A colleague made me aware of an online Compendium of Damages Awarded in Personal Injury Actions Across Ontario (January 1999 – November 2005). It is posted on the website of the County of Carleton Law Association (CCLA) and appears to have been part of a project chaired by Mr. Justice Chadwick, with the help of local lawyers, students and law clerks.

I assume it was aimed at pro se litigants and must have been quite an effort. What I find puzzling though is that most of this data (and I assume more extensive data) is available in Carswell’s Goldsmith’s . . . [more]

We have friends whose marriages have been arranged and who find themselves far from India in new relationships. A new website provides legal information for women in that situation.

A venture of the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Extension, the Legal Resource Centre, the Alberta Law Foundation, and the Changing Together organization the website was launched last month to help educate foreign brides and immigrant women about marital relationships and the law in Canada. . . . [more]

CALL/ACBD 2008
May 25-28, 2008
Saskatoon

Tomorrow is the early bird deadline for this year’s CALL Conference.

Also, there is a terrific pre-conference workshop, the Law Library Leadership Institute being held Saturday, May 24th that is definitely worth checking out.

If you work in a law library, or are otherwise part of the law library community, I hope you will join me at the CALL conference! . . . [more]

That’s the argument in a great posting by Bob Ambrogi, which describes the history of the last quarter century of providing greater public access to the decisions of the courts.

According to Bob, it’s all over for American caselaw, as of February 11, 2008. . . . [more]

The Oxford Handbook of Business History, edited by Geoffrey Jones and Jonathan Zeitlin (ISBN13: 9780199263684; 736 pages; U.S.$150) “provides a state-of-the-art survey of research in business history.” A Q&A with one of the authors explains further:

Sean Silverthorne: What is the purpose of the book, and who is the intended audience?

Geoff Jones: The purpose of this book is to provide a state-of-the-art overview of business history research worldwide. It seeks to speak to researchers in management, economics, sociology, and history who want to know about the latest research in business history, as well as to a wider audience

It’s in the very early stages of its development, but I just found a new site called Booklamp, which claims to do for books what pandora.com (sadly, off limits to us) does for music: recognize patterns in the ones you like and suggest others that you might as well. The FAQ is not available yet to shed some light on how the matching is done, but it seems to employ five criteria: “density”, “pacing”, “action”, “dialogue” and “description”.

There are very few books in the database yet, so it’s more of a novelty than a useful tool, but they . . . [more]

I just came back from a meeting on the new client floor of McCarthy Tétrault’s Toronto office ((Unhappily I can’t show you the art or the layout, which McCarthys haven’t included on their website)), where there’s an interesting construction by Colette Whiten entitled “Is Technology Rewriting the Justice System?” . . . [more]

At TechShow last week, a roll-out for what I believe to be a first – a book devoted to advanced technologies for lawyers to collaborate.

The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools and Technologies: Smart Ways to Work Together, by Dennis Kennedy and Tom Mighell empowers lawyers who are just beginning to try these tools, as well as providing tips and techniques for lawyers with intermediate and advanced collaboration experience. . . . [more]

Via Resource Shelf, a link to UNESCO’s new Freedom of information: a comparative legal survey. This follows on Alasdair Roberts’ 2005 Blacked Out: Government Secrecy in the Information Age, which won the 2006 Louis Brownlow Book Award, and three other book awards in 2007. Professor Roberts is another high-octane Canadian hiding out in the US. . . . [more]

I know–everybody has been checking Slaw hourly to see what shenanigans I’d be up to on St. Patrick’s Day. Well, I hate to disappoint. For much silliness, you are welcome to check my blog post Happy St. Paddy’s Day to All My Friends.

To those of you raising a pint on this fine day: Sláinte! . . . [more]

The TechnoLawyer Blog is compiling a growing list of blog posts and reports at ABA TECHSHOW 2008: Read Our Exclusive Firsthand Reports.

. . . [more]

Slate, the U.S. internet magazine of political commentary, has started a law blog called Convictions. Seems it’s going to be a multi-author thing — practitioners, law profs… — but there’s no “about” page so you have to hunt through the recent posts for the skinny.

Clearly one worth watching, so open it up in your feed reader for a test drive. . . . [more]