I have been fortunate in the last two years to have been asked to speak about social networks in law (and other professional) firms at conferences and workshops. I thought I would take this opportunity to summarize some of the key points I make about social networks.

First, social networks and social media (or knowledge media) are not the same thing. People often called tools such as LinkedIn and FaceBook social networks. These are tools for making our social networks explicit. And indeed, we can use these tools / platforms to keep in touch with parts of our social network . . . [more]

I thought it would be interesting to make use of CanLII’s new ability to sort search results by “most-cited,” imperfect though it is, in order to examine Supreme Court of Canada cases.

There are 4160 SCC judgments in CanLII’s database — a complete set from the beginning of 1985 up to the present, and an incomplete set earlier than that. Essentially, the pool from which to draw is that of all cases in the last 22 years. I took the most-cited 1000 cases as my sample and first simply listed them in rank order, along with some information about each. . . . [more]

It is that time of year. A nod to Arjun Thomas for pointing out the “12 Predictions for 2008” from CMS Watch. Predictions for 2008 include such things as Web 2.0 exhaustion, Facebook backlash at work and productization of search platforms. . . . [more]

The CBC is reporting on an innovation by the Pivot Legal Society and Mountain Equipment Co-op to provide warmth and rights information to Vancouver’s Homeless.

The high-tech Blanket, co-designed and produced by Mountain Equipment Coop, is designed for homeless people, made of waterproof dernier nylon and features a printed list of people’s rights in relation to housing, security guards, police and welfare.

Here’s another reason why cases may get missed, even by better researchers.

CanLII’s privacy policy  para. 14 states

14. In order to limit prejudice to individuals that could result from free publication of documents containing personal information, CanLII is actively involved in advancing standards and policies that promote optimal protection of the privacy of people who appear before the courts.

It seems that CanLII, under this policy, is changing the name of the plaintiff in sexual assault cases to initials even though the plaintiff’s full name is in the title of proceedings in the pleadings and the reasons. This includes . . . [more]

Yesterday’s Sunday Times ((From the Murdoch empire in London, not the NYC one)) was reporting on Lexis’s parent’s plans for the legal market – and they want to focus far beyond the mere $18 billion plus market for legal research and associated applications in 2004.

They report that the average lawyer is going to spend almost their morning using Lexis products:

“Two or three years ago, Lexis Nexis was a legal research company, full stop,” Sir Crispin Davis said. “By and large, a typical lawyer would spend half an hour a day using our products. Now it is more like . . . [more]

RSS, as we know, means Really Simple Syndication. 

Let’s imagine that KISS means Keeping It Simple Syndication.

An adequate use of RSS combined with KISS may help to reduce RISK (Rats, I Should Know) problems and this feeling:

Law.com’s Legal Technology page has a nice overview of the use of RSS to keep current but the focus is on keeping up-to-date on matters that might specifically affect one’s clients, or potential clients. The article is written by the David Whelan of Osgoode Hall’s Great Library.

Previous posts, here, have . . . [more]

I’m sure that some Slawers know what to expect from my post this week, and even though I am loathe to be predictable, I am going to oblige. The Mitchell Report on the use of steroids and other performance enhancing substances in baseball, was published yesterday with much fanfare. It was a fairly damning indictment of the past 15 – 20 years of Major League Baseball [MLB] and comes on the heels of Barry Bonds breaking baseball’s most hallowed record, under a cloud of suspicion, this past summer.

The report was compiled by former United States SenatorGeorge Mitchell at . . . [more]

Like some giant ocean liner or oil tanker, Google is slowly turning the ship to a different heading, and now it’s watch out Wikipedia and all the little “–pedias” that are bobbing on the net. The Official Google Blog reveals that the big plex isn’t content with serving you up your own data but plans to write its own — or, rather, have you write it for them in good Web 2.0 fashion — and deliver it when you search. The project, now in private beta (i just love writing that bit of insider jargon), is called knol, which . . . [more]

Today’s Globe and Mail article “Ottawa, don’t pull the plug on superb website” is about the shutting down of the Canadian Health Network, an online source of reliable Canadian health information. The strength of this article is its comparison of the Canadian Health Network with the new Healthy Canadians website. Interesting. . . . [more]

Amlaw Media announced today, that Toronto’s own Great Librarian David Whelan will inaugurate a Podcast on Legal Information and Technology.

In an interview with the inimitable Monica Bay, David will talk about”RSS: Simply Powerful.” The interview covers how “really simple syndication” tools can help legal professionals easily track information they need to practice law effectively, by using RSS to monitor favorite news sources, blogs, and Web sites.

Give it a listen here . . . [more]

On Friday CanLII announced a new search results sorting option:

December 7, 2007
News Release No 2007-06Dear users,

I am happy to announce a set of new features that CanLII is now offering to you in order to help you deal even more efficiently with search results.

In your search results, you are now able to sort cases based on the number of times a case has been cited. You can do so by clicking on the “The most cited” link in the “Sort” menu of your search results page. By choosing “Sort by The most cited” the search