Ted Tjaden (August 20), Mark Lewis (September 3), and Shaunna Mireau (September 9 and September 14) have already posted on the McGill Law Journal’s Canadian guide to uniform legal citation, 7th ed. (Toronto: Thomson Carswell, 2010), and many others have commented. Here are a few additional links, just for reference:

• lawjournal.mcgill.ca
• Library and Archives Canada Amicus No. 38179070
• Carswell pub. no. 1852 (hardcover)
• Carswell pub. no. 1853 (softcover)

I hope it’s not too late to add a few words of my own. I thought I should hold off until I had actually seen . . . [more]

Over the last decade cloud computing vendors have invested heavily in making Software-as-a-Service secure as possible. Daily security audits, SSL-based encryption, and SAS 70 Type-II-certified data centers are now the norm, rather than the exception, and data stored in the cloud is now privileged to receive some of the best security technology can afford.

However, as with any security framework, cloud computing security is only as good as its weakest link, and in many circumstances the weakest link is the password used to access a web-based application. Passwords are often easier to guess than users think, and are all too . . . [more]

For those who think “tiff” is a file format for quantitative gel scans, I hardly need to point out that we are in the midst of National Biotechnology Week here in Canada (it runs from the 17th to 24th). For the rest of you, here is some notable news that is devoid of red carpets and couture:

In the lead-up to National Biotechnology Week, Saskatchewan hosted the Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference. ABIC provided an opportunity for Canada to showcase its strengths in agricultural biotechnology, for me to showcase my strengths in agricultural puns, and for Premier Brad Wall to . . . [more]

I know a few law librarians.

I make no secret of it.

Some of them have been essential in making Slaw a success — and only in part because they “got” IT light years ahead of the legal profession generally. Some have been engines driving the creation of powerful institutions of legal learning. Some have even been known to play vital roles in firms that practice law.

Why, then, do law firms hide their law librarians as if they were . . . dipsomaniac uncles and aunts?

I don’t say that firms sequester them in dank, windowless quarters. Or that . . . [more]

3-D printing has been around for a number of years. It has allowed creators to design objects on their computers, and then “print out” prototypes, with the printer layering material such as plastic or metal. A recent New York Times video (below) and article show just how far this technology has already come. Prototypes with fully moving parts can be printed–without assembly–and individual customized objects can be created.

The most fantastic use–shown in the second half of the video–are prosthetic limbs that are made to fit the individual at a fraction of the previous cost. As well, these limbs can . . . [more]

The looseleaf service is one of the legal publishing world’s more interesting phenomena of the last third of the 20^th century. Conceived in its most familiar form in the 1960’s as Keesing’s Contemporary Archive by the Commercial Clearing House, they were seen as a clever alternative to publishing new editions of books. It was acknowledged that the pace of change in passing new legislation was increasing, and it was difficult to make a bound book of legislation on a topic of law current, because of the delay between writing and publication. The idea of collecting a book as a . . . [more]

A print merger waiting to happen

The acquisition of Canada Law Book provides a unique opportunity for Carswell Thomson to eliminate a significant amount of duplication in print law reporting by merging print publications like the Criminal Reports and Canadian Criminal Cases, something long overdue in a market that is filled with law report services that offer virtually identical content to virtually the same customers.

Setting aside altogether the question whether either of these full text law reporting services have any future in print, it is inconceivable that both of them will continue to be published as separate publications now . . . [more]

Chris Mondics at the Philadelphia Inquirer wonders if the legal market has seen the worst of the biggest recession in the legal industry since the Great Depression,

For law firms, the devastation that swept through the legal marketplace in 2008 and 2009 has come to an end. Layoffs have stopped or at least have been sharply curtailed, firms that suspended hiring are recruiting once again, and profits, though flat or down, have stabilized at numbers that would make average middle-class American wage earners click their heels with delight.

Even the sky-high starting salaries for first-year lawyers, long the source of

Rafia Zakaria is an American lawyer and Ph.D. candidate at the Political Science at Indiana University. She writes in the September 2010 issue of Guernica about how she has used Shari’ah (Islamic law) to enhance the rights of a female client from Jordan who had been married, abused in the U.S., and finally divorced.

Rudi Stettner of the IndyPosted gives a summary of the predicament of Zakaria’s client,

The woman had married a fellow Jordanian in a whirlwind courtship and followed him to America. It very quickly became apparent that the man had an American mistress. When Zainab (The young

The OBA has graciously allowed me to reproduce an excellent tip sheet by The Hon. Justice Stanley Scherr for presenting spousal support claims. It was previously published in Matrimonial Affairs, the newsletter of the Ontario Bar Association family law section.

1. Always come with the Spousal Support Advisory Guideline (SSAG) software calculations for any appearance where you are seeking spousal support.
2. Imputation of income is often on the table, so bring different SSAG scenarios based on a range of incomes.
3. Make sure that you also present NDI (net disposable income) software calculations. The court will want to see that the

Toby Fyfe and Paul Crookall wrote a report earlier this year entitled Social Media and Public Sector Policy Dilemmas. It was written for the Institute of Public Administration of Canada (IPAC), an organization whose role is to promote excellence in public service.

The report is based on consultations with stakeholders from across Canada and discusses many of the impediments to the use and spread of social media (blogs, wikis, Facebook-style tools) in the public/government sector:

This research paper examines the thoughts and attitudes of public servants from three levels of
government, academics, consultants, and members of think tanks on