Scribes is an American society whose goals include the creation of an interest in writing about the law, and above all, the promotion of a clear, succinct and forceful style in legal writing.

A few years ago some Bay St law firms subjected their associates to compulsory viewing of videos of interviews of US Supreme court Judges on the subject of persuasive writing. These interviews have now been transcribed and can be accessed in PDF form at Scribes Journal of Legal Writing.

In what the New York Times described as a “trove” of interviews conducted in 2008, eight justices . . . [more]

With digital publishing coming of age, many publishers are rethinking how they produce and sell their content. One of the main challenges we face as publishers is making our content and products accessible.

I had the pleasure last week of presenting at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries / /L’Association canadienne des bibliothèques de droit on the topic “Legal Project Management: Is There a Role for Law Librarians?”

My co-speaker was Andrew Terrett, the National Director of Knowledge Management at BLG who provided a great, pragmatic overview of project management in law firms.

Although in my paper I also provided a brief overview of legal project management and what various law firms were doing about it, the focus of my talk was instead on the third part of . . . [more]

One of the cool things I learned last week at the Canadian Association of Law Libraries annual conference was that there are ebooks and also EBOOKS. Wendy Reynolds, Manager, Library Client Services, Legislative Library of Ontario, Helen Clarke, Associate Vice-Provost Collections, Libraries and Cultural Resources, University of Calgary, and Jeffrey Miller, President, Irwin Law spoke to attendees at a session titled “If eBooks are the Medium, What’s the Message?”.

Connie Crosby moderated this panel which included a discussion of various ereader devices – along with a show and tell of some favourite gadgets. Some themes that emerged from the session: . . . [more]

A new outfit in the UK, Judgmental, has just gone online, boasting 90,000 UK case law judgments. From what I can gather, their aim is to make judgments searchable in ways that BAILII currently does not. Principally, Judgmental’s cases are to be searchable by Google and Bing, whereas BAILII — and, I believe, most if not all LIIs — sends the indexers away with a stern robots.txt no. And, it seems, the group is working on making online law more “usable” than it currently is.

At the moment, however, things are still very much in the developmental stage. There’s . . . [more]

As recently announced, Carlos Rossel, Publisher, The World Bank, is guiding the transition of the Bank’s print publishing to largely electronic, open access publishing. As part of this transition, The World Bank invited several of its employees including editors, economists, researchers, lawyers and invited non-Bank guests to a two-hour session yesterday in Washington, DC.

Carlos opened the session introducing the issues and speakers. I then gave an overview of relevant copyright and licensing/contractual issues relating to OA publishing. The information I provided was based on U.S. law as well as international copyright principles from the leading copyright treaty, the  . . . [more]

As Connie mentioned, there are a number of us in Calgary sharing good times at the Canadian Association of Law Libraries Annual Conference.

One of the great things about our group, and this event in particular, is the opportunity to get together in special interest groups. Our SIGs, as we call them, are communities of practice whether that be a workplace type, like the Academic Law Libraries SIG or a broader topic like the Access Services and Resource Sharing SIG. The CALL website offers details about all the committees and special interest groups as well as contacts.

The Private . . . [more]

Howdy from Calgary! I am at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries.

There is a lot of interest in the discussions taking place at this year’s conference. I am hearing from law librarians, legal publishers, knowledge management directors, and many others as to how they can follow along if not in attendance. There is a lot of buzz about greening the library, time management, workflow, digitization, budgeting, cost recovery, legal project management, and ebooks. All the hot buzzwords! I have had more than a few people ask me to let them know the outcome of discussions. . . . [more]

With the relative newness of digital licensing and the growing opportunities for licensing electronic content (including on social networking sites), there are a number of misconceptions already developing. By discussing and clearing up these misconceptions, it will help clear the path to an easier negotiating road and to better licenses.

Misconception #1: Not all licenses are negotiable. Almost every licence is negotiable, but often you have to ask the other side if they are willing to negotiate so that you will have a licence that meets your needs. Always remember to only accept a licence and arrangement that works for . . . [more]

Kent Law School in the UK has launched the inaugural issue of a new open access journal, feminists@law. This from the journal description on the home page:

feminists@law is a peer-reviewed online journal which aims to publish critical, interdisciplinary, theoretically engaged scholarship that extends feminist debates and analyses relating to law and justice (broadly conceived). It has a particular interest in critical and theoretical approaches and perspectives that draw upon postcolonial, transnational and poststructuralist work. The journal publishes material in a range of print and multimedia formats and in English and other languages. The journal is committed to an

. . . [more]

I have never seen so much enthusiasm over access to judicial hearings as I have this past week. The Supreme Court of Canada heard the appeal of the B.C. Court of Appeal’s decision in Attorney General of Canada, et al. v. PHS Community Services Society, et al., dealing with the safe injection site in Vancouver known as Insite.

The case deals with ss. 4(1) and 5(1) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, and an exemption under s. 56, which allowed the clinic to stay open.

The buzz extended well beyond the legal community, and included poverty and . . . [more]

In light of the upcoming law library conference season (notably including the Canadian Association of Law Libraries conference–CALL 2011–next week), I am taking the liberty of sharing a few reasons why I see conferences as essential to law library staff.

If you have a law library, sending at least one library staff member to a professional conference each year is worth more than the equivalent dollar cost of books.

Let me repeat that in another way: you will get more value from conferences than books.

Radical, I know, and my legal publishing friends are perhaps going to . . . [more]