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]

Angela Swan recently wrote a post on “legal education, the alternatives”. Her motivation was a conference at Ryerson on models of legal education, “the how to think” model and the “how to do model”. Angela suggested this was a false dichotomy and I agree completely – I’d be surprised if anyone actually thought either model in its extreme, as presented here, was an appropriate way to train law students. The real issue is how well the two models are integrated and here law schools differ in their programs. The multilayered, multifaceted life (even in my limited experience of it) . . . [more]

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]

There was an article in a recent number of the Law Times on a conference at Ryerson on legal education. The focus seemed to be on whether law schools should stick with their current model of education, i.e., teaching students “how to think”, not what they need to know to be lawyers—what I call the “Harry Arthurs” model. This attitude was juxtaposed with “clinical” legal education.

It seems to me that this is a false dichotomy and that there is an alternative—whether it’s called a “middle way” or not. One such alternative would be to require students to undertake . . . [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]

Forty years ago today, yes December 9, 1968, the first prototype mouse was unveiled in a presentation by Stanford Research Institute engineer Douglas Engelbart. Made of wood with only one button. The mouse is likely older than many of Slaw’s readers.

Here is a BBC clip telling the story, and a Wired tribute.

Another time entirely. This was life before long-distance direct telephone dialling, before the photocopier, and while Colin Tapper at Magdalen was talking about computers and the law, it was all considered data-processing or cybernetics.

Law School was much as it would have been fifty years earlier. . . . [more]

The Geographies of Legal Education: Policy, Practice and Theory
May 25-27, 2009 Carleton University Ottawa
The 2009 annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Law Teachers (CALT) will be held May 25-27, 2009 at Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario. The annual meeting will be held in conjunction with Congress 2009 of the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (CFHSS), and will follow the Canadian Law and Society Association’s meeting of May 23-25. This year’s CFHSS Congress theme is “Capital Connections: Nation, Terroir, Territoire.”
Building on Congress’s aim to consider the ways in which globalization has impacted the relationship between . . . [more]

We haven’t mentioned the Symposium (from the Greek – a Drinking Party) at Ryerson University. Billed as The Ryerson Symposium – Innovation in Legal Education: Ideas for the 21st Century, it was held on Tuesday, November 25th.

On the heels of reports published by two separate task forces examining aspects of legal education in Canada, expert panels examined key issues:

How will Canadian law schools shape society in the next century?

What are the latest developments in the licensing and accreditation of law schools and will it impact legal education?

Can new legal education models unleash innovation and increase accessibility?

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]

Tip of the hat to Ian Kerr, who points us to Michael Giest’s latest project:

Why Copyright? Canadian Voices on Copyright Law

It’s a film on the significance of copyright as an issue in Canada. It features a wide range of Canadian voices – artists like Gordon Duggan of Appropriation Art; writers like award winning science fiction author Karl Schroeder; musicians like Wide Mouth Mason’s Safwan Javed; business people like Nettwerk Record’s Terry McBride, Lulu.com’s Bob Young, and Skylink Technologies’ Philip Tsui; government appointees like Privacy Commissioner of Canada Jennifer Stoddart and Ian . . . [more]