The Wall Street Journal reports today:

Thomson Reuters Corp. (TRI) said Thursday it will cut 240 jobs in its legal businesses, with layoffs focused on locations in North America.

The company employs about 13,000 people worldwide in its businesses providing data to legal professionals. That represents about a quarter of Thomson Reuters’ 53,000 global workforce. In 2008, its legal divisions, which include West, FindLaw, Elite, Carswell and its legal publishing unit, represented roughly $3.5 billion in revenue.

The legal business is part of the financial data and news provider’s professional division, which sells information to professionals in health care, science . . . [more]

The New York Times has released a viewer for its newspaper called the Times Skimmer, which displays stories in a simple grid format for use on small screens such as those on smart phones. Readers are able to choose stories from a menu of Times topical sections and categories. Keyboard shortcuts allow readers to thumb their way more efficiently through the news. As well, they can choose from seven different formats. Click on any of the thumbnails below to see an enlarged version of the format.

The Skimmer isn’t the best way to read the Times on an iPhone: . . . [more]

So try this: create a link to section 650 of a freely available online version of the Criminal Code. Basic law, basic task in this digital age, right?

Unless I’ve missed something obvious, which is the best sort of thing to miss, it ain’t so easy nowadays. There are two online sources of the Code: CanLII’s and the Department of Justice’s, which are actually just one version because CanLII publishes what the DOJ provides.

But let’s start with the CanLII version. There’s the whole statute with no table of contents. And that’s it. A search within for “650,” . . . [more]

The Globe and Mail had an interview with author Cory Doctorow in the weekend edition. After talking to an audience in Toronto on the topic of “How to destroy the book”, he sat down to talk about the future of publishing.

There’s one great line in the interview that will strike a chord with most lawyers: “I don’t think people write 26,000-word licence agreements in order to give you more rights,” [Doctorow] said. “They only do it to take away your rights.”

And for our recent Kindle purchasers, he has some words of warning as well:

“They gave everybody back

. . . [more]

Chatting with Angela this morning about judgments, and then the Ontario Reports undermines my certainty about my prior views.

One expects that such issues as what is a judgment, and what is an endorsement, would have been determined years ago, when the basic rules of precedent were laid down by common law courts.

However, this morning’s copy of the Ontario Reports has me wondering. There are 80 pages of reported judicial decisions in part 10 of volume 96 of the Ontario Reports, Third Edition.

However, four of those decisions from the Superior Court totalling 61 pages are nominally endorsements. I . . . [more]

Here is this morning’s Interim Management Statement from Reed Elsevier. Note the interested bolded statement on R&D in the legal research sector.

LexisNexis has seen a modest decline in underlying revenues with softer legal and corporate markets in the US and internationally. Overall revenues benefit from a full year contribution from the ChoicePoint business acquired in September last year.

The US Legal Markets business has seen a continuation of the first half trends. Revenues in the core law firm market have held up, although these are under some late cycle pressure reflecting the downturn in the legal services industry. Directory

. . . [more]

The Legal Current, a blog published by Thomson Reuters, recently posted comments by Bob Berring on free legal information. Professor Berring expressed scepticism about the future of free tools for legal research, and described why in his view the structured and edited information in commercial tools makes them preferable for legal research.

Are commercial services necessarily more stable?

Daniel Poulin of LexUM has addressed Berring’s arguments in his recent post on SLAW, from the perspective of a publisher of free legal information. I echo his comment that commercial services are not necessarily more stable than government sources of . . . [more]

I saw the last installment from the West series showcasing Bob Berring. Bob Berring is no stranger in this field. He significantly contributed to the law librarianship over a quite long career. His decade long professional connections with West Publishing are also well known. All this said, this short video constitutes nice blog stuff. Simon’s reference to it is an irresistible invitation to prepare a first posting on Slaw. I intend to seriously contest the premature obitary for the free access to law initiative. Here are some of my points.

The market and the production of social goods

Berring’s first . . . [more]

Or even والشبكة العالمية

The language of tomorrow’s web won’t be English – nor will the script.

ICANN’s website has a video that explains the system of Internationalised Domain Names.

The Press Release states:

Seoul: The first Internet addresses containing non-Latin characters from start to finish will soon be online thanks to today’s approval of the new Internationalized Domain Name Fast Track Process by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers board.

“The coming introduction of non-Latin characters represents the biggest technical change to the Internet since it was created four decades ago,” said ICANN chairman Peter Dengate . . . [more]

Here it is on Youtube: some wonderful metaphors.

Will the Slaw community do a rebuttal? . . . [more]

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak October, And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost print source - For the rare and radiant index whom the angels named Table of Public Statutes and Responsible Ministers - Nameless here for evermore.

Science Commons, a subset of the U.S. Creative Commons movement, has an Open Access Law Program. (There doesn’t appear to be a Humanities Commons project; it’s kind of nostalgic to see law as a science.) Essentially the program asks journals to subscribe to a set of principles, to wit:

that a journal 1) take only a limited term license, 2) provide a citable copy of the final version of the article, and 3) provide public access to the journal’s standard publishing contract. In return, the author promises to attribute first publication to the journal.

As of now some . . . [more]