If you think things are a bit quiet this week, it’s because so many of our colleagues are whooping it up in Edmonton, sin city of the wicked west, at the CALL conference.
But some inkling into the goings-on can be found at the CALL Blog. Don’t forget to check it too – it’ll let you know where the latest rave, pub crawl or thé dansant is happening this week. . . . [more]
In my ebulletin this morning from Chancery Lane, a list of links that may be helpful to Slaw researchers who have to look at English law.
Obviously a complete pathfinder would be a much larger taskStart with these:
Sarah Carter’s LLRX Guide
the Essex Guide
the Duke Guide
Duke English Legal History Guide;
Good PowerPoint from the Law Bod
and finally the Kent portal
, but these offer a good starting point.
. . . [more]
After the front cover piece in CBA National , recently mentioned on Slaw, it may seem as if there is a certain inevitability in the move away from billable hours, and to the development of technology-enabled commodity products.
This was the view espoused by Richard Susskind and embraced by legal futurists in North America and Australia.
I questioned whether this was really occurring in practice and whether firms were prepared to make the necessary investments in a piece at the first Pacific Legal Technology Conference back in 2002.
Now a survey of major projects suggests that there . . . [more]
Richard Susskind’s visionary look forward at the SCL 2006 LectureFor those who missed it there was a good summary at Legal IT, postings in the US, Australia, and England and of course the the good folks over at Slaw picked it up as well: The Next Ten Years is now available in transcript form as well as in podcastAnd here as well..
The most interesting ideas are picked up in a recent interview Richard gave to the Law Society Gazette:
. . . [more]‘Lawyers are correct about worrying about the economics of commodity pricing, because when
Since the history of law librarianship in CanadaI acknowledge the start made in the Diana Priestly festschrift, Law libraries in Canada : essays to honour Diana M. Priestly, edited by Joan N. Fraser and published by Carswell in 1988, and the recent CALL publication on Law Reporting and Legal Publishing in Canada: A History, but that’s not really on topic. is relatively underdocumented, it’s interesting to note the Canadian references in our American colleagues’ massive centennial history of AALL.
1912 – June 26–July 2 . . . AALL’s 7th Annual Meeting is the first to be held outside . . . [more]
Two cases, one fairly recent, that address the issue of whether a name within an email might constitute a signature for the purposes of forming an enforceable contract: Mehta v J Pereira Fernandes SA [2006] EWHC 813 (Ch) and SM Integrated Transware v Schenker Singapore, [2005] SGHC 58.
The Singaporean case is found on LawNet, to which I don’t have a subscription.
The English court said that the sender’s automatically inserted email address did not constitute a signature, not being intended as one, but “if a party or a party’s agent sending an e mail types his or her . . . [more]
Ola! Today our Mexican colleagues, and some of those in the U.S., celebrate Cinco de Mayo. Cinco de Mayo, literally, means “the 5th of May.” Many people mistakenly think it is a celebration of Mexican independence, but that day is celebrated in September. From the web:
. . . [more]“Cinco de Mayo” (the fifth of May) is a day of remembrance of the “Batalla de Puebla” (Battle of Puebla): in which poorly equipped but highly motivated Méxican forces of less than four thousand troops, defeated the French forces of five thousand who were well equipped and disciplined. The city of Puebla, 100
Words, words, words. Where would we be without them. #+)&%~! — that’s where. And we’d all be out of jobs.
But since we do ‘ave ’em, I’ve got a pair of places to point you to today that ought to offer hours of lexical — the other ‘lex’ that is — edification and amusement.
First up is WordNet. The official word from the site is that:
. . . [more]WordNet® is an online lexical reference system whose design is inspired by current psycholinguistic theories of human lexical memory. English nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are organized into synonym sets, each representing one
Thanks to the sharp-eyed Laurel MurdochPerforming in Session 11 at CALL next week – don’t miss her for pointing out a new pilot site for explaining in plain language the rationale for Ontario regulations.
The site explains that it’s a one-stop website that makes it easier for businesses to find out about the Government of Ontario’s proposed Lieutenant-Governor-in-Council regulations that affect them and learn about regulations recently approved.
It’s run by the Small Business Agency of Ontario, so it has a business law focus. It’s designed to facilitate the exchange of information between government regulators and businesses regarding regulatory proposals . . . [more]
LexisNexis and American Lawyer Media Part Ways
This week notices went out that American Lawyer Media publications would no longer be available via LexisNexis.
The notice offers no explanation for the discontinuation of ALM databases. Rather, it asserts that the lack of availability through LexisNexis “does not, in any way, alter LexisNexis’ value for customers or our overall market position.”
But there is no word of this on Lexis’ Press Release page. And the logic of why becomes apparent with a new announcement out of EaganAlso on the ALM page:
. . . [more]New ALM/West Strategic Partnership Brings ALM Content Exclusively to
Came back from the awesomely large Association of Legal Administrators conference in MontréalOur session on Practical Paranoia – Remote Computing doesn’t really fit the Slaw agenda, so I won’t bore folks on the topic – and that’s why no live blogging from ALA in Montréal by Slaw this week, only to realize that I should have delayed my train to stay for the session following ours. The smart thing would have been to hear the discussion on Blogs: The Hot New Technology for Communication and Information.
The session included a presentation by Bonnie ShuchaBonnie Shucha, Reference & Electronic . . . [more]
This project has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada | Ce projet a été rendu possible en partie grâce au gouvernement du Canada