Here’s a link to a first chapter by the Advanced Legal Research instructors at Stanford Law School in a work on the history of CALR. I suspect they need to get into the stacks more

It’s interesting as far as it goes, but it doesn’t capture as much of the early detail as Jon Bing’s Handbook of Legal Information Retrieval. Jon’s book led me to Louis O. Kelso’s Does the Law Need a Technological Revolution in 18 Rocky Mntn. L. Rev. 388 (1945-1946) – yes 1946. It discusses the application of computers to the task of legal research. . . . [more]

The Ontario Ombudsman — office of, one presumes — is now on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Ont_Ombudsman

It’ll be interesting to see how this organization uses the tool. The ratio of @ private replies to useful content is running just a trifle high for my taste. There’s got to be a way to exclude these cryptic messages from a stream. . . . [more]

I have just received my copy of Canadian Contract Law, 2d ed (Toronto: LexisNexis Canada, 2009) authored by SLAW’s own Angela Swan (with the assistance of Jakub Adamski).

At 959 pages and the most recent treatise on the topic, it stands to be an important addition to the Canadian legal literature. . . . [more]

The the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada and IP Osgoode have inaugurated an IP Writing Challenge. The winner in each of three categories — law student, graduate student, professional — will receive a $1000 prize and the publication of the work. Works in either English or French are eligible. The precise rules are set out on the IP Osgoode website, but a brief description of the scope of eligible essays is set out below:

Entries must develop a thesis of importance in an emerging area of intellectual property law from a Canadian, comparative or international perspective. Topics can be

Slaw’s own Ted Tjaden is quoted in this week’s Lawyers’ Weekly on whether the free access to the law movement has reached the point of such reliability and comprehensiveness that it can be considered as an adequate substitute for the commercial giants. Canlii’s Daniel Poulin comes to the defence of Canlii.

“I rarely use free resources,” Tjaden said.

“We have the luxury of having one of the better-equipped law libraries in a Canadian law firm with extensive print resources and online subscriptions.

“Although free search engines do supplement the legal research I do, we continue to rely on the value-added

Those of us who were trained to look at the documents – always the documents as I.F. Stone taught – will find the attached documents on the torture of those detained at Guantánamo Bay detention centre both fascinating and chilling.

For the record here are the links: . . . [more]

That’s the proposition advanced in an interview with Justice Ginsburg reported in the NYT and the Post yesterday. She comments on the comparative law question:

“Why shouldn’t we look to the wisdom of a judge from abroad with at least as much ease as we would read a law review article from a professor?”

For Slaw readers, the most interesting line is:

The Canadian Supreme Court, she said, is “probably cited more widely abroad than the U.S. Supreme Court.” There is one reason for that, she said: “You will not be listened to if you don’t listen to others.”

This . . . [more]

From the Pacific a significant decision has prompted a new Grundnormon the judgment of the Fiji Court of Appeal which resulted in the President suspending the constitution and reappointing the interim executive that came to power in the coup. Here is the judgment appealed from. . . . [more]

From last week’s Publishers’ Weekly, a good overview of how the trade publishing industry is employing Indian coders to embed .xml into works. But a paragraph on Innodata Isogen, which I thought of as doing law firm outsourcing shows just how globally linked the outsourcing of the production of legal information has become.

No KPO (knowledge processing outsourcing) project is too complex for Innodata Isogen. Take a recent job that entailed producing marketable Dutch jurisprudence information within the guidelines of European laws, which prohibit the disclosure of any information that could identify the parties involved. “The anonymization

Some stories are beyond Twitter. The full text from Trinity Church on Wall Street, and reports from the Telegraph, Ma Jones and the NYT.

Someone can tell me whether this represents progress, or another sign of the apocalypse. . . . [more]

Here’s an interesting ‘map’ of the current top internet sites and trends. Made by Information Architects Japan, it features top representative websites imagined as stops on the Tokyo subway system, and charts the ‘success’, ‘stability’, and ‘position’ of each site. This is a beta version, and they are looking for comments. When its ready, you can download it from Flickr, or you can order a printed version. See last year’s version here. . . . [more]

Heads up. No, it isn’t a soccer ball flying into your yard from the over zealous kick of spring fever infected neighbourhood children. It is a news release about some enhancements to Quicklaw. There are even screen shots of the new look.

The new Quicklaw functions are designed to follow your workflow and eliminate screen clutter:

• Set your own Start Page with the streamlined global navigation toolbar
• Speed up your research with sharper buttons and icons, highly readable fonts, and an inviting colour palette
• Consistently locate Related Links, General Search screens, and the What’s New icon (available soon) on