I found out about this title from a request by the Dean’s research assistant who asked a reference librarian if we had it in the law library print collection:

Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (2007)

The url also gives links to the table-of-contents and the summary of the reports reccomendations and findings.

There is some interesting matter in the report, but surprisingly not much specifcally on technology and new ways of learning and transmitting knowledge. . . . [more]

A couple of months ago I pointed you to a video explanation of OpenID by Simon Willison. He’s given another talk, “The Future of OpenID,” that he’s put online along with his slides, to take you further into this topic; there’s another introduction and then descriptions of all the things that can (and will) be done with it, as well as a tour of things that are still wrong with it.

Why should you take some time to learn more about OpenID — or anything, if it comes to that? Because Microsoft’s Bill Gates has weighed in on . . . [more]

I’ve been in Europe all week, and my sole access to information has been La Republicca, Corriere and 2 minutes of excruciatingly slow dial-up access. So I haven’t been able to follow Slaw as closely as I should.

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At at the Law Society’s Solo and Small Firm Conference ten days ago, my partner Gavin MacKenzie spoke as the Treasurer about the looming problem of access to legal services outside the big cities.

As he travels to meet with County Law Associations he’s learned in community after community that Ontario’s small town lawyers are an aging breed whose ranks . . . [more]

J’en ai déjà fait mention dans de précédents billets, le vol d’identité cultive frissons et peurs, et ce, comme tout récemment ce papier repris dans La Presse se faisant l’écho d’une étude de Gartner où une hausse vertigineuse du vol d’identité par Internet aurait été ressentie en 2006.

Ce type de discours ne m’intéresse pas. Quoi que! Car en allant sur le site de Gartner, nenni. Rien ne réfère à cette étude faisant état du catastrophisme de la situation, si ce n’est un papier du 27 février, de «4 pages» coûtant 95$ s’intitulant «The Truth Behind Identity . . . [more]

Michel-Adrien Sheppard, sometime Slawyer and full-time Library Boy, mentioned JurisPedia here a number of months ago, but didn’t talk about it then. I thought I’d take a look and see how things were going in this law wiki venture.

Jurispedia, which aims to construct an encyclopedia of worldwide law, looks to be an initiative of 5 institutions:

1. l’Équipe de Recherche Informatique et Droit, Faculty of Law of the University of Montpellier I in France,
2. the Faculty of law of the Can Tho University in Vietnam,
3. the Faculty of law of Groningen University in the Netherlands,
4. the JURIS team

How one thing leads to another in this webbed and polycentric medium…

In David Fraser’s excellent Privacy Law Blog I learn that Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner have a blog called Freakonomics, named after their book that takes an unconventional tack in the dismal science and is good reading (can’t believe that I, a product of the usual wretched micro- and macro-economics courses, said that about one of the most over-rated disciplines in the… but that’s another story). The blog looks like it’s going to be interesting.

And from that I learn that they write a column in the . . . [more]

A late and short fillip today — which got away from me (the day, I mean).

MIT is an endless source of fascination, most of which is available on the web. (I ask you: how many universities would let their students design the front page of their website — every single day??) Today I simply point you to the site of the Perceptual Science Group, which I kept reading as Perpetual Science Group, something else entirely.

Here you’ll find a music study that invites you to take part — do it, and tell them if this or that sound . . . [more]

This from Erica Anderson, TALL President and Research Librarian at the Legislative Library, Ontario:

The Legislative Assembly of Ontario website has been redesigned. It is a “soft launch” and a work in progress so you may notice some content changes, additions, or deletions. Not all of the content has been migrated yet, but it is on its way with more being added by the end of March. Specifically, the House Hansard and Committee Hansard indexes will be returning by about the end of March.

If you have any comments or questions on the new website and its content please direct

The idea of expert systems in law has been around for a number of decades at least and never seems to get much traction. The notion, drastically simplified, is that experts in an area of law analyse it into its components, arrange those components in such a way that it creates a progression of issues leading towards all possible conclusions, and then formulate questions based on this progression which can be posed to a non-expert. Because its meant to be a system, the whole thing has to be set up so that it can operate without the need for (any? . . . [more]

Statistics Canada just released the annual report Legal Aid in Canada: Resource and Caseload Statistics, 2005/2006.

Some highlights:

-Spending by Canada’s legal aid plans during 2005/2006 was up 9% from the previous year.

-Legal aid plans spent $673 million on providing services in 2005/2006, or the equivalent of $21 for every Canadian. Before 2005/2006, this spending had been stable for three years.

-Legal aid plans received 780,000 applications for assistance, an increase of 3% from the previous year.

-About 477,000 applications were approved for full legal aid service. This is up 2% from the year before.

-About 12,000 lawyers . . . [more]

Slaw’s very own Simon Fodden has an item today in The Court (Osgoode Hall Law School) that analyzes the “Authors Cited” sections of Supreme Court of Canada judgments for 2006.

Entitled What is the Supreme Court Reading?, the article states that the analysis “reveals a meagre and mundane stock of stimulation, heavy on textbooks and light on theory”.

Ouch!

Fodden adds: “I assume that the great bulk of references in decisions originate in parties’ factums and do not represent independent research by the judges”.

Blame the lawyers. Sounds good to me. Don’t want to antagonize the bench too openly, . . . [more]

The new CANLII Beta is awesome! Not sure on the interface yet, but they’ve taken a big step forward on the RSS front. Just look at that list!

My only request would be to implement search feeds prior to launch. I want to be able to monitor new cases or legislation that match keyword phrases.

Got some feedback? Send it to beta@canlii.org . . . [more]