Olivier Charbonneau and I will be engaging in a conversation in 13 days with the LegalIT audience on how Web 2.0 tools are being used by lawyers.

A retired lawyer friend in Chicago tells me that Twitter is being used by sophisticated lawyers and firms down there. There seems to have been a lot of buzz at TechShow too.

But can anyone tell me how exactly lawyers are using Twitter? In the delivery of legal services? Or as a networking, communications and marketing tool? Or in some other way? . . . [more]

As of this morning all European internet service providers must store details of user e-mails and net phone calls for at least a year. This is due to Directive 2006/24/EC of 15 March 2006 on the retention of data generated or processed in connection with the provision of publicly available electronic communications services or of public communications networks. It applies to traffic and location data on both legal entities and natural persons and to the related data necessary to identify the subscriber or registered user. It doesn’t cover the content of electronic communications, including information consulted using an electronic . . . [more]

Apparently fed up with judges who sit on decisions for ever and ever, the government in Guyana is bringing in legislation, the Judicial Decisions Bill, that will place a 120 day absolute limit on how long after the conclusion of a civil trial a judge may take to release the decision. The statute requires a judge to give a decision as expeditiously as possible after the end of a trial, and persistent failure to abide by the ultimate limit may result in the judge’s removal from office.

Are there any such legislative requirements in Canada? I couldn’t find any with . . . [more]

A number of great things are emerging from “library land” following last week’s Computers in Libraries conference in D.C.. As a pre-conference event to the upcoming Canadian Library Association conference in Montreal May 29-June 1, 2009, the CLA Emerging Technologies Interest Group has organized some workshop sessions with prominent emerging technologies librarian Jessamyn West for the morning of Friday, May 29th. In the afternoon they will be holding a “Library Camp” of unconference sessions. This will be a fantastic opportunity to bring some of our brightest minds together to nudge Canadian libraries into the future. Cost is $100 . . . [more]

Last week Canada was all about new funding for VCs; but this week in the U.S. saw Essex Woodland Health Ventures close a new(-ish) $900 million bio fund , and even Google will apparently put some of its new $100 million venture fund into bio investments.

This week also saw one of my personal annual Canadian highlights: the 2009 Gairdner Award winners were announced. Here’s one area where we don’t need to trumpet anything to be world-class. 73 Gairdner winners in the last 50 years have also become Nobel laureates. Keep an eye out for the 50th . . . [more]

CAIJ, the Centre d’accès à l’information juridique (the network of law libraries associated with the Québec Bar Association), today launched a mobile version of its suite of free online legal research products.

CAIJ | mobile will provide access to:

• CAIJ’s online catalogue
• its databases of legislation, case law and legal literature
• JuriBistro TOPO, the CAIJ knowledgebase of hundreds of legal questions and answers from 57 fields of law
• access to Quebec Bar Association publications such as Développements récents (annual reviews of areas of law), the Collection de droit (Bar School materials), and proceedings of the annual Bar Association congresses

Here’s a little update on the conference, perhaps the most important singe piece of information I have seen TODAY!

And on a related note, the new Autopilot service from Gmail… . . . [more]

Yesterday’s Keynote was probably one of the best talks on any topic I have ever heard. Inspiring, elevating, and hilarious, Paul Holdengraber delivered a wonderful message about reading, conversation, and libraries that has to be seen to be appreciated. Have a look at it here. There are some other reports as well here, here, and here. Also, he had a nice anecdote on Obama’s first job. . . . [more]

Case citations exist primarily for the purpose of enabling a researcher to locate the full text of a judgment or the decision of an administrative tribunal. The primary purpose of a style guide for legal citation is to ensure that everyone can understand how various combinations of numbers, letters, brackets and punctuation make it possible for the reader to find the full text of a case referred to in a book, article or another case. There are other uses, such as case citators, but the main purpose of a case citation is to provide the means to easily locate a . . . [more]

My apologies for starting this post with a pic, but

A woman in a hotel room in Uganda is making judgments ready for the scanner.

It demonstrates graphically the challenges faced in making legal information publicly accessible through a Legal Information Institute. That’s the topic of an excellent blog posting by Kelly Anderson of Southern African Legal Information Institute – SAFLII – over at VoxPopuLII, which is a guest-blogging project sponsored by Tom Bruce and our friends across the lake at the Legal Information Institute at the Cornell Law School.

We may be complacent in North America about our . . . [more]

The Podcasting Legal Guide for Canada by Kathleen Simmons and Andy Kaplan-Myrth was first officially released back in June 2007 by Creative Commons Canada (see my Slaw post from June 29, 2007). Now they have put out a call to translate the Guide in an open source style, via Traduwiki. Their goal is to have it translated into French, although Traduwiki has the infrastructure to allow for translation into a number of different languages.

If you can help in the translation, please make your contribution via the wiki.

Photo: by Connie Crosby, also available under Creative . . . [more]

As readers of beSpacific will know, the International Herald Tribune’s online presence has been merged with that of the New York Times. The result offers readers a choice between the NYT “Global Edition” and the NTY “US Edition.” I subscribe to the IHT on Twitter, and although that’s not mentioned in the announcement, it would seem that this source has been quietly terminated, because there hasn’t been a tweet in over 15 hours.

For me, this is a sad consequence of the ongoing collapse of the traditional newspaper business. I think the IHT is . . . [more]