We’ve talked a whole lot on Slaw over the years about translation, as befits a law blog in a country rich with immigration and with two official languages:

[related-posts]

And while the computer translation services such as Google Translate are miracles, they don’t always get it right — and sometimes get it comically wrong. A couple of the tough nuts in translation are idiom and professional jargon. A new online service, Linguee, may help here. Linguee, as it says, uses “the web as a dictionary,” allowing you to search for a word or a phrase and find its . . . [more]

A look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering university this fall.

All right everyone, back to work! Holiday time is over. Now it’s down to looking out the window — you do have a window, don’t you? — with longing at whatever is moving freely where’er it listeth.

Or you can flit in a nanosecond (in a Flash, actually) to parts unplanned, thanks to MIT grad student, Joe McMichael‘s Globe Genie. For example, what you see below is a stretch of highway near San Pedro de Visma way in the upper left hand corner of Spain, and I got there thanks to Google Street View and Joe’s randomizer. (I’ve . . . [more]

The right to a thesaurus has been established by the Federal Court of Canada. Or rather, the thesaurus has received official recognition as an “educational textbook or supply.”

Ken MacKay appealed successfully to the Federal Court after being denied thrice by the Correctional Service of Canada. The Honourable Mr. Justice Harrington cites A. V. Dicey, the first Edition of Roget’s, and US Supreme Court Justice Scalia and Bryan Garner (current Editor in Chief of Black’s Law Dictionary) in reaching his decision. In concluding, he writes:

According to Lewis Caroll, “[w]hen I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather

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My library is frequently asked what the best tools are for legislative research in the territories. For provincial legislation (with the exception of British Columbia*) CanLII tends to be our resource of first choice. When it comes to the consolidated legislation for the territories, the situation is a little trickier. Free consolidated legislation is not available for all territorial legislation, so in some cases it may be easiest to go straight to the paid source.

The following is a list of the resources available for finding territorial legislation. Please note that in some cases a completely up-to-date consolidation may not . . . [more]

Montreal-based legal informatics group LexUM, in collaboration with the Southern African Legal Information Institute and the Centre for Internet and Society, recently released a preliminary project report called Free Access to Law—Is it here to Stay? An Environmental Scan Report. The project is funded by the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa:

The overall goal of this research is to respond to a need to study what free access to law initiatives do and how they do it. This will lead to an understanding of the effects FAL [free access to law] initiatives have on society and to an

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I was following links from tweets yesterday and came across an old, if May 2010 meets that criteria, Rex Gradeless post about citing podcasts in legal documents and the new Bluebook (the US equivalent to the McGill Guide). Rex Gradeless is one of the social media savvy (former) law students that we talk about.

There has been a lot of traffic on Slaw regarding podcasts lately, and as you can read, plenty of great offers via that medium.

I just HAD to check out my new McGill guide to see if we had an equivalent! I am happy to . . . [more]

This week the Quebec government opened public hearings on euthanasia and assisted suicide. The National Assembly selected the Select Committee on Dying with Dignity to travel to 11 towns and cities in Quebec to canvass public opinion on the various issues surrounding euthanasia and assisted suicide.

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A rogue and disgruntled associate in a large Canadian law firm had a bone to pick with a few of its partners. Rather than pull in one of those discrete committees that operates just under the surface of every large firm and deals with sensitive internal matters, this associate opted for an office-wide diatribe sent via e-mail from his home. 

The scandalous statements created shockwaves and went through the local legal community like a missile. Inside 24 hours the first media outlet called the firm and the associate for interviews, with many more to follow, including national print media. Then, . . . [more]

An article in last Monday’s edition of The New York Times called “A Sign of the Court’s Polarization: Choice of Clerks” described the increasing tendency for U.S. Supreme Court judges to hire clerks of like-minded political ideology. For example, each and every clerk hired by Clarence Thomas over the past 20 years – all 84 of them – first trained with an appeals court judge appointed by a Republican president. The article then quotes Professor Garrow of Cambridge University who says that “we have created an institutional situation where 26-year-olds are being given humongous legal authority in the . . . [more]

♫ Doin’ it right, doin’ it right, doin’ it right, doin’ it right..♫

Lyrics and Music by: Tom Lavin, recorded by The Powder Blues Band.

Donna Seale (Human Rights in the Workplace) human rights lawyer and educator, has launched her newly redone blog: http://donnaseale.ca/

Doug Jasinski of Skunkworks Creative Group Inc. shares the credit with Donna for the creative input and design.

Donna is a great example of how the power of web 2.0 combined with the Interjurisdictional Practice Protocol can lever a lawyer into a prominent and successful national practice – even from small town Manitoba!

Great . . . [more]