Like other press barons one could name, Steve Brill was always somewhat larger than life – founding the American Lawyer, building the first online legal community, Counsel Connect and launching a cable channel dedicated to trials – Court TV. All this tooks guts and vision. Steve could be a pain, but he was always an interesting painMuch like the prime defendant in the current Hollinger trial in Chicago.

Now Court TV is no more:

Court TV is changing its name, look and logo as part of a network overhaul planned for later this year.

The network, acquired by

When did a Canadian judge say:

It is every day’s business of the Courts to try questions of foreign law

2007
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Bonus prize if you can Name That Judge . . . [more]

I know, I know, Spring refuses to show up properly, the recent vacation is as if it never were, we’ve lost an hour of sleep, and yet work keeps coming in the door faster than it leaves. I can’t offer much solace — too grumpy myself, maybe. But if, and I repeat if, a change is as good as a rest, take a plunge into a whackload of information and knowledge having nothing to do with law.

Dr. James B. Calvert is Associate Professor Emeritus of Engineering, University of Denver, and the author of a set of web pages that . . . [more]

Tired, Sore, Headache Originally uploaded to Flickr by Matt Brett.

It’s been a rough week all around. I thought I would be okay with this new-fangled early Daylight Saving Time change, but I’m not. I’m not even talking about all the problems getting all the computers, machines and gadgets on the right time. I can deal with that. It’s the actual, physical, living the change at this time of year that I have a problem with. The first day was okay, but since then the mere one hour change has disrupted my sleep habits completely, so I am walking . . . [more]

All of you Orwell fans out there (ok me) can rest a bit easier as Google has announced new privacy measures that will make it more difficult to connect the identity of searchers with the searches they are doing. Announced on Google’s official Blog on 3/14/2007 and, ironically, reported by Yahoo News.

Google Log Retention FAQ

Also, Examiner.com . . . [more]

For the hardcore tekkies among us there’s Techmeme, a scraping together of a lot of tech blogs to bring you the stories that might otherwise cost you a dozen or more separate RSS feeds. It offers some business stuff (“Why Cisco bought WebEX”), some strong opinion (“RIP Twitter”), some tech news, wacky and not (“Bracelet Phone”), and some advice (“16 Ways the Media can use Blogs”). If nothing else it will lead you to sources you might not find otherwise, and then you can practice filtering and combining your own tech feed. . . . [more]

A recent InformationWeek article “Most Business Tech Pros Wary About Web 2.0 Tools in Business” (February 24th) discusses the results of a research survey of 250 business tech professionals’ thoughts about the applicability of various Web 2.0 tools in their workplaces. The survey revealed that these tech professionals are either hesitant or skeptical about blogs, wikis, etc., or they are enthusiastic but hesitant to adopt them.

The tech pros surveyed identified several major challenges to introducing Web 2.0 tools in their workplaces:
-security
-lack of expertise
-integration with legacy technologies
-difficulty proving return on investment

Other highlights of . . . [more]

Just a follow up to Simon F’s posting from August 16th on the Institute of Legal Information Theory and Techniques (ittig); when I was browsing Worldlii today I discovered it has been added to their family of national legal databases. It doesn’t seem to fit the with the structure of the other national databases, and is somewhat difficult to navigate in either English or Italian. I wonder if there is a point at which worldlii has too much information and stops being functional? . . . [more]

For a while now, Google has been testing out various ideas in a search engine of theirs called SearchMash. It’s got a lot of AJAX, so it’s quick to respond, and the funcitions on offer now seem quite practical. It might be worth making this your next-to-everyday Google.

Some of the features it offers:

• click on a domain name in the results and see only results from that domain — which, for example, in a search for “slaw,” brings up a list of all of our posts and pages, some 3500 results;
• use the “hide details” button and all of

There’s a brief article in the Globe online reporting that the partners at the significant Toronto law firm Goodman & Carr LLP voted last night to wind down the partnership over the next few months. . . . [more]

There’s an interesting article in the NY Times Magazine about the potential impact of neuroscience on criminal law and the whole business of intention. “The Brain on the Stand,” by Jeffrey Rosen, explains that in capital cases

[l]awyers routinely order scans of convicted defendants’ brains and argue that a neurological impairment prevented them from controlling themselves. The prosecution counters that the evidence shouldn’t be admitted, but under the relaxed standards for mitigating evidence during capital sentencing, it usually is.

Which is pretty much a matter of bad cases making hard law, because the notion of “intention” is and . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada has just released a Special Edition of its Bulletin of Proceedings containing a statistical overview of activities for the period 1996-2006.

It is broken down into the following sections:

• Cases Filed: “The total of 513 cases filed in the year 2006 is approximately 15% lower than the annual average number of cases filed over the last decade”.
• Applications for Leave Submitted: “number of leave applications submitted to panels of the Court for decision, the number of leave applications granted and the percentage granted of the total submitted… In 2006, there were 506