Words have meaning. The context, tone, and interplay give rise to nuances that is the basis for statutory and case law interpretation. But sometimes the iteration of words have meaning too. The frequency and repetitiveness of certain words can at times given insight into a culture or society.

At Jurix: The 24th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems in Vienna, Austria earlier this week, Daniel Martin Katz, Michael J. Bommarito II, Julie Seaman, Adam Candeub & Eugene Agichtei proposed the idea of Legal N-Grams in conjunction with a beta pre-release of Legal Language Explorer, a new web . . . [more]

On December 15, 2011, Quebec's Minister of Justice and Attorney General Jean-Marc Fournier announced the filing of a draft regulation aimed at making the Gazette officielle du Québec available free of charge on the Internet.

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.

My highlights from the fall of 2011:

• Of course, the great news is that all of the reports of the former Ontario Law Reform Commission have been digitized (as reported December 12 right here on Slaw)
• The British Columbia Law Institute (BCLI) is launching a two-year project to consider reforms to judge-made rules governing when a person is

. . . [more]

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about some of my favourite print bibliographies. Most academic law library and law society websites include some research guides or bibliographies – here are some of the ones I use the most:

Queen’s Law Library Select Bibliographies. Very comprehensive lists of Canadian materials for all of the core law school subjects. These bibliographies also lists materials from other jurisdictions.

Osgoode Hall Law Library’s Research Guides also cover many of the core subjects but tend to be more selective in their coverage which is useful to the student looking for just the key . . . [more]

Lexpert Magazine has just launched a blog. It’s early days yet—the blog only launched last week—so it’s hard to say how it will fare. The editorial staff (Jean Cumming, Tim Wilbur, David Dias, and Gena Smith) will do the blogging, likely filling in the “blanks” and doing follow-ups between issues of the magazine. One to follow, in any event.

Welcome to the blogosphere Lexpert. . . . [more]

I had an opportunity to download the new Irwin Law iPad app recently along with a copy of Ted Tjaden’s Legal Research and Writing text. We have a copy of this excellent title in our firm library in print or course, but for testing purposes, I thought it would be a good choice for an eBook.

First I want to congratulate Jeff Miller and his team at Irwin Law. They made an excellent choice of partners in Nubook. The Irwin Law app was easy to find in the Apple App Store, the download process was simple. It was also . . . [more]

The English media came back this weekend to re-examine the health of Thomson-Reuters and reached wildly different conclusions. The BBC talks of Thomson moving to establish hegemony over business data, whereas the Guardian focuses on the weaknesses of post-merger integration and the long-term challenge that Bloomberg presents.

The doyenne of the DC law library community, Jean O’Grady has a fascinating piece suggesting that Thomson may well acquire Wolters-Kluwer

Her analysis is:

Factors Favoring Such a Merger

1. Thomson Reuters Leadership Changes.Exane BNP suggests that TR appears to be “in restructuring

and crisis mode” since they failed to achieve top

. . . [more]

The American group blog Concurring Opinions has posted A Guide to the Eight Most Suspect Types of Law Review Articles. My favourite is number 4:

4. The One-Off

“In my previous article, I made a significant contribution to the literature. In this piece, I will coast on the vapors of that article.”

In the comments section, someone has suggested a ninth category be added:

9. Straight from the Framers!

“In this article, I uncover the original meaning of a clause (phrase, word, or letter) that no one has ever heard of, that no court (or litigant) has ever referred

. . . [more]

When John Palfrey was appointed vice-dean of library and information services at Harvard Law School a couple of years ago, one of the first things he did was create the Harvard Library Innovation Laboratory. Under the direction of Kim Dulin and David Weinberger (also of Berkman Center fame), HLIL explores the ways in which software can “hack libraries…in the good sense of discovering and delivering more capability and value.” Specifically, as they say on the FAQ page,

1. We think in public.
2. We build software that demonstrates how libraries can bring yet more value to scholars and researchers.

. . . [more]

When you search for flights between two cities Google now provides you with a chart of options as the first (non-paid) result, making the peripatetic aspect of a lawyer’s life just a little bit easier. Thus, for example, a search for flights from Winnipeg to Vancouver yields the result you see below: . . . [more]

I have just created a custom search engine of Canadian military law journal articles, publications, reports and news. It is available here: http://www.uwindsor.ca/law/library/canadian-military-law-articles

My guide to researching Military Law in Canada (as well as some documents pertaining to Guantanamo Bay) is located here: http://www.uwindsor.ca/law/library/guide-to-researching-military-law

Users can use the new search engine for one-stop shopping for military law journal articles, publications, reports and news from the following sites:

Canadian Army Journal
Army Lessons Learned Bulletin
Army Lessons Learned Dispatches
Canadian Forces College Papers
Canadian Forces College Review
Canadian Military Journal
Canadian Naval Review
Jane’s Information Group
Canadian Army News
Canadian Defence . . . [more]

In the not too distant past law librarians were valued for their knowledge of “legal bibliography”. Great librarians who built the collections of law schools libraries across Canada were experts in knowing what had been published across jurisdictions and legal topics. With the explosion of print and online legal publishing a knowledge of bibliography gave way to the need to know and understanding how to find relevant information when needed.

Still, the art of knowing the literature on a topic and organising and making that literature available to users both expert and novice is still an important (if perhaps somewhat . . . [more]