Law.com has just reported that the U.S. Supreme Court “adopted a historic rule change that will allow lawyers to cite so-called unpublished opinions in federal courts starting next year”. Apparently, unpublished opinions represent 80 percent of cases decided in the federal appeals courts.

It seems to me that recent rulings of the courts (Canadian and American) may be the start of a re-evaluation of the legal research process. The Ontario Court decision discussed in the April 10 post “Computers Have All the Answers”.- looks as though it will be impetus for some lively debates amongst practicing lawyers (I think the . . . [more]

Cl1p.net — that’s a numeral 1 — is a means of transfering text or files (2 MB limit) between computers. To do that, you go to cl1p.net/anydirectorynameyoulike and follow your nose. So, for example, I entered http://www.cl1p.net/slaw and when the entry page came up I put in some text that you’ll find when you go there; you can copy it with a click of the “copy” button.

What I’m not clear about at the moment, because I don’t have another computer handy, is what the password I’ve entered will do. I imagine that despite the password you can still see . . . [more]

Windows Live Academic Search is available in beta. For us — and for most people — it will be “academic” (in the poorest sense of that word) for a while yet, because it’s only drawing on content in computer science, physics, electrical engineering, and “related subject areas.”

I gave it a try with “topic mapping” (not the phrase) and got 5,670 hits. (For some reason “legal research” produced 63 hits, most of which had no apparent relation to the announced subject areas.) When you hover over a hit, an abstract appears in a right-hand panel, though you can choose at . . . [more]

The Accountability bill [An Act providing for conflict of interest rules, restrictions on election financing and measures respecting administrative transparency, oversight and accountability], Bill C-2 can be found here in html format and here in printable pdf format. . . . [more]

Over the past couple of years, I’ve been noticing a trend. Is this the busiest time of year? or is it just me?

First off, I’ve got a firm wide portal project set to roll out over the next few weeks (again, maybe just me, but it seems like there’s always a major spring project).

Add in the fact that it’s planning and budget time, that I’m prepping a presentation for the BCLA conference next friday, and the CALL Conference is coming quickly there after — and then, woh-and-behold — I should come back just in time to welcome . . . [more]

Get ready for Microsoft’s competitor to Google Scholar, Windows Live Academic Search, which may be announced either tomorrow or Wednesday, according to Charles Bailey Jr.’s Digital Koan. A note in PCWorld says:

Academic Search, aimed at Google Scholar, will allow users to search articles in academic journals or find out if books or articles are available in a library located near the user, according to another LiveSide posting.

According to LiveSide, Academic Search will allow users to do the following:

• View an abstract for an academic article in a search preview pane;
• View the complete article, as

BlackBerrys are helping police officers in West Yorkshire to deal with suspects who try to bluff their way out of being arrested when stopped on the streets.

When officers stop someone they suspect is wanted for an offence, they need to confirm that person’s identity.

Not surprisingly, many of those who are wanted will try to trick their way out of being arrested by providing false details – often those of someone they know, who is not currently wanted by the police.

But now officers issued with BlackBerryThe best BlackBerry joke I’ve heard in a while is:
“say . . . [more]

Wires just announced the development of Westlaw-Japan. Our friends at Eagan, MN have teamed up with Shin Nippon Hoki Shuppan K.K to create Westlaw Japan K.K., a business that will develop a new, state-of-the-art online service created expressly for the world’s second-largest legal information marketplace.

Since West now derives 68% of its legal and regulatory revenue from online, it made sense to focus on the largest undeveloped marketNote that non-North American sales make up only 15% of the West Thomson legal and regulatory market.

A few comments from the launch:

President Shozo Hattori – “We believe significant future

Another fascinating paper from SSRN, this one about mapping case law. I think this approach has enormous implications for everything that relies on an accurate understanding of the structure of law, including accessing legal information, and teaching law.

SSRN-The Web of Law by Thomas Smith . . . [more]

In doing the prior post I thought that there may be some Slawyers who don’t know about the Social Science Research Network’s e-Library. A joint project of Stanford Law School and the European Corporate Governance Institute, SSRN is a repository for abstracts of academic papers (current count: 114,700) and full-text versions of academic papers (current count: 86,500). The data is categorized into 10 areas, or “networks”: accounting research, economics research, entrepreneurship research & policy, financial economics, information systems, legal scholarship, management research, marketing research, negotiations research, social insurance research.

Within each network, papers are organized into topical “journals” . . . [more]

Bruce Welling always wrote the most stimulating heresies in Canadian Corporate LawAs well as having the funniest index references footnotes in Canadian legal writing:
the constitutional significance of drunks
The Exploding Mountbattens.

Since Bruce’s writings are replete with references to his surf buddies, and he can be found at dawn in the lineup at the Alley, off Currumbin Point, it’s not surprising that he has taken himself off to legal publishers in more surf-friendly climes.

His new edition of Corporate Law in Canada (3rd edition) is published by Scribblers Publishing Queensland Australia.

Copies of Corporate Law in Canada (3rd . . . [more]

This paper begins by considering the important role information plays in the law. It then notes the increasing industry concentration that has occurred over the last 10-15 years among legal and other publishers. This industry concentration is believed to have contributed to significant price increases for scholarly journals generally. This industry concentration has potentially significant implications for questions of access, particularly in the current environment of increasing electronic dissemination of legal information. In addition to examining characteristics of the legal information industry, this paper also looks at the role of dominant players such as Lexis and Westlaw and the ways