I have spent the last week deciding between whether to buy a netbook or a laptop.

A netbook was tempting for both the low price ($300 to $400 range) and as an experiment with Linux and OpenOffice (for some netbooks). However, a large number of online reviews pointed out the limitations of netbooks: smaller keyboard, not much memory, and sluggishness, especially those using Windows XP or Vista.

Ultimately, the advice from a colleague helped me decide in favour of a laptop. His advice? Is it for travel or is it for work? Since I wanted to use it for work, . . . [more]

This year’s Canadian Association of Law Libraries conference will be taking place in Halifax, NS May 24-27, 2009 with business meetings on Sunday, May 23rd and sightseeing tours and a pre-conference workshop on Saturday, May 22nd. . . . [more]

Legal IT 3.0 is coming up on April 20 & 21 in Montreal. Dominic Jaar is once again heading up the organizing committee and has put the program together along with Xavier Beauchamp-Tremblay.

It is the largest and the most important event of the year in Canada on information technology for law. Dozens of experts from Canada and internationally (United States, France and Australia), including the keynote speaker Ronald J. Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab, will be there. You will also see some Slaw folk speaking including Simon Chester, Steve Matthews, me, and of . . . [more]

ABA TECHSHOW 2009 is quickly approaching – April 2-4 in Chicago – and as the earlybird registration was just extended to March 6, you have a few more days to save up to $400 on registration fees.

After several years on the organizing committee, and as Chair of ABA TECHSHOW 2007, it could easily be claimed that I am a tad biased about this conference. I won’t deny that – but I think this conference speaks for itself.

ABA TECHSHOW, now in its 23rd year, is the world’s premier legal technology CLE conference and expo. The conference offers more than . . . [more]

The folks at the Toronto law firm Hicks Morley are leaps and bounds ahead of most other firms in their wiki use. They are using the wiki-based platform ThoughtFarmer as their whole intranet. This has had advantages, including being quick to set up and cost effective compared to other intranet or portal platforms.

In October Knowledge Management Specialist Heather Colman made a presentation to both the Toronto and New York Legal KM Groups, and we subsequently invited her to present at Toronto Wiki Tuesdays. These were her slides: . . . [more]

The National Law Journal [sorry, subscription required] reported today there are fewer licensed lawyers in Illinois:

The Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission, an agency of the Illinois Supreme Court, booted 587 active attorneys from the state’s so-called “master roll” this year when they failed to file the paper work showing they had completed 20 hours of certified legal training between July 1, 2006, and June 30, 2008. The lawyers were officially removed from the roll after being sent three reminder letters late last year.

Illinois conceptualized mandatory CLE in 2005 with an initial scaled in requirement of 20 hours.

There

As part of the Ontario Bar Association‘s 2009 OBA Institute (continuing today) the Privacy Law section held a program yesterday entitled “What Every Lawyer Needs to Know About Privacy”. Dan Michaluk has blogged about his session in which he was a panelist with Professor Avner Levin from Ryerson University; their focus was on workplace privacy issues that came out of the Ryerson study The Next Digital Divide: Online Social Network Privacy. . . . [more]

Those Slawyers in or near Toronto might like to know that Richard Susskind, author of “The End of Lawyers: Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services,” will be speaking at the National Club on Wednesday, February 11 at 5 p.m., courtesy of the Canadian Bar Association. Those wishing to attend can let the organizers know here. The first chapter of Susskind’s book is available on the CBA site in PDF.

The CBA announcement of his impending talk also said that Susskind

has recently agreed to share his expertise with the Canadian Bar Association in the role of Special Adviser. He

I’ve done a quick search of Google Books (“Canada” + “law”)(“canadian” + “law”) and have created a library of some of the resulting material. I chose books published in this century that had a limited preview available and came up with 57 volumes. As you’ll know, I’m sure, Google Books has four degrees of accessibility online: no preview available, snippet view, limited preview and full preview. Those in the last category tended to be the oldest material, typically published in the 19th century.

The books I’ve identified have what I believe is a substantial proportion of their text readable . . . [more]

I spent this past Sunday in Dartmouth at the first Podcamp Halifax. As an enthusiast of the Podcamp movement of grassroots community-run events for the social media set (and an organizer of Podcamp Toronto), I was there to help them kick off their first such event, as well as spend time meeting some fascinating people.

One such person is David Fraser, lawyer with McInnes Cooper with whom I have been corresponding for a few years now, president of the Canadian Information Technology Law Association, and law blogger (see his posts here on Slaw and also his . . . [more]

Back in November Dave Bilinsky reported on new Client ID and Verification Rules coming into force across the country.  B.C., Manitoba and Ontario‘s just came into force on December 31st.

The Law Society of Upper Canada is holding a teleseminar on January 13, 2009 to explain how these new requirements will affect legal practices and what you should be doing to confirm your client’s identity upon being retained to provide legal services.

Here is the lineup of speakers (subject to change):

• Karen Bell, Karen Bell LLB
• Caterina Galati, The Law Society of Upper Canada
• Ian M.

Aujourd’hui encore, trop nombreux sont les profanes aux yeux desquels l’Internet reste une terre inconnue, aux rituels propres et au langage incompréhensible. Pour se convaincre des réticences que continue à susciter le réseau parmi les professionnels du droit en particulier, il suffit d’ailleurs de faire état de tous les domaines de la pratique au sein desquels son utilisation est encore exclue. Par exemple, le courriel n’est toujours pas un mode de signification accepté par le législateur, et nombre d’avocats lui préfèrent la télécopie pour de simples communications. Les tribunaux de la Belle Province ne permettent pas encore la production de . . . [more]