The most recent annual report of the Law Commission of England is now available.

The report includes highlights of the past year’s work. In particular, the Commission saw two pieces of legislation that derive from its work reach the statute book: the Estates of Deceased Persons (Forfeiture Rule and Law of Succession) Act 2011 and the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012.

A number of other reports are awaiting implementation in the areas of trust, marriage breakdown, conspiracy, business partnerships, renting homes, etc.

Part 4 of the report is entitled “Measuring Success” and provides interesting stats about the . . . [more]

The Ecojustice Clinic at the University of Ottawa has established the online Ecojustice Environmental Hansard.

According to its website description, the site is “an easy-to-use collection of all House of Commons discussions and debates about Canada’s environment.”

The site suggests 4 different ways to access information:

1.Use the homepage to review featured topic summaries and debates from the previous sitting week.

2.Use the search box to query by topic, content or MPs involved in a debate or exchange in the House of Commons.

3.Browse debates by date or look for ones relating to specific categories.

4.Read topic summaries that

. . . [more]

A recent post by Rich McCue on his blog Rich’s Random Thoughts got me thinking. More: got me motivated into action. Rich is a systems administrator at the University of Victoria (and someone who was helpful getting Slaw launched, back in the day) who is interested in helping academics do their thing better. In this case, he’s put together a set of instructions for making e-books — at no cost to the management.

Essentially it involves composing in Google Docs, converting the exported HTML file into the industry-standard ePub format using an open source app called Sigil, and then, to . . . [more]

we frequently refer to Bill such-and-such years after the Bill has been passed and has become an Act. In the last decade, people tend not to distinguish between a Bill, which has not become law, and an Act, which has.

Connie called out people working in knowledge management in Canada to start sharing. I decided to take up the challenge by sharing a tool from the Field Law arsenal of groovy things that the library shares.

Follow this link to a checklist for noting up administrative law materials.

The checklist is part of the materials that are shared with students attending the Edmonton Law Libraries Association Head Start program, which starts on Thursday, June 22, 2012. The program turns 10 this year and all of the organizers are thrilled that our annual event continues to provide articling students with . . . [more]

I was fortunate to have been invited to teach a session in the Canadian Association of Law Library’s New Law Librarians Institute 2012 earlier this month. The focus of the one-week program is substantive law, but my session was of a more practical nature, entitled “Knowledge Management in the Legal Setting.”

This talk was given last year by Ted Tjaden. Since he was kind enough to share his paper from that talk with all of us (which I found immensely helpful), I thought it good to follow his example and do the same with mine. Click the image or link . . . [more]

An article soon to be published in the Virginia Law Review caught the eye of the Boston Globe, from where it came to my attention. In “Confronting Supreme Court Fact Finding” Alli Orr Larsen criticizes US Supreme Court judges for doing internet research on their own in order to supply legislative facts they feel are needed to resolve a case. I must say I hadn’t appreciated the degree to which, facilitated by the ease of access to data on the internet, the justices do this supplementary fact finding on their own.

The issue isn’t new, of course . . . [more]

I always thought that I could never fall for an Internet-based scam.

Even if I needed them, I would never purchase pharmaceuticals over the Internet. And I’m pretty sure that I’m not on the rolodex of the Nigerian prince who needs urgent rescuing.

But I was recently contacted by a potential client via e-mail. They were contacting me from the Far East about a Canadian matter in an area I practiced in. I obviously requested the requisite pieces of identification, and expressed that I needed money up front in trust. Since they weren’t asking for any money from me, I . . . [more]

Unless you have intentionally avoided any and all Canadian news sources this week, then you have been riding the Omni-Bus with everyone else. All the conjecture inspired me to look at the past several Budget Implementation Acts and see how long they have been or in other words how “omni” they have been.

41st Parl-1st Session: Bill C-38: 753 sections.

40-3: Bill C-9: 2208 sections

40-2: Bill C-10: 471 sections

39:2: Bill C-50: 164 sections

39-1: Bill C-52: 154 sections

39:1: Bill C-13: 217 sections

38-1: Bill C-43: 143 sections

37-3: Bill C-30 . . . [more]

Last week I attended a course at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute at the University of Victoria. I was one of several librarians in a class consisting mostly of digital humanists learning about digital pedagogy. We created hypothetical or real learning assignments relevant to our own fields.

In one of our exercises, the class explored an excellent (beta) site of digital research tools, a site new to me: Project Bamboo’s DiRT, which evolved from an earlier DiRT wiki. The site is a categorized collection of research tools, some of which were familiar but most of which were new . . . [more]

Unless it’s just a glitch in the DRM system, the online version of the Ontario Reports looks to be freely available. Historically, the ORs are a benefit earned by membership in the Law Society of Upper Canada. If so, it’s a pleasant development. (Although, the digital ORs have been the subject of criticism aimed at their failure to take advantage of the functionality that the web offers: they are essentially a photographic image of the print service.)

[hat tip: @davidpwhelan] . . . [more]

Like lots of issues confronting judges, sentencing is no easy matter, tied as it is to the facts of the instant case yet bound within loose limits set by similar-fact precedents. A new service, Rangefindr, aims to make it easier for lawyers and judges to estimate the impact of precedent in a given case.

Research lawyer Matthew Oleynik and his team have analysed and tagged thousands of sentencing cases, double checking their results with computer indexing, to create a database from which relevant precedents can be easily retrieved. The manner of using the service is illustrated in a video . . . [more]