ReInvent Law London 2013

ReInvent Law London 2013 … I had never heard of this series of crowd-sourcing conferences until Brian Inkster told me about it. And he dropped the hint that I might want to go.

I read up online what the conference was about.

“we believe lawyers can change the world

but to change the world we must first change ourselves

it is time to ReInvent

the market for legal services is undergoing serious transition, presenting both possibility and peril

we believe four pillars of innovation will save our industry { Law + Tech + Design + Delivery }TM

cultivating these pillars is our goal at the ReInvent Law LaboratoryTM

if you think like we do, we would love to work with you“

Everyone could hand in a talk proposal online and the organizers would select 25. Those 25 proposals would be posted on their website. The public could then vote for the talk they would like to see in full. From those 25 eventually 10 were chosen as the winners.

My proposals was as follows:

Using blogs to give cold cases a web presence

Not every newspaper’s archives are scanned in and thus available on the web. That means that some unsolved homicides do not appear online in search results unless the victims have a blog or website built and maintained by others.

An example of such a case is the unsolved homicide of Teresa Sue “Tess” Hilt. Tess was found murdered on August 4, 1973, in Missouri (USA). Her case was reported in the local newspapers however, she had no web-presence at all. A former classmate from Tess contacted me and together we decided to change this.

How?

I used the surviving documents to write an analysis on my blog “Defrosting Cold Cases.” I recommended that Michall Holmes set up a memorial page on Face Book. He also made a separate website for Tess’ case and created a confidential email address for people to leave tips.

Results after one year:

Search engine results: zero now thousands

Tribute FB page viewed 95903 times

Emails received: 322

Website “JusticeforTess” viewed 3577 times

These are the results of just one case within one year. Can you imagine what we could do if law enforcement worked with cold case bloggers to provide information that can be used in the blogosphere?

We know that police do not have the time to blog but they do have information that can be made public. We know because many departments have started their own cold case blogs. However, those pages are not well known, not kept up to date and, are not always reader-friendly.

With a little collaboration, a lot more can be achieved.

Let’s give victims of unsolved homicides the web-presence their case deserves in hopes to find answers and ultimately, justice.

Let’s just do this!

Apparently, many liked the idea because I made the cut!

I’ll be working on my talk these coming days and of course, will post about the conference later this summer.

Thank you to all who voted for me. That vote was for the victims of unsolved homicides.

Let’s do this!

P.S.: If you cannot make it to #ReInvent Law London please consider coming to the tweet-up that will take place right after, details here. Hope to meet you there!