There’s not much that the large law firms have as an advantage over mid-size and small firms. Their bloated overhead, high-priced rent, and unnecessary bureaucracy, all translates into higher operating costs passed on to clients.

There is one thing which does hold large law firms apart from the rest, and that’s the decades of institutional knowledge which is internally accumulated. As much as the law is constantly changing and evolving, much of it still remains the same, or is easily updated from precedents that have recently become obsolete. This realm, of internal legal memos and precedents, is the area where . . . [more]

The continued development of CanLII into a comprehensive source for primary legal information has created an environment where, over time, the incremental cost of primary legal information in Canada will deviate toward zero. This has important implications for both commercial and non-profit legal publishers in Canada, because it will disrupt current business models as clients continue to become more unwilling to pay for this content at existing rates. This change will create particular opportunities for CanLII to leverage its position as the provider of free information in ways that are not open to those with a fee based, closed access . . . [more]

Maintaining its commitment to online access to justice, the UK Supreme Court is now uploading to YouTube oral summaries of its judgments from the Bench.

Argument in important cases is already available live on-line, through a partnership with Sky News (see here ) but is not being uploaded due to volume and space constraints.

Details of hearing dates together with case summaries can be found on the Court’s website and are worth diarizing. It is very difficult to retrieve the data if you miss the live broadcast.

There is also a superb blog with detailed commentaries on cases. . . . [more]

I attended a presentation yesterday organized by the National Capital Association of Law Libraries (NCALL) where a representative from the Library of Parliament (LOP) outlined plans to make all older federal parliamentary debates available for free via PDF within the next few years.

Currently, pre-1900 debates are available in digital format on the Canadiana.org subscription website. Senate debates from 1996 onwards and House of Commons debates from 1994 onwards are available online on the parliamentary website.

LOP has teamed up with Canadiana.org in a five-year collaborative effort to create a free-of-charge portal that will offer searchable access to federal . . . [more]

This is an eventful week so far for those interested in US copyright matters. As many will have read, on Tuesday the Supreme Court of the US released a 6-3 ruling in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., in which it addressed the reach of the first-sale doctrine in respect of works published for foreign markets, or—stated another way—the reach of a copyright owner’s control over those products. Twitter continues to show joy over the decision among librarians and consumers of information, along with dismay among others concerned with importation and copyright control.

In Opinion analysis: Justices reject . . . [more]

I was recently alerted to Louis Mirando’s post on the Osgoode Hall Law School Library Blog regarding the addition of the Revised Statutes of Canada to HeinOnline’s collection. I was struck by his comment that “now that there is a continuing consolidation of federal laws available online on the Dept. of Justice Justice Laws Website, there will never be another revision of the Statutes of Canada in print.” While I had long ago realized that revised statutes would no longer be a priority (if they ever were!) for either level of government with the move to online, continuously . . . [more]

Last week a new applications for this year’s award for members of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries was announced: the Janine Miller Fellowship established by CanLII to provide funding each year for one CALL/ACBD member to attend the Law Via the Internet conference. I think this is a fabulous opportunity for Canadian legal information professionals to get more involved in the free access to law movement.

From the announcement:

Janine Miller was an integral part in the vision and development of the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) and served as Project Manager from its inception and later as

Almost a year ago I remarked here that the Ontario Reports, long a staple — and privilege — of membership in the Law Society of Upper Canada, were freely available online. (The reaction at the time was one of mild interest: CanLII provides all the free access we’re likely to require. And, too, the online ORs are delivered up in what I regard as a less than user friendly fashion that takes awkward advantage of what the web has to offer a publisher.)

For what it’s worth, I noticed the other day that the ORs are indexed by Google . . . [more]

Like most law firm librarians, it is my responsibility to make sure that people in my organization have the information resources they need to do their work. We subscribe to a great number of resources and they are in so many formats and databases that locating specific items can be challenging. To make it easier for our users, my team has been creating what we call Practice Area Pages on our Intranet. We feed these pages with tools and information, both internally created and externally sourced.

One of the pages we have created supports our Insurance Practice Group. This page . . . [more]

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries 2013 conference  will be held this year in Montreal from May 5 to 8. The theme is Librarian: Multifaceted Professional.  Note early bird pricing is available only until the end of this week so don’t delay in registering!

Programming this year looks excellent:

• Pre-conference workshop on Saturday – Leading Teams Through Change – with Terri Tomchyshyn, Department of National Defense
• Sunday afternoon – two roundtable discussions at 4 pm: CALL Book Club – Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking. Susan Cain and E-books and Collection Development

A big congratulations goes out to our long-time Slaw colleague Connie Crosby, who has been elected Vice-President of CALL/ACBD for the term running from 2013-2015. This position is effectively a six year commitment, with the succession plan running through each of the VP, President and Past-President positions (each for two years).

Many readers will recognize Connie as one of our founding members here at Slaw. She also has a long, successful track record working in Canadian law firm libraries; including more than nineteen years working in-house. Connie has been a past-President of TALL, served in a variety of . . . [more]

My colleague Alex Yiu and I recently presented at an Edmonton Social Media Breakfast. It was great fun, a neat venue, and a very engaged audience. SMBYEG as it is known on Twitter is held in this beautiful venue (Startup Edmonton HQ at the Mercer Warehouse):

The TEDx sign in the corner while we were presenting was a bit intimidating. I did get me thinking about legal industry ideas worth spreading though. Last August Connie shared a list of the most popular TED Talks. Simon commented on searching TED Talks for law. The search result is now 232 . . . [more]