The NY Times Book Review has a story on the weeding of chapel libraries in US prisons.

The chaplains were directed by the Bureau of Prisons to clear the shelves of any books, tapes, CDs and videos that are not on a list of approved resources… The lists are broad, but reveal eccentricities and omissions. There are nine titles by C. S. Lewis, for example, and none from the theologians Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth and Cardinal Avery Dulles, and the influential pastor Robert H. Schuller.

What they should really be doing is something like the AALL guidelines, to . . . [more]

The concept of “net neutrality” was in the news a lot earlier this year, and was the subject of a few posts at slaw.

In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission is currently working on developing new regulations for broadband internet providers. The Federal Department of Justice recently filed submissions with the FCC arguing in favour of a “non-neutral” internet where internet providers could charge content providers for faster or more reliable service.

Their position is clear: “The Department submits… that free market competition, unfettered by unnecessary governmental regulatory restraints, is the best way to foster innovation and development . . . [more]

In an article in TQ, the Globe and Mail’s quarterly biz-tech glossy insert, David Komaromi, technical services manager at Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP, talks about the new internet phone system the firm has introduced. He says,

[I]t’s the video that’s the killer app. Practising law is about communication, and video on the desktop makes communication all that more clear.

It turns out that one of the ways in which video clarifies things has to do with the fact that, in Komaromi’s words, “There’s no place to hide,” and so you have to pay attention, or appear to at least. . . . [more]

About a month ago, Simon wrote about Google News allowing people to comment on news stories linked from their news page. I rely on Google News to gather stories for me to read, and have been seeing these comments show up over the last few weeks.

Some of the comments add value to the content in the stories. For instance:

• Congressman Vito Fossella comments on a story about a bill in New York addressing the health care issues caused by toxins from the 9/11 site.
• A Princeton paleontologist comments on a story about an asteroid that may have contributed

Microsoft launched a service for automatic translation called Windows Live Translator. The site lets you translate a text limited to 500 words or a web page from English to German, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Russian.

Microsoft uses Systran to produce most of the translations, but also offers an option to translate computer-related texts using a machine translation system developed in-house. Microsoft’s translation technology has been used to translate technical materials, including MSDN Library.
Google Operating System

We’ve talked a bit about French-English translation here on Slaw, for obvious reasons, so I thought you’d be . . . [more]

I think September is the true New Year’s. Campus, the city, and life in general feel completely different than they did a few short weeks ago when Simon F. and I chatted about starting a legal education and technology column in Slaw. Since that chat the topic has been on my mind, and as I found myself back in class beginning my second year of the law program at Queen’s, I’ve been noticing that the intersection of these two concepts is a rather large, intriguing, and often humorous one. And that is why I’m kicking off this series with a . . . [more]

The question is now being asked in Western Africa. The International Development Research Center of Canada (IDRC) has engaged in an assessment of the outcome of free access to law initiatives in four African countries – Burkina Faso, Niger, Senegal and Togo.

The evaluation will be focused more specifically on the impact of free circulation of legal information on the competence of lawyers.

In all those countries, where access to legal information is limited, if any, the local Bar Associations supported by the IDRC are involved in free access to law projects. In two of the countries, free . . . [more]

Some of you may have encountered this ugly message instead of the Slaw you were expecting:

It seems that we’re a victim of our own growth in popularity, and the more readers we have who are commenting or otherwise asking Slaw’s php scripts to do their thing, the more we encroach on cpu limits we didn’t even know we had. I took steps last week, when this began to happen in earnest, to upgrade us to a server at our host, Bluehost, that gives us something like three times the cpu capacity. We’re on their list and I’ve been bugging . . . [more]

Maybe this will help us all. TALL has started a Quicklaw tips wiki. Considering the recent posts about the level of service provided by publishers, and the availability of one jurisdiction’s law in another, I wonder if I’m alone in wondering why it remains so difficult to find a copy of Donoghue v Stevenson in QL. We all know about the case, and some of the excellent resources available online, and in video. However, as a prelude to our annual eFair, where we are asking students to complete their prize ballots by finding information related to the . . . [more]

A few links to the 2007 survey released this morning.

It covers:

Collaboration tools
Web conference software
Wikis and extranets
Instant messaging
Wireless devices
VoIP
Vista
Automating Processes
Tech Support

Don’t overlook the detailed data either at
CIO’s Pleased as Punch

Communications Chart

Software Chart

Financial Stats Chart

. . . [more]

Catching up on my reading of The Hindu, a piece on Legal Knowledge Outsourcing should be read by everyone.

Even if you discount the ambitions massively, the challenge is still quite amazing.

A few quotes:

The majority of legal services in the West can and should be sent offshore, says Mr Russell Smith, President and Chairman, SDD Global Solutions Pvt Ltd, a Mysore-based legal services KPO (knowledge process off-shoring). “And we are talking about services that now fetch a price tag of $250 billion per year and growing”

. ((Mr Smith, a Columbia Law School graduate and former partner . . . [more]

At Saturday’s Annual Meeting of the College of Law Practice Management in Philadelphia, Susan Raridon Lambreth lifted the curtain on the first global survey of law firm associates and their attitudes and aspirations. It builds on the UK survey from earlier this year, but reaches far deeper – 20,000 lawyers worldwide.

As soon as Hildebrandt and Thomson release the results, I’ll flick the links.

But one teaser is that it upends conventional wisdom about associate dissatisfaction.

Watch this space. . . . [more]