Alex Manevich earlier bemoaned here on SLAW the abysmal state of online access to Ontario court dockets.

In a recent request to the Canadian Association of Law Libraries listserv I asked colleagues the current state of online access to Canadian court dockets.

Unfortunately, the situation is not much better two years later.

However, I have added to the Case Law page on my legal research and writing website a chart of links for accessing Canadian court dockets (and for those jurisdictions who do not provide access, I provide a link to contact the court registry).

I will continue to update . . . [more]

U.S. attorneys are being invited to adopt volumes of the Federal Reporter in a current Law.gov digitization project from PublicResource.org. The adoption campaign is being called Yes We Scan. PublicResource.org is a non-profit organization that received the Project 10^100 Award from Google and is digitizing the Federal Reporter by “double keying” all text. Double keying involves the entire text being manually typed in twice with discrepancies being checked, and then the full text being reviewed by law students and legal professionals before being certified. The Law.gov project is meant to make U.S. primary legal materials more available.

From . . . [more]

The Canadian Forum on Civil Justice, based at the University of Alberta, has announced that it is moving to York University.

The Forum undertakes research to improve the civil justice system for Canadians by:

• collecting in a systematic way information relating to the system for administering civil justice;
• carrying out in-depth research on matters affecting the operation of the civil justice system;
• promoting the sharing of information about the use of best practices;
  functioning as a clearinghouse and library of information for the benefit of all persons in Canada concerned with civil justice;
• developing liaisons with similar organizations in

Thanks to our neighbour, Mary Saulig of Goodmans for lending me her copy of an old acquaintance, Benjamin on the Sale of Goods. But this post isn’t about presumptions of delivery or FOB contracts. It’s about one of the most remarkable stories of a legal author I’ve heard.

Let’s start at the Cimetière du Père Lachaise‎ in the 20th arrondissement, though the website doesn’t list this grave, which has this inscription on the tombstone:

Judah Philip Benjamin, Born St. Thomas West Indies August 6,1811, Died in Paris May 6,1884, United States Senator from Louisiana, Attorney General, Secretary of

Let me start by saying two things that I believe:

1. I am an optimist
2. Change is good

I imagine that Slawyers, being those with an intellectual bent who read widely on the web and elsewhere, already know about Patrick Lamb’s recent ABA New Normal column titled “Does It Pay to Hire a Law Firm Librarian?” The comments are interesting and there have been plenty of follow up posts:

LLB – Do law firms still need librarians?
3 Geeks and a Law Blog – Who needs a librarian anyway?
iBrary Guy – A grain of salt and a teaspoon . . . [more]

We haven’t seen an update on Carl Malamud’s Law.gov project in quite a while. There is much to report. To start, here’s a reminder of what the project is about:

Law.Gov is an idea, an idea that the primary legal materials of the United States should be readily available to all, and that governmental institutions should make these materials available in bulk as distributed, authenticated, well-formatted data. To make this idea a reality, a series of workshops were held throughout the country, resulting in a consensus on 10 core principles.

In June the project completed its consultation phase, which included . . . [more]

I confess: I love law reform commission reports. I find they are wonderful 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.

In the past few days, by pure coincidence, I have come across a wealth of new reports by law commissions in New Zealand, Ireland and Australia:

• New Zealand Law Reform Commission Introductory Issues Paper on Law of Trusts : this is primarily a background paper. It traces the development of the trust from its origins in medieval England through to

Inspired by Ted Tjaden’s custom search engine that principally queries Canadian law firms, I’ve put together a Google Custom Search Engine for Canadian law blogs. The engine queries only the 249 blogs which are currently on the Canadian law blogs list maintained by Steve Matthews at lawblogs.ca.

As I explain on the page, because Google doesn’t let you rank your CSE results by date, I’ve given you the option of looking at results from the past day, a week, a month, or year.

What would make this really useful, of course, would be an RSS feed for your . . . [more]

A number of new titles have caught my eye as useful additions or updates to Canadian legal literature.

In no particular order:

• Bullen & Leake & Jacob’s Canadian Precedents of Pleadings + CD (Carswell): This new title is a Canadian version of the UK classic litigation precedent service, now in its 16th edition from Sweet & Maxwell. In the absence of a Canadian edition, many lawyers here would consult the UK title. However, over time, the UK title increasingly referenced UK legislation, which made the UK service less useful. I have not seen the new Canadian version yet but

Will this spread to other jurisdictions? Will people now pay more attention when we talk to them about the importance of proper legal citation? Just a thought :)

Lawyer Fined $100 for Getting a Case Citation Wrong . . . [more]

The last couple of years I have been living vicariously through Twitter, doing my best to follow the discussions at the Internet Librarian International (ILI) conference that takes place in the UK each October. When people who are attending start emailing me things they have learned (as happened this year), I really know I am missing something!

Some highlights from ILI2010

Dr. Hazel Hall, Director of the Centre for Social Informatics at Edinburgh Napier University, spoke about “relevance of social tools for information professionals” in her talk Getting Real About Social Media. Owen Stephens has a nice blog . . . [more]