Yesterday’s Sunday Times ((From the Murdoch empire in London, not the NYC one)) was reporting on Lexis’s parent’s plans for the legal market – and they want to focus far beyond the mere $18 billion plus market for legal research and associated applications in 2004.

They report that the average lawyer is going to spend almost their morning using Lexis products:

“Two or three years ago, Lexis Nexis was a legal research company, full stop,” Sir Crispin Davis said. “By and large, a typical lawyer would spend half an hour a day using our products. Now it is more like . . . [more]

Law is increasingly a peripatetic (no, not “very pathetic”) profession. ((So much for video conferencing and other virtual get-togethers; f2f (^`^ en français?) just won’t go away, it would seem.)) And those of our members who are more mobile may have wondered whether it was just advancing age or that flying was indeed getting even more difficult lately — hard as that may be to imagine. Well StatsCan has just released November’s plane-spotting score, and the fault is in the stars and not ourselves:

The 42 Canadian airports with NAV CANADA air traffic control towers reported 388,559 aircraft take-offs

The Canadian Labour Congress announced a “Victory for Workers” on Friday:

Workers finally have new law to protect their wages

OTTAWA – Canadian workers have finally won new legal protection for their wages and their pension contributions when their employer goes bankrupt. Bill C-12, a series of amendments to existing insolvency and wage protection laws, was approved by the Senate last night and received Royal Assent today. This was accomplished after an intensive three-year campaign by the Canadian Labour Congress and its affiliated unions to change bankruptcy laws that unfairly put workers last in line to get paid.

It seems . . . [more]

RSS, as we know, means Really Simple Syndication. 

Let’s imagine that KISS means Keeping It Simple Syndication.

An adequate use of RSS combined with KISS may help to reduce RISK (Rats, I Should Know) problems and this feeling:

Law.com’s Legal Technology page has a nice overview of the use of RSS to keep current but the focus is on keeping up-to-date on matters that might specifically affect one’s clients, or potential clients. The article is written by the David Whelan of Osgoode Hall’s Great Library.

Previous posts, here, have . . . [more]

If you’ve ever ordered an item from Amazon, you know that every time you log back in to the website, you’re greeted with a list of recommended books, CDs and DVDs. Amazon compiles this list based both on your product purchases and the pages you’ve recently browsed. Essentially, Amazon alters its understanding of and relationship with you every time you use its services — whether browsing, adding items to your shopping cart, or actually purchasing something. Every point of contact between you and Amazon is another data point that redefines the relationship’s fluid dynamic.

There’s a lesson here for lawyers, . . . [more]

As most Slaw readers will know, there’s an important case coming up before the United States Supreme Court requiring the justices to interpret the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution for the first time since the 18 paragraph decision in United States v. Miller 307 U.S. 174 (1939). The new case, District of Columbia v. Heller, No. 07-290, will challenge a trio of D.C. gun control laws.

The poor Second Amendment has been the butt of a lot of tortured analysis, part of the fascinating (and to my mind somewhat bizarre) attempt of American judges and lawyers to . . . [more]

• Newspaper Clipping Generator
• Cliché Finder
• Bullshit Generator
• Futuristic Cereal Name Generator
• Band Name Generator

And just so it’s a true Slaw Six…

• The Ninja Text Generator

. . . [more]

I’m sure that some Slawers know what to expect from my post this week, and even though I am loathe to be predictable, I am going to oblige. The Mitchell Report on the use of steroids and other performance enhancing substances in baseball, was published yesterday with much fanfare. It was a fairly damning indictment of the past 15 – 20 years of Major League Baseball [MLB] and comes on the heels of Barry Bonds breaking baseball’s most hallowed record, under a cloud of suspicion, this past summer.

The report was compiled by former United States SenatorGeorge Mitchell at . . . [more]

Like some giant ocean liner or oil tanker, Google is slowly turning the ship to a different heading, and now it’s watch out Wikipedia and all the little “–pedias” that are bobbing on the net. The Official Google Blog reveals that the big plex isn’t content with serving you up your own data but plans to write its own — or, rather, have you write it for them in good Web 2.0 fashion — and deliver it when you search. The project, now in private beta (i just love writing that bit of insider jargon), is called knol, which . . . [more]

The impressive provider of online apps, Zoho, is coming out this weekend with an updated version of its presentation software, Zoho Show 2.0. (Sounds appropriately seasonal, doesn’t it: zoho show two oh, ho ho?). If you’re looking for an alternative to heavy and costly PowerPoint, this might be it, particularly as your presentation is going to live on someone else’s server and be there (more than likely) when you’re fumbling around for the memory stick that has your deck on it.

Its features are listed on the Zoho blog, and there’s a video to talk you through them. . . . [more]

Today’s Globe and Mail article “Ottawa, don’t pull the plug on superb website” is about the shutting down of the Canadian Health Network, an online source of reliable Canadian health information. The strength of this article is its comparison of the Canadian Health Network with the new Healthy Canadians website. Interesting. . . . [more]

Sounds impressive, no?

I saw one of the millenium’s trends in person: fewer live bodies at smaller symposia with more people attending electronically.

I spoke earlier today at a Law Society of Upper Canada CLE symposium. I’m told there were about 140 registrants. Only about 70 were there in person. The other 70 were elsewhere catching the webcast. I was able to get a “feel” for how the live audience was responding to the audibility, pace and content of the lecture. I haven’t the faintest idea about the web audience. I’m assuming things were fine or those at the production . . . [more]