Summer students at Cassels Brock in Toronto are breaking new ground by writing a blog this summer. What a fantastic idea. It shows the everyday life of summer law students on Bay Street for those who have not yet embarked on law school. It is also a great way for summer students not at this particular firm to compare notes.

According to a news release from Cassels Brock:

“This is the first student-run blog devoted to capturing the Cassels Brock summer experience,” noted Leigh-Ann McGowan, Practice Support Lawyer, Cassels Brock. “The blog was named, developed and is maintained by the

On June 2, 2008 (one week ago) the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of Major League Baseball Advanced Media v. C.B.C. Distribution and Marketing, Inc (2007) 505 F.3d 818. ((8th Cir.(Mo.) Oct 16, 2007)), the Fantasy Sports case. To backtrack a bit; for those who are unfamiliar, Fantasy Sports (or rotisserie and many other names), is the pursuit where players “select” teams of players from real sports teams and compete against other fantasy sports players based upon the statistics compiled by the players they have selected, Wikipedia Definition here.

Fantasy sports have evolved over the . . . [more]

Akamai, the company that the big providers — Adobe, CBC, Cognos… — use to distribute their content on the internet, has released a report on the state of the internet [PDF]. They handle billions of transactions each day all over the globe (“Akamai routinely delivers between ten and twenty percent of all web traffic…”) and so their traffic data put them in a really good position to know about the comings and goings of packets.

Canada appears but once in the report: We’re tenth in the world when it comes to internet penetration (as measured by unique IP . . . [more]

Digital Research Tools (DiRT)

This wiki collects information about tools and resources that can help scholars (particularly in the humanities and social sciences) conduct research more efficiently or creatively. Whether you need software to help you manage citations, author a multimedia work, or analyze texts, Digital Research Tools will help you find what you’re looking for. We provide a directory of tools organized by research activity, as well as reviews of select tools in which we not only describe the tool’s features, but also explore how it might be employed most effectively by researchers.

I like the way the table . . . [more]

From time to time fellow Slawyers wax poetically about the paperless office (or the not-so-paperless-office). Seems to me most of us view it as the unattainable holy grail. However, while it is hard for most large firms to envision making the break away from all of the paper we generate, I think it is something we all owe in an increasingly environmentally conscious world.

Remember the promises of the new technology: three or four day work weeks; robotic servants cleaning our houses and serving us daily; and then again, the Paperless Office. The new technologies — the personal computers, personal . . . [more]

My post about Google’s new favicon got me thinking: do law firms use favicons, and if so, how good are they?

A completely unscientific survey of “quite a few” firm websites tells me that only a small minority of law firms make use of this branding opportunity — and those that do have, by and large, really weak favicons.

Herewith five that I came up with:

This is a weak one. It’s the Cassels logo, seen to the right, in miniature. But at 16 x 16 pixels, the thing just doesn’t translate well: the shape is unclear and the colours

You may have noticed that Google has a new favicon, that little graphic that appears ahead of a site’s URL in a browser’s location field. (Slaw has a white ‘sl’ in a blue square, for instance.) Turns out that Google wasn’t changing for the sake of change, but in order to accommodate the various new modalities that now use browsers — PDAs, iPhones, cell phones etc. They’re in the hunt for one that will scale well and look good in various contexts.

The ones they’re testing now belong to this family:

As you might imagine, choosing a new mini-logo for . . . [more]

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society has been elevated from a Harvard Law initiative to a University-wide research centre. Now, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

From the story:

“The Berkman Center’s focus on advancing the public interest at the intersections of law and technology, civic engagement, and international development, has already created a community of scholars from across the University,” said Harvard Provost Steven E. Hyman. “The elevation to a University-wide initiative is a natural evolution and we are eager to create new networks of interaction on a University-wide basis with the intent

It’s a trio of trills today.

• First up is a fillip of finches. Alek Komarnitsky has set up a web cam pointed at a nest of baby finches. The image is refreshed every few seconds, which makes BirdCam even more fun than his other enterprise, which is titled “Watching Grass Grow – The Most Boring Website in the World” Of course, you may prefer the silence of the lawn to the imagined tweets of baby finches. You can also let Alek’s site play you some bluegrass music while you contemplate the chicks or chickweed.
• Now for some real sound. Sort

We’ve featured Google graphics before, but this one this morning is sensational.

. . . [more]

Following along from last month’s exchanges at the Writers’ Union, a couple of interesting speculative pieces on what technology will do to book publishing and to libraries.

The Economist has a piece this week from Book Expo America on Publishers worry as new technologies transform their industry
. I liked the last line, which echoes what I said to the Writers’ Union:

Publishing has only two indispensable participants: authors and readers. As with music, any technology that brings these two groups closer makes the whole industry more efficient—but hurts those who benefit from the distance between them.

But . . . [more]

A friend raises an interesting question for the Slaw community:

Imagine that you have a ten person lawyer firm (+ support staff) that needs to move to matter-centric DM. What choices would such a firm have, other than the conventional (and somewhat pricey) legal DM vendors (i.e. OpenText and Interwoven), whose work is good but doesn’t quite scale this small.

Does anyone know whether there is a matter-centric DM based on open source or web services, keeping in mind standard law firm security and confidentiality requirements. Does anyone have any novel ideas or suggestions? . . . [more]