The Winnipeg Free Press is reporting that Manitoba’s chief provincial court judge wants to allow live broadcasts of court decisions.

In an article entitled Live broadcasts urged for courtroom decisions, the daily writes that Ray Wyant, a former journalist and the current chief provincial court judge “is planning on meeting with every provincial court judge in the near future to discuss his proposal further and will likely table a policy that will give each judge the discretion to allow audio and possibly videotaping of court cases”.

Wyant originally wanted to start allowing live coverage next week of his sentencing . . . [more]

According to the Times Online, the United Kingdom’s new Supreme Court will allow cameras to broadcast hearings. The new high court is set to open in 2009. It is being created under the Constitutional Reform Act 2005.

“The move could see some of Britain’s most high-profile appeals being shown on television. Such appeals have included the legality of detaining terror suspects without trial, whether the deaths of six Iraqis at the hands of British soldiers was covered by the Human Rights Act, and the extradition of General Pinochet”.

“But Mr Straw [Justice Secterary Jack Straw] has indicated to

Following my jubilant post on Thanksgiving about all major English Canadian legal publishers now having new title RSS feeds, in her recent post Why Can’t We Be More Like Canada? UK librarian lo-fi librarian bemoaned that UK publishers are behind and have not equally taken up the call.

In response, legal publishing consultant Nick Holmes has now put together his own sample RSS feeds for Sweet & Maxwell and Jordans in an effort to urge the publishers on. He discussed the effort on his blog Binary Law in the blog post Feeding the five thousand (2) . lo-fi seems pleased . . . [more]

If IMAP’s your thing, you might be interested to know that Gmail is in the process of making it available to all who have a Gmail account. Check yours to see if the prezzie has already arrived.

If you’re not clear what IMAP is all about, pop over to the IMAP Connection for a lesson, or get the full 9 yards from Wikipedia. . . . [more]

The James Lewtas Lecture will be delivered today by David Vaver, a former colleague of mine and now Professor of Intellectual Property & IT Law, University of Oxford on the topic “Chocolate, Copyright, Confusion: Intellectual Property and the Supreme Court of Canada”

You can watch David live at 1pm EST — the link will be present on Osgoode’s home page. Or you can catch the archive, the link to which will be available in due course on Osgoode’s Conferences and Seminars page.

David Vaver is an excellent speaker — clear, insightful and witty — and I’d heartily recommend . . . [more]

I earlier commented on the blog called Precedent-The New Rules of Law and Style, as did Jordan Furlong, here.

Well, that site has now been revamped as part of the launch of a new magazine under the same name published by Law and Style Media Inc. and edited by Melissa Kluger (she was key in getting Ultra Vires, the U of Toronto law student law school paper off the ground).

I unfortunately missed the magazine launch last night since I was not feeling well. I suspect, however, the magazine will do well since it fills a gap by . . . [more]

In plenty of time for the holiday gift season, Wired Magazine has released Wired Test in PDF, free to download. There you’ll find the results of tests on an advertised “300+ New Products,” gadgets all. The fun of cruising atop our society’s excess aside, this issue of Wired has some real value, given that firms must evaluate and buy a wide range of tools, that, seen from the outside might be labelled gadgets. So you or your firm may well want to know which is the best Camcorder or DSLR camera, the best laptop or smart phone. And, yes, there . . . [more]

It’s not often we Canadians get some play on the US legal gossip queen Above the Law, so let’s congratulate McInnes Cooper’s student recruiting video for making the grade.

Law firms are in tough when it comes to online video. The quality standard expected by the average user is that of the nightly news. And the inevitable re-hash of unoriginal legal imagery is a huge block in the road – someone is *always* going to critique your choices.

So isn’t it great to see McInnes Cooper bring this out? A mix of fun & facts, and a shot . . . [more]

The Times Online is running its own Law21 column, starring Richard Susskind (OBE) and titled “The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services,” which also happens to be the title of his forthcoming book from Oxford University Press.

Susskind says of the 6 columns — “draft excerpts” from his book:

This is neither a lawyer-bashing polemic nor a gratuitous assault on the legal profession. Instead, it is a collection of predictions and observations about a generally honourable profession that is, I argue, on the brink of fundamental transformation.

Much of what he says in his . . . [more]

One area in which the new ways of communicating and collaborating that are discussed so often at this site are coming to the fore is in labour relations. Social networking sites are proving to be a valuable tool for labour union to bring a group of people together in a common cause.

In a widely-reported event last month, IBM workers in Italy wanted to stage a protest over a performance bonus they had not received. They decided to hold the protest in Second Life; IBM has long been a business leader in the virtual world. Protestors from around the (real) . . . [more]

The rejuvenated ABA Journal recently conducted an 800-lawyer survey, the results of which appeared in the October 2007 issue and on the Journal’s website. Some of the findings say a lot without having to say much at all. Consider the subtexts within respondents’ level of agreement with the following statements:

“I find the practice of law to be intellectually stimulating” — 81%
“I am satisfied with my career” — 55%

“I am satisfied with my career”
– Public-sector lawyers — 68%
– Big-firm lawyers — 44%

“I feel that my firm or organization values my contribution”
– White . . . [more]

The Future of Things has an update on the progress of electronic paper. The article is an interview with “the father of e-paper” Nick Sheridon, and includes some history, notes on current applications (including sony’s e-reader), and speculations about 2012, when he expects to see e-paper in widespread use.

The main advantage of e-paper, of course, would be the ease of editing. It might be especially useful for labeling foods and drugs, for instance.

via Stephen’s Lighthouse . . . [more]