The Cardinal Lawyer

Dear graduates, students, faculty, staff, and friends of Louisville Law:

Welcome to The Cardinal Lawyer. This forum represents your direct link to the University of Louisville School of Law and to the dean's office. I hope to post items here on a regular basis, the better to stay in touch with the Law School's most valued constituents.

Some of you are receiving this initial post because you kindly accepted an invitation by the University of Louisville's Alumni Association to join the "Dean's Listserv." If you wish to receive the latest items from The Cardinal Lawyer via e-mail, please send your name, e-mail address, year of graduation (if applicable), and postal address to alumnews@louisville.edu.

The Cardinal Lawyer, though, is much more than a listserv. It is a weblog. "Blogging," of course, has become a very familiar feature of today's electronic landscape. But Louisville Law has never used a blog to communicate with its constituents. I have therefore decided to devote a few words in this initial message to familiarize you with The Cardinal Lawyer's technological capabilities and their true power.

At an absolute minimum, The Cardinal Lawyer generates an RSS feed . RSS, which stands for either "Rich-Text Site Summary" or "Really Simple Syndication," powers the Dean's Listserv. But this blog's RSS feed can do even more. It allows you, the reader, to receive updates from this blog as they are posted, on terms you dictate. To learn more about RSS, please consult the University of Louisville's RSS tutorial. If you are ready to get started with The Cardinal Lawyer's RSS feed, click on the universal syndication icon at the end of this sentence .

The Cardinal Lawyer will boast additional features that make this forum worthy of your attention. Its sidebar, once fully built, will offer links to important items of interest to the entire Louisville Law community. The Cardinal Lawyer's archives will offer one-stop shopping for all items, no matter how short or elaborate, that I write as the dean of the Law School. Some of those pieces -- especially those published in the Louisville Bar Association's Bar Briefs, the Kentucky Bar Association's Bench and Bar magazine, and the Law School's own print-based publications -- would otherwise be unavailable in readily searchable electronic form. The blog format allows me to add features -- links, images, multimedia -- that enhance the interactivity of items that were originally published in print-based media. Finally, the immediacy and ease of blogging will enable me to communicate news, thoughts, and observations to you that might evaporate before I commit them to paper.

Ultimately, The Cardinal Lawyer represents your direct link to me and to our beloved Law School. I hope to see all of you on this page.


Very truly yours,

Jim Chen
Dean and Professor of Law