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]

Nada Khirdaji has an interesting piece on her transition from legal research skills in law school to research skills in practice in CCH’s law student monthly,

Law school helped me to think like a lawyer, but it was only in practice that I began to appreciate the essential role of legal research. In fact, much to my chagrin, I remember derisively dismissing an optional course in advanced legal research on the assumption that it would be of little use to me.

I am now a research lawyer. Everything that I know about legal research I learned in practice. I

I don’t think we’ve yet pointed you on Slaw to the Avon Global Center for Women and Justice at Cornell Law School. Among its various functions is the provision of legal resources “such as international laws, domestic laws, articles and reports on gender-based violence.

You’ll find the relevant documents from the United Nations, as well as those from the various and lesser-known (here) regional organizations, such as the Economic Community of West African States and the South Asian Association for Regional Co-Operation.

The Center also offers student research assistance to judges confronting issues of gender-based violence, though whether the . . . [more]

The first Friday of February is a tradition at Dalhousie University which I’ve mentioned previously here at Slaw. The first Friday in February is Munro Day, a Dalhousie holiday in honour of the benefactor who rescued the university from a precarious financial position in 1879. This time there is a short video to go along with the Munro Day link celebrating Dalhousie’s rich history. In the spirit of George Munro, last fall Seymour Schulich made a transformative donation to the Law School at Dalhousie University which has since been renamed the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University. . . . [more]

There is an excellent article over at the Stream comparing the electronic sources of the English Reports. Just like Drew Jackson, I love it when someone asks me for a case I know is one of the weird citations that are incorporated into the E.R.’s. I always feel like a superstar, which helps balance the “I have no idea what I’m doing” moments.

We have talked about the HeinOnline and CommonLII sources of this data on Slaw.

The usefulness of these, and other digitized collections of aging print, hit home for me this week. I was looking for some old . . . [more]

As everyone will doubtless know, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled against permitting the District Court for the Northern District of California to broadcast on YouTube the challenge to California’s Proposition 8, as had been originally planned. That doesn’t mean that the screen’s gone blank, though. Cunningly, MarriageTrial.com is filming a re-enactment using transcripts from the actual trial (transcripts you can download so you can sing along!).

The MarriageTrial.com site currently offers you Episode 1 in 3 Chapters, essentially giving the opening statements of the various parties. As well there are a couple of summaries to bring . . . [more]

Legal publishers pairing themselves with applications that embed their subscription-based resources isn’t new. West KM does it, as does LN’s Quickfind. Now out of LTNY we hear about the latest tool addition, Lexis for Microsoft.

Do these tools add valuable functionality for firms? Even if we hesitate on a few of them, the overall answer is probably ‘yes’. But an issue that seems rarely talked about is that of usage rates – the measure by which most flat fee pricing for online database services is based. The end effect of many of these tools is that they drive . . . [more]

For about nine months now, HeinOnline has been running webinars, aiming to host at least one per month. The upcoming webinar, on Wednesday, February 24, is on “Using and Searching the United Nations Law Collection” and will run for 30 minutes. There’s an excellent list of points that will be covered on the relevant Hein wiki page, along with instructions as to how to participate.

All of the previous webinars are archived and available for viewing online or for downloading. Most are concerned with U.S. resources, naturally; but a number are of general interest — “Getting Started” in HeinOnline . . . [more]