Last week, the Quebec government introduced a bill in the National Assembly (provincial legislature) to tackle the issue of SLAPPs.

Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPPs for short, typically take the form of defamation actions brought by large corporate actors in an attempt to shut down criticism by non-governmental organizations or local citizens. The actions are seen by critics as an abuse of process, or a form of legal bullying by interests with deep pockets who try to bankrupt opponents or intimidate them into silence.

Bill 99 will amend the Quebec Code of Civil Procedure to authorize courts . . . [more]

Quietly this week, Google Docs added support for PDF files. You can now upload PDFs to your account, making them available for viewing and sharing.

Unfortunately, you currently can’t edit those PDFs, but I’m sure the feature is in the works. They’ve also had the ability to create PDF files out of your Google Documents for some time now. . . . [more]

Redesigned FindLaw.com site helps people find answers, find lawyers . . . [more]

The Canadian Forum on Civil Justice has released a 70-page report “Justice for Nunavummiut: Partnerships for Solutions” [PDF]. (Nunavummiut are Inuit living in Nunavut or who regard the territory as their home.)

This extensive study “presents recommendations for the following key issues:”

1. Access to public legal education and information
2. Access to legal services and legal professionals
3. Litigants with unequal power
4. Enforcement of court rulings, laws and entitlements
5. Specific issues related to Family, Civil and Administrative Law
6. Geographic parallels and variations
7. Creating an evidence base – A recommendation for research

Mozilla is trying to set a Guinness World Record. They’ve already collected over 1.7 million pledges and served up several thousand Firefox 3 downloads. To be part of the record you must download Firefox 3 by 11:16 a.m. PDT (18:16 UTC) on June 18th.

A technical assessment of the browser, but it works beautifully for me here now. . . . [more]

To start, huge tip of hat to our colleague Jim Middlemiss, who was live blogging all morning on the three hour hearing into the BCE Bondholders dispute.

The court reserved. . . . [more]

Tonight the Canada Council awards this year’s Killam Prizes – which come with a cheque for $100,000.

The Social Sciences winner is Ottawa’s Constance Backhouse. . . . [more]

At a Univ brunch on Park Avenue last month, I met a bright young English blogger, Roz Savage, who is blogging from a rowing boat, as she crosses the Pacific in a bid to be the first to row the largest ocean in the world. This may not have much to do with most of what we find on Slaw, but if you’re not awed by the boldness and courage of the venture, not to mention the humour of the blog, and the way that she is engaging with her friends commenting on the blog, then go to the next . . . [more]

Here are a couple of links to interesting pieces that editors (in their infinite wisdom) decided didn’t need to appear in the print versions of either the Globe and Mail or Canadian Lawyer.

Martha McCarthy was asked to comment on the five years that have elapsed since the Ontario Court of Appeal’s Halpern decision.

Philip Slayton talks about how little we actually know about the judges of the Supreme Court of Canada. He observed from a conversation in a Yaletown bar that it was easier for two Canadian lawyers to list members of the U.S. Supreme Court . . . [more]

That’s the position of one Massachusetts official offered in the explanation for why the new courthouse in Worcester Massachusetts didn’t provide space for a law library.

Just goes to show that the case for legal research has to be made continually.

It wasn’t heard in Governor Romney’s office, which is why the law library has been the sole tenant of the otherwise abandoned “old” Worcester courthouse for eight months, and lawyers continue to have to trek in and out.

. . . [more]

We’ve noticed Fastcase a couple of times on Slaw, including a piece in 2006.

A recent piece from Forbes uses Fastcase as the poster boys for open source access to the law. But it also speculates what impact services like PreCydent, Public.Resource.org and Collexis Holdings’ Casemaker division will have on the major players. It makes a convincing case that for small to medium firms, the majors may have priced themselves out of consideration, opening a niche for new entrants ((Lest anyone is tempted to organize a flag day for the majors, Forbes reports that Fastcase’s revenue last year . . . [more]

From time to time lawyers need to touch base with sub-political reality, and scientific journals offer one way to do that. WorldWideScience is a cooperative venture among 44 countries under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information (sigh: I wish I didn’t wish it was run out of Denmark or Korea or Chile) that offers a federated search of the various countries’ databases. Canada’s contribution, for example, is the National Research Council’s Institute for Scientific and Technical Information and Defence Research and Development Canada’s Defence Research Reports.

I ran a simple search . . . [more]