The relationship of legal information to context is a key dimension of recent developments in legal informatics scholarship and innovation. These developments range from investigations in law and psychology to political and moral theory, from explorations in artificial intelligence and law to legal information theory, and from research on the legal Semantic Web to the creation of new applications that help nonlawyers contextualize legal information.

Professor Guido Boella, Dr. Guido Governatori, and colleagues are exploring ways to model legal contexts to aid automated legal reasoning. In their recent paper these scholars show how defeasible logic can be employed . . . [more]

This week in biotech, everyone was taking up a challenge.

• Grand Challenges Canada was launched this week to spend $225 million of the Canadian government’s money on 5 “grand challenges” over a 5-year period. The first task — a grand challenge indeed — is to create a new class of point-of-care (POC) diagnostics. Along with the X-Prize’s ventures into healthcare, we are seeing an interesting experiment in the ability of prizes to drive innovation.
• In a sign of progress being made globally against basic health challenges, this week with fewer children are dying as malnutrition, HIV and TB all

. . . [more]

This is a bit of a global pot-pourri drawn from what I’ve been reading from elsewhere.

Access to Justice in Australia
Another Thomson/West acquisition – this time a Brazilian publisher was acquired
Harvard Law Library joins the Chesapeake Project
The Guardian picks up on Rob Martin’s hyperbolic rant against Canadian Legal Education
An English law firm outsources all of its non-billable activities, including its law library, IT and knowledge management.

. . . [more]

♬Oh dreams Sea of wonder
Sea of dreams
夢は　素直に笑うために　描くもの
Sailing free on a sea of dreams
you and me
Sailing free on a sea of dreams…♬

Music by: John Kavanaugh; lyrics written and recorded by: MISIA for Tokyo DisneySea’s 5th Anniversary.

SLAW is looking forward to its future in this video from Canadian Lawyer intern Bryan Smith who was on hand to cover SLAW’s 5th Anniversary celebratory event at the Toronto offices of Heenan Blaikie LLP on Thursday May 13, 2010. Simon Fodden and Simon Chester are interviewed on this video and they provide some insights on . . . [more]

Hamlet uses Early Case Assessment to assess his risks.

On June 8th, I am giving a two hour seminar via CLE-TV on “Going Out on Your Own” with Trevor Todd and Michael Anderson. The CLE BC program lawyer who created this course is Meredith Woods.

The intended audience is lawyers interested in setting up a practice or who have recently set up a practice.

The course will provide Law Society of BC CPD 1.5 credit hours and will cover topics of professional responsibility and ethics, client care and relations and practice management.

In preparation for this course, Michael Anderson provided an interesting article on developing your own personal . . . [more]

I am in the midst of attending 5 conferences in 3 weeks, for the legal, library, publishing and business industries. The conferences are for varied audiences, and yet I am seeing some good synergies between the discussions.

I therefore found David Whelan’s blog post “A Perspective on Professional Education” to be of interest. In it he compares the Canadian Association of Law Libraries conference–held last week in Windsor in conjunction with the Michigan Association of Law Libraries–to the 5th Annual Solo and Small Firm Conference put on by the Law Society of Upper Canada on Friday. As one . . . [more]

Consider this a post somehow related to the knuckle-dragging Weltanschauung  that produces conduct such as the federal troglodytes’ cancellation of the long-standing grant to the Gay Pride parade organization.

Once upon a time – or in current jargon “back in the day” – much of the social interaction portions of the Internet were a wilder place. “Flame wars” (aka “flames”) in the open-to-all-comers portions of USENET were legendary. All one needed was an ISP, a dialup modem, and suitable OLR (Off Line Reader) software.

There were some more moderated, usually more civilized, paid membership only, places . . . [more]

I think I’ve finally recovered from the CALL-MichALL conference in Windsor. Congratulations to Annette Demers and her team for putting on such a thought-provoking and inspiring event. I have pages of scrawly, incoherent notes to guide my thinking for another year (assuming I can make any of it out). I thought I’d share some of my favourite learning, in hopes of provoking discussion in the SLAW community. In no particular order, some of my favourite tid-bits from Windsor:

• tables on wheels make your library a more collaborative space
• Embed the content in the workflow, (not the librarian in the work

. . . [more]

Earlier this month, British Columbia residents witnessed political awkwardness at a level unusual even by West Coast standards when a special prosecutor cleared B.C. Solicitor General Kash Heed of wrongdoing in a criminal investigation. Mr. Heed was re-appointed to cabinet later that day, only to re-resign the next morning after the special prosecutor stepped down as a result of his law firm’s $1,000 contribution to the Heed campaign shortly before the last provincial election.

The special prosecutor has stated that he was aware of his law firm’s donation early on. However, he did not consider it an apparent or perceived . . . [more]

This past March, I was fortunate to get some face time with one of the senior directors for Thomson Reuters’ new Print and Advanced Media division to talk about business. Among the many topics to be discussed was that particularly irksome one, the future of print. When we kicked off our conversation, the director acknowledged that she had had some feelings of trepidation when she signed on to help run a division that seemingly—excuse the pun—has a limited shelf life.

I understood where she was coming from, particularly since I’d just seen Thomson Reuters’ 2009 financial report released the . . . [more]

Between the government’s withdrawal of funding for NGOs that provide maternal health programs overseas, and a proclaimed emphasis on maternal health at the upcoming G8, some in Canada are wondering if we’re heading to a new vote on abortion.

Liberal MP Paul Szabo of Mississauga South said,

Is (a vote) inevitable? I would say yes.

If such a vote was held today, what would the outcome be? . . . [more]