We’ve blogged in the past about Hugh Lawford and the vision and tenacity that built the Queen’s Law School treaty data processing project into the foundation for one of Canada’s two commercial legal databases.

It’s an accident, of course, that QL was based in Kingston – in the same way that Dayton and Eagan were in the American systems. But that’s where the ideas were.

Kingston was of course where Hugh taught contracts, in between being Lester Pearson’s right hand man in Ottawa.

Today, the Kingston Whig-Standard reported that the remaining QL office in Kingston is to close. Rationalization . . . [more]

I’m not sure whether Mick Jones was inspired or disgusted by his experience at the British Music Experience (probably the latter). In any case, it has moved him to set up a temporary “Rock N Roll Public Library” in some kind of office building under a highway in London. This is a great example of the do-it-yourself ethic that often accompanies punk culture, and which some claim is central to it. Sounds like a great excursion for the whole family to learn about every-day self-empowerment. . . . [more]

There I was, racking my brains late in the week (no easy thing) for a subject for this Friday Fillip. And then it came to me: jellyfish. We haven’t talked about jellyfish on Slaw, which, seeing that we’ve talked about pretty much everything else (law lords, marijuana, street racing, deserts, the BBC, Canada’s home page, and the like), was a clearly open invitation.

So let’s start big. Very very big.

That big.

Meet Noruma’s jellyfish, some of which can reach over 400 pounds in weight. As if that singular prospect weren’t enough to turn this into a fillip upside the . . . [more]

♫ JUST TO LET YOU KNOW
I Am Not Extinct
JUST TO LET YOU GO
This Is Not My Extinction
Hopefully It Won’t For A Long Time For Now (now)
cuz’ I am not extinct oh oh Extinction ♫

Recorded by Avril Lavigne

Albert Einstein once said: “Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them”. Accordingly, I am looking at the new court rules for British Columbia and the attempt to revamp the civil trial process with a heavy heart. Notwithstanding the effort and work that has been put into this process by many learned . . . [more]

Courtesy of my friend and partner, Subrata Bhattacharjee, today is the last sitting of the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords (you can watch the feed here. So farewell to a court that has provided a vast range of legal judgments from Attwood v. Small in 1838, through Rylands and Fletcher, through M’ALISTER or DONOGHUE (Pauper) v. STEVENSON. In October, a Supreme Court will start sitting to hear appellate matters.

In this Guest Week on Media and Entertainment law at Slaw, it only seems fitting that they’ll spend part of the last day on pop . . . [more]

Bill Gates has been quoted as saying: “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.”

To put that in perspective, lets compare some specs. The space shuttles will soon be retired – they were first launched in 1981 – almost 30 years ago.

In 1981 an example of a computer available then was a PDP11. It cost US$110,000, had 192 KB of memory, 5MB disk packs, and the footprint of a large desk.

Today, we buy cellphones for around $200 or so that . . . [more]

Congratulations to Natalie Gauthier, the doyenne and pioneer of Canadian law blogging: her blog, Le pub et le droit, is five years old today. You can also follow Ms Gauthier on Twitter at twitter.com/nggauthier in English and in French. . . . [more]

Facebook status updates are all a-twitter this morning (excuse the pun). Updates like this one are spreading around Facebook. The question: is it true or not that Facebook has agreed to let third parties use users' posted photos for ads without the users' permission?

Well the results are in and the winners have been announced for this year’s Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, that annual dark and stormy nightmare¹ in honour of poor Lord Lytton, the one time Secretary of State for the Colonies (Canada, I’m looking at you) and novelist of less than wretched quality. (After all, folks, it was Himself who coined “the pen is mightier than the sword” which in full is “beneath the rule of men entirely great the pen is mightier than the sword” — but that’s another story.)

The contest now has numerous categories, because we just . . . [more]

A copy of the Law Society of British Columbia’s 2009-2011 strategic plan was posted to their website yesterday. Adopted by the Benchers’ back in February, the 12-page document identifies three principal goals:

1. enhancing access to legal services;

2. enhancing public confidence in the legal profession through appropriate and effective regulation of legal professionals;

3. effective education, both of legal ­professionals and those wishing to become legal professionals, and of the public.

Hat tip to Courthouse Libraries BC. . . . [more]

♬ All we need is love…♬

Lyrics and Music by Lennon & McCartney

In the June 2009 issue of The Atlantic online, Joshua Wolf Shenk looks at the issue of “What Makes Us Happy?” This is no new-age, crystal-based, aromatherapy-scented review of superficial meaning-of-life issues (not that The Atlantic would ever stoop to that level). Rather, this is an article that examines a 72 year Harvard longitudinal study of 268 men that started in 1937 which included among its participants, President John Kennedy. The article is also an exploration of psychiatrist George Vaillant who has been “the chief curator . . . [more]

Lawyers Feed the Hungry, the meal program run out of the cafeteria at Osgoode Hall in downtown Toronto, has now been in operation for over a decade. Each week, close to a thousand guests are served a hot meal four times per week (Wednesday and Friday dinner, and Thursday and Sunday breakfast), as well as a bag lunch at the latter three meals. In effect, guests are provided with a free meal for every day of the week.

Many members of the profession think about helping out with the program from time to time but lack access to a practical . . . [more]