Canadian scientific research is under threat following the federal government making it more difficult to access scientific information and significantly down-sizing or closing federal science libraries. We are seeing a drastic reduction in accessibility to information and related literature research services needed by the Canadian scientific community, far exceeding library maintenance and restructuring that would typically be done to keep up with changing information, technology and standards.

Today CBC News reports that the main Health Canada science library has been closed. According to the news report, the closure was justified by a drop in in-house staff use of the . . . [more]

What’s in store for civil advocacy in Ontario?

It is a vexing question. No one seems to know the answer.

But here are some things we do know: fewer and fewer cases are reaching trial; fewer and fewer litigators are getting trial experience; more and more cases are being resolved through mediation; there has been no corresponding reduction in the cost of litigation or improvement in the speed of resolving disputes.

A world that offers only mediated, interest-based resolution of civil disputes is a world where the rule of law is weaker, where rights are not robust and predictable.

The . . . [more]

I’m on for a little rant today but this is significant topic, courtesy of one of my LRW students conducting some research on the Nadon appointment to the SCC (on the plus side this does drive home the point I continually try to make that you cannot exclusively rely on one source or the web all the time). Interestingly, I thought we were getting rid of all the print government publications because the Interwebs are so much more efficient and effective? Well try and find SC 2013, c 40 which received Royal Assent on December 12, 2013, over a month . . . [more]

There are some recent decisions of the Federal Court that acknowledge the necessity of using online legal research sources and seem positioned to allow law firms to charge reasonable disbursements for them. The basis for having computer research costs allowed appears to be the ability to justify both the amount claimed, how it is calculated and the relevance and necessity of the research performed.

The key to costs happiness will lie in how legal researchers keep track of their work. A researcher in a costs argument will have to explain that the disbursements for billed research on Westlaw or Quicklaw . . . [more]

It is the time of year when blogging is celebrated. The Clawbies, the Blawggies and ABA Blawg 100 winners have been announced and the ABA Blawg 100 Hall of Fame was added to. January is also a time when infrequent posters get their game on and make “this year I will post more often” promises.

Great stories have been shared on the benefits of blogging from a variety of people.

There are many benefits that have come my way from blogging. I have met some great friends, gained some street cred by being recognized by clients waiting in our . . . [more]

At the end of November, Creative Commons announced the release of an updated set of copyright licenses, dubbed version 4.0. The aim, as it has been since the start of the Creative Commons movement, is to let producers and owners of content make that content legally available for re-use by others with no conditions or some few conditions attached, depending upon the particular license chosen.

Version 4.0 contains a number of important improvements. It has greatly improved the usefulness of CC licenses around the world by taking many countries’ copyright and other laws into account. As well, the . . . [more]

UN Women, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, a three-year-old organization, has made available online a database of those provisions in nations’ constitutions that concern gender. The Constitutional Database covers 195 countries and provides relevant passages in both the original language and English translation. It is possible to download the entire database in PDF.

The database is searchable, of course, with filters available for country, region, or type of provision (e.g. reproductive rights, marriage family rights, equality…).

[Hat tip: Blogging for Equality] . . . [more]

Join me in welcoming the debut of Journal of Open Access to Law, or JOAL. A post on the B-SCREEDS blog at the Legal Information Institute announced the launch:

I’m proud to announce the debut of the Journal of Open Access to Law, a multidisciplinary journal that will publish the work that its title suggests: research related to legal information that is made openly available on the Internet.

Simon Fodden wrote about the new peer-reviewed journal in June, posting about the call for papers for the first issue.

That issue is now available and, true to its subject, is . . . [more]

We have a pretty darn fantastic research training program at my shop. We offer learning objective based source training and give refresher training at lawyers desks, in groups, as feature items on meeting agendas, and we also share what we know via blogs, email bulletins and on our Intranet in both text and multimedia. We keep our skills sharp by attending vendor delivered training and by doing legal research daily.

Even with this highly programmed scenario we learn search quirks by initially not getting things quite right and then figuring out why things did not work as expected. Here is . . . [more]

The Commons on the photo sharing site Flickr has brought together institutions from around the world to share their images (photographs, illustrations and the like) that are either in the public domain or available for open use.

I was surprised to notice last week that a Law Society of Upper Canada Archives is part of The Commons.

According to an undatec LSUC press release:

The Law Society Archives is pleased to announce that it has been admitted to The Commons on Flickr, a grouping of institutions from around the world that contain archival photograph collections which are available on

In early December of 2011 and 2012, I posted top 10 lists of the most consulted cases. Two lists were published each year – one for all cases consulted and the other for consultations of cases decided in within that year. With the tradition now firmly established, I’m very pleased to present for 2013 the top 10 most consulted cases on CanLII.

As in prior years, I leave it to the readers to determine the significance of any case appearing on either list.

Top 10 most consulted cases of 2013

1. R. v. Duncan, 2013 ONCJ 160
2. Meads v. Meads,

If you like podcasts, and who doesn’t — it’s hard to beat learning something and getting to close your eyes at the same time — you might take a listen to the McGill Podcasts, and particularly those in their Law & Society category. There are about twenty or so “pure” podcasts and the same number again of earlier videos.

The subjects range widely, including, for instance, “The Syrian conflict and the International Criminal Court: Interview with Human Rights Watch’s Richard Dicker,” “Tax Avoidance, Tax Evasion, and Tax Justice with Professor Allison Christians,” “Racial Profiling . . . [more]