I was a bit surprised at s statistic that was reported by Jack Newton here at Slaw last week. Though a top 5 desktop app, Evernote showed a usage rate of only 16% in Clio’s annual survey.

There has been plenty of discussion about Evernote here at Slaw, and David Whelan recently discussed Evernote Updates for iOS. An easy link for Evernote clipping was even added to Slaw a couple of years ago.

I used Evernote (the iPad app) last weekend as a ‘meeting binder’ for the background information that I would have otherwise carried to the fall . . . [more]

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) which many law firms belong to jointly produced a white paper in October 2012 entitled The New Librarian. 

According to Steven Lastres via the On Firmer Ground blog:

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) recently released a joint white paper that acknowledges the strategic alliance that has developed between law librarians and technologists in driving efficient and effective legal information management.

Kate Hagan, Executive Director of AALL says, “As legal professionals retool and reskill through innovation and

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) have co-published a white paper called The New Librarian that looks at the new skills that today’s information professionals need to have or acquire to do well and survive. It is full of examples of how law librarians in different contexts are facing up to the challenges of constant change.

In her introduction, Kate Hagan, Executive Director of AALL, writes:

This joint white paper acknowledges the strategic alliance that has developed between the law librarian and technologist in driving efficient and effective legal information management. The

Lexum, the company that puts the opinions of the Supreme Court of Canada online, has updated the judgments page. The new page shows off Lexum’s product Decisia, software to assist courts and tribunals to put their decisions online.

The new page offers you a few recent decisions and a few news releases, with the option in each case of browsing through the entire database. Judgments can be browsed by date, case name or subject. Sophisticated searching is also possible, of course.

The only suggestion I’d make (after a very few minutes of using the Decisia layout) is that . . . [more]

Yesterday at the Law via the Internet conference, Clay Shirky, author of “Here Comes Everybody” and “Cognitive Surplus” described how people were using RapGenius.com to do more than explain rap lyrics…they were using it to explain law.

Here’s an example: 

Will “the crowd” develop an interest in annotating the law?

There is a pretty exciting project underway in Quebec that has built a platform for just that purpose.

In the meantime, go here to read more about Clay Shirky’s presentation and to watch the video.

Finally, if you want to try your hand at annotating Canadian law, we’ve . . . [more]

Right to Know Week is an international event started in Bulgaria in 2002. Its purpose is “to raise awareness about people’s right to access government information while promoting freedom of information as essential to both democracy and good governance.”

In Canada, events across the country are posted on the website http://www.righttoknow.ca/.

Last week I was fortunate to attend a run-up event to Right to Know Week called Open Data, Big Data, Yes…but NOT Personal Data, put together jointly by the Toronto Board of Trade and Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner Dr. Ann Cavoukian. She encourages public institutions to . . . [more]

I got to tell you. It’s tough being on the same posting day as Mitch and Yosie these days. The bar can sit pretty high when my coastal time zone mind wakes up to see what they’ve posted each Thursday. Such is the evolving quality of Slaw, I suppose — which, of course, makes for great reading.

Case in point, Mitch’s post below shares a wonderful vision for how KM can evolve to be more effective, more business-centric and drive new innovation. Simply fantastic. Please don’t take the rest of this post as a critique of Mitch’s ideas.

One difference . . . [more]

I missed the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) conference, which wraps up today in Washington D.C. So my thoughts are turning not only to envy, but also to some of my own KM thoughts mixed with those emanating from conference tweets.

Too often Canadian law firms see KM as nothing more than a repository of documents and clauses: Matthew Parson’s so-called “information landfill.” And because KM is seen as nothing more than a landfill site, firms see KM as nothing more than a software solution to assist lawyers sift through the debris.

What a terrible waste!

But, what if . . . [more]

We hear a lot of talk about access to justice from the judiciary and the politicians who are charged to execute this lofty ideal. But it took an initiative between the National Virtual Law Library Group and the Federation of Law Societies of Canada to found CanLII over a decade ago.

The Free Access to Law Movement could hardly envisioned the rise of mobile technology in the 2002 Declaration on Free Access to Law. When a solo private practitioner uses their own resources to advances the goals of unrestricted legal access and provides it to the public for free . . . [more]

We came across this recently in the 1959 Canadian Law List: The Law Library of the Future!

Let’s compare the concerns of 1959 with 2012: Economy (the new tech costs less), Space saving (we all have better uses for space), Convenience (a.k.a. ease of access, dare I say on your desktop?), No binding costs or problems (a thing of the past), No bookshelves (see space). Does this sound familiar?

I do note that this new technology wasn’t cheap. Using the Bank of Canada inflation calculator: The SCRs that cost $118 in 1959 would cost $941.69 in 2012; this represents . . . [more]

Following the inspiring lead of Connie Crosby and Shaunna Mireau, I’m sharing a summer project list. I have quite a long summer project list, and it has had to face regular trimming. Summer rarely seems to offer the generous spare time foreseen during the hectic days of the late spring term.

My summer project list contains standard mundane tasks like reorganizing files – physical and electronic – as well as institutional projects difficult to achieve during the academic term, and taking a bird’s-eye view of library collections and services. I won’t bore anyone with those.

Some of the invigorating . . . [more]