Knowledge@Warton has a great recap of a discussion from the 2010 Supernova forum. At issue is the evolution of social networking tools, and how they compare with corporate KM efforts. It’s an interesting discussion with a diverse range of opinions. If you’re currently involved in a KM program, or a law librarian seeking new ways to add value to your firm, I would encourage you to read this piece in its entirety.

One issue in particular that caught my eye was the contrast between ‘keeping it fun’ and maintaining value. Here’s a snippet:

While there are virtues to being able

I see from Carswell’s online catalogue that a new 7th edition of the the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (the “McGill Guide”) is due out on July 19, 2010.

There are separate records for what appears to be a softcover version ($50) or a hardcover version ($93) with no immediate indication of there being an online option.

I have long been critical of parts of the McGill Guide so it will be interesting to see what is new in the 7th edition.

I found with the 6th edition there were no good examples of citing to the Canadian Encyclopedic . . . [more]

The electronic format of the Ontario Reports is the worst of both the print and electronic worlds; it is dreadful. I cannot read the “two-page” format as the print is too small and, if I go to the single-page format with the type at a size I can actually read, I can’t go from the bottom of one page to the top of the next. My effort to contact the electronic publisher, not LexisNexis, to get its help was ignored.

As I have mentioned before on Slaw, we now desperately need some real effort to be made to deal with . . . [more]

The Law Society of BC has issued a Notice to Profession asking for comments on a proposed model Anton Piller order. A copy of their draft proposed 19-page model order is here in PDF (and I hope to review it shortly).

As stated in their draft documentation:

This Model Order is prepared in response to comments of the Supreme Court of Canada in Canadian Bearings Ltd. et al. v. Celanese Canada Inc. et al, 2006 SCC 36, which endorsed the development of model civil search and seizure Orders (a.k.a “Anton Piller” Orders) in Canadian jurisdictions. This draft is intended

If you are attending the upcoming American Association of Law Libraries conference in Denver, you are invited to drop by the CALI booth on Sunday afternoon from 2 to 3 p.m. for a “meet and greet” session with hosts and panelists of the Law Librarian Conversations podcast. Hosts Richard Leiter, Marcia Dority Baker and Roger Skalbeck will be there along with a pack of panelists to meet you.

You are also welcome to attend the recording of the special AALL 2010 episode of LawLibCon on Tuesday, July 13th at 2 pm in the CALI booth at the conference. Richard . . . [more]

If you use Google Scholar at all, you may be pleased to know that it’s now possible to refine certain searches. In a particular kind of search you want to know how a judgment or article has been received: this you can get by clicking on the “cited by [n]” link that will appear beneath each item in your search results. The happy ability to refine comes from Google’s addition of a switch to let you search within the articles or judgments that cited your initial work. Thus, to use a pedestrian example, Google Scholar returns 789 results for a . . . [more]

In a very curious custom, today seems to be the day when leases renew in Montréal, so it’s Moving Day, when a few hundred thousand Québecois decide to switch residence on the same day. Movers are sitting on their hands much of the rest of the year, but are booked solid for July 1 months in advance. Even at rates that are triple normal.

Why? . . . [more]

The oldest law reports in North America were originally written by Josiah Quincy Junior (1744-1775), recording the cases of continental America’s oldest court, the Superior Court of Judicature of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. That is the direct ancestor of today’s Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, which has been in continuous existence since 1692.

My friend Daniel R. Coquillette, former Dean of Boston College Law School has edited a new edition of the law reports published this month.

Quincy’s court reports offer a rare legal insight into life in the American colonies prior to the American Revolution, and cover such

Are any members of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries doing any recent bibliometric analysis of case law citation and noting up? I know of several such efforts in the past (see the Research Databank of their Committee to Promote Research).

There is also of course the study done by Greg Wurzer, Aleksandra Zivanovic and Rhonda O’Neill (“Canadian Electronic Citators: An Evaluation of their Accuracy and Efficiency” (2004) 29 Can. L. Libraries Rev. 68) and various citator comparisons done by American colleagues a few years back in the Law Library Journal.

However, I think the time has come . . . [more]

Westlaw Canada has added some search features:

1) Did you mean? If you misspell your keywords in a search (e.g., “fiducary”), the system will prompt you to see if you meant the correctly spelled word (e.g., “fiduciary”). Interestingly enough, the misspelled “fiducary” still had 5 results which raises the issue if one should always truncate the term to “fid!” (this recalls a library school exercise I used to assign in the old days prior to there being online citators for UK cases – the exercise had students “note up” the famous Jarvis v. Swan Tours decision. I had one student . . . [more]

And now for something long ago and far away. “Somethings,” I should say: the Tarlton Law Library at the University of Texas has an online exhibition of old legal dictionaries that will leave you itching to look something up — again and again. The exhibit features 30 of the some 100 old (before 1800) and rare dictionaries in their collection, stemming from the common law, Roman law, and civil law systems.

[click image to enlarge]

Vocabularius, for example, a small excerpt from which is pictured here, was first published in 1475 and last published early in the 17th century. . . . [more]

World Cup 2010 has been full of intrigue and interest; in posting about the legal aspects of the world cup last week I felt that was too much of interest to post at one time so this post continues the legal aspects of the world cup as we prepare for the round of 16.

It seems that World Cup 2010 has been a boon for South African Law Firms.

FIFA does indeed have a legal committee but I haven’t had much luck trying to discover the terms of reference for the legal committee nor even a description of what . . . [more]