Summer, that fleeting season of long days and special projects, is half over. Insert anxious gasp. I am certain that I am not alone in the horror that begins on the Tuesday after the August long weekend when approaching the To Do list. The projects that are contemplated in May or June are often overshadowed by other important work.

There are some great books on legal project management. I have Jim Hassett’s book Legal Project Management Quick Reference Guide, 3rd edition 2013, on my desk. Ted did an thorough review of the 2nd edition, and the 3rd edition . . . [more]

Next week marks the 95^th annual meeting of the Uniform Law Conference of Canada in. Founded in 1918, the ULCC is Canada’s oldest and longest serving law reform agency. As set out in its Constitution:

The mandate of the Uniform Law Conference of Canada is to facilitate and promote the harmonization of laws throughout Canada by developing, at the request of the constituent jurisdictions, Uniform Acts, Model Acts, Statements of Legal Principles and other documents deemed appropriate to meet the demands that are presented to it by the constituent jurisdictions from time to time.

The constituent jurisdictions are . . . [more]

In a conversation the other day we touched on the differences between how (or if) electronic legal research was taught when I was in law school, and then a few years later when I first instructed legal research and writing. We recalled the equipment, manuals, and peripherals the publisher(s) sent us, and a perception of their complexity.

Serendipitously, the same day, I noticed Sarah Glassmeyer of CALI wrote on LLRX about an idea to collect those old things and more.

Note: It’s not that she’s a hoarder. Sarah happens to want to collect and preserve “our shared legal technology . . . [more]

I now continue sharing some of the lessons I learned from walking the historic pilgrimage route in France and Spain, the Camino Frances, over six weeks in May and June. Before we started our journey, the question in our minds was how we were going to sustain walking 20 or 25 (or even 30) kilometres a day, carrying all our belongings? We practiced hiking regularly with our backpacks loaded, but could only really manage time for walking two or maybe three days in a row. How would we walk for 35 days?

After the first two weeks–especially walking through . . . [more]

As I like to point out, law reform bodies can be a great source for legal research. They often conduct widespread consultation with stakeholders, compare how other jurisdictions deal with the same problem and frequently dig into the history of an issue.

Here are a few examples just from this month:

• Law Commission of Ontario Final Report on Increasing Access to Family Justice: “The family law system has been the subject of much comment in recent years and many reports recommending changes to the system. Since 2010, there have been reforms in relation to procedures to address domestic violence

Many of us enjoy attending and sharing knowledge gained at conferences, and several fellow Slaw bloggers recently have done so in respect of last week’s American Association of Law Libraries annual meeting. An understated newer highlight of the AALL annual meeting is the poster sessions exhibit, introduced in 2012. I took a couple of turns through the exhibit and was impressed by the depth and range of projects and studies carried out by fellow law librarians, instructors, and researchers. The AALL annual meeting site contains the full list of accepted poster sessions, with descriptions. Below are brief notes . . . [more]

So far we’ve been quiet about the ALM Law Librarians Survey 2013, a survey done of AmLaw 200 law firms each year. The survey results were announced earlier this month, and were officially released at the American Association of Law Libraries conference last Tuesday. I attended the release with analysis by Kevin Iredell, VP of ALMLegal Intelligence. This was the 12th year for the survey, and is typically answered by the head librarian in each firm.

From the related The American Lawyer article by Alan Cohen:

By now, it’s a phrase that law firm library directors likely hear

SmartChicago is a group formed with the aim of using technology to better the lives of Chicagoans. Among other things, they support centres that help citizens get access to their health records, they promote free broadband access, they work to improve citizens’ technological skills — and they try to make relevant laws easier to understand.

To assist with this last aim, they’ve done a very practical and perhaps surprising thing: they’ve opened an account on the Rap Genius site, a place to go to learn the meaning of a lot of rap lyrics — or poems, or items in the . . . [more]

One of the final sessions at this week’s American Association of Law Libraries conference offered participants a guided opportunity to work with the yet-in-beta Congress.gov. As THOMAS “himself” confirmed, the venerable THOMAS.gov — now the ripe age of 18 years — is looking to retire:

THOMAS will be retired! Tomorrow at 2:30 PDT we'll tweet about its replacement, #Congressdotgov. #aall13 http://t.co/FIOKzk6K7Q

— Congressdotgov (@congressdotgov) July 15, 2013

As we noted and discussed at the time, the Congress.gov public beta was launched several months ago. It has received several iterative updates since then: inclusion of the Congressional Record, . . . [more]

It is important for all persons working in the legal field to have an understanding of how this impacts on perpetual access to legal information from the federal government.

This email was sent to members of the infodep listserv (from the Depository Services Program) on July 8, 2013:

“The new Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (TBS) Procedures for Publishing are now in effect. These procedures clarify the continuing role of Publishing and Depository Services during the Government of Canada’s transition to electronic publishing.

They apply to all departments listed in Schedules I, I.1 and II of the Financial Administration Act,

I am reporting today from a session at the American Association of Law Libraries 106th Annual Meeting. This morning I am attending a session on Business and Competitive Intelligence.

The session is a cooperative effort between AALL and the International Legal Technology Association. The AALL program app shares the intention of the session:

The session started with an overview survey, mainly answered by law librarians, to identify themes of how law libraries in firms supported BI and CI. The five major themes were:

.

Law Librarians shared stories of their BI and CI efforts. Firm library teams have created interesting . . . [more]

As law firms tackle the new reality of the economy and the changes being demanded by corporate clients, they should look to those within the firms who are already well-versed in strategy for business change: librarians.

I am currently in Seattle at the American Association of Law Libraries annual conference, including the Private Law Libraries’ Summit on Saturday. The message we are hearing from a number of different perspectives is clear: lawyers would be advised to seek help in re-developing their firms so they are better positioned for competitive advantage, and librarians are well suited for the C suite, . . . [more]