♬We’re talking ’bout manners, nice manners,
Manners make you feel good
Manners, nice manners.
Manners make you feel so good,
They make you feel so good.
They make you feel so good.♬

Lyrics and music by Cathy Bollinger, “Manners”.

Perhaps it is a factor of growing older…perhaps it is a recognition that social etiquette (along with ethics) are not just welcome but necessary, or perhaps it is just a fact that I seem to have an increasingly striking resemblance to a certain disgruntled elf in Snow White (as an aside, if ‘disgruntled’ means grumpy, what does ‘gruntled’ mean????? Was . . . [more]

The BBC reminds us today that Microsoft’s PowerPoint (love it or loathe it) is twenty five years old.

Two Slaw contributors (Dan P and Simon C) have a sideline as the PowerPoint Twins and have illustrated the best and worst of the programme to audiences in three countries. We can dazzle you with the absolute worst slides you’ll ever see in two minutes,

Here is the handout from a presentation in Mexico and Simon F’s ambiguous relationship with the pervasive presentation tool.

Notwithstanding Edward Tufte and David Byrne, PowerPoint is here to stay.

Of course what every PowerPoint . . . [more]

Tom Shumate has a good article up on Law Practice Today titled Computers, Tequila and Hand Guns: Controlling Technology So It Doesn’t Control You. The tips he offers on managing technology are all good reminders of taking a common sense approach. See the section headers for those recommendations:

• Double-Check Everything
• Slow Down
• Set boundaries
• Schedule it
• Monotask

The funny part for me is that I’ve met Tom at some of the LPM section events, and he’s as polite as they come. Almost Canadian. So for him to lead with a quote about “tequila and hand guns”; and then . . . [more]

The Christian Science Monitor reports today that a number of URL shortening services have agreed to cooperate by sending data to a common storage mechanism created as an archive for this purpose.

There has been a good deal of discussion — and concern — recently about the fate of shortened hyperlinks should another shortening service close down, as tr.im did not long ago. The hope is that this archive, currently hosted and managed by Gnip, will preserve crucial linkage between long and short URLs even despite the failure of a service.

The CSM reports that “Bit.ly, Twitter’s default link . . . [more]

New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman declared in his book that “The World is Flat,” by which he meant that globalization had levelled the playing field so that all countries might now compete on more or less the same terms. Since its first publication four years ago, technological changes have only made the world flatter yet, as anyone who has taken a look at legal outsourcing to offshore jurisdictions must realize.

Flat World Knowledge, a publisher of texts, wants us to see how technology can make books more readily and cheaply available to college and university . . . [more]

How do I monitor things, let me count the ways. The many, many, many ways.

Twitter, Google Reader (yes, I switched), Facebook status updates, LinkedIn groups, internal firm communications, and very significantly print that comes in the mail.

One item that I used to monitor in print is the Canada Gazette. I made a decision to monitor it in print years ago because I was afraid of missing something if I had to remember to go to a website to retrieve it. This unfortunate choice of media nearly caused me to miss the proclamation of the . . . [more]

The Ontario Human Rights Commission today released its annual report for 2008-2009.

This has been the first year under a new structure and mandate.

On June 30, 2008, the Human Rights Code Amendment Act, 2006 came into effect.

From that date, all new complaints were to be filed with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario. There was a transition period during which people who still had complaints with the Commission after June 30, 2008 could either continue with this direction until December 31, 2008, or could opt out and file an application directly with the Tribunal up to June . . . [more]

The New York Review of Books has a series of podcasts online, one of which is of legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin interviewed by Hugh Eakin of the NYRB editorial staff. Dworkin addresses the formulaic nature of the hearings and particularly the notion, much mooted at the time, that a judge’s personal opinions should be irrelevant and her only task ought to be to faithful to the law.

Dworkin says at one point:

There’s a great myth abroad in America which is that a judge can decide cases by just saying I will apply the law whatever it is and my

We discovered an early description of a computerized online retrieval system in the short story “How-2” by science fiction writer Clifford D. Simak. The story was published in Galaxy November, 1954.

One morning, a lawyer discovers a box with a do-it-yourself kit inside. Following the instructions for use, he builds a robot – one whose design happens to be misdelivered from the future. The lawyer is to appear in court. But his friendly robot spends the night before the trial building a new robot – a lawyer-robot.

‘”(A lawyer robot) with a far greater memory capacity than any

With the copyright reform hearings and public input now in full gear, I thought it would be interesting to get a feel for where readers are at with this issue. So I created this quick, clearly unscientific poll. Copyright issues are really about balancing the interests of creators, users, and society as a whole, and are far more complex than a short question – but lets see which side of the larger debate readers fall on.

Take the survey

Survey results . . . [more]

I had earlier asked about efforts to organize the increasing amount of legislation being digitized as a result of various efforts by academic and courthouse law libraries.

While conducting such historical legislative research online I stumbled across the Canadian Legislation Online page at the Great Library and I don’t think SLAW has yet commented on their page.

Kudos to the Great Library. They provide links to a number of the historical material, including:

– Revised Statutes of Canada, 1970

– the Canada Gazette (soon to be from 1841 to 1997) (via Library and Archives Canada) (the site works great and . . . [more]

When, if ever, is it appropriate to use humour in a hearing? And what boundaries should lawyers respect?

This, my first slaw.ca post, has been a great opportunity to read a little, think a little and affirm my belief that humour is an important advocacy tool, though subtlety is the key to its successful use.

My interest in the subject of humour and advocacy began at an Advocate’s Society lunchtime session a few years ago. In debriefing a mock examination, one of our well-respected Superior Court judges took great exception to a flippant remark made by a witness. She turned . . . [more]