A lot of government decision-making makes people who care about the environment want to tear out their hair. Sometimes they go further and sue. Does it help?

Suing the government can certainly draw attention to a decision. Sometimes, the subsequent negotiations can lead to a better result. Very occasionally, Canadian courts actually do force a government to to do a better job on an environmental matter. For example, they have required the federal government to actually come up with a plan for protecting an endangered species, as the Species at Risk Act specifically requires them to do. And in Oldman . . . [more]

Evernote is a digital notebook application with both desktop and mobile versions, all of which easily synch so that your information is available on any of your devices at any time. Evernote is a cross-platform application, which means that you can use it and information will synch even if you have a Windows desktop, an iPad and an Android phone.

Although many consider Evernote to be a productivity app, it can also be a helpful marketing and business development tool to help lawyers capture marketing and business development ideas, keep track of notes on prospective clients, and develop content, among . . . [more]

The promise of technologies related to the semantic web is coming closer to realization. These innovations have interesting potential as ways to provide better navigation of legal information and to work as infrastructure to encourage innovation in both software development and content generation. This could be achieved by providing the means to separate the development of applications, the production of secondary content, and the development and maintenance of databases of primary legal information. This is important for legal researchers as it has the potential to remove the barriers among publishers’ platforms and facilitate better utilization of content from multiple sources. . . . [more]

We are hopeful that you are familiar with metadata, especially as it exists in e-mail messages and word processing files. If not, then a brief refresher is in order. There are a couple of different types of metadata, but most regard the common definition to be data that is stored internal to the file (you can’t see it without knowing how to look at it) and is not explicitly defined by the user. The application (e.g. word processor) inserts data within the file such as the author, last time printed, fonts used or creation date. But what about image files . . . [more]

The really interesting piece of news that we’ve come across in the past fortnight is the announcement by Jordans publishing that they are now moving into the world of legal services.

Here at LLN / HOB we have always repeated ad nauseam that we hoped a law firm of some stripe would discover they could actually generate revenue from legal publishing activities; but instead the tables have been turned and Jordans have decided that there will be money in the world of practice while it appears to us, from the report, that they still intend to retain their legal content . . . [more]

Readers of SLAW know that, as a rule, librarians are passionate about their collections, and despite negative stereotypes, they embrace the electronic resources and developments with alacrity, often way ahead of the pack. (For example, in 1998, the librarian community were among the earliest adopters of, and overwhelmingly enthusiasts for, the new Google search engine, with is simple clean lines and lack of advertising – such a contrast to the AltaVista, Ask Jeeves  and Excite interfaces in use at the time.)

Where practical and useful for the organisation, librarians equally maintain the book resources for which they have responsibility. . . . [more]

There are many excellent recommendations in the CBA’s Reaching Equal Justice report. 

As a law professor and a member of the Legal Education and Training Team of the CBA’s Legal Futures initiative, I naturally focused on those relating to law schools, including this one:

All graduating law students should have a basic understanding of the issues relating to access to justice and know that fostering access to justice is an integral part of their professional responsibility.

This sounds great but there is a problem. Reaching Equal Justice assumes that access to justice is part of a Canadian lawyer’s professional . . . [more]

Two tragic deaths, months and thousands of kilometers apart, recently collided in my consciousness as I pondered the topic of my latest contribution to this SLAW Justice Column.

In late March of 2013 a jury found Richard Kachkar not criminally responsible (“NCR”) in the tragic high-profile death of Sgt. Ryan Russel. Kachkar had been charged with murder after an early morning barefoot rampage in a stolen snowplow. By the time the evidence at this trial was done, both the defence and crown psychiatric experts had reached the conclusion that Kachkar was suffering from a serious and debilitating mental illness. The . . . [more]

In my last column I talked about building reputations by being quoted in the media (proactive media relations). However, when you’re involved in something of interest to the media, it’s not always good news. Reputations can be threatened as well as made by media coverage. Reactive media relations involves the careful management of reputations, whether on behalf of a client, a lawyer, a practice group, or the whole firm.

How often does something occur in a law firm that unleashes the hounds of the media? More often than you might think. I had no trouble recalling ten examples from my . . . [more]

What happens to highly successful women lawyers and corporate executives and managers who decide to stop working and stay at home with their children full-time? Do they miss their successful careers? Do they feel they made the right choice for them and their families? What happens if they want to return to work ten years later when the children are older or their husbands have lost their jobs?

These questions were explored in a recent lengthy New York Times magazine article that revisited twenty-two women who were profiled in 2003 and labeled as the “Opt-Out Generation”.

Each of these women . . . [more]

On June 11, 2008, the House of Commons met in the Committee of the Whole to allow the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, the Leader of the Opposition, Stéphane Dion, Jack Layton, the leader of the New Democratic Party, and Gilles Duceppe, leader of the Bloc Québecois to each offer apologies for the harm done to First Nations and other Aboriginal students through their residential school experiences.[1]

Two new issues, related but readily distinguishable, have arisen in the past few months, about the residential school experience, neither of which were public knowledge at the time of the apology and certainly . . . [more]

The Internet has eroded traditional sources of authority. Where once the Encyclopedia Britannica was a final word on many subjects, Wikipedia now reigns supreme. A decade or two ago, the annual Information Please almanac with its sweet index could settle all arguments, now a Google search will do. A highly articulated structure of editors and review panels once guarded the mountain top of cognitive authority. But no more. The retrieval of information no longer troubles us, sorting out the glut of data is the trick. Yet one source holds sway in the world of legal information: The Uniform System of . . . [more]