RIA Novosti sets up agency providing legal information. Here is the Press Release

MOSCOW, December 3 – The Russian state news agency RIA Novosti has established a law agency to cover new developments taking place in Russia’s legal system, a RIA Novosti deputy editor-in-chief said on Wednesday.

The Agency for Legal and Judicial Information (APSI), set up jointly with Russia’s Supreme Court, Constitutional Court and Supreme Court of Arbitration, is due to begin its work in the near future, Maxim Filimonov said.

The new agency aims to provide objective information on the activity of the courts in an effort to . . . [more]

Two of my favourite blogs, The Court and Michel-Adrien Sheppard (aka Library Boy) come together in this post, which went up today. Michel-Adrien is certainly no stranger to SLAWyers, as he is a frequent contributor to the discussions here. Thanks to Michel-Adrien and the intereviewer for this insight.

I’m sure I’m not alone in my fascination with career path stories – learning how someone else came to be where they are now. The steelworker who is now a systems architect, the former prison guard who is now a lawyer – these stories show just how powerful serendipity can . . . [more]

CommonLII has just announced that, thanks to Australian High Court Justice Michael Kirby, it is now making the English Reports from 1220-1873 available online. (Well, from 1457, really; the 1220 cases, of which there are a great many, are nonetheless outliers: the dates leap from 1220 straight to 1457. The data were provided by Justis.

The cases are in PDF and not searchable, so far as I can tell. OCR of that old type would be a nightmare anyway.

I have to say it is an impressive sight to look at the four centuries of links to this great . . . [more]

Tip of the hat to Ian Kerr, who points us to Michael Giest’s latest project:

Why Copyright? Canadian Voices on Copyright Law

It’s a film on the significance of copyright as an issue in Canada. It features a wide range of Canadian voices – artists like Gordon Duggan of Appropriation Art; writers like award winning science fiction author Karl Schroeder; musicians like Wide Mouth Mason’s Safwan Javed; business people like Nettwerk Record’s Terry McBride, Lulu.com’s Bob Young, and Skylink Technologies’ Philip Tsui; government appointees like Privacy Commissioner of Canada Jennifer Stoddart and Ian . . . [more]

While on Twitter I recently came across Mari Moreshead who does “client services and community management” for CourtCanada.com. I had never heard of CourtCanada and so checked their website and asked if I might interview her for the purpose of reporting back to Slaw readers.

CourtCanada was started in 2006 by former bankruptcy lawyer Gregory Azeff who is the company’s President and Chairman of the Board of Directors. CourtCanada is currently comprised of two services:

InSolve – a bankruptcy case management system, first beta tested in February 2007 and released in final version January 2008. For cases in the . . . [more]

Every year a ‘Vendors Forum’ is held as part of the annual meeting of the Canadian Law Libraries Association (CALL). In recent years the forum has evolved into a series of simple product presentations by the legal publishers. The most recent meeting held in the spring in Saskatoon was no exception.

In earlier years, the forum was a bit more exciting with panels of representatives of legal publishers frequently under the gun as they were asked pointed questions on the legal information issues of the day. Some thought that the questions were too tough and that the forums themselves lacked . . . [more]

I am very busy this week with additional, ongoing preparations and adjustments, as are all my colleagues and co-workers, as we move into the thick of renovations at the Priestly Law Library. If you’re interested, we have a renovations website up and running. It contains some architectural renderings of what the finished product will look like, as well as some background on the principles governing the design, as well as updates on progress, photos, etc. Have a look. We expect to be finished by next Sept! . . . [more]

Some time back I wrote about typefaces and why lawyers might want to care about which face they put forward. Of course, the choice of typeface isn’t the only aspect of the print world (whether on paper or in pixels) of interest: how the text is laid out is an obviously important feature affecting readability, one element of which I want to touch on in this post.

That element is justification, by which I mean whether or not the text is made to line up on the right edge of the column in what is sometimes called “flush right.” There . . . [more]

Voici le discours . . . [more]

Since it’s important, here it is – in English .

No time for a witty comment . . . [more]

As delivered by the wonderfully named Herménégilde Chiasson, yesterday’s Throne Speech in Frederickton contains a paragraph on legal information.

The speech from the throne opened the third session of the 56th Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick.

* Timely access to justice is important and your government will receive the report of the Task Force on Access to Family Justice. It is expected that the report will provide recommendations for improved access to justice, expanded use of alternatives to family court, and increased access to legal information and legal assistance in family law matters. Your government will provide its . . . [more]

I just arrived home and am catching up on the terrorist attack on Mumbai this evening (tomorrow morning in India).

BlogTalkRadio SAJA (South Asian Journalist Association) are holding web-based phone-in discussions every 12 hours, 10 – 11:30 am/pm ET or 8:30 – 10:00 am/pm Indian time. The guests on the first call (evening of Nov. 26 in Canada) included Benjamin Piven, former Fulbright Scholar in Mumbai and Suketu Mehta, author, “Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found.” Author Rohit Bhargava has posted the details on his Influential Marketing Blog.

For those wishing to follow the latest news, some . . . [more]