I attended a Women’s Law Association of Ontario dinner recently where Chief Justice Winkler provided the following tips on how to succeed in law:

1. Law is a helping profession. Help others without looking for anything in return.

2. People want to help you. Graciously give them the opportunity do so.

3. Respect your elders. Respect those younger than you. Respect those the same age. Respect those in lesser positions than yours. Respect others.

4. Be loyal. Loyalty begets loyalty.

5. Do not exaggerate. Don’t mislead the court. Don’t take advantage of anyone.

6. Get a mentor or several mentors.Don’t

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Here’s the only existing study of the citation rates of open access legal journals v. their toll access counterparts. OA legal articles garner a 58% better citation rate. . . . [more]

I am very excited about the new offering from the Canadian Association of Law Libraries: the New Law Librarians’ Institute. This is a substantive learning opportunity that I wish I had as a new law librarian.

According to the flyer sent out by the Association:

the New Law Librarians’ Institute is an intensive, week-long, in-person course fostering key competencies in law librarianship, including knowledge and understanding of

• law-making institutions (legislatures, courts, administrative tribunals) and how law is created
• characteristics of, and differences between primary and secondary sources of law
• the principal substantive law publications (legislation, case reports, commentaries) in

. . . [more]

 Canadians have long had a hand in Techshow - there have been at least 4 Canadian lawyers who have chaired ABA TECHSHOW and many many more have been speakers and Techshow planning board members.  By my count, there are at least 5 Canadian speakers at the 2011 conference.

The University of Western Ontario has been the only common law school in Canada without a student-run law review. Until now.

After years and several attempts of starting a student-run law review, the faculty finally approved the launch of a new peer-reviewed legal journal. This current effort started over a year ago, when I thought that it was ridiculous that we didn’t have our own academic publication that our student body could get involved with and administer themselves.

After consulting with a number of other colleagues in my year with a background in publishing, notably Joel Welch, Kamila Pizon, and . . . [more]

3D printing would seemingly be mind-blowing for Access Copyright

The Federation of Law Societies announced today that the Ad Hoc Committee on Approval of New Canadian Law Degree Programs had lived up to its name and approved the programs proposed by Lakehead University in Ontario and Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia. This national hurdle was established by agreement among the provincial law societies in 2009 as a logical outgrowth of the Federation’s decision in 2007 to establish Canada-wide academic requirements for all Canadian law degrees, a process culminating in the approval by member societies of a set of National Requirements in 2010.

Lakehead University must still gain the . . . [more]

One of the joys (and irritations) of Twitter is the receipt of unexpected alien tweets courtesy of the people you follow. (I think you can turn this feature off in most Twitter clients, if the thought of entertaining friends of friends alarms you.) Thus, thanks to Rob Hyndman (@rhh) I learn via PEI of a post on Paul Mason’s blog, Idle Scrawl, on the BBC site.

The post is “Twenty reasons why it’s kicking off everywhere,” and it lays out twenty bullet points that would provide fodder for a discussion about recent social ferment, particularly in Europe and . . . [more]

Just A Click Away, a Canada-wide initiative on public legal education and information (PLEI) being coordinated by Courthouse Libraries BC, is organizing a two-day intensive conference in Vancouver, British Columbia on February 23 & 24, 2011.

The conference is about how to use Internet and social media technologies to better educate the general public about the law and provide resources for individuals to solve legal problems.

As a run up to the conference, Just A Click Away has been running a webinar series that features different approaches being used to provide online PLEI.

So far, 2 webinars have been . . . [more]

I read with great interest a recent article by Chris Anderson in Wired Features how video on YouTube is having the unexpected effect of allowing people to learn–and innovate–at an accelerated rate. He gives the example of people learning from one another how to dance, developing skills previously unheard of. Take for example the Legion of Extraordinary Dancers:

According to Anderson, many of these dancers were self-taught through Internet video, bringing together tricks and moves previously unknown in dance. Part of this is accelerated learning and innovation, he says, comes from people sharing what they know, so that others who . . . [more]

A couple of years ago I posted on the few offerings about law that were available on iTunes U, Apple’s semi-successful attempt to corral some serious podcasts and videos. I’ve had another look and find that the corpus has grown — though it hasn’t exploded in the way I imagined it might — and now contains a fair number of worthwhile lectures, both audio and video.

Searching for law in iTunes U isn’t particularly easy. There’s no category for it per se, and it’s variously plunked in other slots in the roster of topics. And searching for “law” . . . [more]

2011. Time may be a philosphical construct, but it sure did seem to move quickly in 2010. As the new year approaches, many people make resolutions, including me. I am resolving to learn three new things in 2011.

1. How to schedule time effectively for reviewing social media sources
2. How to have a conversation in French
3. How to renovate a document management interface so that it makes sense to both browsers and searchers

These are the extra things that I resolve to learn in 2011. As a law firm librarian, I am happy to report that I learn some new . . . [more]