In one of our later advanced legal research and writing class of the term, we turned our attention from traditional primary and secondary material to alternative or less-expected legal research resources. I posted earlier on the portion of the class in which we learned strategies to mine Twitter for legal research. The other broad angle we looked at addressed strategies and tools to assist in finding helpful secondary resources in legal blogs and other open web information sources.

Legal research in blogs

I think it’s fair to suggest legal blogs are so widespread and well-known that they may be . . . [more]

Press Release from London this morning

London, United Kingdom: 1 April 2014 – Janders Dean is pleased to announce the launch of the ShockLaw© wearable time management technology solution for law firms and lawyers – featuring the Bill-IT© bracelet with LawyerShock© vibration technology, the ShockLaw© Server, and associated mobile device monitoring apps.

In an age when the ‘Internet of everything’ is dominating technology development, Janders Dean is leading the market with the introduction of the ShockLaw© wearable platform – and showing true thought leadership with the product’s integration both across the lawyer’s workplace surroundings, and also across software applications being . . . [more]

In the US, Lexis has a “Think Like a Lawyer” campaign aimed at law students with the social media element #BeUnprecedented. There are some interesting terms with student use of academic passwords that are not found in Canada.

For 1Ls and 2Ls, your law school Lexis Advance® ID continues to provide access to our legal research tools all summer long. Use it to look good inside a firm, or prep for the classes to come.

The LexisNexis Canada online products terms of use at section 2.5.5 limits academic use to “that directly related to academic coursework required by the academic . . . [more]

Registration is now open for the 2014 edition of the New Law Librarians’ Institute. This is an intensive, week-long program aimed at developing skills in the key competencies of law librarianship developed and presented by the Canadian Association of Law Libraries.

The program will feature expert instruction from leading law librarians and law professors, small class size, a mix of lectures and practical sessions, hands on sessions, and valuable take-home materials. This year the Institute will be held at the Brian Dickson Law Library, University of Ottawa with accommodation in the university’s residences.

Despite the name, this program . . . [more]

 I thoroughly enjoyed Susan Munro’s recent Slaw column “Show me the Money” in which she forcefully and unabashedly made the case for the value of high-quality legal editorial work. She stands on firm ground when in defending the professional standards of paid editors she argues that “when the job is done properly, enormous value is added”. To this I would add that in such circumstances, professionals are very happy to pay for the result. As Susan notes, unquestioned quality permits reliance, efficiency and cost savings to lawyer and client.

But she misses the point.

Her article was a response to . . . [more]

My Supreme Court of Canada news releases subscription told me that The Court heard Loyola High School, et al. v. Attorney General of Quebec (read the summary at Docket 35201) yesterday.

I look on this case with intellectual interest from the perspective of someone who convinced my (public school) Jr High principal that we should have French as our option rather than Religion. There were 27 kids in my Jr High School and we all had the same ‘option’. My younger brother who shared a classroom and teacher with me though he was a grade younger is still mad . . . [more]

From Legal Sourcery:

CBA Legal Research Section

CBA Saskatchewan is considering expanding its sections and providing a Legal Research forum for lawyers that are interested in maintaining and honing their research skills. This section will be geared towards those who conduct legal research, including lawyers with firms, the courts, government, corporations and law reform and other legal institutions, contract research lawyers, and law librarians in the private and public sectors. If you are interested in being part of the section, please contact the Branch. Based on the level of interest, the Branch will consider introducing this section during the 2014-2015

We note the death of Canadian author, Heather Robertson, last Wednesday. She published her first book, Reservations are for Indians, in 1970, and her last book, Walking into Wilderness, four years ago. She was a founding member of the Writers’ Union of Canada and the Professional Writers Association of Canada.

For the Slaw community she is best known for being the representative plaintiff in the action by freelancers to be paid royalties for electronic and digital access to their work. Robertson v. Thomson Corporation is the seminal case on copyright in a digital environment as it affects freelancers . . . [more]

By this point in the term, our advanced legal research and writing class has covered all the favourite usual suspects: research plans, research records and journals, secondary research using legal and library databases, federal legislative research, provincial legislative research, primary research using the big three, UK research, US research, and so on. We’re saving EU legal research for next week.

But this week we took a small detour and looked at the use of social media as a resource for legal research. For instance, we examined the strategic use of Twitter as a legal research source, mainly for secondary information . . . [more]

A note about the Quicklaw NetLetters Collection reminded me recently about scope notes. Quicklaw is focusing on NetLettrs that are most widely used by their customers and discontinuing some others. Like most collections that are discontinued, the archive of the discontinued titles will remain. LexisNexis Quicklaw has committed to helping users identify archival content:

The discontinued NetLetters will remain on Quicklaw as archive sources with the archival indicator (*) appearing beside the source name.

Understanding when database coverage starts and the currency of a collection is an important element in comprehensive legal research. Each research tool looks after currency in . . . [more]

Welcome Legal Sourcery from the Law Society of Saskatchewan Library to the law blog scene. They are posting several times a week on ” legal research tricks, interesting legal research news and what’s happening at the Library.”

Today they explain the blog name:

Putting our heads together and thinking creatively, we took a vote and decided to call this blog Legal Sourcery. Legal Sourcery is the expertise and capability we bring to legal research. It represents the multitude of legal resources we provide and the skills we use to wade through these resources.

So far they have pointed out interesting . . . [more]

Google now lets you search a news archive that consists exclusively, it seems, of newspaper archives, digital or scanned, provided they aren’t held behind a paywall. This may have been available before now, but I’ve only become aware of it today. And I have to say that for anyone seeking to inquire into the last hundred years or so, this is a treasure trove. Google doesn’t say how many newspapers are in the database, but I count something like 120 beginning with “A” alone (among which is a plentiful supply of Canadian publications). For each publication, you’re told how many . . . [more]