Out of the blue (well to us anyway) House of Butter learnt that BAILii was teetering after it became clear that UK government sources of money were to become increasingly difficult to access as the (UK) coalition austerity belt tightened.

On 10 June we learnt from a number of UK LIS LAW posts and BAILii themselves that although they’d still receive UK government funds until March 2012 the organization would have to appeal for more funds from other parties.

Their funding page was updated with the following appeal notice a few days later

Why is BAILII appealing for funds?

BAILII’s

There is a trend that is causing me great consternation, and I think its impact is only just starting to hurt our users and budgets. It is the decision being taken by some publishers of electronic versions of journals and law reports to remove their titles from the aggregators, such as Lexis or Westlaw, and to build their own platforms and then sell the titles /access separately to consumers at a rate they think is achievable.

I admit to my fair share of cynicism in relation to legal publishers; many – though thank goodness not all – have always seemed . . . [more]

What do your clients find when they Google you?

The answer to that simple question lies at the heart of the personal digital profile concept. For most lawyers, your law firm website bio will be front and center in the results, and that is as it should be. While ensuring that particular page is prominent in search results for your name is a necessary step, my own view is that it is not a sufficient one. 

Lawyers are inherently predisposed to manage and minimize risk, and building out your digital profile is a strategy for doing just that when it . . . [more]

Early in July I launched Law Firm Leaders – the ONLY group on Linkedin exclusively for and populated by firm chairs, managing partners, and a few qualified executive committee members of (primarily U.S.) firms with over 100 lawyers in size. With an initial membership of over 60 law firm leaders, this question from my colleague, Brian Burke, quickly became one of the most popular, generating numerous responses:

As you think back over your years of service as a managing partner, as you think about some of the leadership lessons that you’ve learned (perhaps some through trials of fire), what one . . . [more]

What exactly is virtualization and why is there so much buzz about it these days? Virtualization can occur in many forms, but most initially think of using virtualization to consolidate servers into a single hardware platform. Essentially, you can run multiple servers on a single piece of hardware, where each “server” has its own memory “footprint” within the host machine. Servers are the most common devices when firms embark down the virtualization path. There are many other forms of virtualization such as desktop, network and storage virtualization. Desktop virtualizations occur in the larger firms all the way down to solos. . . . [more]

As lawyers know, between the lengthy process and the various complexities that are inevitable within the traditional legal system, many people become discouraged with their attempts to obtain justice. As others have suggested, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, specifically mediation, may offer the needed solution to for this lack of efficient access to justice. Rather than aiming to replace the established system, however, these mechanisms work in parallel with it.

Many non-governmental organisations here and abroad have realized the overwhelming inefficiency of the existing traditional legal system in the countries in which they are based. This is the reason many projects . . . [more]

After the 2010 earthquake destroyed Haiti’s law libraries, the Law Library Microform Consortium (LLMC), a non-profit cooperative of libraries, spearheaded the Haiti Legal Patrimony Project. 13 U.K., U.S., and German libraries contributed unique materials from their collections to help rebuild a collection of Haitian law online via the LLMC Digital database. Many of the 700+ titles on the master list (initially compiled from Law Library of Congress and Columbia University Law Library bibliographic data) have been digitized. The online collection comprises constitutions, statutes, codes, periodicals, and legal treatises. The Haiti Project is one of many digital law library initiatives. . . . [more]

This is the first of a series of posts that were prepared as the sequel to a request by Professor Daniel Poulin to explain the character and purpose of “Halsburys” and the “C.E.D.” to his seminar on legal information at the University of Montreal. The first post is a generic description of the Halsburys Model and will be followed by posts on Halsburys Laws of Canada, the Canadian Encyclopedic Digests, and the Juris Classeur Quebec, three publications of the same ilk or genre that are designed to provide legal researchers with “a complete statement” of the laws of Canada, the . . . [more]

[ français / English ]

Depuis mon retour dans le milieu de la justice en 2005, j’ai entendu à maintes reprises bâtonniers, ministres de la justice, juges en chef, professeurs d’université et tutti quanti dire que leur priorité est l’accès à la justice pour tous ! Comment ne pas être d’accord ? C’est un des principes fondamentaux de nos sociétés libres et démocratiques. 

Un autre de ces principes est « nul ne peut ignorer la loi » : on impose comme obligation à tous de connaître toutes les règles qui gouvernent notre société. L’accès à la justice, c’est aussi ça  . . . [more]

As I grow older and crabbier, I attend fewer conferences. Seeing old friends is a treat, but the standard meeting format that is built around a parade of speakers, many of whom are not natural communicators, and many of whom do not understand the inner soul of using PowerPoint, holds less and less appeal for me. But on June 16, 2011, The Future of Law Libraries Conference at the Harvard Law School gave me new hope. John Palfrey and his staff, with special nods to Meg Kribble, put on a stimulating, provocative and, well, classy event. The legal information situation . . . [more]

A favourite quote of mine is by Fred Bartlit at the 1994 ABA Techshow

We experiment with software. We buy, we try, we fail. The key to making it all pay off is in the re-engineering process — that is starting off with a blank slate and working from there.

With evaluation periods becoming commonplace, maybe Fred would now say, “we try, we buy, we fail”. Regardless, desktop and smartphone apps are now so abundant and relatively inexpensive that it is all too easy to head down a path of dependance on a program without realising it.

While your main . . . [more]

A lot has been written about the positive impact to the bottom line when corporations include more women on their boards. At it’s most simplistic, corporations recognize the value of a woman’s different life experiences in corporate decision making, along with a greater understanding of what types of services or products would interest female clients. However, the research goes much further than this to include the different and complimentary ways that women process information and make decisions. A recent Harvard Business Review article “ Defend Your Research: What Makes a Team Smarter? More Women” examines the impact that including . . . [more]