While Worldlii covers many jurisdictions, it missed last night’s decision in Malvolio v. Olivia argued before the Supreme Court of Illyria. [Nothing to do with Marmont’s division of the Illyrian territory into 96 cantons, each with a justice of the peace. The rest of the judicial hierarchy consisted of 11 Tribunals of First Instance and a supreme court of Illyria – see Napoleon and the transformation of Europe by Alexander I. Grab at 191.]

Shakespeare apparently missed out the denouement of the story of Twelfth Night, where Malvolio did not go sheepishly to gaol, but responded by suing Olivia . . . [more]

As Simon announced last year, the Library of Congress Web Archive set out to ensure an electronic archive of significant legal blogs – and Slaw was included.

The announcement this week read: The Law Library of Congress is pleased to announce the launch of the Legal Blawgs web archive. Harvesting began in 2007 and the archive has grown to more than 100 items covering a broad cross section of legal topics.

We have three captures:

October 10/02/08 *
November 11/06/08 *
December 12/05/08 * . . . [more]

I teach a Directed Readings in Law Reform course at Osgoode Hall Law School. The assignment (not my creation, but used the first year the course was taught and I thought it a good idea) is to develop a law reform proposal, ostensibly to the Law Commission of Ontario. Thus the students are to use the LCO’s mandate and take into account its values and principles and approaches to the analysis of law reform projects. Although the LCO’s mandate explicitly includes the consideration of technology to increase access to justice, none of the students — who are “regular” age law . . . [more]

Olivier Charbonneau and I will be engaging in a conversation in 13 days with the LegalIT audience on how Web 2.0 tools are being used by lawyers.

A retired lawyer friend in Chicago tells me that Twitter is being used by sophisticated lawyers and firms down there. There seems to have been a lot of buzz at TechShow too.

But can anyone tell me how exactly lawyers are using Twitter? In the delivery of legal services? Or as a networking, communications and marketing tool? Or in some other way? . . . [more]

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has a splendid project available online on the practice of deep packet inspection, or DPI (not to be confused with “dots per inch”). Essentially, DPI involves the examination of a message sent over the internet at the deepest level, a level ordinarily assumed to be private, and is usually done by governments concerned about security or law-breaking or by internet service providers seeking to extract (or introduce) marketable information. DPI is the basis upon which, for example, service providers might “throttle” some flows in favour of others that are, typically, more lucrative. . . . [more]

….and so once again, best wishes from all of us on the faculty to you, the class of 2012, as your journey through law school begins.

Before I yield the microphone, I have some news to share both with you and with my colleagues: that little lottery ticket I bought on a lark at the corner store last month turned out to be the sole winner of the $6.7 million jackpot. When the dean returns to her office, she’ll find my graceful letter of retirement on her desk.

And so, as this is my last official function here, and as . . . [more]

The Australian government has announced its plan to build a high-speed fibreoptic network that will cost upwards of $30 billion. The government rejected proposals from the private sector in favour of this plan, which will see public-private partnerships and the sale of the government’s share after five years of operation. Between the Lines has the story.

This will be the largest infrastructure project in the country’s history and will generate nearly 40,000 jobs.

Now if only the Canadian government would wake up and invest in the future in this way… . . . [more]

I’m delighted to be hosting the next edition of Blawg Review (#207) on Monday, April 13 at Law21. For those not familiar, Blawg Review is a weekly collection of the best of the legal blogosphere, assembled each week by a different law blogger. This post is to invite all Slaw readers to nominate great posts made during this week (April 6-12) for consideration for Blawg Review #207. Not all entries will make the final cut — there’s a tremendous amount of content submitted for these things, and I’m actually hoping that my version will be a little briefer than . . . [more]

As of this morning all European internet service providers must store details of user e-mails and net phone calls for at least a year. This is due to Directive 2006/24/EC of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks. It applies to traffic and location data on both legal entities and natural persons and to the related data necessary to identify the subscriber or registered user. It doesn’t cover the content of electronic communications, including information consulted using an electronic . . . [more]

Hat tip to Dario Bonacina at the New Blog Times for a report on Vic Gundotra’s remarks at the Web 2.0 expo on Google’s migration to voice activated searches, which would be a killer app for mobile phones.

According to a report on CNET: Mobile is central to Google’s work. The company already offers a search application for the iPhone and some other models that lets people issue queries by speaking rather than just typing. The accuracy of the speech recognition has improved 15 percent in the last quarter, Gundotra said, and usage of the service is growing fast. . . . [more]

A number of our Slaw bloggers were down at the ABA Techshow this past week, including a few of us captured on video by the newly launched LexConference website. For those that missed the event, I’m embedding the videos for Dominic Jaar, David Bilinsky and myself.

ABA TECHSHOW 2009 Interviews: Dominic Jaar, Legal Counsel at Ledjit Consulting from LexConference on Vimeo.

ABA TECHSHOW 2009 Interviews: David J. Bilinsky of Thoughtful Legal Management from LexConference on Vimeo.

ABA TECHSHOW 2009 Interviews: Steve Matthews of Stem Legal from LexConference on Vimeo.

You can see all of the videos . . . [more]

Apparently fed up with judges who sit on decisions for ever and ever, the government in Guyana is bringing in legislation, the Judicial Decisions Bill, that will place a 120 day absolute limit on how long after the conclusion of a civil trial a judge may take to release the decision. The statute requires a judge to give a decision as expeditiously as possible after the end of a trial, and persistent failure to abide by the ultimate limit may result in the judge’s removal from office.

Are there any such legislative requirements in Canada? I couldn’t find any with . . . [more]