Cheryl Niemeier, Director of Knowledge & Research Services at Bose McKinney & Evans LLP, started a series of blog posts on legal research apps last week. The post was titled Part 1 – Legal Research in Your Pocket: Fee-based Services and it made me a little bit jealous.

It also made me a little bit nervous and a little bit worried and a little bit puzzled.

Cheryl’s excellent annotated list of research apps includes content that many Canadian law libraries would license, HeinOnline and CCH Intelliconnect. It also contained a lengthy list of sources that would only apply for . . . [more]

Last week at the KMWorld 2014 conference in Washington, DC, Step Two Designs out of Australia once again handed out their annual international Intranet Innovations Awards. This year Ogletree Deakins, an international labour and employment law firm based in the U.S., is winner of the Gold Award for Intranet Rework:

ODConnect, Ogletree Deakins’ intranet, was specifically acclaimed for its client-matter sites and search capability, which judges said provided “a rich set of intranet improvements to support lawyers in their everyday work” and demonstrated “an intranet developed with clear priorities and strong business alignment.” The judges also highlighted “really

This is a follow-up to a September 18, 2014 post on Slaw.ca entitled American Association of Law Libraries Report on Access to Justice that referred to a white paper about what U.S. law libraries are doing to assist self-represented litigants (SRLs).

The blog of the National Self-Represented Litigants Project funded by the University of Windsor Faculty of Law has a recent guest post on the role that Canadian law libraries can play to help SRLs.

It is written by Annette Demers, Acting Law Librarian, University of Windsor, Melanie Hodges Neufeld, Director of Legal Resources, Law Society of Saskatchewan, and . . . [more]

What lawyer doesn’t daydream about throwing in the towel and leaving practice—at least once in a while? Even if just infrequently like during a trust audit. Or maybe frequently but only during select rituals, like contemplating a depleted retainer, or feeling that file go off-the-rails while pondering what it could be like to have your salary taken care of without all that suspense.

Ruminating about less beaten career paths is perfectly lawyerly. The CBA even publishes a list of career alternatives for lawyers, or writes up profiles of people who have pursued different legal paths from time to time. . . . [more]

In September, at the Opening of the Courts, a very similar speech was given by the Chief Justices of Quebec and Ontario to their respective audiences. Unknowingly in tune, the highest ranking provincial judges of both provinces deplored the heavy, inaccessible and saturated court system.

Chief Justices Nicole Duval Hesler, François Rolland and Élizabeth Corte pleaded for the augmentation of judicial staff. But more importantly, they came to the conclusion that despite the current efforts to use staff more efficiently, the court system can simply not satisfy the increasingly high demand. Thus, as per Justice Rolland, “[n]ous n’avons plus le . . . [more]

It’s Open Access Week this week, an opportunity to highlight efforts to promote, facilitate and otherwise support access to cultural, scientific and legal information. If you’re on campus at York University this Friday afternoon Osgoode Hall Law School professor Carys Craig will introduce the screening of “The Internet’s Own Boy” a presentation of the York University Libraries Scholarly Communication Initiative. If you can’t be there Friday I encourage you to watch this wonderful telling of Aaron Swartz’s life story which is also openly available on the Internet Archive.  . . . [more]

Today, the University of Ottawa is organizing Government Information Day to examine the many challenges of organizing, digitizing and preserving often finicky government documents.

We all use them every day: rules and regulations, Hansards, parliamentary committee reports, government agency documents, court records, official stats, public sector scientific and technical reports, etc.

Anyone who has ever had to track down an old order-in-council or find a controversial pollution report by government scientists will appreciate how hard it can be.

For the past little while, the CLA Government Library and Information Management Professionals Network, part of the Canadian Library Association (CLA), has . . . [more]

It seems Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) version 4.0 could be more than it appears. If you thought it was just an innocuous little digital rights management tool for balancing intellectual property interests with your modest entitlement to enjoy downloaded ebooks from public libraries and vendors in rustic peace and seclusion, you might think again. Last week news started to spread that Adobe Digital Editions version 4.0—released about a month earlier in September— was actually an overactive and prolific snitch, reporting back to Adobe on a daily basis about every ebook title you downloaded, every ereader device you used, every page . . . [more]

The Legal Sourcery Blog reported recently that the three Saskatchewan Courts now have a practice directive in place that requires the use of the Citation Guide for the Courts of Saskatchewan.

The purpose of this Guide is to provide a standard set of citation rules for the courts of Saskatchewan. It covers all of the basic citation structures. For citation questions not covered by this Guide, the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (the McGill Guide) should be consulted. Where this Guide and other style guides differ, this Guide prevails.

A Notice to the Profession outlines some of the . . . [more]

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries‘ Webinar Committee has announced a substantive law webinar series created and presented by former Slaw contributor Ted Tjaden. This follows from a successful Civil Procedure 101 webinar they presented earlier this year. These sessions are aimed at information professionals and others in the legal industry who would like to expand their understanding of the law. All are welcome.

See the details below. Click through the individual topics for more information and to register. Note the mention at the bottom–you can also register for all 5 webinars at a 20% discount (essentially getting . . . [more]

We see a noteworthy update this week in the back-and-forth between public domain advocate Carl Malamud and representatives of The Bluebook: A Uniform System of Citation®.

As I understand it and as you might know, Mr Malamud has been working for some time to challenge both the appropriateness and the legality of the copyright protection claimed in The Bluebook. This week, on behalf of Mr Malamud and his foundation, Public.Resource.Org, Professor Christopher Sprigman of the Engelberg Center on Innovation and Policy wrote to counsel for the Harvard Law Review Association to outline its current position.

The letter is fascinating. . . . [more]

I have too many RSS feeds. I receive and send too many emails. My calendar is too full. My project list is too lengthy. I am a totally average person working in a law firm. What to do?

1. Figure out what in your world is waste
2. Stop doing it

Simple, right? Perhaps one thing I should stop is asking redundant questions.

One way to consider your actions with the goal of stopping waste is use the 5 Whys method for your daily work. What is the root cause for why you are doing what you are doing?

Here is a . . . [more]