Time and circumstance have been good to me. I began studying China in 1968. Why I did so was a mystery to all concerned. No one in my family had dreams further than the boundaries of Canton, Ohio. As my father, a working man who thought that I was throwing my life away by studying the Chinese language, put it, “You never even met a Chinese person before you went off to college. We don’t even have a Chinese restaurant in this town!” My decision was not based on practical reasoning; I just discovered as a freshman in college that . . . [more]

Background

I initially mentioned the lawsuit against Law Buzz last year when it was first launched. The case settled earlier this summer, with the plaintiff opting to move forward with her business. But a spin-off lawsuit was launched by Tycho Manson, one of the defendants in the original action, against anonymous posters commenting about him on the original case.

Pepall J. of the Ontario Superior Court heard a motion earlier this month in Manson v. Doe, dealing with a various forms of relief by the plaintiff, Manson:

1. an order seeking validation of service by e-mail
2. an injunction requiring

Corruption in government and business can occur everywhere; no country is totally immune. (See, for example, Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index.) But in some countries and in some industries the demands for bribes and kickbacks or the promise of favours for favourable decisions are a serious reality. Governments that wish to halt or hinder corruption have passed anti-bribery and corruption legislation, proscribing not only corrupt acts that take place within their jurisdiction but also acts that take place ex juris if committed by their nationals or businesses incorporated within their jurisdiction. Britain’s Bribery Act 2010, which came into . . . [more]

The Section of State and Local Government Law of the American Bar Association (ABA) hosted a panel on cyberbullying at the 2011 Annual Meeting.

The panelists included James Hanks of Ahlers & Cooney, Grant Bowers, Legal Counsel for the Toronto District School Board, Dr. Jeff Gardere, a psychologist from New York with expertise in mental health, and Kathy Macdonald, from the Calgary police.

Notes from James Hanks’ talk, focusing on American legislation, is available here. This post focuses primarily on the Canadian content by the rest of the panel.

Defining the Problem

Cyberbullying is completely different from . . . [more]

The Canadian Bar Association’s National magazine has just released an article in the July/August 2011 edition, The Best in Digital Marketing. Compiled and edited by Luigi Benetton, the article surveys opinions from Marni Macleod, Allison Wolf, Connie Crosby, Carol Fitzwilliam, Warren Bongard, Jordan Furlong, and myself.

Leadership and innovation was recognized for the following firms:

• Osler for best design
• BCF for best recruitment outreach
• Goodmans for best client outreach
• Hull & Hull for best use of video
• Miller Thomson for best national website
• Brazeau Seller for best regional website
• Foster LLP

Offered in Beta from the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the United States House of Representatives, this new website offers excellent access to the Code.

The US Code is an official consolidation of Federal US Laws by subject, and highly useful. Its various accessories, such as the indispensable Popular Name Tool make it a first resort of legal researchers. The online version, and various commercial print versions, are not considered official for US courts. However, this particular online version will likely be the most up to date version of the code, given its provenance. . . . [more]

Herewith half a metric dozen sites that deal in words, those pesky bits we use to build and navigate our worlds. (FYI, in Japan sets of objects come in fives, which makes a whole lot more base ten sense, when you come to think of it, than our duodecimal dozen, even though the latter is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6, and pretty much maps onto the lunar months and… Onward. Sorry about that.)

• Let’s start off easy, with a little quiz. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary is 100 years old this year and is throwing a

This is a post in a series to appear occasionally, setting out some articles or videos that contributors at Slaw are enjoying and that you might find interesting. The articles tend to be longer than blog posts and shorter than books, just right for that stolen half hour on the weekend. It’s also likely that most of them won’t be about law — just right for etc.

Please let us have your recommendations for what we and our readers might like.

. . . [more]

The riots that started in Tottenham, London on 6^th August and spread throughout London and England for the subsequent 3 days, could not have been predicted. Initially people thought that the shooting of police suspect Mark Duggan had sparked community tensions that eventually boiled over. But this theory has been quickly discounted. Others initially blamed government cuts for causing public anger. Others, including the Prime Minister, David Cameron, blamed a ‘Broken Britain’. None of these theories really provide us with a satisfying answer as to why so many young people looted, vandalised and attacked property and people without . . . [more]

Last week, the Law Commission of Ontario released its proposed Draft Framework for the Law as it Affects Older Adults:

“The Framework is intended to assist with the development and evaluation of laws, policies and practices to ensure that the realities of the circumstances and experiences of older adults are taken into account, and that laws, policies and programs promote positive outcomes for these members of society.”

“It is accompanied by an extensive Interim Report, which sets out the research and analysis which form the basis for the Framework, and provides examples of its implications and implementation.”

“It is

According to the Google Docs Blog today, they’re introducing the ability to control access to documents at the page level:

Using page-level permissions, you can make some pages private for certain users while keeping other pages public for everyone to see. For instance, let’s say you have a Google Site that you’ve shared with your team and your manager. You can allow your team to see one set of pages, let your manager edit another set of pages, and keep yet another set of pages private for only you.

As is usually the case with innovations, they’re not available right . . . [more]

Yes, lawyers are conservative. Yes, they’re slow to respond to social change. And yes, they’re by and large technophobic (ask any lawyer you meet about venerable RSS and watch their incomprehension).

But.

Some innovate. Clearspire, a firm in DC, if it can be said to have a location, is one of the innovators, and a firm worth taking a look at. It’s almost tedious to count the ways in which Clearspire differs from Rumble, Bump & Stiltskin, but the Economist does its usual good job of summarizing matters. These are three of the highspots:

• No billable hour. Instead:
  

  Clearspire