Connecticut Employment Law Blog : Connecticut Employment Lawyer & Attorney : Daniel Schwartz : Stamford, Hartford New Haven, CT

By all accounts, Friday's Law & Technology Symposium by the Connecticut Bar Foundation was a smashing success.  Over 125 people attended with dozens more watching online.  But beyond the numbers was the feedback from the attendees who appreciated the symposium for the content it delivered.  It'll soon be posted on the internet for download and we'll share the details once its available.

My thanks, once again, to the terrific Connecticut Bar Foundation staff, who assisted in pulling this together, my planning committee, and our sponsors for all their support.  And my thanks to all the speakers who came from near and far to speak -- for free -- to this group.  Because of their generosity, we were able to waive any registration fees to the attendees, a luxury to have in this day and age. 

At the program, we also announced the winners of the Supreme Tweet contest, in which we asked people to summarize their favorite Supreme Court case in a "tweet" (140 characters or less).  It was tough to choose, but here were our three favorites:

• @malson4 Carolene Products - Justice Stone: "Fine, fine, I will put it in a footnote. No one ever reads those things anyways." #cbftech
• @GoldnI Brown v. Board of Education--"Hey Eisenhower, just kidding about the conservative thing. Love, Earl Warren." #cbftech
• @coolasmcqueen U.S. v. Nixon: We have the privilege of informing you that you ARE a crook #cbftech

My thanks to all who participated. We'll be sending out the prizes to the winners shortly. 

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After months of planning, the Law & Technology Symposium by the Connecticut Bar Foundation is finally here. Registration begins at 7:45 a.m. and the program will begin promptly at 8:30 a.m.  It's at the UConn Law School. 

If you're out of state (or even if you're in-state) and can't attend in person, the Connecticut Law Tribune and Brandon Smith Reporting have teamed up to provide a free live broadcast of the event.   To view the event, simply go to www.lawtrib.com/techsym and you'll be able to sign up there. 

My sincere thanks to both the Trib and Brandon for their generous sponsorship of this. 

As part of the run-up to the event, we ran a contest on Twitter to have people "tweet" their favorite U.S. Supreme Court case in 140 characters or less.  We had only two big rules: 1) That they use the hashtag #cbftech, so we could publicize the event; and, 2) That they be creative or witty with their tweets. 

When I first thought of this, we just wanted to spread the word about the program.   I expected to get maybe a few dozen responses at best.  By my count, we had well over 200 tweets about the program. I stopped counting. Crazy.

Nevertheless, we have gone through them all and picked our top ten. We will announce our grand-prize three winners from this list at tomorrow's event.  The other seven receive an honorable mention and our sincere thanks. (Hey, it's a non-profit educational foundation, no iPad to hand out here.)

We've got a good cross-sampling of the different types of approaches people took. Some were serious, some were humorous, some were absurd, and some were, frankly, educational. 

In no particular order, the top ten tweets (after the jump) are:

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This post continues my public service outreach on a program developed by the Connecticut Bar Foundation.

As I mentioned earlier this month, I am chairing what I expect will be a terrific educational program on April 9th at UConn Law School on how technology is changing the practice of law. Full details to this free program are available here.  We hope this symposium will sell out, so please register today (did I mention it includes breakfast and lunch and is FREE?). 

We've spread the word through conventional means (ads, e-mails, mailings) but there are still many others who we think will benefit from this (particularly for those out-of-state who would like to see the webinar). Thus, we're going to try to use the power of social media to do so.  We need your help.

Here's how you can help:

Everyone knows (or should know) of at least one U.S. Supreme Court case.  It could be a favorite case, a notable one, or even an obscure one.   We thought it would be fun to try to summarize, comment on, or write something pithy on that Supreme Court case.  But there's a catch.  Can you do so in 140 characters or less; in other words, in a "tweet" that you can post to Twitter? 

What do we mean? Take these examples:

• Brown v. Bd of Ed: Remember Plessy v. Ferguson? We don't know what we were thinking. Yes, separate schools are inherently unequal #cbftech
• What would Law & Order be without its most common phrase "You Have the Right to Remain Silent"? Thank you Miranda v. AZ #cbftech
• Roe v. Wade: The decision that determined how George Washington got across the Delaware River #cbftech

Ok, so the last one might not pass muster, but hopefully you're getting the idea (and we'll explain the hashtag below).  In essence, we're asking you to come up with your favorite Supreme Court summary tweet.  We'll be asking all of our presenters at the symposium to come up with their favorite "tweet" of a Supreme Court case and will share them with you as well. I've already seen a few and you have your work cut out for you.

So how do you participate? A few simple steps:

• First, using any Twitter account, just "tweet" or post your summary.  It can be serious, funny, pithy, cute, whatever you wish.  But it has to be on Twitter. No e-mails or comments to this post will be included in the contest though you are welcome to add one. (For tips on how to get started on Twitter, click here.)
• Next, and this is critical, you MUST use the hashtag (or symbol) of #cbftech for your tweet. This hashtag is being used to promote the Connecticut Bar Foundation symposium and is the official tag for the conference. In addition to spreading the word about the free educational conference, it will also allow us to keep track of the tweets.
• You can enter as many tweets as you'd like. In fact, we hope to spread the word about this contest so tweet early and often!  But only tweets made by midnight of April 2, 2010 will count towards to the contest.  We will announce the winner at the symposium on April 9, 2010. 
• By participating in this contest, you allow the Bar Foundation to re-tweet or publicize or use, in any way, without any compensation or further permission, the tweets in any future publication or for any other purpose.  Of course, we will attempt to link each tweet with the Twitter user name (for examples of this, David Pogue did a Twitter contest as well.)
• A winner (or winners) will be chosen in the sole discretion of myself and members of the symposium committee. Our decision is final and we reserve the right to modify the rules as necessary to ensure that this runs smoothly.
• The prize or prizes are still being finalized.  But it won't be an iPad or anything close; this is a non-profit educational foundation we're talking about. Besides, shouldn't just being named the "winner" be a prize enough? (Scratch that, we'd probably want an iPad as well.)
• If you'd like to track all the entries, you can search on Twitter for the hashtag #cbftech. This should also work on Google!

Sound fun? We think so. So, take a minute to spread the word about this great contest and tweet away! And don't forget to register for this terrific program on April 9th. 

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