It is changing how people communicate. It is changing expectations. It is changing attitudes. It is changing business. Given all that, you can be sure that Web 2.0 will change the law and legal practice.
Sometimes technically obvious, Web 2.0 has even been dismissed as a figment of the imagination of those desperate to recreate dot.com fever. If you are producing widgets, so the argument goes, there is nothing in Web 2.0 that will help – the marketing department are hyping it up to get an increase in budget. But any business which hopes to sell widgets or employ people to make them needs to know about Web 2.0 – and so do its lawyers. Among other things, Web 2.0 is changing the landscape of intellectual property like a bulldozer in a neatly planted garden. Moreover, Web 2.0 impacts directly on legal practice – partly because of blogs, wikis and new ways to handle knowledge but mainly because of the attitudes and expectations of clients. You cannot afford to hear the client say, or see the look that says, ‘you just don’t get it’.
SCL wants to help you ‘get it’. A major two-day conference, Web 2.0 – Internet Law in the 21st Century is set for 22 and 23 June at St Anne’s College Oxford. SCL has brought together experts on the technology, the so-called second generation of Internet-based services, and on the law and practice affected by it. As the law adapts to cope with mashing, online collaboration, blogs, folksonomies and MMORPGs, the Conference will give you the confidence to deal with the new problems that always come alongside such adaptation.
In keeping with the collaborative philosophy that spawned the likes of Wikipedia and which, at a surface level at least, underpins social software innovations, the SCL Conference will aim to pool ideas and provides a forum to achieve this. In place of the standard lecture format, the Conference features hands-on, structured panel sessions. Each panel session features a short presentation by one or two keynote speakers setting out the latest thinking on their subject. The panel then analyse each point with the help of contributions and questions from you, the delegate. This approach ensures that each session is lively and you will benefit from the shared knowledge and experience of the speakers, panellists and other delegates.
With more than 25 confirmed speakers and contributors recruited from the very top of their specialist areas, a high-profile Conference dinner and the usual SCL value pricing. It is an event that is likely to be oversubscribed.
Click here for full details of the Conference.
Click here for a copy of the conference brochure
