There’s a piece by Debra Logan on the Gartner Blog Network, “Twitter and e-Discovery,” that goes over some fairly straightforward stuff about e-discovery and social media. What struck me as interesting was an observation at the end of the piece, pointing out that because of the briefness of a tweet, it is more likely decontextualized than are other discoverable utterances (doodles on pads at meetings?), at least when it’s looked at outside the flow it first appeared in. It’s context that gives or controls meaning, and the briefer the utterance the less each word is shaped by neighbouring . . . [more]

The Obama administration’s efforts to foster openness and public engagement took a giant leap forward this week with the announcement of data.gov, making data from across the U.S. government readily available from a single portal. This will be an incredible tool for those interested in measuring how governments actually perform and should be a standard part of every government’s web offering… *cough*Canada*cough*

Though Canada hasn’t followed suit yet, we did get more data this week about Canada’s Clean Energy Fund, and about two new BIP investments by the Ontario government. 

We also saw interesting new data in . . . [more]

I was attending a KM session in NYC a few years ago when Michael Mills (Director of Professional Services & Systems of Davis Polk & Wardwell) was leading a session. He indicated, at that time, that the focus of the firm’s KM efforts was on helping each lawyer manage their own personal knowledge; hence Personal Knowledge Management (PKM). Several of the law firm KM leaders in attendance saw this as heretical — after all, most of the efforts in our KM teams are aimed at helping the firm or groups within the firm (e.g. practice groups) manage knowledge. This knowledge . . . [more]

Take the opportunity to read Dennis Kennedy’s May piece in the ABA’s Law Practice Today, Legal Technology Trends for 2009, this year’s version of his annual predictions and advice. I’m stealing none of his thunder if I tell you that his eight trends are:

1. Technology budgets get decimated
2. Making do with what you have or doing more with less
3. The mobile phone as platform
4. Looking to the cloud
5. Using tech to get the word out and the money in
6. Focus on client-focused technology
7. E-Discovery in still waters
8. The perfect storm for collaboration

For one thing you’re going to want . . . [more]

Why is a private law librarian from Alberta posting about Knowledge Ontario? Three answers:

1. Public body collaboration is interesting and in my backyard – Knowledge Ontario is a similar concept to The Alberta Library
2. There was an event today gathering input to shape the next steps for this excellent collaboration effort
3. I fell like I was there because of Connie’s Live Twitter feed and the #ko-idea hash tag

What is Knowledge Ontario?

Knowledge Ontario (KO) is a collaboration of libraries, cultural heritage organizations and educational institutions. Its focus is on connecting Ontarians with digital content to support their information

The media are slowly picking up on the number of court cases that are requiring disclosure of Facebook and other social network pages in litigation. SunMedia has a story today — see, e.g. “Social networking plays out in court” in the North Bay Nugget, and yesterday there was a story on Canoe Technology, “Facebook content showing up in lawsuits.” [See also “An Obligation to Discuss Facebook During Discovery,” from a couple of months ago on Slaw.]

Ian Kerr of U of Ottawa is quoted in the Sun Media story as saying this:

“The courts

The Podcasting Legal Guide for Canada by Kathleen Simmons and Andy Kaplan-Myrth was first officially released back in June 2007 by Creative Commons Canada (see my Slaw post from June 29, 2007). Now they have put out a call to translate the Guide in an open source style, via Traduwiki. Their goal is to have it translated into French, although Traduwiki has the infrastructure to allow for translation into a number of different languages.

If you can help in the translation, please make your contribution via the wiki.

Photo: by Connie Crosby, also available under Creative . . . [more]

I had the pleasure again to guest lecture in FIS 2133 – Legal Literature and Librarianship at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, being taught by John Papadopoulos and Sooin Kim. The topic was knowledge management (KM) in law firms.

Two broad themes emerged (albeit slightly unrelated): (i) their concern over the job market for future law librarians / knowledge managers, and (ii) my continued proselytizing for an integrated approach to information in law firms by merging library functions with KM and continued “convergence” with library and KM and other administrative functions in law firms, including training, marketing and . . . [more]

Lawyers’ Weekly reports that the Law Society of BC is considering whether it should be able to insist on doing a complete copy of a member’s computer in the course of an investigation. Pros and cons are discussed in the article, along with the proposed policy.

Concerns raised have included the lawyer/member’s privacy, and solicitor-client privilege.

Could not however the Law Society have sent in an investigator who would have had physical access to all the same files? Is the concern that once the mirror image is made, it is accessible to more people, with unknown controls?

In Ontario, the . . . [more]

A tip of the hat to Gerry Blackwell at Canadian Lawyer magazine for his writings on technology. More specifically, in this month’s issue (unfortunately not available through a link) he discusses the progress that colleague Elizabeth Ellis has made at her firm with SharePoint 2007. Last month, he also managed to take my rambling comments and convert them into an article on knowledge-sharing.

I enjoy Gerry’s writing and he was very interested and approachable in discussing technology issues. To his credit, he balanced my comments on the use of technology with the importance of the “people” factor in knowedge sharing, . . . [more]

Over two years ago, Simon Chester noted,

75 percent of all traffic on the Internet is due to file sharing, with 59 percent of that file sharing attributed to people swapping video files. Music tracks account for 33 percent of the file-sharing traffic. E-mail, it turns out, accounts for just 9 percent of the total traffic.

Well it turns out that all that file sharing activity is not without risk.

Tiversa, a Pennsylvania-based company that monitors peer-to-peer file sharing, revealed this week that they found a transfer of military information from a defense contractor in Bethesda, Md., to . . . [more]

While it’s mainly an American based survey there’s much of interest in the latest ILTA Survey of Corporate Law Departments.

I was surprised that

Word 2003 still dominates word processing

Sharepoint hasn’t been widely deployed

Most corporate law departments have had experience coping with electronic discovery

Knowledge management doesn’t seem to be of interest to most corporate law departments

There appears to be ample opportunity for creative technological exchange between law firms and their clients . . . [more]