We discovered an early description of a computerized online retrieval system in the short story “How-2” by science fiction writer Clifford D. Simak. The story was published in Galaxy November, 1954.

One morning, a lawyer discovers a box with a do-it-yourself kit inside. Following the instructions for use, he builds a robot – one whose design happens to be misdelivered from the future. The lawyer is to appear in court. But his friendly robot spends the night before the trial building a new robot – a lawyer-robot.

‘”(A lawyer robot) with a far greater memory capacity than any

We learned this morning of the death of Professor Hugh Lawford, a legend in Canadian legal information. He will be mourned by many students who studied with him at Queen’s University Law School, and his passing should be noted by every Canadian lawyer, because Hugh and his colleagues revolutionized how law is practiced. . . . [more]

Simon has drawn our attention to Peter Schwartz’s comments on the “Reinvention of Legal Research” that appear in the Huffington Post. The premise of the post appears to be that legal publishers are suffering because they are no longer able to impose “per-minute and per-use pricing structures” which allowed publishers to use law firms as information wholesalers. According to Schwartz, this pricing model facilitated cost recovery by law firms who passed these charges through to their clients.

The flaw in this argument, in Canada at least, is that it has been more than a decade since flat rate pricing models . . . [more]

Congratulations to Slaw and The Court founder Simon Fodden for being featured in the article “The Paperless Chase” by Emily White in the July/August 2009 edition of National, the Canadian Bar Association magazine (see pages 38 & 39). Simon talks at length about Slaw, law blogging, and technological change.

In the article, Simon explains:

I think there are a good many lawyers who would like to write much more than they do…Of course, they write memos and opinions, but I think they’d like to expand on a topic. And blogs give them that opportunity to do that.

White also . . . [more]

Slate has an excellent article up on the opening of micro-blogging standards. The piece is titled To Live, Twitter Must Die, but the content isn’t nearly so sensational.

I really like the message here. There are dangers anytime we put too much faith in a single company, and expect them to police the balance between their own business interests surrounding a proprietary technology, and the greater access to that web technology. Especially when we grow to depend on it. This article references Twitter’s dominance with micro-blogging, but it could have easily been Google’s relationship to internet search.

I also . . . [more]

One of the most important figures in popular music died this week, and I’m going to join the crowd eulogizing him. I’m talking about Lester Polsfuss, orse. Polfuss, a.k.a. Red Hot Red, Rhubarb Red — and Les Paul.

Les Paul, along with Leo Fender and Adolph Rickenbacher, was one of the inventors of the solid body electric guitar — that’s a recent version of Gibson’s Les Paul Standard model you see to your left — the idea being that hollow body electric guitars could be played only so loud because of feedback from the body’s resonance. And though he . . . [more]

There has been lots of controversy over privacy issues relating to various services offered by Google and many others. Those issues are often not easy to come to grips with because they are in the context of previously unknown territory. Speaking of unknown territory, The Onion has a parody news report entitled “New Google Service Lets Privacy Critics Opt-Out, Relocate to Remote Village“. . . . [more]

If I were clever, this entry would be the briefest fillip yet. But… I ain’t and it ain’t. So let me go on at just a little length about abbreviation in messaging. See, there’s no real cost to my prolixity: on a blog, no one is charging me for the publication of each word. But if I were texting you I might try to compress things so that my thumbs wouldn’t fall off and your eyes wouldn’t fall out from reading on the teeny tiny screen. This is old news: who doesn’t know LOL, RU, 2NTE, TTFN, etc.?

Curiously, Twitter . . . [more]

This began as a comment, and then got out of hand. It is a response to Simon Fodden’s post on squigglies, pilcrows, and gaspers and Gary Rodrigues’ post, “The full stop in legal citation – has its time finally come?“.

Looking at a printed page in a law report, I don’t care whether the law report abbreviations have periods or not, as long as the periods are consistently there or not there. The context will almost certainly make it clear, without the periods, whether “A” is the Atlantic Reporter or an indefinite article, and whether “OR” is the . . . [more]

Doing some filing work I came across a photograph I took during a visit to the Supreme Court a couple of years ago: In one of the courtyards that bring light to inner-facing windows (see an image of the plan) there’s a badminton court. At least, I’m reliably informed that’s what it is:

click image for full view

The thought of justices whacking away at shuttlecocks is a mighty pleasing one, though I suspect that the court is used by staff or the clerks. The net seems a bit low to me, though, so maybe it’s for counsel to . . . [more]

Karl-Heinz Schreiber, who I believe must have set some sort of record for the most appearances of any individual in reported Canadian caselaw. My count is 44 decisions.

Leaving aside the current story, the legal merits and the political background, which are in the hands of the Oliphant Inquiry and in the presciently accurate work of my friendStevie Cameron. The sheer quantity of court appearances and decisions is impressive. Two appearances in the Supreme Court of Canada, and on the extradition issues, as the judge noted, five applications for judicial review, four of which were dismissed, the . . . [more]

One of the reasons I might like to practice in the United States is that I’d get to use the squiggly in my documents. Otherwise known as the section symbol or mark, § is one of my favourite typographical elements, having an elegance and symmetry that please me in a way that the mere “s.” we Canadians use to denote a section of a statute simply cannot. It is, literally, twice (as good as) our section character, being two esses, one above the other. Feel free to sprinkle your comments in Slaw with this lovely mark: easy to do: simply . . . [more]