I didn’t realize that on January 27th the Government of Canada had ordered a review under the Investment Canada Act to determine if the investment by Amazon.com in a fulfillment centre for Amazon.ca would be of benefit to Canada. Today the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages announced this has been approved, based on the following commitments made by Amazon:

• new jobs for Canadians and improved service for Canadian consumers;
• increased visibility for Canadian books on the Amazon.ca Web page;
• an investment of over $20 million, including $1.5 million in cultural events and awards in Canada and the promotion

In law we’re used to structured data, although, like the oft-mentioned M. Jourdain, we may not know it by its fancy name. Very roughly, it’s data that’s been labelled in some useful way, so that it can be found or otherwise manipulated using that label. So, when we tell CanLII or our favourite commercial database that we’d like to see R. v. Molière, please, we’re wielding the label “case name,” for example. Like most professions and trades, we analyze our tools and products, naming the parts and their relationships, creating various “ontologies.” It starts simply in law school, . . . [more]

David Canton has been first to comment on the new digital version of the Ontario Reports that arrived in the inboxes of members of the Ontario bar this morning.

Although I take no credit for being a catalyst in this development (see my SLAW rant here from over 1 year ago), I am extremely pleased with the product and have already used it to print a nice PDF of one of the cases reported in it. The various advertisements for new publications, seminars and other material are often in color and fairly easy to scroll through.

I applaud the effort . . . [more]

Materials from a January 2010 conference held by the Self‐Represented Litigation Network of the U.S.-based National Center for State Courts were recently posted on the Webjunction website.

The conference took place in Austin, Texas.

“The Self-Represented Litigation Network is an open and growing group of organizations and working groups dedicated to fulfilling the promise of a justice system that works for all, including those who cannot afford lawyers and who go to court on their own. The Network brings together a range of organizations including courts, and access to justice organizations in support of innovations in services for the self‐represented

From the Law Day 2010 Press Release

Access to Justice: Justice for All

Changes in legal systems, financial barriers, and language concerns can have an impact on the ability of all BC citizens to gain access to the justice system. This raises a question about whether everyone in BC has equal access to the justice system.

This concern for justice for all is the theme for this year’s BC Law week, which aims to connect BC’s citizens with members of the legal community. Simply, it means that every BC resident has a right to justice when confronted with a legal . . . [more]

I happened to be looking at currency dates for a section of the Criminal Code today and saw a big bold New heading. To my glee the New heading prefaced a note about shading on the Department of Justice Laws website. The site has a new feature showing provisions that are not yet in force as shaded. Well done DOJ!

The frequently asked questions page describes it like so:

What does the shading of provisions mean?
A new feature has been added to the consolidated Laws on the Justice Laws Web site: provisions in original enactments that are not

Here’s a turn-up for the books: there’s a new entry in the Canadian legal search engine market. CanLII notwithstanding, Kent Mewhort, a McGill law student and experienced software engineer, has launched Nomus, a free search engine for Canadian legal decisions.

This is no Google-based amateur effort, but rather a serious tool running with at least one interesting algorithm and one valuable additional feature. I’ve had a small exchange of emails with Mr. Mewhort, and some of the material in this post comes from that.

First the scope: the database is drawn from publicly available, i.e. governmental, sites . . . [more]

Before we leap to the assumption that advanced analytic programmes can really help suggest what we should be reading, I reproduce without sarcastic comment an email I got this morning:

“Dear Amazon.ca Customer,

As someone who has purchased or rated Knowledge Management and the Smarter Lawyer by Esq., Gretta Rusanow or other books in the Law Practice General category, you might like to know that Set-Off Law and Practice: An International Handbook will be released on April 11, 2010. You can pre-order yours at a savings of 16% by following the link below.

Set-Off Law and Practice: An International Handbook . . . [more]

A recent notice from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency indicates that the deadline to make a claim for compensation under the class action lawsuit on behalf of freelancers and other contributors to online databases launched by Heather Robertson has now passed.

According to the notice, the class action alleged that the creators were not properly compensated for the electronic reproduction of their works in online databases. The notice advised that Thomson Reuters, CTVglobemedia, and The Gale Group, agreed to pay $11 million to settle the lawsuit, while making no admission of wrongdoing. No reference was made to any other legal . . . [more]

The post below may be offensive to some who believe in the majestic integrity of the law, that law is central to our civilisation and that we should not poke fun at its divine origin. . . . [more]

The Toronto Association of Law Libraries (TALL) hosted a Publishers’ Forum at the University of Toronto Law School last week entitled “Free Access to Legislation: How Do They Do It?”

The meeting was well attended by TALL members.

Publishers making presentations to the forum included representatives for the Department of Justice Laws website, CanLII, the Legislative Assembly of Ontario website, and Ontario e-Laws.

All four of these sites and their developers are to be applauded. Although not necessarily the intent of the session, I came away with a better sense of appreciation for their hard work . . . [more]

Last night I had the pleasure of speaking to the INF 2133 Legal Literature and Librarianship class at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto on the topic of knowledge management (KM) in law firms.

The course is taught by law librarians John Papadopoulos and Sooin Kim. There was, I think, some interest in the topic of KM since many of the students were aware of the importance of KM and some had taken Professor Choo’s courses, some of which discuss KM.

Two things arose that I thought I would mention here:

Records management

In basing my talk on . . . [more]