There is little doubt that eDiscovery presents a challenge to lawyers.

Identifying exactly what kind of a challenge it is has proven to be a little harder to define. Some would consider the sheer volume of ESI to be the greatest challenge. Others would say it’s the impenetrable technical jargon that presents the biggest hurdle to lawyers. Or perhaps it’s the fragility/persistence paradox that has most lawyers scrambling to catch up.

You can read any number of blogs, articles and white papers that present different aspects of the complexities of eDiscovery as being the single greatest challenge (generally the one . . . [more]

Linda Greenhouse, who covered the U.S. Supreme Court for The New York Times for 27 years, is retiring this week.

Here at the Supreme Court of Canada, we have had the pleasure of monitoring her articles for our current awareness service dealing with significant foreign court judgments.

She reflected on her career in Sunday’s edition of the Times in an article entitled 2,691 Decisions.

During her years covering the U.S. Supreme Court, she won a number of major journalism awards, including a Pulitzer Prize for beat reporting in 1998.

In January, she will begin a new job at Yale . . . [more]

If you look at the BBC’s news website, the headline item is the Khadr interrogation video released as a result of Minister of Justice, Attorney General of Canada, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Appellants v. Omar Ahmed Khadr Respondent – and – British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, Criminal Lawyers’ Association (Ontario), University of Toronto, Faculty of Law – International Human Rights Clinic and Human Rights Watch Interveners, in which the court held that

The appellants must disclose (i) all records in any form of the

Something that we haven’t mentioned here on Slaw is the new law blog monitoring website Lexmonitor. The site was developed by Kevin O’Keefe and Lexblog, who are normally in the business of building lawyer blogs, and now expanding into the world of aggregations & web publishing. If you subscribe to the make your own media approach, which I frequently do, then a monitor tool aligned with the company product makes a lot of business sense.

When I noted the launch of Lexmonitor a couple weeks back, the concept I thought the most of was the threaded discussion . . . [more]

While we have mentioned situations where important provisions have been dropped into miscellaneous statutes, the NYT, Volokh and the ZDNet blog is reporting a quite extraordinary case where the litigants and the US Supreme Court appear to have completely overlooked a relevant statutory provision¹, for a couple of reasons:

it got dropped into an elephantine budget measure for military appropriations
the major legal databases apparently scant the relevance of military law

Both sides and the Judges involved in a recent U.S. Supreme Court judgment missed the applicability of an explicitly on-topic Act of Congress: the military justice provisions

LinkedIn, the social networking site sometimes known as “Facebook for professionals”, continues to grow more than a year after Steve Matthews wrote about it. There are now over 20 million members.

The folks at LinkedIn recently commissioned the experts of clear explanations, Common Craft, to explain how to leverage LinkedIn in our professional lives. The result is this video:

For more ideas on how LinkedIn is used by various groups, there are additional customer success story videos on the Official LinkedIn Channel on YouTube. This is the Mergers & Acquisitions video:

No Law video yet. For an . . . [more]

Can’t believe I am only just noticing this. The stellar law school blog Law is Cool is not just a blog, but also a podcast! They periodically put out audio with interviews and discussion targeted at law students.

I just listened to the recent Episode 10 discussing the 7 Year Law Degree with Jordan Furlong; using a law degree for alternative careers with David Aylward, founder and director of COMCARE Emergency Response Alliance; and access to justice and the Justice on Target program with Minister Chis Bentley, the Attorney-General of Ontario. Kudos to this episode’s . . . [more]

Library and Archives Canada has a new online exhibit devoted to the life and career of one of the architects of Confederation, Canada’s first Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald:

“As well as presenting an exhibition of photographs, documentary art and other unique records held at Library and Archives Canada, this Web project introduces tens of thousands of pages from Macdonald’s political papers and correspondence that will be made available online for the first time in 2008, enabling all Canadians to learn about Macdonald’s life, career and legacy.”

It is also possible to read his biography in the Dictionary . . . [more]

By two days we missed an auspicious anniversary. On July 8, 2005, Slaw was loosed upon an unsuspecting readership.

Eagle eyed readers will note 3,108 posts and 4,100 comments((We’re getting almost as wordy as some of the SCC judgments)).

Shoutouts to (the other) Simon for leadership, tech support at all hours, and 1,037 posts. He has been indefatigable.

To Connie (264) and Steve (138) for shouldering a load and keeping Slaw vibrant. And to all other of the regular posting crew – happily too many for me to cut and paste easily, thank you, for keeping us interesting and . . . [more]

In the U.S., some Members of Congress have started reporting about their activities on the floor using social networking tool Twitter. In a blog comment, Texas-based Christopher Glenn explains the meaning of this to him as a U.S. citizen:

So in June, I was made aware that the House of Representitves Congressman for my district, John Culberson just started using Twitter. Just because it seemed interesting, I added him (www.twitter.com/johnculberson).

Shortly thereafter, he tweeted “I am on the House floor. I am voting yes for Community Health Centers which provide medical care to uninsured Americans.”

This completely

Apple’s new iPhone App Store (which allows developers to create applications for the iPhone) is now available on iTunes 7.7 (you can download it here). Once you have access to the store, you can browse “All iPhone Apps,” “All iPod Touch Apps,” and “All Free Apps.” . . . [more]

Law librarians dutifully tell their students that s. 11(3)(c) of the Statutory Instruments Regulation, C.R.C. 1978, c. 1509 requires that proclamations must be published in the Canada Gazette, Part II. We also them show them various alternative ways to find coming into force information, including, among other things, the Orders-in-Council website.

This week, however, I experienced “proclamation by media release” regarding the coming into force of the Wage Earner Protection Act and subsequent amendments to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act and the Companies Creditors Arrangement Act. This Act was “proclaimed in force” by the Minister in a . . . [more]