The Provincial Court of BC recently announced the relaunch of its website, which had been undergoing incremental change for the past year. In keeping with the scope and reach of the Court and access to justice principles, the new features appear designed to offer accessible public and professional understanding of the Court, its operations, and its initiatives. The redesign features information about alternative dispute resolution, links for self-represented litigants, and updates about Court initiatives, among other things.

It should go without saying that the new site also continues to offer current case law, and I want to highlight the . . . [more]

I have a bit of a writing habit. I am not alone. Over the years, I have tried to determine why I enjoy putting words on a page or screen for others to read. It could be shameless need to promote my ideas, it might fulfill my outgoing introvert soul, and it could be that it helps me solidify the Why for my daily work life.

Why does anyone do what they do?

Regardless of how it came to be, I would like to share a new publication with you.

A Handbook for Corporate Information Professionals, edited by Katharine . . . [more]

When I first learned about “LII-in-a-Box,” a new legal information service developed by the African Legal Information Institute, I thought it might provide a stand-alone information system that could operate independent of the internet. I thought it might be something that would alleviate poor and intermittent internet connections that make access to online information difficult in under-served communities and countries. Honestly though, what really came to mind was the LibraryBox Project that Jason Griffey has been championing for a number of years now. . . . [more]

In late 2014, during a meeting of my firm’s technology advisory group, I recall skeptically saying something like: “What hacker is actually going to target a law firm. We don’t store client credit card data, there are multiple layers of security on our servers, on our files and for employee personal information, I mean really, we are not Target or Home Depot.” Other members of our group did not agree with me.

Boy, was I mistaken. On December 31, 2014 the Law Society of BC issued a Fraud Alert titled BC law firm’s computer system hacked by extortionist.

Notices

In case we missed you on New Year’s Eve, the 9th annual Canadian Law Blog Awards (aka the ‘Clawbies’) were announced.

This year’s Fodden Award winner for the top overall Canadian blawg went to Double Aspect, the Canadian constitutional law blog of Leonid Sirota, a J.S.D. candidate at NYU School of Law. As usual, we chose winners and finalists for 3 practitioners, 3 practice blogs, 3 ‘new’ law blogs, and a series of topical and group awards.

You can visit Clawbies.ca to see the full list of this year’s winners & finalists.

Once again, there were many . . . [more]

I’d like to use my last entry of 2014 to highlight a few worthy potential recipients of your charitable spirit. Depending where you live, and to whom you contribute, you may also still have a few hours left to earn a 2014 charitable tax credit or to see your donation doubled for the recipient.

If, like me and other old and not-so-old people, you continue to rely on good old email, you likely are still seeing a steady stream of last-minute 2014 donation appeals from one charity, non-profit, or political group or another.

A recent lesson in giving reminds . . . [more]

In with the new, out with the old. Last week I beamed about the promise of new gifts from Google in the form of the pending End-To-End extension which will put pretty good privacy in reach of ordinary Gmail (and probably other email) users. As Tiny Tim may have said, “Encryption to us all; God bless us, every one!”

This week I draw your attention away from the shiny and new, and direct it to the digital dumpster—where all shiny toys eventually end up. Fresh to the heap: the Yahoo Directory. This marks not the passing of some fleeting fad, . . . [more]

“The Alberta Law Reform Institute (ALRI) will be moving to full electronic publication of its reports in 2015.” My perspective: like every other piece of born and solely digital legal information, law librarians will figure out how to make these important materials permanently available. Nothing to see here folks…unless institutional law libraries (government ministries, courts, academic law libraries) are not supported. Surely that wouldn’t be allowed to happen in a democratic country and among a group that values information and precedent as much as the legal industry.

I will stop being facetious and get to the [other] point about law . . . [more]

This December, Carswell migrated their eReference Library collection to the Thomson Reuters ProView platform. I was able to see this process purely from the content user perspective as the library team did all of the preparation, communication, and implementation for our side as the client partner in the vendor client relationship. Today, I had an opportunity to use one of the texts that my firm has access to through this new interface.

I like the clean and intuitive experience of using ProView content via a browser.

There are a couple of features that are interesting:

• the expanding chapter outline that

As I like to tell users who come to my library, law reform commission reports can be a legal researcher’s best friend.

Law commissions consult widely with stakeholders, they may compare how other jurisdictions have dealt with the same problem that has you stumped and they frequently dig into the history of an issue.

Here are a few recently released reports that caught my attention.

• Law Reform Commission of Ireland Issues Paper on Cyber-Crime and Cyber-Bullying: “The Commission seeks the views of interested parties on the following 5 issues: 1. Whether the harassment offence in section 10 of the

I was just reminding myself of this project and thought others might be interested. Digging into Linked Parliamentary Data was one of fourteen projects funded by the 2013 Digging into Data Challenge. This is a collaborative project including the University of Amsterdam, the History of Parliament Trust, the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, King’s College London, and the University of Toronto. . . . [more]

ABA Journal is holding its 8th annual Blawg 100 competition that allows readers to vote on the best legal blogs in 13 categories. Readers can register for free to be able to vote:

We [ABA Journal staff] remember the blogs that have tipped us off to breaking news and the bloggers who have compelled us to write about their innovative ideas.

And over the summer, we cue readers—and other bloggers—to write in and let us know about their favorites: When we can see their love for a blog is real and not a marketing hustle, it catches our attention.

Now,