In 1910, an Englishman by the name of Percy T. Carden ^{[Fn. 1]} published an interesting proposal arguing for the creation of loose leaf law reports, which, at the time, generated considerable debate concerning the merits of ditching bound volumes in favor of publishing cases as single-issue slip opinions to be filed away in drawers. See Carden, Loose Leaf Law Reports, 26 L. Q. Rev. 75 (1910); see also Loose Leaf Law Reports, 30 Can. L. Times 244 (1910) (doubting that debris of littered “loose leaves” would ever find their way back to their proper places); Hawley, Law . . . [more]

Last October, Les Publications du Québec — the official printer for Acts and regulations in that province — started to remove marginal notes from its newly updated consolidated legislation collection called “Compilation of Québec Laws and Regulations”. When an Act or regulation gets amended, all its marginal notes are now removed from the text. Marginal notes in Quebec legislation will therefore progressively fade out as consolidated texts are being updated.

Marginal notes are words and small phrases that were traditionally displayed in the margin of printed statutes, providing hints about the content of specific provisions. Modern typesetting conventions . . . [more]

China China China. 

It’s the mantra of global business & finance and following their lead comes the legal industry.

The flood of international law firms into the Asian region to service the new opportunities in an ever expanding legal market over the last decade has been phenomenal and in 2010 there’s a new gold rush for law firms with china connections for this year’s huge IPO boom

Where the law firms go, so go the feeders, all of them desperately hoping for a piece of the pie.

The region’s two leading locations with a rule of law based on the . . . [more]

Two very good columns were posted here recently on the topic of looseleaf legal publications—one by Susannah Tredwell; the other by Ruth Bird. Ruth in particular painted a very negative picture of the looseleaf—basically the care and feeding is too onerous—and predicted its demise within the next 10 years.

Susannah referred to an article in BoingBoing; the comments on the article are most entertaining—mostly cries of woe from people who had been forced as part of their job duties to file looseleafs. From the tone of some of the comments you would think that looseleaf filing is a . . . [more]

I believe that a book without an index is not as useful as a book with a good index. 

A case headnote can provide a complete index to a judicial decision.

Headnotes are at risk because the full text of legal decisions without headnotes are now available free on the Internet from multiple sources. This free access has resulted in a dramatic reduction of print subscriptions to law reports.

Is there a need for headnotes? Headnotes tend to save time for a searcher by providing an index to a decision and by providing index material for digests. When a judicial . . . [more]

Having been a supporter of open access to research and scholarship for a dozen years now, I sometimes think that I have seen it all, from brilliant strategies to collegial indifference. Thus my surprise and delight, when I recently had the chance to meet Goldis Chami and Gordana Panic at the University of British Columbia to talk about their efforts, as students, to bring about open access to the work published by faculty and graduate students at UBC. Goldis, a second-year medical student, and Gordana, a recent graduate in Biology and Psychology, explained to me that they were determined to . . . [more]

In conjunction with the release of his latest autobiography, The Fry Chronicles, Stephen Fry has produced a rather unique interactive iPhone app titled myFry. What really catches your attention about it is the app’s navigation system:

When I first saw it, I was immediately struck by its beauty. Its functionality, however, remained something of a mystery to me. The designer of the app, Stefanie Posavec, writes:

The app functions as a ‘visual index’ of key theme tags within the book, which have been divided into 4 major groups: People, Subjects, Emotions, and Fryisms (metaphors, similes, word play,

It has occurred to House of Butter that in 2010 there now appears to be a singular lack of imagination at senior management levels at the major legal publishers.

Plenty of the usual tinkering and re-imagining of existing content and products and more of the we’ve bought this and look at the our latest JV with one or other technology based company to help “streamline” content management and flow at law firms. Woop de doo.

HOB wonders if this lack of imagination has its roots in fact that both Lexis and West currently see themselves as “content” database storage and . . . [more]

What does the acquisition of one publishing house by another mean for an author? Since the announcement of the acquisition of Canada Law Book by Carswell Thomson, I have received a number of calls from authors and editors asking me questions relating to the acquisition and what it will mean to them.

Is one legal publisher better than another?

Needless to say, it can be a bit disconcerting for an author to learn that his or her publisher has been sold to a competitor. In persuading an author to sign with Publisher A, as much effort would have been spent . . . [more]

Under the Author Information section of an article in Nature last week (August 5), there was a highly irregular reference to an unusual number of extensive contributors: “Foldit players (more than 57,000) contributed extensively through their feedback and gameplay, which generated the data for this paper.” As you might imagine, this throws a small wrench into the intellectual property concept of scholarly publication, in which the publisher reaps the profits, while the honors of priority and attribution go to the identified authors. In this case, the 57,000 anonymous authors suggest something new is afoot. 

In the article in question, “ . . . [more]

What’s the best thing about Wikipedia? It’s a source that’s “good enough”. It’s an excellent way to get up to speed when all you really need is general or background knowledge. And the price point is so attractive! But would I rely on Wikipedia exclusively? Doubtful … and I certainly wouldn’t rely on it in an important situation without checking primary sources. 

Some wikis are now appearing as sources of legal information. I was fascinated to read the recent post on this site about the new tax wiki established by Professor Ben Alarie, of the U of T Law Faculty; . . . [more]

After a judicial decision is completed by a judge and filed with a court, a legal editor may add a headnote to the decision. A headnote is normally prepared by an editor employed by a publisher. 

The main purpose of a caselaw headnote is to save a searcher time in finding a point of law. A headnote should be an index to a judicial decision. For example, a headnote can serve a searcher so that only a portion of long decision has to be read.

Comment and opinion should not be part of a headnote.

What are the elements of . . . [more]