A few days ago we mentioned Soulette Gray’s proposal for another Legal Information Institute.

The Justice Department in Jamaica released a comprehensive paper on the reform of the justice system which included this recommendation:

PROPOSAL 4.30
The Task Force proposes that a Jamaica Legal Information Institute be established as an agency of the Ministry of Justice in order to increase accessibility to legal materials in a timely and effective manner. The Canadian Legal Information Institute can serve as a model for this initiative.

And a big round of applause to the Canadian Bar Association for their assistance to the . . . [more]

Canada Post have made a few changes since the last time you bought stamps. Aside from the price going up by the usual cent a year, they have updated the process for the future. Ah! There is no longer a need to supplement last year’s stamp with those one cent stamps. They now have Permanent stamps (identified with a “P” rather than a monetary value). If you buy stamps this year and the price goes up next year, you continue to use those stamps without having to add any postage. This new scheme only applies to regular postage within Canada. . . . [more]

A post in the Law.com blog summarizes a theory put forth by Ned Snow, assistant professor at the University of Arkansas School of Law, who found a 250-year-old common law tradition granting copyright protection to authors of personal correspondence and now claims that forwarding an e-mail is a violation of copyright law… Here is the paper: A Copyright Conundrum: Protecting Email Privacy.

I am of the opinion that, if no means are taken to protect the copyrights, it is not an infringement to forward the email. In fact, unless the sender uses IRM (Information Rights Management), that . . . [more]

In an apparent admission that live.com isn’t quite snapping at Google’s heels, the financial press are reporting that Microsoft has renewed discussions with Yahoo.

Yahoo’s shares are up 18% in early trading at $33.29, while Microsoft was down 1 per cent at $30.66.

Last year Yahoo turned down an offer from Microsoft to buy a stake in Yahoo’s search business.

Okay Slaw readers, is this the markets in pursuit of an easy story? When did any of you last use Yahoo to access information?

For the background see Business Week. . . . [more]

As many of you are aware (and as Connie referred to last week) the CALL/ACBD conference is set to begin this weekend in Ottawa.

In preparation for the conference I want to draw your attention the CALL/ACBD Website, and more specifically the activities of the various committees and special interest groups of CALL/ACBD. Over the past year and a half, CALL/ACBD has embarked on an ambitious redesign and rethinking of how the organization is represented on the web. As part of that process, we have tried to flatten out the structure of maintaining the website. Currently, the chairs . . . [more]

Thinking of using one of the cheap Indian legal research outsourcing firms? Does outsourcing Legal Research breach any rules of professional ethics?

While there has been no determination of this issue in Canada, at least three American bar regulators have chimed in on this subject. The answer is yes, with full disclosure and the referring firm being liable for the work outsourced. . . . [more]

This morning the Parliamentary Committee released its report on the review of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

There are 25 recommendations: . . . [more]

This study, commissioned by the Research Information Network and the Consortium of Research Libraries, looks at how researchers interact with academic libraries in the UK. Based on qualitative and quantitative data from over 2250 researchers and 300 librarians, its aim is to guide the future development of academic libraries in responding to researchers’ information needs. Key themes/issues discussed in the study:
-open access
-branding the library
-researchers’ behaviour (e.g., how they find information, their use of print information resources, etc)
-the library as a physical space/place
-availability of digital information
-researchers’ new ways of working
-communications between librarians and . . . [more]

While I’m not too entranced with some of the fluff questions, there are useful thoughts in Law.com’s profiles of three pioneers in the application of technology to knowledge management.

John Alber – and for John’s other work see KM for law firms–legal or not?

Oz Benamram who’s doing such extraordinary things with Recommind at MoFo.

And Anthony Cordeiro at Shearman and Sterling. . . . [more]

First, the serious stuff. 

A plaint and a plea –

As many (some?) of you have probably seen, there’s a distinct lack of commentary / posting / discussion on the court by people who are (1) not undergraduate law students or (2) maybe “qualifed” [bg] lawyers not hiding behind anonymity. I happen to think both trends are not helpful and not likely to draw participation from practitioners, or at least not those The Court would generally want to have.

I’ll leave it to others to comment on how those trends might affect academics.

If any of you feel you can . . . [more]

It was shown that 87 percent of the popular Wikipedia pages are in the top three result positions for Google, whereas this only the case for 72 percent of the pages if the Yahoo or MSN search engines are used. The presented data has helped to explain how search engines, and Google in particular, fuel Wikipedia’s growth and shape what is popular on Wikipedia — Google giveth, Google taketh.

Anselm Spoerri, What is Popular on Wikipedia and Why? First Monday

The implication in this article is that Google has somehow arranged for Wikipedia’s most popular material to show up in . . . [more]

Between Lawyers has been discussing virtual law firms for some time; they even have a dedicated category. On Monday, fellow blogger Ron Friedmann chimed in with his post The Office is Dead.

So, at this point in time, how realistic is the idea of an entirely virtual firm? I wouldn’t go as far as Bruce and say that ‘face-to-face’ is a fundamental necessity, but I certainly have doubts.

Conceptually, I think many of us techie-types see the day coming when office space won’t be as essential. Tool wise, we’re certainly getting closer. But the idea of taking an . . . [more]