Some recent posts have advocated the idea that law school publishers should “stop publishing” law journals in print. Instead, the posts say, the publishers should direct their energy to “creating definitive versions of their journals in digital formats and making the law review articles readily accessible in online repositories”.

I agree with the conventional wisdom that the demise of print formats for law journals and law reports is an inevitability and that it will happen in the not too distant future. Acceptance by the legal community of “digital only law journals” combined with economic realities will ultimately produce that result. . . . [more]

Something with only a tangential relation to law, but squarely in the middle of our interest in online resources and libraries:

As of today all Canadians can log into the Canadian Cochrane Centre, part of “The Cochrane Collaboration,” and free of charge read abstracts in plain language of studies in medicine and health care — or, as the welcome page puts it:

…the best available evidence on which health treatments work, which ones don’t, and which may cause harm.

I have to say I’ve never encountered the Cochrane Library before and am basically ignorant about how it’s funded and . . . [more]

Here’s a link to a first chapter by the Advanced Legal Research instructors at Stanford Law School in a work on the history of CALR. I suspect they need to get into the stacks more

It’s interesting as far as it goes, but it doesn’t capture as much of the early detail as Jon Bing’s Handbook of Legal Information Retrieval. Jon’s book led me to Louis O. Kelso’s Does the Law Need a Technological Revolution in 18 Rocky Mntn. L. Rev. 388 (1945-1946) – yes 1946. It discusses the application of computers to the task of legal research. . . . [more]

I have just received my copy of Canadian Contract Law, 2d ed (Toronto: LexisNexis Canada, 2009) authored by SLAW’s own Angela Swan (with the assistance of Jakub Adamski).

At 959 pages and the most recent treatise on the topic, it stands to be an important addition to the Canadian legal literature. . . . [more]

The the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada and IP Osgoode have inaugurated an IP Writing Challenge. The winner in each of three categories — law student, graduate student, professional — will receive a $1000 prize and the publication of the work. Works in either English or French are eligible. The precise rules are set out on the IP Osgoode website, but a brief description of the scope of eligible essays is set out below:

Entries must develop a thesis of importance in an emerging area of intellectual property law from a Canadian, comparative or international perspective. Topics can be

Slaw’s own Ted Tjaden is quoted in this week’s Lawyers’ Weekly on whether the free access to the law movement has reached the point of such reliability and comprehensiveness that it can be considered as an adequate substitute for the commercial giants. Canlii’s Daniel Poulin comes to the defence of Canlii.

“I rarely use free resources,” Tjaden said.

“We have the luxury of having one of the better-equipped law libraries in a Canadian law firm with extensive print resources and online subscriptions.

“Although free search engines do supplement the legal research I do, we continue to rely on the value-added

Those of us who were trained to look at the documents – always the documents as I.F. Stone taught – will find the attached documents on the torture of those detained at Guantánamo Bay detention centre both fascinating and chilling.

For the record here are the links: . . . [more]

Heads up. No, it isn’t a soccer ball flying into your yard from the over zealous kick of spring fever infected neighbourhood children. It is a news release about some enhancements to Quicklaw. There are even screen shots of the new look.

The new Quicklaw functions are designed to follow your workflow and eliminate screen clutter:

• Set your own Start Page with the streamlined global navigation toolbar
• Speed up your research with sharper buttons and icons, highly readable fonts, and an inviting colour palette
• Consistently locate Related Links, General Search screens, and the What’s New icon (available soon) on

CAIJ, the Centre d’accès à l’information juridique (the network of law libraries associated with the Québec Bar Association), today launched a mobile version of its suite of free online legal research products.

CAIJ | mobile will provide access to:

• CAIJ’s online catalogue
• its databases of legislation, case law and legal literature
• JuriBistro TOPO, the CAIJ knowledgebase of hundreds of legal questions and answers from 57 fields of law
• access to Quebec Bar Association publications such as Développements récents (annual reviews of areas of law), the Collection de droit (Bar School materials), and proceedings of the annual Bar Association congresses

Case citations exist primarily for the purpose of enabling a researcher to locate the full text of a judgment or the decision of an administrative tribunal. The primary purpose of a style guide for legal citation is to ensure that everyone can understand how various combinations of numbers, letters, brackets and punctuation make it possible for the reader to find the full text of a case referred to in a book, article or another case. There are other uses, such as case citators, but the main purpose of a case citation is to provide the means to easily locate a . . . [more]

The Toronto Association of Law Libraries (TALL) held an event on Thursday evening at the University of Toronto Law School called Charting Our Course: The TALL Publishers’ Forum.

The publishers panel was comprised of representatives from CCH, Irwin Law, Canada Law Book, Carswell, LexisNexis and SOQUIJ. TALL had provided them a series of questions in advance and those questions were posited at the session, covering such issues as open access, pricing, licensing, digital rights management, and customer support. To their credit, the publishers participated despite being potentially exposed to a crowd of law librarians who have been concerned over . . . [more]

While updating some international law research resources, I came across the University of Ottawa’s JuriGlobe – World Legal Systems website. I have not had time to explore it in depth but it appears to be a vary ambitious site with lots of research, links and statistical information. The “About JuriGlobe” link describes the site in these terms:

JuriGlobe is a research group formed by professors from the Faculty of Law of the University of Ottawa, which focuses on the development of a multilingual information data bank, accessible to all on the internet, containing general information relating to the different