Last November, Lexum proceeded to survey the users of its Supreme Court of Canada decisions web site (scc.lexum.org/en). The results of such surveys are rarely shared; they can indeed have high commercial value or simply be embarrassing. The ones communicated here are not embarrassing and they are, at times, surprising. At least, they were not the ones Lexum was expecting. For instance, respondents are less eager to access legal content on mobile platforms than Lexum had initially assumed and their appetite for social web-related services appears much more limited than anticipated. In a more foreseeable way, respondents confirmed how the . . . [more]

The hot new thought (again) in some physics circles is that time doesn’t exist. Take a moment on this Friday to wrap what remains of your mind around that thought. Not possible. It’s like those “yes, but” thoughts you used to have lying awake at night when you were a kid and wondered what was outside the universe: nothing, right? Yes, but…

So lacking the math or the philosophical chops necessary to dispense with time, most of us reckon with it. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, ad infinitum. Yet of all of these measures, it’s really only . . . [more]

More and more lawyers are using video to differentiate themselves. Video provides potential clients the opportunity to learn more about a lawyer than what is written in the biography. Hopefully through the video, potential clients will feel a connection with the lawyer and want to make the initial contact.

So videos’ are good. They are also time consuming, can be expensive and aren’t right for everyone.

I recently completed a number of videos for a lawyer including his biography. The intention was to give the potential client a slice of information and leave them wanting more. Screen time was limited . . . [more]

This is a post in a series appearing each Friday, setting out some articles, videos, podcasts and the like 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.

An item noted by Susannah Tredewell on the VALL website, CANSIM data has been made available free of charge by StatsCan under the Statistics Canada Open Licence Agreement.

CANSIM is Statistics Canada’s key socioeconomic database, receives periodic updates daily to its various tables, and “provides fast and easy access to a large range of the latest statistics available in Canada.”

They’ve also added a screencast video tutorial, which would have been a nice addition to the 4 videos StatsCan currently has on its Youtube channel. It seems rather odd, I must say, when an organization’s youtube channel . . . [more]

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) is accepting nominations for this year’s Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing.

It honours a publisher (whether for-profit or not-for profit, corporate or non-corporate) that has demonstrated excellence by publishing a work, series, website or e-product that makes a significant contribution to legal research and scholarship.

Slaw.ca won the award in 2009 (yay team!).

Members as well as non-members of CALL can make nominations. Criteria are explained on the Award website (see link in first sentence).

Members of the Award Selection Committee set up to choose the lucky winner are: . . . [more]

Site news for those who read Slaw only via RSS or email

1. Comment Watch:

In the last week there were 57 comments. You might be particularly interested in these:

• The 8 comments on Edward Prutschi’s post, “Crime & Punishment in 2012”
• The erudite, not to say abstruse, renewed comments on Shaunna Mireau’s post, “Queen’s Counsel Appointments”

You can subscribe to the comments on Slaw either as a separate matter (RSS, email) or as part of a subscription combining posts and comments (RSS, email).

2. SlawTips

This week’s tips on SlawTips are:

• Tuesday:

An interesting decision came out in the twilight of 2011. The Vancouver Sun v. British Columbia, 2011 BCSC 1736 is worth a look not only because it is the first of what is likely to be many cases adjudicating fallout from last year’s Stanley Cup riot in Vancouver, but also for its utilization of production orders to get useful information from third parties unrelated to the criminal events under investigation. As upcoming lawful access legislation is expected to create a number of new production orders (largely focused on acquiring telecommunications data from third parties), this case may provide a window . . . [more]

Slaw is pleased to let you know that three new columnists have joined us. They’ll be coming on line over the course of the next months, in the order in which their brief bios appear here:

Kevin O’Keefe, as you’ll likely know, is the CEO and founder of LexBlog. He was a trial lawyer in Wisconsin for 17 years and remains a sustaining member of the the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, and he has served as a vice president of business development for Martindale-Hubbell. LexBlog is that mighty platform that enables thousands of lawyers in the US . . . [more]

This morning in a brief decision Canada’s top court ruled in a Reference that Internet service providers are not bound by the CRTC’s broadcast regulations

The judgment is so brief we quote it in full: . . . [more]

At a press conference on February 6, 2012, Steve Woodworth, backbench Conservative MP for Kitchener Centre stated that he tabled a motion in Parliament calling for the creation of a special committee to study medical and scientific evidence about when a child can be considered a human being separate from the mother. He also wants that committee to examine the legal impact of denying full human rights to an unborn child and provide options to update the law.

Woodworth expects his motion to get an hour of debate in March and another hour in June.

As stated in my previous . . . [more]

John is bored. His firm just hasn’t been busy this month and instead of the usual big transaction work all he has are small bits and pieces of corporate matters. Even though none of it is complicated he just can’t get down to doing any of it and is wasting time surfing the net instead.

Terry is deadline driven. Every day is about putting out fires and meeting last minute deadlines. He knows he should plan ahead and get to his projects done before the last minute but he has gotten use to the adrenaline rush and just can’t get . . . [more]