Having a carpenter for a partner adds an interesting twist to my life. Rather than playing Scrabble or sipping Margaritas on beaches, when he and I take a vacation, it is often to work on the current building project. It also means I take special interest in construction that leads to the courts like McMillan v. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Eugene Meehan’s excellent publication Lang Michener Supreme Court of Canada L@wletter had this note today:

TORTS: GOVERNMENT AGENCY LIABILITY
The Applicants purchased a condominium unit in a condominium development in White Rock, British Columbia, constructed in 1994.

Find a niche with growth potential
Organize information to make it useful
The internet is a distribution channel — not a product
Turn words into maths
Separate the signal from the noise
Computers can’t do everything
Treat content like patented material
Print’s not dead, it just needs online help

Rules that wouldn’t have been recognized by the distinguished figure below:

They’re the distilled wisdom in a well-researched piece entitled Westlaw rises to legal publishing fame by selling free information – St. Paul company outprofits Gannett, McGraw Hill, New York Times

And it started here: . . . [more]

The most recent issue of the AALL Spectrum features a number of articles on law library design as part of its 9th Annual Architectural Series.

AALL Spectrum is the monthly magazine of the American Association of Law Libraries.

From the presentation article:

“This edition highlights the need to innovate to be green, to stretch budget dollars, and to make the best use of space: a law school, Penn State’s Dickinson School of Law, and a law firm, O’Melveny & Myers San Francisco, both aim for LEED certification; a new decentralized library at Bose McKinney & Evans emphasizes green; a

Most Slaw readers will know that gavels simply aren’t part of the equipment of Canadian or British judges – however much they may feature in the popular iconography of the American judicial system.

Which meant that it seemed odd to see headlines like Gavel falls on Judge Cosgrove, by Tracey Tyler in the Toronto Star for April 1, (admittedly fixed in the electronic archive) or Gavel Slams Harper on Khadr in the free Toronto newspapers for April 24. . . . [more]

Gosh I know I’ve a lot of space on my Ipod, but do I really need to be able to check the wisdom of Bryan Garner all the time, everywhere. Our friends in Eagan MN announced the release of most recent 8th edition of Black’s Law Dictionary Application for the iPhone. It’s a unique publication – as far as I know, the first serious legal research tool released for that platform. And a big plus for Bryan, who got a great tip yesterday from William Safire in the NYT.

While today’s FT lauds Thomson-West’s acumen in building a . . . [more]

Announced Friday by the Prime Minister’s Office:

PM announces appointment of new Librarian and Archivist of Canada

24 April 2009
Ottawa, Ontario

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced today the appointment of Daniel J. Caron as Librarian and Archivist of Canada, effective April 25, 2009.

Mr. Caron, currently Senior Assistant Deputy Minister, Corporate Management and Horizontal Integration Sector, Library and Archives Canada, replaces Ian E. Wilson, who is retiring from the Public Service after a very distinguished career.

The Prime Minister also announced that, upon his retirement, Mr. Wilson will hold the title of Librarian and Archivist of Canada Emeritus

Book off an hour or so at 3 p.m. ET this coming Tuesday, April 28, to join, via webcast, the “sneak preview” of the grandly named Wolfram/Alpha Computational Knowledge Engine at Harvard’s Berkman Center. As we told you last month in One to Watch?, Wolfram, a mathematician, has kept wraps around his project while talking up its potential in general terms. Will it be a search engine? Will it be an answering tool? Will it be so much more? Now you can tune in as Stephen Wolfram and Jonathan Zittrain, law prof at Harvard expose some of the . . . [more]

We’ve blogged recently on studies showing the colossal waste of time and energy that spam causes. But fret not, the Honourable Tony Clement, Minister of Industry, today announced that the Government of Canada is delivering on its commitment to protect consumers and businesses from the most dangerous and damaging forms of spam. The proposed Electronic Commerce Protection Act (Bill C-27) will deter the most dangerous forms of spam, such as identity theft, phishing and spyware, from occurring in Canada and will help drive spammers out of Canada.

“Our government knows how damaging spam can be to Canadians and Canadian . . . [more]

Yesterday’s Federal Court decision of Mr. Justice O’Reilly, Omar Ahmed Khadr v. The Prime Minister Of Canada, The Minister of Foreign Affairs, The Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and The Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police 2009 FC 405, is available in PDF.

[3] I am satisfied, in the special circumstances of this case, that Mr. Khadr’s rights under s. 7 of the Charter have been infringed. I will grant his request for an order requiring the respondents to seek his repatriation from the United States. Given my conclusion regarding s. 7, it is unnecessary for

The notice from Quicklaw about legislation that Shaunna just mentioned has been causing a fair bit of discussion in TALL‘s listserv. As a result, Louis Mirando, Chief Law Librarian at Osgoode Hall Law School has described the Ontario historical legislation digitizing project that is currently underway. With a slight bit of editing, here is Louis’ message, reprinted with permission:

most recent efforts have been undertaken as part of, and are funded by, the “Ontario Digitization Initiative” (ODI) of the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL). As its pilot ODI project, OCUL is digitizing Ontario legislative materials from the

This notice is making the rounds:

Notice to Quicklaw Customers:

Please be advised that the bills sources will no longer be available on the Quicklaw™ service starting in May.

However, customers can still access a full annual statutes service for Canada (English and French), Alberta, British Columbia and Ontario on the Quicklaw service. Full-text versions of the annual statutes are made available on Quicklaw upon receipt of royal assent. The annual statutes sources contain the commencement information for each annual statute, as well as a list of the acts amended by any particular statute.

Hopefully someone will fill the void . . . [more]

A NJ Appellate Division court says that Wikipedia is too malleable to be used as evidence in Palisades Collection v. Graubard, A-1338-07.

Mary Pat Gallagher of the New Jersey Law Journal reported yesterday,

“[I]t is entirely possible for a party in litigation to alter a Wikipedia article, print the article and thereafter offer it in support of any given position,” an appeals court held. “Such a malleable source of information is inherently unreliable and clearly not one ‘whose accuracy cannot reasonably be questioned,'” such as would support judicial notice under New Jersey Evidence Rule 201(b)(3).

The decision reversed an . . . [more]