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

. . . [more]

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

. . . [more]

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

. . . [more]

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]

A lot of attention has been paid lately to ‘cybersecurity’, much of it aimed at system-wide security or ‘critical infrastructure’ security, but a good deal also to individual questions of authentication, identity management, vulnerability to hacking/phishing/malware and so on. Among the solutions at the individual level, one finds suggestions about using locked-down versions of documents in PDF, various degrees of encryption and so on.

To what extent is the use of these measures problematic for people who rely on technology to make information accessible to them because of physical or other disabilities? The simplest example is the inability of text . . . [more]

The Quebec Bar Association has teamed up with Montreal radio station CIBL 101,5 and the Juripop legal clinic to organize a weekly radio debate program called Droit de Cité.

Every week, 2 teams of university debaters face off on a controversial public topic. Members of the public get to vote online to determine which team wins. All shows are archived on the Droit de Cité website.

The show started in the second half of October and will last 31 weeks.

Topics so far have included:

• Should Quebec set up its own firearms registry?
• Should the City of Montreal install

. . . [more]

There’s an item of interest in the federal government’s Weekly Checklist of publications, namely a brief by James R. Robertson, General Counsel, and Erin Virgint of the Legal and Legislative Affairs Division, Criminal Charges and Parliamentarians [PDF], a publication from the Library of Parliament.

The report looks at three areas where criminal charges or convictions might be thought to have an impact: eligibility to run for office, removal from office, and expulsion from Parliament.

The first area is governed by the Parliament of Canada Act and the Canada Elections Act, as well as the Constitution Act, 1867 with respect . . . [more]