I have always loved law reform commission reports. They are great sources for legal research. Many of the reports provide historical background on an issue and you can often find comparative information about how other jurisdictions have responded to a legal problem.

This past month, 3 law commission reports from England and New Zealand caught my attention for how they incorporated a comparative law approach:

• The Law Commission of New Zealand released an Issues Paper on the use of financial penalties by enforcement agencies to punish corporations and individuals for breaches of the law. The document briefly examines the situation

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Last week the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) met in Geneva to further Member States’ negotiations on several matters.

WIPO published its SCCR 25 conclusions this week, and they are summarized in its SCCR 25 Update. The outcome of the negotiations is progress on three points: work toward a legal instrument to benefit visually impaired or print-disabled persons—the most concrete outcome, it appears (and attaining Canada’s endorsement); exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives and for educational institutions; and the protection of broadcasting organizations.

From the SCCR 25 Update:

Negotiations advanced to the

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I was a bit surprised at s statistic that was reported by Jack Newton here at Slaw last week. Though a top 5 desktop app, Evernote showed a usage rate of only 16% in Clio’s annual survey.

There has been plenty of discussion about Evernote here at Slaw, and David Whelan recently discussed Evernote Updates for iOS. An easy link for Evernote clipping was even added to Slaw a couple of years ago.

I used Evernote (the iPad app) last weekend as a ‘meeting binder’ for the background information that I would have otherwise carried to the fall . . . [more]

In a country as large as the United States and one boasting as many law schools as it has, the attraction of ranking is almost irresistible. How else to make sense of the profusion? A sensitive and nuanced differentiation and description would tax critics’ creative powers to bankruptcy. Not only, then, are law schools ranked, but law journals also. And here, too, it’s the simple numbers that get used because . . . they’re there, the most important measure being the frequency with which articles from the journal are cited by others (though whether the “others” must be published in . . . [more]

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) which many law firms belong to jointly produced a white paper in October 2012 entitled The New Librarian. 

According to Steven Lastres via the On Firmer Ground blog:

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) recently released a joint white paper that acknowledges the strategic alliance that has developed between law librarians and technologists in driving efficient and effective legal information management.

Kate Hagan, Executive Director of AALL says, “As legal professionals retool and reskill through innovation and

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Initiated in 2006, the Early English Laws project

aims to produce new editions of all legal codes and treatises produced in England between the reign of Æthelberht of Kent and Magna Carta (1215).

The results are impressive so far: high quality digital images of the manuscripts, transliterations, philological notes, translations, and scholarly commentary, all of which can be compared line by line in the very nice interface. Here is Aethelbert’s Code, which the project describes as:

This law-code is thought to be the one Bede attributes (Historia ecclesiastica, 2.5) to King Æthelberht of Kent (560–616). It has survived in

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So-called omnibus bills have been in the news a lot this year. The 2012 federal budget that amended dozens of pieces of legislation was referred to by many commentators as an omnibus bill.

What is this legislative creature?

The Library of Parliament recently published a paper entitled Omnibus Bills: Frequently Asked Questions that tries to get to the bottom of the issue:

Omnibus bills have been used for decades by governments of various political stripes as a vehicle to propose certain kinds of legislation to Parliament. While their use is well entrenched in Canadian parliamentary practice, it is nonetheless often

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Four – or so it seems.

CanLII’s summer 2012 survey of Canadian lawyers and Quebec notaries (discussed here) drew over 4,300 responses*, allowing us to extract insights into matters of general interest.

As shown below in a survey screenshot of Question 10, we asked about online sources used to conduct legal research.

In addition to the eight options offered, respondents added many, many more to the list, but in the end less than a third of respondents reported using more than four online sources in the past 12 months.

The results also showed us that the more experience . . . [more]

National magazine from the CBA now has a new website www.nationalmagazine.ca

Uncovering shoddy research sometimes requires a high degree of detailed inspection. And if anyone is in need of an example of how important accurate citations are (not to mention intellectual honesty), this article describes a great one.

UVic Law Prof. Chris Tollefson uncovered a big hole in the Enbridge case for the Alberta-BC pipeline by attempting to follow the footnotes. Turns out citation errors were just the start: the content of the materials was also questionable, raising the prospect that the pipeline will likely impact cariboo survival, and not at all in a good way. The Professor gets an A+. . . . [more]

I’ve just emerged from a few weeks of first-year law student legal research instruction. During that immersion—that is, when I didn’t have time to read it—I came across an interesting post on the RIPS Law Librarian blog: Michele Thomas’s “Guiding Principles for Enhancing Classroom Experiences.” The principles arising from the author’s reflections are sound and broadly applicable, in my view.

Our teaching team happened to implement this year or have in place some of these, at least in some form. I expect we’ll look at more of these, or others, next year.

My favourite tips are Ms . . . [more]

Butterworths Canada that is.

One notable Canadian publishing anniversary that has largely passed unnoticed is the hundredth anniversary of Butterworths as an incorporated Canadian company. Given the company’s recent accomplishments, this is truly regrettable.

Butterworths and Company (Canada) was incorporated on November 14, 1912. From the outset, it was a bumpy ride. According the the History of Butterworths: History of a Publishing House, the launch was done initially done in secret because of expected litigation from Canada Law Book regarding the rights to sell and distribute Halsburys Laws of England in Canada. As expected, a writ arrived soon after . . . [more]