Another story of students’ use of cellphones to cheat has hit the news. The authorities in this case, the state of Mississippi, turned to technology for a solution, but not in the way you might think. They engaged a company that analyzes test results to find commonalities in mistakes that, according to the inventor, mark the students as cheaters. Apparently, cheating has declined considerably since the introduction of this tech-check (though how the state could know that through independent methods is unclear).

The old academic in me loathes cheating, so I would, at first blush, simply jam all cell . . . [more]

The law student of 1594 passed Christmas revelling to The Comedy of Errors by Shakespeare. We know this because of the Gesta Grayorum which was printed in 1688 from a much older manuscript. This text has been conveniently reproduced with an introduction on the Mr. Shakespeare blog.

We can also look forward to a 3 volume set, part of the Records of Early English Drama series, to be published in January 2011 by Boydell & Brewer: Inns of Court, edited by Alan H. Nelson and John R. Elliott, Jr. According to the publisher’s blurb:

The Introduction provides

. . . [more]

Cynthia Vukets of The Star covered today a new study that predicts the success of lawyers based on their law school yearbook photo,

A University of Toronto professor has found that he can predict how much money a law firm will make just by looking at university yearbook photo of the managing partner.

“We found that power is what predicts their success,” said Nicholas Rule, a psychologist. “It’s the impression of power that one gets from someone’s face.”

He took yearbook photos of the managing partners of the 100 top US law firms and showed them to college students. Students

. . . [more]

Plain language — the written kind — has been of interest here on Slaw recently, with John Gregory’s post “Enforcing Plain Language” and Simon Chester’s post announcing the (October) Educaloi conference, “Telling the Law to the Public. Are There Better Ways?“. I’ve got a couple of things to offer here.

First, I thought readers might like to be reminded of The Legal Writing Institute and, particularly, its open access journal. (You should also have a look at volume one of their Monograph Series: The Art of Critiquing Written Work, which comprises 15 articles.)

There’s . . . [more]

Don't re-invent the wheel, use the expert tools to find your information, and look for the interconnectedness of the information that you use.

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries/Association Canadienne de Bibliothèques de Droit has launched upon its first distance learning initiative, with two more webinars coming up shortly.

Joan Rataic-Lang will be presenting a session on November 23 which I’m sure will resonate with many of us. Her talk, Cost-Saving Measures in the Library, promises to cover not only how to select the cuts and economies, but to lead change and communicate effectively the messages to your stakeholders. For those of you who may not know Joan, she’s a witty and engaging speaker, and I think you’ll enjoy the session.

December 7 . . . [more]

The September/October 2010 Issue of Law Practice Magazine focused on law firm professional development and how to build talent.

I think one of the must read articles from that issue is Building A Better Talent Game Plan: Best Practices for Training and Developing Lawyers by Marcia Pennington Shannon.

When making decisions about lawyer development and training programs, many firms focus mainly on how it will affect the short-term bottom line – especially when the bottom line is hurting due to a struggling economy. The article sternly warns against doing this: Giving the short shrift to professional development today can have . . . [more]

In addition to our post last Monday, here is the video of what happened at Dalhousie Law School during the Wickwire Lectures.

Our thanks to Richard Devlin and his colleagues for making it available. Wickwire Lecture 2010

Be patient with it loading – it’s a 1350 MB beast of a file, which will load wonderfully on university broadband, but may be slow to load on the computers of mere mortals. . . . [more]

ON lawyers volunteer in the classroom

Once again the courts are being asked to intervene in university affairs. Gábor Lukács, a faculty member in the University of Manitoba Department of Mathematics, is upset with the way the Dean of Graduate Studies handled the matter of a recent PhD candidate. It seems the candidate twice failed his comprehensive examinations and only then declared a disability based on anxiety disorder. The dean ultimately allowed the candidate to proceed without having passed his comps; and, moreover, seems to have forgiven a failure by the candidate to rack up enough graduate school credits to meet the faculty’s requirements.

According . . . [more]

On Friday 5000 people across Canada attended the LEAF Persons Day Breakfast

7th ed. - 7th Circle