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]

A 5-member panel of the Ontario Court of Appeal released a significant, 150-paragraph reasoned decision this morning involving conflicts of laws and when Ontario should take jurisdiction over out-of-province defendants – see:

Van Breda v. Village Resorts Limited, 2010 ONCA 84
http://www.ontariocourts.on.ca/decisions/2010/february/2010ONCA0084.htm

At issue were claims for personal injury damages occasioned as a result of accidents suffered by Canadian tourists at resorts in Cuba and whether the plaintiffs could sue in Ontario.

In paragraph 109 (pasted below) the Court has “re-formulated” their own test in Muscutt from 2002.

[109] To summarize the preceding discussion, in my view, the Muscutt

One of the reasons I started the Cross-Border Biotech Blog a year ago was that the industry in Canada was in terrible shape. In the face of a global financial crisis, biotech as an industry was attracting some attention and some bailout funding, but by July last year, 70% of Canadian biotech companies reported having under 6 months of cash remaining.

This year has started with some new, and better, data. Equicom’s year-end review shows that although several Canadian biotechs did go under, the surviving companies overall outperformed market indices. BIOTECanada updated the July survey recently as well, . . . [more]

The Real-time web has been a popular topic in recent times as we all try to figure out how it is changing, and will continue to change our work lives. I’ve recently started Yammering here at Dalhousie; no not prattling on endlessly, but using the service Yammer or enterprise microblogging. In simple terms think Twitter, without the 140 character limit and limited to your workplace or business email domain. The product has been around for a couple of years and has been referred to in passing here at Slaw previously. In the short time that I’ve used Yammer at . . . [more]

Canada (Premier ministre) c. Khadr, 2010 CSC 3, (29 janvier 2010)
Le pourvoi etait accueilli en partie.

K a droit à une réparation en vertu du par. 24(1) de la Charte. La réparation demandée par K — une ordonnance intimant au Canada de demander son rapatriement — est suffisamment liée à la violation de la Charte survenue en 2003 et 2004 parce que les incidences de cette violation persistent jusqu’à présent et pourraient influer sur son procès lorsqu’il sera finalement tenu. Bien que le gouvernement doive disposer d’une certaine marge de manœuvre lorsqu’il décide de quelle manière il doit . . . [more]

On May 1, 2009, 23 library partners, including the Paul Martin Law Library at the University of Windsor went live with Evergreen – an Open Source integrated library system. With only 2 – 3 developers to take it out of the box (originally packaged for the public library world), development has literally happened on the fly for the past 10 months.

It has been hectic, but we have a project we can all be proud of. To top it off, yesterday we heard that OLA has awarded the Project Conifer partners with two Divisional Awards. All awards will be presented . . . [more]