It must have been a decade ago in DC when I heard Dov Seidman tell a group of sceptical partners that he (and an adjunct group of academics, powered with technology) could seize a significant part of the market for business clients who wanted legal research.
Since then his business, LRN, has prospered, as can be seen in this press release from LRN about Dupont, which has contracted its outside legal research to Dov for the last 8 years:

A new multi-year agreement for online ethics and compliance education will extend a three-year relationship that has assisted DuPont in

. . . [more]

Following up on the post that resulted from my trip to India just before Slaw started, have a look at Tony Williams’ recent piece in Legal Week on the topic of outsourcing. Williams was Managing Partner of Clifford Chance before leaving to head up Andersen Legal – which was a casualty of Enron. His consulting firm site Jomati has some interesting perspectives on trends, generally from a European perspective. For a different take on outsourcing see http://www.jomati.com/NewFiles/cloutsourcing_nov04.pdf . . . [more]

King Harald Blåtand (Harold Bluetooth in English) was King of Denmark in the 10th century and before his untimely death in battle with his son, he united parts of present day Denmark, Norway and Sweden. It is the legacy of unification which led Bluetooth technology to be named after King Blåtand as it is a technology which enables various devices to communicate or to be united, it is hoped that Bluetooth technology will be able to unify wireless networking.

I do not profess to be an expert on the subject of Bluetooth technology, I do own a device that is . . . [more]

NYU law librarian Mirela Roznovschi is the editor of GlobalLex, an excellent, free online source of research guides for international law and the (domestic) laws of foreign countries throughout the world.

They have just published my November 2005 guide called “Researching Canadian Law“. . . . [more]

Slaw now offers email subscription. Using the text entry box in the right menu, you can obtain a daily digest of postings to Slaw, courtesy of Feedblitz. You ought to be able to unsubscribe very easily, and suspend email if you’re going to be away for a while. Feedblitz will provide you with a management link with each email and will once a month remind you of your Feedblitz password. Please let us know if for any reason this doesn’t work the way it ought. . . . [more]

1. Google Books
2. Information Week: “Pay by the Page”
3. CNET: Amazon Throws Book at Google
4. Walter Benjamin: “Illuminations on Unpacking a Library”
5. Blog Juridique: L’archivage électronique de l’histoire du droit
6. mozbot search: british library msn
7. Library and Archives Canada: Le Répertoire des projets canadiens de numérisation
8. Soquij
9. CNN: Google Base
10. Google Base
11. Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography
12. KM World Wiki
13. Connie Crosby’s Blog
14. KM World and Intranets 2005
15. KM World photos on Flickr
16. CBC Radio, The Current: Google’s digitization project [streaming media]
17. AustLII
18. Moninfo
19. LLRX: Australian Legal System
20. York University: Academic Jobs postings
21. Alan Gahtan’s Blog
22. Techdirt
23. CRN: “Murder Suspect’s Google Searches

. . . [more]

Google Books, and away we go……. . . . [more]

During all of this debate about Google Print, Amazon has been awfully quiet. But in reading the print version of Information Week (Nov 7, 2005) I came across a short article “Pay By The Page” outlining Amazon’s plans to expand its “Search Inside the Book” technology to let customers buy part of a book or read it online – for a fee.

This got my curiosity. In roaming around the web I came across references to two potential new services from Amazon, “Amazon Pages” and “Amazon Update” on a recent (Nov 3, 2005) CNET story:

Amazon’s new

. . . [more]

Two weeks ago when I’d last posted, I’d asked for replies on your use of commercial versus free online databases for legal research, with a breakdown between legislative, caselaw and legal commentary issues. My own practice is predominantly using commercial databases over free. The response I received from others on Slaw, and from some colleagues at my firm, were instructive:
*Use of commercial ($) db’s rather than free: Legislation: 50%: 4
<50%: 3
50%: 1

*Use of $ db’s rather than free: Caselaw: 50%: 7
<50%: 0
50%: 1

*Use of $ db’s rather than free: Legal commentary: 50%: 7 . . . [more]

Books do furnish a room. Books map the brain of a reader. Our choice of books and our arrangement of them have meanings that tell stories and reveal patterns of thought.

Think about Walter Benjamin’s lovely essay in Illuminations on Unpacking a Library and how his books establish patterns and relationships. (If you have an Amazon account, look inside the book “Illuminations” at page 59.)

In the law I remember at the start of my career working with lawyers who had the luxury of extensive shelves, the curiosity to acquire books and the possibility posed by cheaper prices than today . . . [more]

Documentation juridique. ServiceDoc Info - Blog Juridique - L'archivage électronique de l'histoire du droit:L’archivage électronique de l’histoire du droitlundi 14 novembre 2005Bonne idée et bonne pioche que Simon Chester a produit pour le compte du site collaboratif canadien slaw.ca.A partir de l’annonce de l’accord British Library / MSN largement relayé dans les médias, il constate avec anxiété que les ouvrages juridiques sont peu ou mal représentés dans l’offre actuellement disponibles.Mais il en profite pour lancer une sonde systématique sur les contenus en testant sur quelques grands classiques. Bonne occasion de repérer des sources ou des titres indispensables.De fait, il n’en trouve pas beaucoup, mais il constate avec amusement que la montée des néo-conservateurs rendaient certains ouvrages plus disponibles (“Funnily it was the rise of the neocons that make some of this material available”)Ce qui est fort intéressant dans ce post, c’est qu’il a déjà obtenu une réponse très détaillée proposant de nombreux liens très riches sur les projets de numérisation du droit canadien, dont notamment le répertoire des projets canadiens de numérisationVoir en ligne :Slaw, A Digital Archive of Legal History ?

The biggest story in Canadian legal research and information tools all year and Slaw’s sitting on the sidelines. Shame on us for being so passive.

There’s a battle being waged over the largest official law reports in the country, the pioneer in the delivery of online legal information to the legal profession, now threatened with closure by a government that thinks that there’s no need for law reports with court websites and that editing and headnotes are relics from a quaint distant time.

I’m talking about the Charest government’s plans to close Soquij – even though it’s financially self-sustaining and . . . [more]