A key trend in eGovernment today is enabling more public participation in policy- and law-making. One very meaningful way to increase the public’s involvement in lawmaking is by crowdsourcing the drafting of legislation, as the Brazilian Câmara dos Deputados has done through its e-Democracia platform.

Now, crowdsourcing of legislation has come to the U.S., through LexPop, a new wiki created this month by Matt Baca and Olin Parker, both students at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. [Baca is also a law student at New York University.]

As its first effort, LexPop is hosting the . . . [more]

If you haven’t noticed by now, we’re in (yet another) Federal election. The leaders of the four major parties are currently scheduled for a televised debate on April 12 (English) and 14 (French).

But what about the fifth party, the Green Party, which received almost as many votes in the 2008 election as the Bloc Quebecois? Because the Green Party’s 8% of the popular vote is spread across Canada, rather than concentrated in a single province, they did not receive a single seat, while the Bloc won 49 seats.

Given the relative popularity of the Green Party, its leader, Elizabeth . . . [more]

Here’s the only existing study of the citation rates of open access legal journals v. their toll access counterparts. OA legal articles garner a 58% better citation rate. . . . [more]

We have mentioned before the recent work of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law on online dispute resolution (ODR) and a colloquium held to review the potential future work of UNCITRAL on e-commerce issues.

ODR

The UNCITRAL Secretariat has produced a working paper for the meeting next month of the ODR Working Group. Working Paper 107 is a draft set of procedural rules that might apply to ODR processes. Along with it, you’ll find WP.106, the provisional agenda for that meeting.

Will this work? Is it likely to be useful? Or is it too high-level to provide real . . . [more]

The Montreal Gazette yesterday published a profile of LexUM, the outfit that operates the free legal information service CanLII and that also publishes the decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada.

The article briefly explores plans by LexUM to expand its business into the private legal market. LexUM recently went private, severing its ties with the University of Montreal.

Today Lexum still operates CanLII – a go-to site frequently consulted by lawyers, judges and other legal professionals as well as members of the public – but has set its sights on making inroads into the lucrative and burgeoning market

As ex-Chief Executive Officer of the Canadian Centre for Court Technology / Centre canadien de technologie judiciaire, I’m pleased to officially announce the nomination of Patrick Cormier as the new CEO of the CCCT-CCTJ.

Aside from being a close friend and confrère, Patrick Cormier is a social media, technology and information management expert. He is also the president of Government 2.0 Think Tank Inc., which provides advice to government Departments and Agencies on how to best advance their information management and web 2.0 agenda. Prior to founding Government 2.0 Think Tank Inc., Mr. Cormier was a military lawyer . . . [more]

On October 30, 1938 — okay, the day before Halloween — Orson Welles broadcast to the US his rather creative version of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. As most of you likely know, after starting his regular radio program with a sententious (and somewhat boring) reading of the first part of the 1898 novel, Welles’s Mercury Theater on the Air players interrupted with a series of mock news reports that eventually told of an invasion from Mars. Panic ensued in many parts of America. Gotcha!

Thanks to the miracle of the internet, you can listen to the hour-long . . . [more]

Since the IPad was introduced it has commonly been acknowledged that the IPad and its brethren are transitional devices, a stepping stone to the next transformation in computing. I believe that time has come a bit sooner than expected. Forget the IPad, the Blackberry, the Android, I want a Pomegranate! The question is not, what does it do? The question is what does it not do? Have a look for yourself: Pomegranate . . . [more]

Google has introduced a brand-new feature called Gmail Motion, which allows you to control e-mail through your body’s movements. I can only begin to imagine how the body language of an aggravated counsel will easily degenerate into uncivil communications, and possibly profanities.

You can read more about Gmail Motion on the official Google blog. Movement specialist, Lorraine Klayman, M.Sc., has a YouTube video explaining the feature further, as does Paralanguage expert, Dr. Dennis Tooley, Ph.D. . . . [more]

Most lawyers would agree that there are three qualities needed to run a successful practice: excellent legal skills, great client service and the ability to find and retain clients. In other words: ability, hard work and an entrepreneurial mind-set. It is the latter that can be the most challenging for younger lawyers as they receive little or no training in business development.

Most law schools and bar admission programs provide no business training as this is seen as outside the scope of educating students about the law. Nor is it typically part of the articling experience at law firms. Once . . . [more]

Remember the flame things in chemistry lab in highschool or university? Bunsen burners, right? Turns out that chemist Robert Wilhelm Eberhard Bunsen did a bit more than start fires. Google is celebrating his birthday, which was either today or yesterday in 1811. If you hurry, you can catch their fun animated doodle:

. . . [more]

The employment standard under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) is found under part III in the Proposed Integrated Accessibility Regulation (PIAR), which is slated to become law around July 2011 (not confirmed). This standard requires an organization that is an employer to engage in the proactive identification, removal and prevention of barriers hindering the full participation in employment of persons with disabilities. It also requires that organization to have policies and procedures for establishing individual accommodation plans where barriers cannot be removed proactively, shifting the onus from the individual who needs the accommodation to the person who . . . [more]