Canadian citizen Omar Khadr is the only Western national left in Guantánamo Bay. Khadr and fellow detainee Mohammed Jawad are believed to be the first child combatants ever to face prosecution of alleged “war crimes”. Khadr was only 15 years old when he was captured by US forces in Afghanistan and later transported to the infamous US detention centre where he has now spent more than a quarter of his life. Khadr faces trial by US military commission. The military commissions fall so far short of international human rights standards that it is impossible for Khadr to receive a fair

An article in the recent Communications of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), “Got data?: a guide to data preservation in the information age,” makes the case for urgent investment in data cyberinfrastructure — whatever is required to store, manage, catalog and access data.

(Note: that link won’t give you much joy unless you happen to subscribe to the ACM portal. Fortunately, the author, Francine Berman, who is Director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, has put up on her website a version of the piece in PDF, “Surviving the Data Deluge.” Such is the . . . [more]

Technology has become an essential part of practising law and working in a law office (or any office for that matter). My TechTips column from the Summer 2008 issue of LAWPRO Magazine summarizes what I think are the 10 essential technology skills and practices that every lawyer and law office staff person should be familiar with.

Do you know what Alt+Tab does? How about a right-click on your mouse? Do you know how to use Cut, Copy and Paste? How about Paste Special. The text format shortcuts will save you tons of time next time you have to type up . . . [more]

Here are the slides from a talk I gave on Dec. 1 at the Schulich School of Business in a session held for practicing marketers.

What I found most interesting from the discussion that ensued afterward was the suggestion that vote monitoring tactics observed during the U.S. Presidential election could be duplicated here, specifically for the proposed vote-swap.

The concept behind it was that all of the other parties would work together to ensure they all got as many seats as possible. Ridings where the race was close were identified, and participants were matched with a person in a . . . [more]

The Canadian Bar Association recently published Guidelines for Practicing Ethically with New Information Technologies (the “Guidelines”) as a supplement to its Code of Professional Conduct.

While the Guidelines provide a considerable amount of information concerning the use of technology in a legal practice (even referring to certain software in its annexes), some lawyers may find themselves at a loss as to how to actually implement the guidelines in their practice. This essay identifies certain aspects of the Guidelines that are worthy of additional commentary and refers readers to (mostly free) tools which will prove useful in following the Guidelines. . . . [more]

On Nov. 27, 2008, I attended a session hosted by the Toronto chapter of the Legal Marketers Association (LMA) on Social Media Success.

The event was moderated by Max Valiquette of Youthography, and featured a panel with Parker Mason of CNW Group, Michael Rabinovici of AR Communications Inc., and Stuart Wood of Torys LLP.

Wood claimed his firm didn’t know he was there. But the event was promoted on the LMA website, and as he soon found out, he was part of an impromptu podcast when Mason revealed he was recording the session.

Full audio . . . [more]

Slaw is pleased to announce that the Toronto Opinions Group (TOROG) has agreed to make public on Slaw memos and precedents that may prove to be helpful to others. The Toronto Opinions Group consists of a group of lawyers, primarily practising with the Toronto offices of the larger Canadian law firms, with an interest in third party (or transaction) opinion practice. TOROG meets regularly to review current opinion issues with a view, where appropriate, to discussing problems, assessing best practices and developing common approaches to opinion issues and opinion language. It does not involve itself in specific transactions or opinion . . . [more]

I attended an American Association of Law Libraries webinar on screencasting and podcasting this week. I heard about this session via Slaw and decided to attend to see if this tech would fit in nicely with our current Intranet offerings.

Kerry Fitz-Gerald, Reference Librarian, Seattle University School of Law Library and Rita Kaiser, Reference Services Librarian, King County Law Library educated and inspired me. The session was just over an hour, and due to my longitunal location ran from 11 a.m. to 12ish.

I was so inspired, I bought a headset with a mic at lunch, and proceeded to avoid . . . [more]

I noticed this webinar from the American Association of Law Libraries and thought others might be interested:

How to Train Without Showing Up

Date: Wednesday, November 12, 2008 – register by November 5th.
Time: 12:00 – 1:15 p.m. Central Time

Find out how screencasts and podcasts can be created and used for educational purposes. Our speakers will share how they use screencasts and podcasts in their libraries and will offer you suggestions on how you can use them for training purposes in your own library.

In this webinar you will:

• Get introduced to how screencasts and podcasts are created
• Receive

I’ve been away for a bit, but I’ve been busy studenting (a new word in honour of the impending replacement of W). I expected somewhat of a challenge from the shift to being a full-time student but I will freely admit that it has been a bigger challenge than I first anticipated. It has been more of a mindset question more than any other factor (and perhaps this has been exacerbated by the fact that I am accustomed to being at the front of the room standing and doling out information rather than sitting down and absorbing). But I have . . . [more]

A recent article in Library Journal caught my eye: “Living Library” Debuts in Santa Monica ((Library Journal, 10/20/2008)) As the article explains the living library movement invites library users to ‘book’ meetings with individuals with special interests, beliefs or experiences.

Though I can’t find proof of this in her written work, Connie Crosby once said that she pays attention to trends in public libraries that could apply to law library services. This memory glimer (hopefully I am attributing the credit correctly) says to me: how would the construct of a living library help my firm? What would that look . . . [more]

I am currently at the Internet Librarian 2008 conference in Monterey, CA. Under the category of “I wish you were here” is the presentation by Michael Sauers, Technology Innovation Librarian from the Nebraska Library Commission. I caught the tail end of his presentation and unfortunately didn’t take notes, but here are his Lessig-esque slides. Michael knows a lot about Creative Commons through practical use as well as trial-and-error.