Ley.mx is a Justia site that provides free online access to federal and state legislation for the third amigo in the NAFTA trio. The Federal constitution, codes, regulations and other statutory instruments are available in both HTML and PDF formats. The same documents for the 31 states seem to be available only in PDF; though you’ve got the choice to download them or view them online within an embedded Google viewer. As well, there are links to the appropriate government sites, law schools, and a number of law firms.

The simple and attractive site is in Spanish, as are all . . . [more]

Simon Fodden first spoke about the new Google Buzz here on Slaw last week. He didn’t have access yet at the time (do you now, Simon?).

First impressions

I was surprised to see it appear unannounced in my Gmail box a few days ago as an option on the left side of my mailbox. When I clicked on it, I was even more surprised to see I had followers and people I followed already set up (those people I was connected with who also have Gmail accounts). I was already privy to a number of conversations in progress. My . . . [more]

Citius, Altius, Fortius. Let me join the (undoubtedly numerous) others appropriating olympic symbolism this week. In this case, the olympic motto (Swifter, Higher, Stronger) happens to be a timely way to summarize this week’s biotech news.

Citius:Matthew Herper at Forbes called for faster communication to investors when companies deviate from their agreed clinical trial plan with the FDA. Herper suggested that the FDA should disclose the actual agreements with the companies; but I argued that as with any other material information, it is the company’s job to communicate with its investors.

Altius: This week certainly saw higher . . . [more]

Most of us today are blithely heading for our own personal data disasters. We generate and store vast volumes of information, but few of us really look after it.

So says the New Scientist. And then there’s the matter of professional data. Ever since solicitors invented deed boxes and tying docs up in pink ribbon — £31.08 for 109 yards — lawyers have fretted over the safe storage of information. Now that much of what’s important isn’t amenable to loops of ribbon or even file folders, old practices alone are no longer adequate.

The New Scientist piece introduces two . . . [more]

I dislike waiting. Someone doing a word association test would never blurt my name as a response if the word “patience” was provided. Lucky for me, tomorrow ends the wait for the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Tercon Contractors Ltd. v. Her Majesty the Queen in Right of the Province of British Columbia by her Ministry of Transportation and Highways.

There is a considerable amount of commentary about Tercon available from a wide variety of sources on the web:

• Tercon Heads For Supreme Court Showdown
• Supreme Court weighs the rules around bidding
• Supreme Court of Canada to Hear

In the U.S. there’s a League of Technical Voters the aim of which is to motivate and assist “technical experts to improve lawmaking and governmental process.” Citability.org, a project supported by that league and other organizations, is tackling one small part of the lawmaking-improvement process by urging “advanced permalinks” on American legislatures. Their complaints about the situation outside commercial databases are familiar:

• links to statutes too often go to large PDF files;
• where there are HTML files of legislation online, it isn’t possible to link to particular clauses within the legislation
• when legislation changes, earlier online versions of provisions

We’re used to seeing law firms breaking new ground in deploying technologies for marketing purposes, but I hadn’t seen a law firm sponsoring a television channel – and one devoted to matters legal.

What’s even more remarkable is where it’s coming from. Not some US powerhouse, or a tech-savvy firm in rural Canada.

No this news comes from Bucharest, (which as Simon reminded us Romania outranks Canada in its electronic infrastructure), where Juridic TV, the first television channel dedicated to public legal information, was launched online on February 8 and will broadcast an around-the-clock daily programme. . . . [more]

Three cases that are making their way through the Ontario court system have a few things in common: they’re all recent, all under the Class Proceedings Act, they’re all significant claims and they all name prominent Toronto law firms as defendants. . . . [more]

There’s an interesting little post on Tim Bray’s blog, Ongoing, entitled “The Listening Engine.” Bray, one of the bloggers I’ve been following for years now, is the Canadian software developer and entrepreneur who co-founded Open Text Corporation and who is now the Director of Web Technologies at Sun Microsystems. He’s thoughtful, sensible.

In The Listening Engine he puzzles over how it is that RSS and Twitter are resources that some people simply don’t make use of:

When I first discovered the magic of RSS, I expected that it would sweep the entire online population, including everyone’s kids,

Wired Magazine is reporting that the Judicial Conference of the United States, the body that develops policy for federal courts in that country, has proposed new model jury instructions that explicitly ban the use of applications like Facebook and Twitter:

U.S. District Judge Julie Robinson of Kansas, the chair of the Judicial Conference Committee on Court Administration and Case Management, told the nation’s judges in a Jan. 28 memo that the new jury instructions ‘address the increasing incidence of juror use, of such devices as cellular telephones or computers, to conduct research on the internet or communicate with others

On January 28, 2010, the Law Commission of Ontario and IP Osgoode held a Symposium on electronic medical records. The Symposium brought together experts from law, academia, health and other areas as part of the consultation that Professor Pina D’Agostino is carrying out in her project on the intersection of IP, ethics and privacy issues arising from electronic medical records. Professor D’Agostino is an Osgoode LCO Scholar in Residence and she is carrying out her project in association with the LCO. All these issues were discussed, with some passion in some cases, but so was a more fundamental question about . . . [more]

I understand from various sources that preparations are well advanced for the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries. Among other things, the meeting offers an invaluable platform for legal publishers and law librarians to share information with each other.

A key element of the preparation for the meeting is the annual request for information on the anticipated price increases that the library community can expect in the coming year. The issue of price increases is a critical element in planning and budgeting and gives the library purchaser a useful guideline for use in budget presentations and in . . . [more]