For many of us, E-Discovery has become a thorn in our side as we attempt to ensure that our organizations are able to be compliant with the court’s demands – particularly when dealing with the US Courts. Perhaps it’s time to look at some of the benefits of an effective e-discovery capability within an organization.

Of course the first value that is often commented on is related to Records Management and the ability to facilitate and strengthen the Records Management goals, thereby leading to a connection with Risk Management and the Chief Risk Officer’s portfolio. This generally is successful through . . . [more]

Herewith a new feature: the Slaw Timeline for the past week. Clicking on the link or on the graphic below will take you to a PDF file that shows you the posts on Slaw this week at a glance. Best of all, the title of each post is linked to the entry, so you can catch up on any reading you missed. And if you pop all the Slaw Timeline files in a folder (or go to our Timeline Folder) you’ll be able to consult a graphic record of where we’ve been.

Let me know what you think.

. . . [more]

This is Good Friday for Christians, those at least who use the Gregorian calendar. And this post is about using that calendar and a formula in order to calculate when Good Friday and Easter should be celebrated each year. To make it more than simply topical, let me point out that this calculation has been known since the middle ages as “computus,” which seems right for those of use who use “computers.”

…And for those of us who are drawn to (I do not say “revel in”) complexity. Because at the heart of “computus” you’ll find “epact . . . [more]

LawProse, Inc. has a remarkable set of videos of interviews with eight of the justices of the United States Supreme Court — 26 videos in all. If you’re a court watcher or interested in the psychology of judges and judging — or if writing for judges is your thing — this is a feast for you. An article by Tony Mauro on the U.S. Supreme Court Monitor describes the videos as showing the

justices speaking passionately, sarcastically, angrily, into the camera as they answer questions about brief writing, oral advocacy and their own love-hate relationships with the written word.

Apparently . . . [more]

A sobering quiz at the BBC Magazine, as Parliament starts to trim back obsolete laws.

Parliament has begun moves to repeal all or part of 328 Acts which experts say are completely redundant.

Let’s see whether Slaw readers do know the law. I only got 4 right out of 10. Humiliating. . . . [more]

Very neat idea:

HP BookPrep, a new offering from HP’s IdeaLab, is a print-on-demand service where you can order a book (current or out-of-print or rare or damaged) and have it produced for you as a print-ready PDF file. . . . [more]

From the land of “Herr Doktor Doktor” via Language Log:

…Ian Thomas Baldwin, who holds a PhD from Cornell, and now serves as researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena… [had] been accused of “title abuse” by the German police under a little-known Nazi-era law that specifies that only people who hold PhDs or medical degrees from German universities are permitted to be called “Dr.” [But] persons with a PhD from an accredited US institution can now use Dr. in Germany without jeopardy. As I understand this, however, PhDs from Japan, Canada, and other

Here is a link to a summary of the attendee survey results from the ALM Legal Tech Conference in January.

Odd that it took this long to compile – at ABA Techshow in 1988, we were doing automated audience surveys, using unbelievably primitive tools, but real-time.

Here is the answer list to one question:

What topics do you see as hot technology issues in 2008?

Electronic Discovery 69%
Online Collaboration 32%
Knowledge Management 36%
Document Management 53%
Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity 29%
Data Security 48%
Other 13% . . . [more]

The most recent issue of The Lawyers Weekly features an article entitled Animal law: from the classroom to the real world? that describes the emergence of animal law as a serious field of study and perhaps legal practice:

“If the law schools are any indication, animal law is a growth area. University of Toronto has just become the seventh law school to offer animal law on its curriculum, after McGill, Dalhousie, University of Alberta, University of Ottawa, University of Victoria and Université du Québec à Montréal(…)”

“Just as actually practising environmental law was seen as a pipe dream of law

A tip of the SLAW hat to SLAW’s own Steve Matthews for his article called “Who Do You Think You Are?” in this month’s edition of the CBA National magazine. Among other things, Steve writes on protecting your online brand and developing an online network. Nice work Steve. . . . [more]

We’ve blogged a couple of times about Carl Malmud’s efforts to provide free access to U.S. cases and other important documents (see: Case Law Just Wants To Be Free and Carl Malmud Publishes Cases). Now Boing Boing reports that Malmud’s efforts to gain access to U.S. federal legislative histories has run into a block in the form of Thomson West. Complied by law librarians at the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the histories have been scanned by Thomson West pursuant to a deal they made with the GAO; and now Thomson West claims an exclusive right to the documents.

Malmud . . . [more]

I earlier commented on SLAW on the problem of link rot on the web.

I am updating my “Doing Legal Research in Canada” guide on LLRX.com since I believe I last updated it in 2004 and it is out-of-date (my similar guide on NYU’s Globalex site is more current for now than the guide on LLRX.com).

As part of updating the LLRX.com guide, I was struck by the fact that easily more than 50% of the links were broken (and for some topics, it was as high as 90%). All within 3 years or so! And the existing links were . . . [more]