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Archive for April, 2009

Free and Commercial Access to the Law

Slaw’s own Ted Tjaden is quoted in this week’s Lawyers’ Weekly on whether the free access to the law movement has reached the point of such reliability and comprehensiveness that it can be considered as an adequate substitute for the commercial giants. Canlii’s Daniel Poulin comes to the defence of Canlii.

“I rarely use free resources,” Tjaden said.

“We have the luxury of having one of the better-equipped law libraries in a Canadian law firm with extensive print resources and online subscriptions.

“Although free search engines do supplement the legal research I do, we continue to rely on the value-added

. . . [more]
Posted in: Legal Information, Legal Information: Libraries & Research, Legal Information: Publishing, Substantive Law: Judicial Decisions, Technology

Happy Birthday UWO

Today’s Free Press has a piece by Chip Martin on the history of the University of Western Ontario law school – and a nice tribute to Ivan Rand. There’s a new biography of Rand on the horizon by Bill Kaplan which will likely deal with his involvement in the founding of the state of Israel.

There’ll be big celebrations all year in London Ontario. . . . [more]

Posted in: Education & Training, Education & Training: Law Schools, Miscellaneous, Practice of Law

SCC as Greater Influence on Foreign Law Than the US Supreme Court

That’s the proposition advanced in an interview with Justice Ginsburg reported in the NYT and the Post yesterday. She comments on the comparative law question:

“Why shouldn’t we look to the wisdom of a judge from abroad with at least as much ease as we would read a law review article from a professor?”

For Slaw readers, the most interesting line is:

The Canadian Supreme Court, she said, is “probably cited more widely abroad than the U.S. Supreme Court.” There is one reason for that, she said: “You will not be listened to if you don’t listen to others.”

This . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Information, Practice of Law, Substantive Law, Substantive Law: Judicial Decisions

This Week’s Biotech Highlights

They say the key to a good golf swing is in the follow-through. Hopefully the same is true of blogging, because this week on the Cross-Border Biotech Blog saw a lot of our trends and stories revisited with new developments and new perspective:

Electronic medical records drew a lot of attention this week, with the annual Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference and the first EMR implementation by a large hospital group being topped by an even larger and more influential implementation — the U.S. military.

Budgets and bailout issues were also active. There was good news . . . [more]

Posted in: Substantive Law, Technology: Internet

Email – Good Enough Isn’t!

If I was honest with you, I would admit that I read with glee the flurry of news reports noting that Facebook and other Web 2.0 media (such as Twitter, Yammer, and Friendfeed) had surpassed email as the preferred form of communication particularly for teens and young adults today. If you pardon the pun, the inner geek in me let out a loud Yahoo!

For years I have been struggling with the notion that email had become the place to work for many lawyers. It seemed that a bad technology had taken root to the point that it would be . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Technology

Twitter: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (AKA to Tweet, or Not to Tweet)

Twitter was a certainly a hot topic at ABA TECHSHOW last week. Loads of active Twitterers were tweeting away there, and many more attendees where trying to learn more about it. Are you still trying to figure out what Twitter is, and more importantly, what it might do for you? My good friend Jim Calloway, the Practice Management Advisor at the Oklahoma Bar Association, has a special knack for explaining technology in a practical and very understandable way. To learn more about Twitter read this great article he posted on the OBA site earlier this week: Twitter: The . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

Fiji Constitution Suspended

From the Pacific a significant decision has prompted a new Grundnormon the judgment of the Fiji Court of Appeal which resulted in the President suspending the constitution and reappointing the interim executive that came to power in the coup. Here is the judgment appealed from. . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Information, Substantive Law, Substantive Law: Judicial Decisions

How Outsourcing Copes With Dutch Anonymization Laws in the Production of Caselaw Databases

From last week’s Publishers’ Weekly, a good overview of how the trade publishing industry is employing Indian coders to embed .xml into works. But a paragraph on Innodata Isogen, which I thought of as doing law firm outsourcing shows just how globally linked the outsourcing of the production of legal information has become.

No KPO (knowledge processing outsourcing) project is too complex for Innodata Isogen. Take a recent job that entailed producing marketable Dutch jurisprudence information within the guidelines of European laws, which prohibit the disclosure of any information that could identify the parties involved. “The anonymization

. . . [more]
Posted in: Legal Information, Legal Information: Publishing, Substantive Law

Web Trends Map, Beta

Here’s an interesting ‘map’ of the current top internet sites and trends. Made by Information Architects Japan, it features top representative websites imagined as stops on the Tokyo subway system, and charts the ‘success’, ‘stability’, and ‘position’ of each site. This is a beta version, and they are looking for comments. When its ready, you can download it from Flickr, or you can order a printed version. See last year’s version here. . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Information, Technology

Metadata for Photos

It’s come up a few times now – the need to review documents and strip them of hidden metadata that could unwittingly reveal information and breach confidentiality.

One aspect that hasn’t received enough attention is metadata for photos.

PC World has a new article on this subject, explaining where to find the hidden information, and how to properly remove it. Not just interesting, but apparently part of your professional responsibility. . . . [more]

Posted in: Practice of Law