I have a Friday admission, I’m going to cheat on my Slaw post. This has been the first week of the new school year at the law school, and yes I have been busy. But I want to cheat because I found this post from Simon C. to be especially informative last year and I think it bears repeating. This is Simon’s post from last September on First Year law students from the Millennial generation. Up until that point last year I had sensed something different about the first year law students but couldn’t quite put my finger on . . . [more]

Never let it be said that your intrepid reporter doesn’t dig deep enough for the story — even if, as in this case, he digs by proxy. What you are looking at (click on the image to see a larger version) is the drainage system that lies somewhere beneath the Supreme Court of Canada. This photo and many others of drains elsewhere beneath this fair land are the work of Andrew Emond and are gathered together in a subset, Underground, of his site Worksongs.

And just in case you think that Mr. Emond has a unique interest, I’m . . . [more]

The Washington Post reports in the Sept. 7/07 article Judge Invalidates Patriot Act Provisions that a judge has declared portions of the U.S. Patriot Act to be unconstitutional: . . . [more]

The Ontario Court of Appeal’s first webcast is taking place right now (12:50pm EDT). You can see the argument in the case of Frohlick, Melanie et al. v. Pinkerton Canada Ltd. et al. by clicking here, and agreeing to abide by certain terms. At the moment there doesn’t appear to be any provision for archiving and streaming videos of hearings. . . . [more]

House of Butter had a posting on Wednesday conveying news from the University of Notre Dame Australia blog here that access to the Quicklaw database was no longer to be available to clients outside of Canada. Access to the materials was to continue to be available through LexisNexisAU and Lexis.com.

I assume the reference is to old Quicklaw.

I have been curious to know, at a relatively technical level if possible, how all of the various LexisNexises will be designed to interact with one another (if at all) and with Lexis.com (probably not). When the new Quicklaw was unveiled, it . . . [more]

To complement our current column by Kelly Friedman on E-Discovery, I thought I’d point folks to a primer on that topic by NASCIO (National Association of State CIO’s), “Seek and Ye Shall Find? State CIOs Must Prepare Now for E-Discovery” [PDF]. The brief closes with this observation:

Since e-discovery efforts hold promise for serving as a strong motivating force for state records management and digital preservation initiatives, NASCIO will address in a forthcoming Research Brief ways in which State CIOs can start and move forward records management and digital preservation initiatives while improving the states’ ability to deal with e-discovery

Here’s a link passed on by Rich in our library to an article at TechCrunch describing a new eBook service from Amazon and Google. It is meant to be delivered on a new piece of hardware called ‘kindle.’ As one reader notes, a bad choice for any book-related product, but perhaps it is meant to be a book killer.

As an interesting aside, see the second comment on the article which must be astroturf. Further into the comments there are some worthwhile thoughts, especially #8. . . . [more]

Only USD100 less than the real thing. And unburdened of any ability to transmit voice.

Apple’s new iPod touch. . . . [more]

The Bootstrapper blog has a list of 100 free products and services available on the Internet for poor entrepreneurs starting and running businesses. The list features all types of handy tools ranging from productivity software, office software, and accounting software. It also highlights free resources related to networking, communication, print and web design, marketing and sales, and customer service and relations. Best of all, it points to sites that offer free samples of trade magazines, packaging and mailing materials, coffee, coffee mugs, paper, post-its, postage, pens, and more!

I can see poor students loving this list too. Pass it on. . . . [more]

That is the question asked in an article published last week in the Legal Times.

It provides an overview of the increasing use of the legal blogosphere by tenured law professors to pursue legal scholarship:

“If you are looking for the future of legal scholarship, chances are that you may find it not in a treatise or the traditional law review but in a different form, profoundly influenced by the blogosphere (…) Who are the bloggers? The uninitiated might think they would be young professors, those who have grown up with the Internet and are comfortable with self-publication in

The Online Education Database came up with a method to determine who the top library bloggers are.

The methodology took into account various measures such as Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati Authority, and number of Bloglines subscribers.

These contests are always a bit “iffy” (see post questioning some of the criteria) but what the heck? Let’s pat ourselves on the back.

5 blogs featuring law librarians (including 2 Canucks who are Slawyers!) made the top 25 list:

• Law Librarian Blog (5th)
• Slaw contributor Vancouver Law Librarian Blog (17th)
• Slaw contributor Connie Crosby of Toronto (20th)
• The Handheld Librarian

Everyone should have a look at the latest issue of the American Bar Association Journal – Law in the Age of Terror

. . . [more]