There has been a legal aid boycott in Ontario by senior lawyers, protesting underfunding of the service in the province, especially for complex cases.

A report by Prof. Michael Code of UofT and the Hon. Patrick LeSage commissioned by the Attorney General of Ontario found that the previous system was placing cases in the hands of lawyers who were probably inadequately prepared to deal with them.

The Attorney General has responded to these issues by pledging an additional $150 million over the next four years for legal aid, a 21% increase, the largest in its history. Min. Bentley said, . . . [more]

Cushing Academy in New England has decided to get rid of an outdated technology and embrace the future.

Says its Headmaster: “When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books”

Instead of a library, the academy is spending nearly $500,000 to create a “learning center,’’ though that is only one of the names in contention for the new space. In place of the stacks, they are spending $42,000 on three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet and $20,000 on special laptop-friendly study carrels. Where the reference desk was, they

I have a cottage, where I go to get away from it all. (We won’t talk about how frustrated I am that it’s one of the few places in the province where there’s no cell phone signal and that high speed internet is simply unavailable…) And I have a friend who irritates me by persisting in calling my cottage a “cabin.” It’s only a word, I know. But each time he does it, I feel like the benighted Englishman in Germany who couldn’t come to terms with the fact that the locals called a knife a Messer: “I know . . . [more]

Harvard University has launched DASH — Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard — a repository that currently makes available free the work of “[m]ore than 350 members of the Harvard research community, including over a third of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences,” according to the press release. At the moment there are some 1,500 papers available in the repository (some requiring that you register with DASH, for reasons that are not made clear on the site).

Of particular interest to Slaw readers is the fact that Harvard Law School is a participant and has lodged 64 articles with the . . . [more]

If ever you should need an argument against the death penalty, you could scarcely do better than the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, a man executed in Texas in 2004 for deaths by arson — for which he was not responsible. His story is told in “Trial By Fire” by David Grann in the current New Yorker. Willingham’s case has come to prominence again because his was one of the first investigated by a Texas government commission set up to examine errors and misconduct by forensic scientists — something that Canada has recent experience with.

Craig Beyler, an . . . [more]

As Simon mentioned in welcoming me aboard, I have been writing an employment law blog for nearly 7 years now, which is hard for me to believe. At that time, there were only a few active legal blogs in Canada and over these past 7 years I have watched this space develop into a vibrant hub of information sharing, discussion and debate. So for my first Slaw post, I’ll start with a discussion of social networking sites in employment.

But first a digression. I suppose it was only a matter of time, but the ABA Journal reports that the “Florida . . . [more]

I have been wearing my knowledge management hat a lot lately. I am working with our internal departments and groups to identify process pain points and find ways to tweak our existing systems to enable more intuitive information sharing. This process make me think about … processes.

Like many organizations, we sometimes fall down on laying out our processes for things. This often means that one group thinks another group is responsible for a task that they are really responsible for. Beyond obvious internal communication issues, I interpret my KM roll as “facilitator of good processes”.

I went looking for . . . [more]

There’s an interesting article today on Law.com about what impact the recession is having on the situation of law librarians in the United States. “Law Librarians: ‘No More Sacred Cows’” by Alan Cohen is based on the 2009 American Lawyer survey of law librarians. To see the actual findings of the full survey you’ll have to be a subscriber, but Cohen hits the high spots for you.

Library budgets have shrunk in 46% of cases, compared to 9% in 2008 / The expectation from the firms is that every resource must show a decent ROI. / New software

The free legal information portal CanLII (Canadian Legal Information Institute) announced today that it has added point-in-time legislation databases for Manitoba, Newfoundland and Labrador and Prince Edward Island.

“Users of these provinces’ consolidated Acts and regulations now have access to versions as they came into force since 2004 or so, as well as to current versions updated weekly from governments’ websites.”

CanLII now offers point-in-time legislation databases for the federal and all provincial governments and plans to add similar collections for the legislation of Canada’s three Northern territories soon.

The databases make it possible to search a legislative text as . . . [more]

All the recent talk here about free speech online is proving extremely relevant.

In the high profile case between Marc Lemire and Richard Warman, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal has refused to apply s. 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, which stated that hate messages also affected,

Tribunal chair Athanasios Hadjis said,

Since a formal declaration of invalidity [of Section 13(1)] is not a remedy available to the Tribunal, I will simply refuse to apply these

Hallelujah! Can it be true? I have been arguing for years that all of these standard form contracts that are being forced upon us in the 21st century – are about as far from being “offer + acceptance + consideration” as one can get! First, they force the whole contract on you – then there’s a provision in it that they can change the terms at any time without notice to you! Well apparently the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association has come up with a new Code of Conduct which encourages its members to provide contract language which allows users to . . . [more]

Canadian Press has reported that a group representing Canadian songwriters and music publishers is suing the company that operates XM Radio in Federal Court. The group, CSI, is a joint venture between CMRRA and SODRAC. CSI seeks an injunction preventing XM Radio from broadcasting songs by Canadian artists represented by CSI, until XM’s operating company, Canadian Satellite Radio Inc., pays royalties that CSI alleges were due on July 31.

Some previous reports on the Copyright Board tariff have suggested that the tariff was something of a win for satellite radio. The tariff was set at 6.2% of revenues for . . . [more]