.

Tech Ecosystem

Last week I had a query from my friend who was looking to buy new plasma TV, but we he hooked it up to his old DVD player the promise of HDMI quality picture was missing. I had a look and found out his 9months old DVD player doesn’t support HDMI output. I guess déjà vu must be coming to you, cause how many times we have brought home Electronic product only to find out it either won’t run or is not backward compatible. Just a month back I had brought Pioneer car audio Bluetooth player where you can through A2DP transfer music from your mobile, laptop and play through car speakers BUT my mobile doest have A2DP profile.








Manufactures through try to make their products backward compatible but still it doesn’t work always.
Cause electronic products today have a ecosystem in which they are made and tested, and will be out of place in older generation, and you purchasing a TV might end up changing everything in your living room except the furniture.
Solution to this problem is god planning
Take account of the your needs

1. What you currently have?



2. How much are you willing to spend?



3. How long do you intend to keep it?

Answer to these questions will help you to find your very own Tech Ecosystem.

India is growing as a big market for FMCG goods where product gets launched simultaneously here as its international release, This may be good for one part, but other part says If the technology comes late then it has been tried and tested in other markets where we save ourselves to be the guinea pigs .
An example will be the ram which is used in computers , their was SDRAM then came RDRAM which was not launched here ,and it was rejected due to its higher price and making and new form of DDR RAM was launched which is the new standard .

Onelook Search Engine

I have found this search engine to be quite useful when i am stuck with words.

Think of this web site as a search engine for words and phrases: If you have a word for which you'd like a definition or translation, we'll quickly shuttle you to the web-based dictionaries that define or translate that word. If you don't know how to spell the word, we'll help you do that too. No word is too obscure: More than 5 million words in more than 900 online dictionaries are indexed by the OneLook® search engine.

Secure your Wireless connection

Most of today workplaces, home, etc have a wifi, which through has its pros but cons are not to left behind. With these simple tips you be well on your way to better secure wifi network.

• You should encrypt your wireless transmissions, but WEP is definately not the way to go. WPA>(Wi-Fi Protected Access) encryption has been out for at least a couple of years and all new laptops and wireless access points support it now. It is much more secure than>WEP (64 or 128). WPA2 has also been available for a while and as of March 13 2006 WPA2 certification is mandatory for>all new devices wishing to be Wi-Fi certified.

• Instead of turning off DHCP, restrict the number of DHCPconnections to the specific number of hardware devices. Ifyou're already filtering for MAC addresses no one else isgoing to grab a free IP address if a laptop is not connectedto network .Then when on the road and at home, the user can connectwithout having to change network settings.

• Additional security: while this isn't really security, ithelps take your network out of the limelight of routineguessing. Default IP address ranges are typically192.168.x.x.Make yours even more unique by making it in the 10. range orthe 172. range. This is more likely to be something theaverage person, that thinks they can hit your router, won'tthink about, or even know about.

Microsoft Office Templates

Microsoft has a website for Microsoft Office that has lots of (free) templates available for all sorts of situations (cover letters, legal documents, holiday cards, etc). It also has images you can download. It provides training on all Office products. There are two ways you can access the site. Within any Office product, you can click on Help and then click on Office on the Web. Or, through your browser go to: http://office.microsoft.com/. Go to the site and look around, it has a lot to offer.

Due process of law on Thin Ice

Pick out any newspaper publish in India and you will find instances of vigilante justice being handed out by people. This new type of behaviour has risen to such an extent that even the Chief Justice of India has remarked that peoples faith in the Indian courts has gone down due to SLOW PROCESS OF LAW

People on the street have taken on themselves to be the new Robinhoods of society. This has already and will eventualy if not stop now led to Rule of the MAN rather than LAW.

Recent cases will come to light the tv sting (Teacher involved in Human Trafficking ) in Delhi wich led to riot, etc.

Crimes commited by sane people, do have their side of the story, a person my be guilty of crime but what drive him to do such a thing greed,necessity, etc. The reasons can be many that is why in the light of Natural Justice his story is to be heard by the Judge.

Many people involved in handing out vigilante justice are making mockery of the Due process of law.

The foreseeable solution is the Pyramid Effect, to start at the top and the rest will follow, frist ones are Politicians, Senior Police officials who do not take action, Judges who for no reason dely the hearing.

One can see the writing on the wall, where it takes more than 10 years for (Uphaar film hall) case to move into Frist appeal from trial court, and other countless trials which are still pending. one doesent need to be Einstine to fig it out that criminal punishment is insufficient or nonexistent to the crime commited.

Powerpoint presentation -Golden Rule

Me

being an Advocate presentations are a part of the profession, having said that i see many times people still missing the the golden rule whis is to KISS as many in management would know

what the Acronym means it short form for

-Keep It Simple Stupid- .

I guess most of the people use all sorts of graphics, wierd fonts, illogical contrast background and foreground that all purpose of the presentation is lost.

I had seen 10 20 30 RULE to Powerpoint in some blog which i find very useful when i am going to make presentation

10: not more than 10 slides.

20: not more than 20 minutes to complete it.

30: not less than 30 Font size

Follow these rules as your base and you would never go wrong.

Next i will discuss good websites available to help you on your quest to create your magnum opus Presentation.

ThinkPad T61 Review

It has has been 15 years since IBM launched its first ThinkPad 700C.
ThinkPad T60 gives away to the new T61 with the announce of the Santa Rosa platform, People at the Lenovo have made quite a few changes in the new T61 Firstly the name is change to Just ThinkPad not IBM ThinkPad, The rollcage extends to whole of the laptop even the LCD more of the new features later on in the review.

The following are the specs of the 14.1” T61 being reviewed:



Screen: WXGA+ 1440 x 900 (LG screen)
Processor: Intel T7300 Core 2 Duo (2.0GHz, 800MHz FSB, 4MB Cache)
Hard Drive: 120 GB hard drive
Memory: 1GB x 2 RAM (PC5300, 667 MHz, DDR2 SDRAM), up to 4GB max memory
Optical Drive: DVD+-R Double layer / DVD+-RW Drive (Ultra-slim Super-Multi Drive)
External Ports and Slots: Three USB 2.0, Firewire 400, one SmartCard Reader, one VGA, one 4-in-1 card reader, headphone / line-out, microphone-in, modem, 1Gb Ethernet, Fingerprint reader, Secure chip,webcam
Wireless: WiFi Intel 802.11agn(n-disabled), Bluetooth 2.0 w/ EDR
Graphics: NVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M (128MB)
Operating System: Windows Vista Business
6-cell Li-Ion battery

Reasons for buying/Competition

The competition to Thinkpad T61 series is:
#Dell Latitude series
#Toshiba Tecra series
#HP business series (nx, nc, etc )
It took me lot of time when deciding on my next IT companion, I finally decided on T61 as it gave me the right mix of business and pleasure features which I was looking for, as luck would have it was not available here in India so I purchase it from Funan IT market from Singapore, where I got a great deal with the purchase I got the additional 1GB (677mhz) of ram and ThinkPad optical notebook mouse and a carry case.

The Features

Software
“Access IBM” is now “ThinkVantage” If you ever seen a Thinkpad notebook you will seen a blue button on the keyboard that is the “ThinkVantage” button it gives access to all Lenovo ThainkVantage software
Access Connections, Active Protection System, Rescue and Recovery, Client Security Solution, Secure Data Disposal, Fingerprint software,System Migration Assistant, System Update
Other notebook makers do have some amount of software but they do not come as close to what ThinkVantage has to offer.

Hardware
It has spill free keyboard, so you don’t have to cry over spilled coffee
The hard drive is protected within the magnesium roll cage and shock mounted. Even if your T61 is dropped the included Active Protection System (APS) software will work with the on board accelerometer to detect a fall situation and end hard drive activity to prevent data loss. This rollcage now even extends to the LCD screen which allows for better singale of WiFi, it holds the LCD in its proper place.
There is Security embedded chip which protects your data physically.
The DVD drive is swapable which means you could take out the DVD drive and swap it with extra battery, and you now have full more than 9hours of standby or swap it with Blueray drive which will be out soon.
The ThinkPad T61 is a premium product with a durable build, it is geared towards business users or simply those willing to pay a bit more to get something that won't fall apart after 1-year of use.

Input and Output Ports
T61 has 3x USB 2.0 ports, 1 firewire port, Smart card, MMC card reader, monitor out port, modem and Ethernet LAN port.

Heat and Fan
The bottom never got as hot on the T61, and all around it just felt cooler. Since there’s a lot more heat vents on the T61, the fan doesn’t need to run as much. But even when it does run, the T61 fan is very quiet. The addition of more vents on the T61 really goes a long way to keeping the system cool, but internally the T61 uses a new cooling system too, so some true design innovation is at work here.

Keyboard
The ThinkPad keyboard is one of, if not the best, notebook keyboards out there. There's zero flex, every key feels individual, every key has great travel/feedback and the keyboard is full-size.

Warranty
I got 3 years international warranty .ThinkPad warranties are different than most other notebooks. They follow the machine, not the buyer. No registration or proof of purchase is ever necessary. If you sell your ThinkPad, there is no need to transfer the warranty. Machine type and serial number are required to look it up.

Pros
Excellent build quality, magnesium internal cage in lid and body provide extra protection
Keyboard is highly usable, one of the best in the industry
System runs cool, even though it now has more powerful processor
FireWire and media card reader are nice new port options for the T-series
Great performance and good battery life with integrated graphics
Integrated WWAN and web camera are nice options to have

Cons
Screen brightness is lacking, in strong lighting situations screen appears washed out
Would rather not have the Windows Live toolbar built-in
T61 is thicker than the ThinkPad T60 and T43 notebooks
Screen is not centered