Category Archives: U.Miami

Smile, Someone’s Watching

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Seems like UM has decided to install a web of spy security cameras on campus.

IQinVision, market leader in high-performance HD megapixel IP cameras, today announced the University of Miami, Florida, has installed over 350 IQinVision megapixel cameras throughout its main campus in order to create a safer environment for students, staff, and visitors. The University of Miami is a private research university with more than 15,000 students.

The university had maintained video surveillance for a number of years, but as Jose Ruano, Executive Director of IT Security, explained, “Our challenge was that a university is very de-centralized. We had so many legacy analog systems, and we were looking to bring it all together into a unified system that we could manage in a centralized manner.” Campus Police are responsible for monitoring video and investigating any incidents, but as Ruano pointed out this was made very difficult by the many disparate systems.

In order to integrate all the different video systems into a single unified system, Ruano and colleague Steve Weatherly, Senior Security Engineer, knew the university needed to upgrade to IP. “It was much more economical to upgrade our cameras and run them over the IP network than laying coax,” recalled Weatherly

(via IPSecurityWatch.com – Article – University of Miami installs over 350 megapixel cameras.)

I wonder whether the U. has thought this through carefully:

  • Are there rules about siting them so they cannot see into dorm rooms or offices? (This is particularly important for cameras that can be aimed or operated remotely)
  • Who has access to the feeds?
  • How long are the images stored?
  • Are there policies in place as to how to respond to subpoena requests? Will people captured in the images be given notice before their images are shared?

Any other issues I should put on my list before I go asking questions?

Posted in U.Miami | 3 Comments

We’ve Hired Susan Bandes

Posted on February 22, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Looks like the cat is out of the bag: Brian Leiter reports, accurately, that leading crimlaw scholar (and Jotwell Criminal Law Section Contributing Editor) Susan Bandes is moving from DePaul to Miami Law. I understand she turned out a chaired offer at another law school in favor of us. Yay!

Here’s Susan Bandes’s bio page.

Posted in Jotwell, U.Miami | Comments Off on We’ve Hired Susan Bandes

The Paperless Office (Like it Or Not)

Posted on February 19, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

The Vice Dean has sent round a memo announcing that in aid of forthcoming office construction projects (we’re hiring a lot of people and they do have to sit somewhere) all faculty file cabinets in common areas are to be taken away, and we must empty them forthwith — in the next four weeks or so (one of which I will be away).  According to reports of a meeting I missed because I was in New York, we may keep the files in our office, or the law school will scan them for us, or if we box them up it will transport the boxes to our home or another location of our choice.  Or of course, if we prefer, we may instead dispose of our files, for which purpose the law school has suggestively positioned large gray plastic dumpsters on wheels in highly visible locations, one partly blocking the entrance to my suite of offices.  The law school kindly promises to empty it as often as needed.

I am a professional pack rat, so I have *a lot* of files in cabinets in our storeroom and cabinets in our common areas. At least two large and wide vertical file cabinets, and a handful of small traditional file cabinets too.

I suppose I’ll have to spend a few hours doing triage on it all.  Perhaps a bit can be thrown away.  Perhaps a good fraction can be scanned, although I wonder how they will name the files in a way that makes them easy to use. And no one has said anything about OCR, so I imagine the resulting files will be inefficient.  Some of the older files, are primarily copies of articles or cases, and the main reason for keeping them is that they serve as a reference list.  Those files would be best if they could be converted into lists that hyperlink to the online versions of the material, but that would take trained labor willing to be bored.  I’m not sure we have that around in sufficient quantity; and I already have several other things I want my research assistant to do in the limited time I’m willing to distract her from studying.

But, at present either I’m going to the paperless office or I will have an office so full of paper (in hard-to-access boxes) that no student, and perhaps not even I, will be able to get in there.

Then again, the law school did say they would transport the boxed files to the location of my choice. Perhaps I should suggest the Vice Dean’s office?

Photo Credit: Mrs Magic.

Posted in Law School, U.Miami | 1 Comment

Alumnus in the News: Reince Priebus ’98

Posted on January 15, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

Reince Priebus UM Law '98It seems that newly elected GOP chief Reince Priebus graduated from the University of Miami School of Law in 1998. For a write up of his activities as a law student see University of Miami | School of Law – Reince Priebus, JD’98: UM Degree Sets Him Apart. He was a student leader, and was here around the same time as our other recent political star, Senator Marco Rubio ’96.

Not everyone is a fan, however, of what Mr. Priebus has been up to since he graduated. See for example this Wisconsin blogger’s take, New GOP National Chair Is Voter Obstruction Operative from Wisconsin. (And, more about the voter suppression in Wisconsin.)

And finally, consider this little thought experiment from Steve Benen: how would certain elements of the partisan press be reacting if Reince Priebus had just been elected to chair the Democratic Party?

Posted in Politics: US, U.Miami | 1 Comment

Robert Rosen on the Roles and Dilemmas of Attorneys in Advising Corporations

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Michael Froomkin

This is pretty cool: my colleague Robert Rosen has just had his Ph.D dissertation — written many years ago and apparently something of a cult classic — published.

Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

The recognized study of the disparate roles that corporate attorneys play in representing and advising their institutional clients. Long passed around and cited by scholars and lawyers as an unpublished manuscript, the book is also accessible to a wide audience and includes inside interviews. Professor Robert Rosen insightfully explores the choices that lawyers, managers and executives make about how lawyers are involved in corporate processes.

In the companies studied, Rosen showed that corporate lawyers were repeatedly intertwined in decisions—beyond those regarding mere legal compliance—ranging from finance to production to sales to returns to litigation. But the how, when and consequences of their involvements varied. The book analyzes these variations. It examines relations between inside and outside counsel and the management of the corporate legal function. It locates them in a taut framework of organization theory and institutional behavior, a frame and application since referenced for its cogency and explanatory power.

The author, now a senior professor at the University of Miami Law School, repeatedly calls on attorneys to understand the organizational context of their work. His book repeatedly calls out attorneys who ill serve their clients because they failed as organizational analysts. It has since been recognized by legal, ethical, and sociological theorists as a rich resource of corporate analysis and the divergent roles that lawyers play.

The groundbreaking research was conducted at six major manufacturing companies as Rosen interviewed a triad of inside counsel, outside counsel and managers who worked on particular problems. This novel method allowed self-serving statements (especially by the lawyers involved) to be checked and placed in realistic context. More important, because it triangulated how the legal problem was understood, the method brought out how the legal task had been structured. The frames that the lawyers, managers and organization imposed on the legal problems varied widely—and the sources and consequences of these variations are detailed and explained.

The book’s latest edition is now available from Quid Pro Books, but the manuscript has already had scholarly impact and praise. For example, the Yale Law Journal noted in 1996 that “Rosen’s important manuscript is widely cited in recent literature on legal professionalism.”

Posted in Law: Practice, U.Miami | 1 Comment

More on the Legal Corps

Posted on October 25, 2010 by Michael Froomkin

I've learned a few more (tentative) details about the UM Law Legal Corps. (See Meet the UM Law Legal Corps Fellowship Program.)

  • The law school has identified an office and three staff persons to run the program, which will be housed off-campus in the Legal Services of Greater Miami-Dade building.
  • The Law School expects to identify at least 300 placement opportunities for graduates, far in excess of the number of graduates expected to choose to (or qualify to) participate.
  • Placement opportunities will be national in scope, including posts as supernumerary law clerks for federal judges, state appeals court judges, and trial court judges. These placements will be as additional clerks for the judges, and should not be cause for the judges to reduce their number of paid clerks.
  • There may even be a few international placement opportunities.
  • Nonlocal legal corps members will participate remotely in the professional development sessions. The law school intends to seek CLE credit in the relevant jurisdictions (and it has experience in this since it runs national conferences).

Of course, it's still early days, and it's all a moving target…

Posted in Law School, U.Miami | 1 Comment