A short follow-up to a previous Slaw post on e- passports and privacy. Although there is no exact date, the Canadian government has announced that they will finally begin issuing the long awaited ePassports by the end of 2012.

The e-passport will now be valid for a period of 10 years and contain a data chip inside it that can be read electronically to provide border officials with the bearer’s information, holographic images and a hidden photo of the bearer that can only be viewed under ultraviolet light. Public ePassport readers will be installed in Passport Canada’s 34 . . . [more]

The Federal/Provincial/Territorial Heads of Prosecutions Committee today released its new report on wrongful convictions entitled The Path to Justice: Preventing Wrongful Convictions.

It was written by a committee of senior prosecutors and police officers and is follow-up to a 2005 report entitled “Prevention of Miscarriages of Justice”:

“The format of this update mirrors the original report: it provides a summary of developments in the law and reports on efforts to implement the 2005 recommendations. Those recommendations are re-examined in light of events over the past six years and, where appropriate, modifications are suggested. It also highlights international developments since

. . . [more]

Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell have an excellent piece in Law Practice Today on 10 non-marketing uses of social media; very basic items such as ‘reconnecting’, or ‘learning a new subject matter’. It’s well worth a look.

One recurring thought that hit me as I read it, though, was that for each and every suggestion (whether intended or not) there was excellent marketing value being delivered. Marketing should never be considered simply running around flogging articles, or speaking like we’re reading from an advertising script. If those are the only activities someone takes part in online, you might . . . [more]

Mirela and her staff at NYU have kindly uploaded my updates to my Researching Canadian Law Guide on their GlobaLex website.

Updated guides have also been added for Bhutan, Latin America, Kenya and Sweden.

I regularly use these foreign law guides (along with the international law guides) when doing international and foreign legal research. . . . [more]

Site news for those who read Slaw only via RSS or email

1. Comment Watch:

In the last week there were (once again, exactly!) 33 comments. You might be particularly interested in these:

• (Law) School’s in again, so it’s not surprising there were some meaty comments on Ted Tjaden’s post on “Legal Research and Writing Skills in Law School”

You can subscribe to the comments on Slaw either as a separate matter (RSS, email) or as part of a subscription combining posts and comments (RSS, email).

2. SlawTips

This week’s tips on SlawTips are: . . . [more]

If you’ve done a CanLII search in the last few days, you’ll have noticed that they’ve introduced contextual snippets into the search results. The searched for term is highlighted and shown with some surrounding text, apparently in a number, if not all, of the instances in which the term appears in the relevant document. The graphic below illustrates: . . . [more]

Once again Rich McCue has published the results of his annual survey of incoming law students at the University of Victoria. His executive summary of the results is as follows:

• 84% of incoming law students own “Smart Phones” that can browse the internet (up dramatically from 50% last year), with 42% of the total being iPhones, 13% Android and 27% Blackberry’s.
• 19% of students own tablet devices or ebook readers.
• 98% of students own laptops, and 16% own both a laptop and a desktop computer.
• 50% of student laptops are Mac’s, up from 44% last year.
• The average laptop price

. . . [more]

In the age of social media like Facebook and Twitter, school administrators are asking whether such electronic communication is appropriate between students and teachers. They are wondering where boundaries for such communication should be placed. Many school boards are choosing a strict path, forbidding or restricting any communication via social media between students and teachers.

[ français / English ]

Trop de gens se désolent du manque de conscience citoyenne de certains de nos jeunes, du manque d’implication de nos concitoyens dans les affaires publiques, de la lassitude et de l’incompréhension généralisée face au fonctionnement de nos institutions. Il me semble que nous faisons face à un problème croissant de citoyens qui ne comprennent pas notre système et son fonctionnement.

Cependant, et trop souvent dans le travail que nous faisons chez Éducaloi, certains membres du public voient d’un mauvais œil que nous recevons des fonds des gouvernements dans notre travail… Comme si le fait que . . . [more]

Ted Tjaden’s post today on “Legal Research and Writing Skills in Law School” could not have been more timely for me and my colleagues at the Bora Laskin Law Library.

For the first time that anyone here can remember (*however, see comment 3 below), the UofT Faculty of Law is offering a stand-alone mandatory legal research and writing class for its incoming first year class. It is a 10 week programme of hour-long classes that attempt to address many of the challenges that Ted outlines. This programme was long in the making and was driven by the Law . . . [more]

Although I am reluctant to merely “re-post” a link to today’s “What’s New in Legal KM?” post from Above and Beyond KM – especially since many of you likely already follow Mary’s blog – she provides a great overview of the ILTA-KM sessions, especially for those of us who were not there. There is a lot to mull over in this post and likely hours of useful reading if one were to click through all of the links she has provided. . . . [more]

Next week I will have the opportunity to join with a number of colleagues on a panel to discuss with law school students the importance of legal research and writing, largely in anticipation of them becoming lawyers on graduation and needing to have certain skills in order to excel in their profession (and I think it is great that this law school is making this kind of session available to students).

One of the questions put to the panel in advance of the session was: “What kind of legal research skills should law school students be highly proficient in by . . . [more]