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]

A comment by Karen Sawatzky on Simon’s Scrolling post inspired me to think about the language that is most appropriate when teaching law students legal research. Sometimes a funny anecdote is more than just a funny anecdote!

I used to use the expression “it’s a gong show” until a law student asked me what I meant by that. Thanks D. for asking what you thought was a silly question and what became a realization that I was totally pop-culture-less.

Articling student intake is mostly in June at my firm, and by my calculations, this year’s students might be as young . . . [more]

Last week I shared a slide deck from an introduction to Knowledge Management. If you didn’t have a chance to look at it, I will wait until you have a quick look now.

The slide I heard most about was slide 14 (below) which charts the functionality of various types of enterprise technology against one another. Unfortunately visual presentations do not include a lot of explanation, so I thought it would be of interest to pull out this specific graph and discuss it a little further. Click for a larger image:

This graphic was put together by fellow presenter . . . [more]

I’m cheered to share a happy note about Library and Archives Canada. Over the past few weeks I’ve enjoyed browsing posts on a pilot service from LAC: thediscoverblog.com, the Library and Archives Canada Blog. Subject areas vary, as they should, though a few recent posts stand out to me in opening up the world of Canadian government and legal information and research.

• Looking for the Debates of the House of Commons (Hansard) online? breaks down and explains what’s accessible online, what is not, and how to access Hansard.
• Finding Aid 300 tells us about a guide to early census

Others have talked about their contributions to lawTechCamp 2012 held in Toronto in May. I am sharing the slide decks from the presentation I did with fellow consultant Stephanie Barnes and the six minute demo I did the same day.

The first talk here is an introduction to Law Firm Knowledge Management. Included are some images developed by Stephanie, and some we have developed together, as well as content from other sources. . . . [more]

Admin law people (and which of us aren’t?) can rejoice in the arrival of a new blog in their area, the aptly named Administrative Law Matters. Launched around the middle of last month, the blog is a single person effort by Paul Daly (@pauldalyesq), Assistant Professor at the Faculté de Droit of the Université de Montréal, with an emphasis on common-law jurisdictions. Posts appear nearly every day. A welcome addition to the already fine collection of Canadian legal blogs.

[hat tip: Blogging for Equality — a great blog, by the way, that I need to post about . . . [more]

Earlier this month I posted a bit on that week’s news of funding cuts to the Library and Archives Canada (LAC) and the National Archival Development Program (NADP). This week brings further developments on that issue.

On Monday this week, Canadian archivists led the Archivists’ On to Ottawa Trek Day of Action:

On April 30, 2012, the National Archival Development Program (NADP) was eliminated. Surplus notices were sent to Library and Archives Canada (LAC) to ultimately reduce its staff by 20%. Libraries and archives in the Transport, Immigration, and Public Works departments were unilaterally shut down.
…
On May 28,

The vast majority of web searches continue to be conducted through Google, estimated at about 66.4% of all searches in early 2012. Google is understandably concerned about losing its market dominance. In December 2011, Microsoft’s upstart search engine Bing surpassed Yahoo and become the second most used search engine worldwide.

The only way Google can retain its lead is by continuing to provide the most relevant information to users, so it constantly rewrites its code, as with the new Penguin update that I mentioned here. Although Wikpedia has over 365 million readers and is ranked one of the top . . . [more]

Among the top dozen creditors of Dewey & LeBoeuf which filed for bankruptcy yesterday were some familiar names:

Thomson Reuters $2.363 M

Lexis Nexis $1.413 M

Wolters Kluwer $653 K

I find the relative scale of the debts interesting, as well as the fact that the three publishers must have been prepared to continue to extend credit long after the newspapers were spreading word of Dewey & LeBoeuf’s troubles far and wide.

We’ve had scant experience of law firm insolvencies so I don’t know what has traditionally happened to the library when a firm closes its doors. Or in today’s . . . [more]

I am spoiled. I admit it. My brothers used to call me Precious – I am sure they were being facetious. This character flaw leads to severe disappointment when tools that I like to use are delayed or disappear.

One of my favourite, and hopefully to reappear soon, tools is the Daily Bill Activity Reports of the Alberta Legislature. Following this link, you may think, “There is a 2012 document at the site, why is she complaining?”

The daily activity report doesn’t include the 28th Legislature. We started the 1st Session of this legislature on May 23, 2012, and . . . [more]

openparliament.ca — “This is not a government site. Not even sort of,” says the tagline at the very bottom of the page. And one way you know it’s true is that it’s easy to use. We introduced openparliament.ca back in 2010, a successful volunteer effort by Michael Mulley to make access to data about the doings of MPs as easy as possible.

Now Mulley has added access to the work of parliamentary committees. As you’d expect, everything’s laid out clearly. You pick the committee that interests you, then go to the meeting by date (unless it was in . . . [more]

I was asked to present this week at a special lunch session of the Toronto Association of Law Libraries as one of several speakers to discuss tablets and their apps. In my case, I will discuss the new iPad (or iPad3, as it is sometimes called).

If interested, set out below are my general comments on iPads along with a list of apps I most frequently use. . . . [more]