In late 2008 I proposed that eventually someone would use a legal blog post as an authority in their factum. Here’s to one step closer to that goal.

I just noticed that a blog post of mine on Slaw about Ron Livingston was cited in an article by Rebecca Phillips in the Fall 2010 issue of the Campbell Law Review, Constitutional Protection for Nonmedia Defendants: Should There be a Distinction Between You and Larry King?

Phillips discusses statements made by social media users used in defamation cases and its conflict with First Amendment rights. In her conclusion she mentions . . . [more]

Standards for on-premise, cloud and mobile technologies used by lawyers have, to-date, been lacking. While an abundance of recommendations, best practices and other guidelines have been issues by Bar Associations and other organizations, there has not been a single, comprehensive document lawyers could look to for clear guidance on what minimal standards should be adhered for on-premise, cloud and mobile technologies.

The International Legal Technology Standards Organization (ILTSO) aims to change that. ILTSO is a non-profit organization consisting of attorneys, bar association representatives, IT professionals, and business leaders with a stated mission of “helping attorneys and clients better understand the . . . [more]

Lost amid the rumpus (yes, I used the synonym function for that one) of #elxn41 was an announcement that happened shortly before the election call; from Policy Monitor Canada: Canada Launches Open Government Data Portal. From the Open Data site:

The Open Data Pilot is part of the Government of Canada’s commitment to open government, which is being pursued along three streams: open data, open information and open dialogue, and aims to drive innovation and economic opportunities for all Canadians.

While the content remains somewhat sparse as of yet, I applaud the thinking behind making data more widely available. I . . . [more]

Technical work in the library–largely done behind-the-scenes–is key to ensuring things go smoothly on the client-facing side such as reference and research. One tedious and time-consuming tech task is shelf-reading: checking each book on the shelf to ensure it has been signed back in and is in the correct place. Without doing this on a regular basis (such as once or twice a year), books that have been mis-shelved become impossible to locate.

A library shelf-reading prototype using augmented reality technology–technology that adds to an image of physical space with a computer-generated overlay–is being developed out of Miami University’s Augmented . . . [more]

Here’s the only existing study of the citation rates of open access legal journals v. their toll access counterparts. OA legal articles garner a 58% better citation rate. . . . [more]

The Montreal Gazette yesterday published a profile of LexUM, the outfit that operates the free legal information service CanLII and that also publishes the decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada.

The article briefly explores plans by LexUM to expand its business into the private legal market. LexUM recently went private, severing its ties with the University of Montreal.

Today Lexum still operates CanLII – a go-to site frequently consulted by lawyers, judges and other legal professionals as well as members of the public – but has set its sights on making inroads into the lucrative and burgeoning market

CanLII has just announced that now you can get an RSS feed for a caselaw search. The feed will give you “recently added decisions that match your current query.” As you see in the image below, an RSS icon appears above and to the right of your search results:

Click on image to enlarge.

This will be a great boon to researchers, giving their current awareness a serious cost-free boost. But it’s not the only improvement announced today. Searches are now speedier, thanks to improvements in indexing. (I’m informed that since last summer CanLII has been made faster by a . . . [more]

Two weeks ago in my post on indexes in law-related e-books I made mention of the 3 new e-book offerings from LexisNexis Canada that are included for free for purchasers of the hard copy.

I have now tested those e-books on my iPad and thought I would pass on my comments.

The three titles are:

– The Practitioner’s Criminal Code, 2011 Edition
– Ontario Superior Court Practice, 2011 Edition
– LegisPratique – Code de procédure civile annoté, édition 2010

The books are in EPUB format and were easy to download and transfer on to my PDA by . . . [more]

I am very excited about the new offering from the Canadian Association of Law Libraries: the New Law Librarians’ Institute. This is a substantive learning opportunity that I wish I had as a new law librarian.

According to the flyer sent out by the Association:

the New Law Librarians’ Institute is an intensive, week-long, in-person course fostering key competencies in law librarianship, including knowledge and understanding of

• law-making institutions (legislatures, courts, administrative tribunals) and how law is created
• characteristics of, and differences between primary and secondary sources of law
• the principal substantive law publications (legislation, case reports, commentaries) in

I thought it might be useful to have a list of the public bills which died on the Order Paper when Parliament dissolved this weekend. I’ve attached them as .rtf files because of their size- it seemed overkill to paste them right into this post.

Government bills 2011

Senate orphans

I haven’t included the private bills because frankly most of them died (not a surprise, of course). See the Status of Bills document on the Parliamentary website for more details on the 400+ private bills introduced this session.

Which legislative deaths do you regret? I’m sure that the Copyright . . . [more]

Those who don’t always have easy access to the big commercial databases might like to be reminded of the useful free service provided by the Washington & Lee Law School’s Current Law Journal Content, where the tables of contents of nearly 1600 journals are indexed. A few years ago Slaw used this service to offer a page setting out the TOCs of Canadian journals, but it somehow got lost in the first redesign of the blog.

I’ve re-instituted it now. You can always find the link on the new “useful things” item in the main Slaw menu. On the . . . [more]

To supplement an earlier posting on World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Intellectual Property Day, I note that the Canadian Intellectual Property Office is also promoting April 26, 2011 as Canadian Intellectual Property Day! . . . [more]