California Immigration Lawyer Blog

As readers of this blog know, I am a big fan of the internet virtual reality world, Second Life®. I plan to write many more posts about Second Life over the next year as I will be the incoming president of the Second Life Bar Association with my term beginning in February 2010.

For now, I would like to highlight an upcoming conference that will be held on Second Life that is being sponsored by the Second Life Bar Association and the Young Lawyers Division of the American Bar Association. The conference will be about practicing law in a virtual world. It will take place on November 14, 2009 from 12:00-3:00 p.m., (pacific standard time). There will be two sessions divided into broad topic areas led by lawyers who are members of our association and experienced in issues relating to virtual law:

Session 1: Practice Issues Unique to the Virtual World Setting

Daniel Perry – ‘DanielPerry Laa’
Virtual Law Teams

James Bryce Clark -'JamieBryce Infinity'
Privacy and Security

Stephen Davies – ‘Little Gray’
Dispute Resolution, Civil Rights

and

Session 2: Substantive Issues in a Virtual World

Craig Abrahamson – ‘Lexis Looming’ Contracts and Business Transactions

Stephen Wu – ‘Legal Writer’ Intellectual Property Rights

The conference is free but you do need to RSVP ahead of time. For more details about the conference and how to register, you may check the "Practicing Law in a Virtual World" conference page of the SL Bar Association's NIng website. Hope to see you there.

I am going to be presenting a segment on virtual law - being a lawyer in the virtual world of Second Life.® The presentation will be at a seminar sponsored by the Association of Defense Counsel of Northern California and Nevada. The seminar entitled, "Owning and operating a business called a 'law firm', will take place from July 31 - August 1, 2009 in Monterey, California.

I will be on a panel along with Ida Jones, professor at the Craig School of Business, California State University Fresno, and Lorri Mon, assistant professor, College of Information, Florida State University.

Our presentation will focus on the internet virtual world of Second Life. We will provide an overview of what Second Life is and a discussion of some of the legal issues that arise in Second Life. We will talk about the educational opportunities for lawyers in Second Life and the challenges of practicing law in Second Life. Finally, We will explore some of the other Web 2.0 applications such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. and discuss some of the legal issues that may arise for lawyers who use them.

If you are planning to go to the seminar, I hope you will introduce yourself to me.

The virtual world of Second Life® is increasingly being used for education purposes. I never thought that I would see an educational use in the field of immigration but recently it was used just for that. In the blog post, "Case Study: Loyalist College Massively Improves Test Scores and Training Outcomes Using Second Life," Second Life employee, Amanda Linden highlights a new study published by a college in Canada that discusses the training of border guards at their school.

The college, Loyalist College, in Ontario, Canada, has a program which students to be customs and immigration agents. Prior to September 11, 2001, students would go into the field at a border office and observe agents working. After September 11, non-bonded personnel were not permitted to observe professional agents. The school tried roll-playing scenarios but the training was not effective. They decided to create a training program in Second Life which creates border crossing simulations.

Photo from Second Life Blog

The training program is comprised of various scenarios that could happen on the border. A Second Life script generates information from the virtual license plate on the cars passing through the border and replicates the information in the guard booth. Statistically relevant issues are programmed to pop up inside the guard station such as problems driving records and stolen car warnings. Students take turns playing the drivers and border agents.

You can see a video of the training here:

Continue reading "Could Second Life® help U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers learn their skills?" »

On Thursday, June 25, 2009, at noon, attorneys licensed in California will be able to earn one free unit of continuing legal education credit in ethics on Second Life® by attending a seminar hosted by the Second Life Bar Association. Second Life is a online virtual world where people create avatars and then interact with others in the virtual world. I am a member of the Second Life Bar Association, a legal organization made up of lawyers, students and scholars from around the world who are interested in law and in interacting in a virtual environment.

The Second Life Bar Association has arranged for Carol Langford, an attorney and professor based in Walnut Creek, California, to give a lecture on ethics. Ms. Langford specializes in giving advice on legal ethics and discipline to attorneys, judges, law firms and corporations, and in representing lawyers and law students before the California State Bar in disciplinary and admissions matters. Ms. Langford has devoted a considerable amount of her time to training lawyers in issues involving law practice management. She has also co-written two books: a nationally adopted textbook entitled Legal Ethics in the Practice of Law, 3rd Edition (Lexis Law Publishing, 2007 )and The Moral Compass of the American Lawyer, Truth, Justice, Power and Greed (Ballantine, 1999).

Continue reading "Free Continuing Legal Education Credit in Ethics offered on Second Life®" »

As I have mentioned before on my blog, I am a big fan of the virtual world of Second Life and am active in the Second Life Bar Association. A terrific opportunity is coming up this weekend to earn free continuing legal education credit (California, 2.0 hours) and to learn about web 2.0 tools for lawyers. Kate Fitz will be presenting a seminar on Second Life about web 2.0 tools on Saturday, May 2, 2009 at 12:00 p.m. I was fortunate to attend the first seminar Kate did and learned a great deal. This seminar is an expansion of the first.

"Web 2.0" tools include: blogs, vlogs (video blogs), social networks, wikis, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, RSS feeds, and much more. Many of these tools are free. This seminar will show you how to use these tools to keep up-to-date, enhance your research and collaborative work, network with colleagues and clients, and market your practice. Participants will receive handouts including links to the featured web tools.

Ms. Fitz (JD, MLIS) is a reference librarian with the Sacramento County Public Law Library. She is also the founder of the Lawspot Virtual Worlds Law Library in Second Life. Ms. Fitz practiced law in California for several years before changing focus to law librarianship. She teaches Internet legal research as well as courses on Westlaw, other subscription databases, and forms and pleadings; she also co-teaches a course for self-represented litigants on basic court procedure.

For more information on how to register for the seminar, you may check the SL Bar Association's registration page. If you would more information about the SL Bar Association in general, please visit our website.

If you have any questions that are not answered on those web pages (or even if they are answered there), about the Second Life Bar Association, please feel free to contact me.

Tomorrow (Saturday), April 4, 2009, at 3:00 p.m. (pacific daylight time), I will be giving a presentation on Second Life© (www.secondlife.com) to a group of avatars on how to bring a fiance (K-1) or spouse to the United States. The group that has asked me to speak is called "crossing borders." It is comprised of people (avatars) who have met on Second Life and now wish to bring their relationships into real life.

I will be talking about the following topics:

• consular processing vs. adjustment of status;


• tips on filing a petition with USCIS;


• tips on preparing for the interview.

If you are on Second Life and are looking for the meeting, send me an IM (to my avatar "Geri Kuhn") and I will send you a landmark to the meeting. Hope to see you there.

I'm shopping for a new dress. Fortunately shopping on Second Life© is cheaper than shopping in downtown San Francisco. My new dress will cost me less than L$500 (L=Linden dollars). This is the equivalent of U.S. $2.50.

Tomorrow, Saturday December 13, 10:00 a.m. (California time) is the SL Bar Association's second annual holiday party. The venue is a castle on the top of a mountain. We will have music, dancing, fireworks and of course, virtual food. Except for the virtual food, it will not be much different than the other bar association parties occurring at this time of year. The only difference - you can drink as much virtual alcohol you like and still be ready to head into the real office for a day of work or head into a mall and spend real money.

Hope you all will join us!

Anyone who talks to me and uses the internet soon learns that I am a big fan of the internet-based virtual world called Second Life©. Second Life is an amazing virtual reality in which users create avatars who then interact with each other. You can go dancing, shopping or listen to music. You can also participate in educational and spiritual activities or you can just hang out on a beach. There are thousands of groups to join from support groups to social groups to educational groups. I am a member of the SL Bar Association, a group of about 100 scholars, law students, and attorneys from around the world. It has been great fun to meet people who have an interest in the law and in virtual reality.

One of our members, Kate Fitz, has been instrumental in arranging for lawyers to get continuing legal education credit by attending seminars on Second Life. In real life, Kate is a law librarian at the Sacramento County Law Library. Kate (known as Cat Galileo on Second Life) has also established a law library on Second Life. (See Kate's website about the Lawspot.) On Saturday, November 22 at noon, she will be leading a seminar on web 2.0 tools for lawyers. Web 2.0 tools abound. Blogs, vlogs (video blogs), social networks, wikis, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter, RSS feeds, and much more. Many of these tools are free. Her talk will show lawyers how to use these tools to keep up-to-date, enhance research and collaborative work, network with colleagues and clients, and market a practice. Participants will receive handouts including links to the featured web tools.

The seminar is free to anyone attending. If you wish to obtain the one hour of continuing legal education credit, the cost is $25.00 or the equivalent of that in Linden dollars. You may find more information about the seminar and register for it on the SL Bar Association's website. Hope to see you there!