Delighted to see (thanks to Ron Friedmann’s blog ) that Steven’s smiling faceSee page 33 is found on an excellent piece in Jordan Furlong’s CBA National assessing the state of knowledge management in Canada as applied to law firmsI leave to one side my own work on this topic.

Ron observes that with trends in US law firms away from structured knowledge management, Canada may offer more interesting developments than south of the border.

But Slawers can also see what Steven Matthews, Knowledge Services Director, Clark Wilson,Vancouver, looks like in person. . . . [more]

With all of the discussion earlier about II and Lawyers; I was half expecting to hear someone use the phrase … “can’t we all get along?” I deliberated on whether to enter this debate; but, after having gathered my thoughts here goes… First, to think that this is a problem of IT and lawyers is to look at this through too narrow a lens. Indeed, there is discussion throughout management and IT literature that is looking at the IT-Business problem. What follows here is one person’s view of the problem and some suggestions for dealing with it.

Canada has a new Minister of Justice, The. Hon. Vic Toews, and I thought that it might be interesting to look at some of his previous work.

He has two entries in the Index to Canadian Legal Literature:

– “The Charter [Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms] in Canadian society.” (2003) 19 Sup. Ct. L. Rev. (2d) 345-350

– Manitoba, Department of Justice, Report on Manitoba public consultations on the Young Offenders Act. (Winnipeg: Manitoba Justice, 1999)

And has appeared 7 times before the SCC:

– R. v. Butler [1992] 1 S.C.R. 452

– Reference Re Canada Assistance . . . [more]

In my post from January 20th called “The Elusive Search for Historical Canadian Stock Trading Prices” I mentioned that I didn’t know if the trading data included on Lexis Nexis would be included in a subscriber’s flat rate or not. Helen Katz kindly spoke with Lexis Nexis and found out that, if you speak with them before the end of February (i.e. this month) you should be able to include it in your flat rate.

I wanted to confirm this directly with Lexis Nexis Canada . I spoke with Christine Burchert, Sales Manager for Ontario. This is . . . [more]

Take a look at Google China, if only to be like the bear who went over the mountain to see what it could see. The URL is simply http://www.google.cn, and it will accept English queries. Try “tienamin” and the variants “tiananmen” and “tianamen,” because it seems likely that China will not want to let viewers find out about the massacre in 1989 — provided that it’s worried about English.

Then compare (English) results with those that google.com throws up. I followed some of the Google China links, and found that, because of my browser history function I guess, that . . . [more]

When someone asks you for the Wagon Mound (1) Case, just where do you look? At the BC Courthouse Library Society’s Popular Case Name Table, of course!

Someone asked me to get a copy of the Wagon Mound 1 case. That was all they had for me. No proper case name. No citation. “Funny name for a case,” I thought, after I had them repeat it to me about three times. So I did a Google search and I stumbled upon this BC resource that lists the popular names of cases and their corresponding proper names and citations, . . . [more]

The Wall Street Journal has a law blog. It's apparently about law, business and the business of law, written mostly by WSJ writer Peter Lattman. Here's the link: http://blogs.wsj.com/law.

I was wondering (offline) with Michael and Connie, how many Slawyers we have attending the Canadian Association of Law Libraries conference in early May?

And, if there are a significant number of us, what kind of interest there would be for a Slaw Blogger Meetup? (for Contributors & Readers both, of course.)

Ladies & Gentlemen, please chime in… :-) . . . [more]

Simon (C’s) recent posting recalling the work of the Canadian Law Information Council (CLIC) set me thinking. None of the CLIC material is now online, I think, so I searched through the UVic law library catalogue. The work of CLIC on behalf of Canadian law and legal information and technology was truly astounding. It is worth bearing a look or a relook.

I don’t mean this to merely duplicative of Simon, nor to remiss fondly about the old days, but to revisit one of CLIC’s innovations that truly useful, and which could be reinvented in the online world. That is, . . . [more]

As I was shovelling snow on the NS Public Highways last week, (btw Connie, the best shovel is 24-in. Yukon Ergonomic Snow Pusher, lightweight, gets 2 feet of snow at once) I got to thinking about blogs, the usefulness of which is a popluar Slaw topic. So in the midst of a particularly heavy shovel full, I decided to do a little legal lit. review of traditional sources (Canadian context) and review some caselaw where Blogs are being mentioned.

It seems that Blogs have not yet made a forceful entrance in the Canadian courtroom. My fairly quick and dirty . . . [more]

With the escalation of fury we are witnessing over the publication (and re-publication) of the Danish cartoons my curiosity over Canadian blasphemy laws was aroused and I did a quick search of the CED on Westlaw. This is what results: “At common law, blasphemy and blasphemous libel consisted of the publication of contemptuous, reviling, scurrilous or ludicrous matter relating to God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, or the formularies of the Church of England. It was not blasphemy at common law to attack any religion except Christianity, and an attack on the Christian religion had to be such as tended to . . . [more]

The Canadian federal Department of Justice finally appears to be improving the currency of its online legislation, with the following formal announcement at http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/index/index.html:

Updates to Justice Laws Web page

The Department of Justice is in the process of upgrading its online ability to consolidate legislation and to provide for regular and timely updating of Acts and regulations on our public Web site. As of January 27, 2006, all Acts on this site have been updated to September 28, 2005 at a minimum and many have been updated to dates beyond this point, as will be indicated at the

. . . [more]