Monterey College of Law in California is partnering with BARBRI, a law exam review/prep provider, to bring iPads to students in their first year law program this season. Students in their law school program tend to be older (average age 38), and the iPad is meant to help them better keep up with readings and study for bar exams.

From the August 25/10 article in Campus Technology:

“Many of our law students work the equivalent of three jobs. Between law school, work, and family, it is a constant challenge for them to set aside enough time during the

Colleague Katharine Thompson has provided me a list of some of the changes she noticed in the new, just received 7th edition of the McGill Guide, known more formally as the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, edited by editors of the McGill Law Journal and published by Carswell.

This is the leading legal citation guide in Canada, its counterpart in the US being The Bluebook and the more recent ALWD Citation Manual.

The biggest change to me in the new 7th edition of the McGill Guide is the aversion to periods (albeit, presumably they remain acceptable . . . [more]

I saw an intriguing tweet from Westlaw today:

@Westlaw: WestlawNext New delivery format: WordPerfect http://ow.ly/2oiFw

Why am I intrigued?

File formats for downloads from free and fee services may seem innocuous, but every change has an effect. For instance, when Queen’s Printers in some jurisdictions changed their format (from HTML to PDF) for publicly available legislation, CanLII had to come up with new collection practices as PDF formats made point in time comparison with existing HTML files ‘difficult’. That is a grand scale example of a file format issue.

A smaller scale example would be rewriting user materials to . . . [more]

This is a follow-up to Gary Rodrigues’ excellent discussion about Access Copyright on July 26. Access Copyright has some proposed changes to its tariff before the Copyright Board of Canada. In contention: the high jump in fees per student in academic institutions, and Access Copyright’s definition of “copy” which includes uses already permitted under the Copyright Act.

Some good write-ups about the proposed tariff increase (from anti-tariff viewpoints): Michael Geist, Howard Knopf and Techdirt. I was looking for something pro-tariff not written by Access Copyright themselves, but didn’t see anything. Additional links welcome in the comments! . . . [more]

We note, with mixed emotions, the passing of Canada Law Book, a company whose roots in Canadian law go back a century.

Here is the announcement that it is being acquired by Thomson.

* 04 Aug 2010

Thomson Reuters Acquires Canada Law Book
Combined content and services provide true online and print customer advantages

Toronto, Canada, Aug. 4, 2010 – Thomson Reuters today announced the acquisition of Canada Law Book, a division of the Cartwright Group Limited. Canada Law Book will be aligned with Carswell, a Thomson Reuters business headquartered in Toronto. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The Canadian Judicial Council is a source of publications that should interest lawyers. The most recent report is The Canadian Justice System and the Media [PDF], a 2010 update to their publication of the same name in 2007. Although written explicitly for the benefit of members of the press and other news media, the section on Publication Bans and Other Restrictions on Media Coverage provides a handy review of the law in this area.

The Council commissions more frequent analyses on technology and its impact on the judicial system. For example, thus far in 2010 they’ve released four pieces by . . . [more]

Two interesting topics have come up in recent days; both of which seem connected. The first is Amazon’s prediction that ebook sales will overtake paperback sales by the end of 2011. Not entirely surprising, considering they’re already outselling hardcovers (“180 e-books for every 100 hardcovers”). And on it goes: paperback sales are eclipsed, ebooks will then be compared to the combined sales, paper becomes the minority, and so on. I think we all know the trend.

So if the market’s future is digital, what exactly do we want from the experience? The answer to this question depends a lot . . . [more]

Let me introduce you to Document Cloud (DC), an online service funded by a very substantial grant from the Knight Foundation.

Document Cloud directly addresses a concern that I’ve expressed a number of times here, that online news stories often refer to, or depend on, documents that are themselves not made available to the reader. Occasionally, of course, a link to an outside source would suffice. But at other times it would be most sensible to lodge the document in a secure place, and, better, a place that would help the referencing news organ to embed it in the . . . [more]

To date, LinkedIn has only offered a handful of sidebar applications that users can install. They’ve been very picky, and only a few are aligned with vertical industries. Even then, it’s obvious that industry apps must have a broader application and be applicable to the general business community. Late last night, the rollout began for Legal Updates on LinkedIn and it’s a huge win for my friends at JD Supra.

We’ve written about JD Supra before here at Slaw, so I won’t spell out their core offering for law firms. They are, however, a company that’s been built around . . . [more]

Earlier today I stumbled across an excellent, free Investment Treaty Arbitration website at UVic Law that has so far appears to have gone unnoticed by SLAW.ca commentators.

According to the site, it provides access to all publicly available investment treaty awards along with information and resources relating to investment treaties and investment treaty arbitration and links to further resources.

Readers of the site are encouraged to send investment treaty materials and awards to Professor Andrew Newcombe for posting.

You can access awards chronologically or alphabetically by claimaint or by respondent state. Information is also provided for expert opinions and ICSID . . . [more]

I received a sad note today from Courthouse Libraries BC. It was not unexpected, but I am still sorry to report that the two wonderful loose-leaf print publications that this venerable organization has laboured over for many years will cease June 30th, 2010. Farewell to BC Legislative Digest and the Canada Legislative Index.

These publications began in 1979 and 1980 respectively and have been wonderful sources. As the letter states “they grew out of a need for a timely method of tracking BC and federal legislative changes”. The CLI in particular (given my firm’s jurisdiction is not in BC) . . . [more]

In conjunction with the launch last week by Irwin Law of the new, third edition of my book with them called Legal Research and Writing, I am pleased to announce the launch of a companion website called:

http://www.legalresearchandwriting.ca

The site contains links to all of the major URLs listed in the book (and more) as well as providing basic information about legal research and writing.

I hope to continue to develop the site over time and to possibly include an “updates” section on the site containing any major updates on new cases or other information contained in the book. . . . [more]