I’ve always understood myself to be one of the most fortunate people who ever lived, no small reason for which is the fact that I’m pretty much always happy. My happiness meter seems to be set a couple of cranks higher than “C level.” But lately I’ve come to realize that this good grade in good feeling is quite widespread; indeed, it would seem that the ability to be happy most of the time is built into all human beings (else, I suppose, we might all take a hard look at each other and immediately decline to thrive). The problem, . . . [more]

This is just an alert until the other blog gets its post up, but the SCC just ruled out broad claims to ground a right to paid legal services within the Charter.

Decision is summarized here and more media commentary is available from Kirk Makin, quoting my partner David Stratas.

Notwithstanding our sympathy for Mr. Christie’s cause, we are compelled to the conclusion that the material presented does not establish the major premise on which the case depends — proof of a constitutional entitlement to legal services in relation to proceedings in courts and tribunals dealing with

Ontario to webcast some court proceedings and archive them online for 90 days.

TORONTO — In line with the recommendations of the Panel on Justice and the Media, some court proceedings will soon be webcast and provided to the media, Attorney General Michael Bryant announced today. . . . [more]

On the day of Dalhouise Law’s 2007 Convocation (if you follow this link around 1:30-2ish AST, 12:30 EST, you might see the 2007 grads marching up the street) I want to bring your attention to a Maritime case that was decided in the Nova Scotia Supreme Court on May 16. In R. v. Mersey Seafoods Ltd., 2007 NSSC 155 , Justice Warner ruled that the occupational health and safety legislation of Nova Scotia does not apply to a fishing vessel based out of Nova Scotia. In paras. 99 & 103 of the decision Justice Warner states:

“[99] Safety aboard ships,

The day before yesterday Google released Translate, a new search tool that lets you use your mother tongue to search for results in other languages, using machine translation of course. It currently works for 12 languages: English, Arabic, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Traditional), and Chinese (Simplified). The new tool is introduced in this press release from Google.

To test it out go to http://www.translate.google.com/translate_s. (Using simply http://www.translate.google.com will take you to http://www.translate.google.com/translate_t, which is Google’s plain translation page.)

In true Canadian fashion I asked it to mediate between our two official languages, using the . . . [more]

Sun Microsystems holds some patents that might be trespassed on by the folks developing open ID software. So what are they doing about it? They’re promising never to rely on the patents, thus freeing developers from the anxiety of a possible future lawsuit, and that by a particularly large gorilla. Evidently this is not the first time they’ve taken this open source route, and Simon Phipps, one of their own, has blogged about ten reasons why this approach is sometimes the best way to go and why others should adopt it.

The covenant is brief and intelligible:

Sun Microsystems irrevocably

A nice piece from the Chronicle of Higher Education from Todd Gilman a senior librarian at Yale about how to succeed as a librarian – and what habits are essential.

Granted the advice is framed with reference to faculty – but the lessons wouldn’t be lost on law firm partners either.

Openness

Responsiveness

Collaboration

Communication . . . [more]

A piece in the Library Journal paid tribute to the ever-amazing Sabrina Pacifici who spoke at last year’s ALA Conference in Montréal. It reveals the secret that many of us had wondered about: granted that she’s a mover and shaker – how does she find the time.

The answer is that sleep is a foregone option.

. . . [more]

For those of you who already love Facebook, Andrew McAfee from Harvard Business School is also raving about it. Read his praise for Facebook’s privacy and disclosure controls, its very social software features, and its many channels and platforms for interaction. He also goes on to write about Facebook’s lessons for Enterprise 2.0: its unique features can be useful for employees within a company. Allowing employees to build social networks in Facebook style may encourage them to use collaboration technologies adopted by their company. . . . [more]

From our friend lo-fi librarian:

The British and Irish Association of Law Librarians is blogging! Contributors include: Angela Donaldson, Fiona Durrant, John Franssen and James Mullan of LI Issues.

The BIALL Blog

And once on the BIALL blog, I found out that ALLICE (Association of Law Librarians in Central England) has a new blog up as well.

Congratulations to both groups, and best of luck! . . . [more]

While I’m on search engines (see my prior post about Google’s universal search), I recommend that you take a look at hakia, a new search engine still in beta. It seems to be a project that began in Turkey and that now has its base in the U.S. It’s aiming for the higher end research market, it would appear:

hakia’s capabilities will appeal to all Web searchers – especially those engaged in research on knowledge intensive subjects, such as medicine, law, finance, science, and literature.

(This is the first time I’ve ever seen law mentioned as a target discipline . . . [more]

“We want to help you find the very best answer, even if you don’t know where to look.”

Sounds like something a librarian might say. But it’s Marissa Mayer, a Google V.P., talking about that fact that Google’s many search options — news, video, images, blogs, etc. — might be confusing for people. Last week Google announced it was initiating “universal search,” the aim being to “blend content from Images, Maps, Books, Video, and News into our web results.”

Some searches throw up images or videos, others yield news reports, in addition to the usual mound of web page results. . . . [more]