Not being a practicing lawyer, I’ve required more than a moment to clue into the depth and difficulty of the problems facing law firms and their clients as a result of all of the current forms of electronic data, ranging from emails to material on web sites, or blogs for that matter.

As I’m sure the rest of Slaw knows, these forms are more evanescent than good old paper, and are more subject to easy… emendation, shall we say, or to unintended publication. These foibles can prove troublesome within lawsuits, for example, when documents must be produced or otherwise made . . . [more]

When teaching students or lawyers about legal research on the Internet, I usually try to also explain the concept of the “deep” or “invisible” web – the large number of webpages that are not indexed by major search engines. One of the more complete online articles on the topic of finding this sort of material is by Marcus P. Zillman on LLRX.com. His article is entitled “Deep Web Research 2005” and can be found here. The Wikipedia entry on “deep web” can be found here. . . . [more]

Just a quick note to show Jack Vinson’s list of KM Bloggers.

Vinson built his list using Blogdigger Groups, which includes both opml export capabilities, and an aggregated feed. . . . [more]

The 2006 Bloggies (more formally known as the 5th Annual Weblog Awards) are taking blog nominations up until 10 pm EST tonight.

These are the categories: . . . [more]

Further to my previous post on this, I managed to find out more about Project Alouette – Ted is right, it is part of the Open Canada Digitization Initiative, the name Project Alouette was just announced before Christmas. There is no website as yet.

This is a text of the press release from CARL from November:

COMMUNIQUÉ

CANADA’S RESEARCH LIBRARIES LAUNCH THE OPEN CANADA DIGITIZATION INITIATIVE

OTTAWA – November 17, 2005. Leaders of Canada’s major research libraries held a national summit at Emerald Lake, BC, November 1-3, 2005. The summit outlined plans for online access to Canada’s recorded heritage. At . . . [more]

I look at UK web-sites from time to time to see if they have made any progress with putting up consolidated versions of legislation. A year or so back I found information about a government project that was doing just that, but all information about it seems to have vanished – or at least I cannot find it. HMSO Online seems to have evolved into a new Office of Public Sector Information (with the wonderful acronym OPSI) and this site gives the text of original Acts, but they don’t seem to incorporate amendments. Perhaps one of SLAW’s UK readers can . . . [more]

We’re not in Kansas any more.

And Google clearly isn’t just a search engine company.

Today they announced a smorgasbørd of software in the form of the Google Pack.

The interesting one is the Norton Antivirus 2005 Special EditionNorton AntiVirus Special Edition does not include the following features: Norton™ Internet Worm Protection, which stops certain damaging Internet worms at their attempted point of entry; and extended threat protection, which detects spyware and certain non-virus threats such as adware and keystroke logging programs

You’ll need Windows XP with Administrator privileges and either Firefox 1.0+ or Internet Explorer 6.0+

Here is . . . [more]

Tomorrow the Education Institute, a partnership of a number of Canadian library associations, will be conducting a teleseminar on RSS entitled “The Ins and Outs of RSS: Really Simple Solutions for Really Simple Syndication” being presented by Geoffrey Harder.

Key topics:

• Finding RSS feeds
• How to find and use an on-line or desktop news aggregator
• How to create feeds

While the intended audience is library staff, I’ve had a look at my advance copy of the presentation screens and think this would be of interest to a wider audience.

It’s not too late to sign up . . . [more]

Kudos to Michel-Adrien Sheppard for a comprehensive pathfinder for the Law on Elections. . . . [more]

Great posting from an Illinois site discussing legal research assignments that is just as relevant here.
Considering the advice is so sensible, this news needs to get wider circulation:

Here is the information that should be transferred, and so often isn’t:

* The name of the case, the identity of the party we represent, and how to bill the time;
* The issue that needs to be answered;
* The facts of the case I think are most pertinent to the issue;
* The procedural posture of the case and how the work product will be used–for a motion to . . . [more]

Readers of slaw should also be aware of a wonderful magazine that our friends in Eagan, MN put out three times a year, called Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing is a print newsletter published by West three times a year for legal research and writing instructors and law firm and law school librarians. The newsletter provides a forum for discussing the teaching of legal research and writing, focusing on research materials, tools and theories. Among the subjects frequently covered in Perspectives are trends in electronic legal research; solutions to legal research problems; and recently published legal research and . . . [more]

Up at dawn and then to read Mr. Pepys his Diary, which is a worthy account, published each day of his life and times, as observed by a witty and informed gentleman about town. And as one might expect, Mr. Pepys knows about the law of his times
A remarkably active blog, and a creative use of the technology – what I also enjoy is the erudition of the commentariat: see this example.
I can understand why The Guardian described it as one of The Ten Best Book Blogs . . . [more]