The International Legal Technology Association has its annual conference ILTA 2010 just around the corner. This association and its conference includes some of the leading law firms in North America and looks at not only technology but also records management, information management, knowledge management, social media and related areas. This year’s theme is “Strategic unity”

a concept that resonates the need for law firms and law departments to unite their technology with the practice of law. These disciplines must come together as never before in order to survive and thrive in the future. Conference sessions will be developed around this

“Sharpen the Saw” was #7 on Stephen Covey’s list of the habits of “Highly Effective People” The main point was that effectiveness requires continuous attention to self renewal and maintenance. The same applies to the technology systems we often just take it for granted. It is easy to go months without turning our minds to the mundane task of taking the time to keep it all working well. 

When an unexpected “disk full” situation arose recently the subject got my attention very quickly. A user “whoops” had inadvertently moved a large number of files. They seemed to . . . [more]

The potential ban against BlackBerry devices in Saudi Arabia has been averted, for now. The Saudi government is implementing a 48-hour grace period until tomorrow while they test out a deal reached which would allow them to monitor messages for criminal activity,

Officials say the deal involves installing BlackBerry computer servers in the kingdom, which would allow the Saudi government some access to user’s data.

Any agreement has to apply to all three of the mobile operators in the country, including Saudi Telecom, which is state-controlled, Mobily and Zain Saudi Arabia.

If the plan is successful it may help . . . [more]

But not me. Really.

The Periodic Table of Irrational Nonsense.

I figure he left law/lawyers out because it/we usually occupy a higher position in the periodic table.

[hat tip “Da Boid O”]

DC . . . [more]

As you read this, I’ll be lolling on a beach in Ontario that’s the lovely part of an island described by some as a sandbar held together by poison ivy. It’s not nearly as bad as that makes it sound. But the shrub Toxicodendron radicans is, in fact, pervasive, and I’m really, really allergic to the nasty urushiol it offers up to the unwary.

Those of us who revel in concrete surrounds and the comparative safety of traffic tend to forget that nature has green claws that can make trouble. There’s poison oak, as well, and poison sumac. Now I . . . [more]

The Federal Register, the daily journal of the United States Government including changes to rules and regulations, is celebrating its 75th anniversary, has relaunched its website and re-envisioned their services. Federal Register 2.0 is organized like a daily newspaper and is part of the open government initiatives under the Obama administration.

This video (which also appears on the new website under “About Federal Register 2.0”) provides additional detail about the history of the Federal Register and the changes:

Also note the website is using images from photo sharing site Flickr made available for use under Creative Commons licensing. . . . [more]

I’ve run across a few interesting tools for making reading the web a bit easier. Depending on what you are after, one of these might suit…

Readability

a simple tool that makes reading on the Web more enjoyable by removing the clutter around what you’re reading.

Read it Later

One reading list, everywhere you are

Use the bookmarklet to add things to your reading list, then sign in to the site later when you have the time to read. Designed for the longer-form materials that actually require some time and concentration.

Flipboard (iPhone and iPad only)

World’s first social magazine

In my last column, I said that asking how many people you need in your law firm marketing department is the wrong question: you need to know what you want to achieve and how quickly you want to see results. I also said that the key marketing appointment is the person who is going to lead the charge, whether that person is a lawyer in the firm, a staff person, or a consultant. The important thing is to have someone making the decisions, based on a goal. 

Once you know what you want to do, finding the kind of help . . . [more]

R. v. Bomberry, 2010 ONCA 542

[9] At approximately 3:45 a.m., [the deceased’s] car stopped at an intersection about five blocks away from his apartment. The vehicle was half on the road and half on the curb. [The deceased] was in the driver’s seat and had suffered a single stab wound to the chest. Expert evidence indicated he would have died rapidly from the injury. Expert evidence also indicated that he was killed while sitting in the driver’s seat, likely by an assailant sitting in the front passenger seat. There was some evidence to support the conclusion that [the deceased]

In Weber v. Canada (Minister of National Revenue), 2000 CanLII 14993 (F.C.), http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/fct/doc/2000/2000canlii14993/2000canlii14993.html, Hargrave, Prothonotary, described and then disposed of the respondent’s argument:

[8] Mr. Weber’s main issue is that, in his view, Revenue Canada made an offer to him, in the form of the Tax Certificate, to settle at $110,650.81: critical here, in Mr. Weber’s view, is the dollar sign with one bar through it. Mr. Weber’s submission is that a Canadian dollar sign has two vertical bars, but a peso has only one vertical bar. The offer, being in Mr. Weber’s view, in pesos, worth about seventy-five

Google has released their estimate for the number of books: 129,864,880.

They also offer a full explanation of their counting methods, with some interesting quotes:

• “we can’t rely on ISBNs alone is that ever since they became an accepted standard, they have been used in non-standard ways. They have sometimes been assigned to multiple books: we’ve seen anywhere from two to 1,500 books assigned the same ISBN.”
• “We trust OCLC and LCCN number similarity slightly less, both because of the inconsistencies noted above and because these numbers do not have checksums, so catalogers have a tendency to mistype

Introduction: Citizen Lawmaking Online

Citizen lawmaking seems ideally suited to today’s Web. Government social media and online deliberation resources, coupled with widespread access to broadband in many nations, and much improved Internet access to laws, combine to furnish citizens with abundant means for participating in the creation of laws online. The category of information and communication technologies (ICTs) that enable online citizen involvement in lawmaking has many names, including eConsultation, eDemocracy, eParliament, eParticipation, eRulemaking, and Dr. Beth Simone Noveck’s “collaborative democracy”.

In the U.S., citizens in many jurisdictions already have the . . . [more]