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Archive for April, 2008

Lakehead Gets Law School Approval

A companion piece to my recent post on the various sites under consideration: the Law Society of Upper Canada has approved Lakehead University in Thunder Bay as a site for a new law school, Ontario’s seventh. The Toronto Star editorial points out that:

[b]efore it can be launched, the Lakehead law school still needs to win approval from the Federation of Law Societies of Canada and from the provincial ministry of colleges and universities.

It also suggests that there is already a sufficiency of lawyer-producing ventures in the province and in a stupid comparison tells its readers that we have . . . [more]

Posted in: Education & Training

The Friday Fillip

I don’t go to the movies much, partly, I guess, because I’ll eventually watch the good stuff on DVDs at home, and partly because I’m hypercritical of the genre. This addiction to the “good stuff” means that when I do determine to see a flick, I wind up vapour-locked in the aisle at Blockbuster or glazing over at the movie section of the paper because the choice is so… all-fired important. Dumb, I know. But there it is.

Which is why sites like Apple’s movie trailer page are helpful. I get to sample a bit from the various contenders without . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

Evidence Week?

Previously I was not aware that the Supreme Court did theme weeks, but in what seems to be Evidence Week at the S.C.C., I noted, with interest, the following article in the Globe and Mail earlier this week: A chance encounter that might rewrite the rules by Kirk Makin. I have nothing to add to the commentary but given the significance of the case and the precedents involved, I thought I would do a little web 1.0 and provide the linking.

The Precedent, which has been cited over a thousand times in a little over 10 years:
R. . . . [more]

Posted in: Substantive Law

Ultraportables

Tired, aching shoulders? Thumbs the size of zucchinis? You may need to ditch the laptop and the BlackBerry you’re using and plump for an ultraportable computer instead. Weighing in at something like 2 pounds, an ultraportable won’t do everything for you, perhaps, but a near full-size keyboard and a couple of hours of battery life should get you through most of life’s “got-to-write” situations with a whole lot less… well, a whole lot less. Simply.

Here’s a site with nearly two dozen of these submicros to choose from, some fresh on the market, others yet to come. And though I’m . . . [more]

Posted in: Technology

New Media Consortium

So the University of Ottawa recently became a member of the New Media Consortium, “an international 501(c)3 not-for-profit consortium of over 260 learning-focused organizations dedicated to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies” based in Austin, Texas.

You’ll find some amazing content on their website which I have yet to fully explore. However, I might start off reading their 2008 Horizon Report [pdf], “that seeks to identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have considerable impact on teaching, learning, and creative expression within higher education”.

With membership to this consortium, you can opt to join the Technical . . . [more]

Posted in: Technology

Maritime Law Book to Provide Free Access

This from Maritime Law Book to Slaw:

Effective June 1, 2008 Maritime Law Book will provide free access to over 215,000 cases in our 12 databases that cover every common law jurisdiction in Canada plus the House of Lords and Privy Council (U.K.).

No registration is required. And the databases are searchable.

Free access is limited to the judgment without a headnote. Also the free access does not include the MLB Key Number System.

Existing subscribers will continue to have access to our time saving headnote material at existing prices. And note that all users will now have access to

. . . [more]
Posted in: Legal Information, Legal Information: Publishing, Substantive Law: Judicial Decisions

McMaster University Library to Host Faculty Blogs and Wikis

I love hearing about libraries coming up with new innovative services. This is a great (local) example:

McMaster University Library is now using WordPress and PmWiki to host blogs and wikis for interested faculty and staff. As Amanda Etches-Johnson, the leader of the project, says in a news release, this new service responds to faculty’s growing interest in using blogs and wikis to extend and encourage class discussions, group work and collaboration. See Amanda’s blog post “A toolbox for faculty” for more details on this project. . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Information, Technology, Technology: Internet

Berkeley Research Tutorials Re U.S. Congress

The University of California at Berkeley’s library has a wiki with some tutorials on how to find Congressional materials on the internet (and in their library, natch). So, for example, you can learn how to find a bill, a hearing or a congressional debate.

The instruction is delivered in a Flash slideshow (no sound). Below the Flash window is a live window on the actual web source so that you can mimic the lesson in real time. . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Information, Legal Information: Libraries & Research

Going Solo Post-Articling Is Brave

I received an interesting submission to lawblogs.ca last night. Solo in Ontario: Criminal Practice is written by Bo Arfai, a 2008 call with the unenviable position of going solo post-articling. After a brief email conversation, I advised him to get some profile & contact information up on his blog, which should be in place shortly.

What I find interesting is that he’s blogging from a very human perspective. In a world where many of us consider both articling and the early years of practice in ‘big firm’ context, I have to think Bo’s immediate future & choices are a more . . . [more]

Posted in: Education & Training

Phoning It In

The Stats Can Daily has a report on the 2006 survey of types of residential phones. The big shift is away from exclusive use of land lines to include cell, cable and VOIP phones as well: In 2006 29.6% of households (3.8 million) used only land lines; in 2007 the figure had dropped to 24% of households (3.1 million).

Only 6.4% of households report relying on cell phones only, up from the 5.1% of the prior year. Less than one percent of households report not having any phone at all.

What’s interesting to me is that the survey, which is . . . [more]

Posted in: Technology

Beijing Olympics: Corporate Sponsors Risk Black Eye

The international NGO Human Rights Watch recently published a report on the upcoming Beijing Summer Olympics that states that the “corporate sponsors of the Olympics risk lasting damage to their brands if they do not live up to their professed standards of corporate social responsibility by speaking out about the deteriorating human rights situation in China.”

The report targets the 12 highest-level corporate benefactors of the Beijing Games, known as the TOP sponsors (“The Olympic Partner”): Atos Origin, Coca-Cola, General Electric (GE), Manulife (parent company of John Hancock), Johnson & Johnson, Kodak, Lenovo, McDonald’s, Omega (Swatch Group), Panasonic (Matsushita), Samsung, . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Information: Libraries & Research, Substantive Law