The screen capture below is a portion of my Law Society of Upper Canada’s 2009 form for lawyer annual reports. It’s from the non-mandatory section collecting demographic information. 

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For what it’s worth — and it can’t be very much at 16 pixels square — CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute, has a favicon. It may have been up there for months and I’ve only now noticed it, of course. But if so, you may not have noticed it either, so I thought I’d show it to you — at twice the size you’d actually see it at: — rather than that used by the other legal information institutes, AustLII, WorldLII, and BaiLII respectively:

We’ve posted about these inconsequential artworks before on Slaw: Law Firm Favicons, Google’s . . . [more]

The New York Times is the source of a great many wonderful things — as befits a newspaper that has been the doyenne of the American print press for generations. And, thankfully, not all of these wonderful things are serious or even news-related. As a signal example of this, I present Abstract City, a blog of illustrations by Christoph Niemann. Here, of course, words fail, but copyright reigns; in such a circumstance, perhaps, Wittgenstein would advise: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” But what did he know?

Having already pointed you in the right direction, I . . . [more]

You may have noticed a story in your favoured news source back in February about the Canadian Competition Bureau filing a motion to take the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) to the Canadian Competition Tribunal. In short, the Competition Bureau has targeted CREA for the practice of not allowing prospective sellers to list their home on the MLS system unless the seller signs on for the full real estate agent service, including commission, which the Competition Bureau labels an “anti-competitive practice”. To which the CREA has responded.

If you have bought or sold a home in the . . . [more]

I can’t resist my annual greeting–I hope you are having a great day and for those of you celebrating, a fun evening.

Photo: Ring of Kerry in Ireland by Connie Crosby, September 2006 . . . [more]

My wife and I did a good thing on the day of the recent Oscar telecast: we attended a 1 pm showing at our local theater of the Oscar-nominated short films and short animation films.

Although I thought the Oscar presentation was too long and not funny enough, having seen the 1 pm showing made the presentations later that night for those two categories much more interesting.

If you get the chance to see the winning short animation film it is simply brilliant. It was Logorama, a 16-minute animated film set in what is presumably Los Angeles that uses . . . [more]

Here it is, just about half way between Friday Fillips, and I’m feeling the urge to share some frivolous findings with you. I hope that those who read Slaw for our contributions to your understanding of law and practice will forgive me this mid-week miscellany, most of it blithely immaterial.

But let’s start with law, in a way. The Globe and Mail this morning reported on a British scholar’s announcement (assertion?) that the 1613 Elizabethan drama, Cardenio, is in fact (mostly) by Shakespeare, and not Fletcher (his ghost blogger?) or Theobald, the later plagiarist. In the brief excerpt cited I . . . [more]

I have a quintet for you today, five easy — and small — pieces, the first of which, fittingly, is Five Easy Pieces. There’s the 1970 movie, of course, made famous by the chicken salad sandwich scene. The title comes from an opening scene not actually used in the movie, in which, in the words of the script, there’s a:

CLOSE-UP of a program announcing a Dupea family
recital. The CAMERA SCANS down the bill . . .

The CAMERA COMES to rest on:
Five Easy Pieces – Grebner – Played by Robert Dupea.

But Grebner is fictitious. . . . [more]

India Code makes current versions of Indian Acts available for free:

India Code the India Code Information System contains all Central Acts of Parliament right from 1836 onwards. Each Act includes: Short Title, Enactment Date, Sections, Schedule and also Foot notes.

The Acts can be searched by “Short Title, Act Number, Act Year, Act Objective, Full Act Text, and FreeText Search.” The interface requires double clicks, and the results are not in a perfect form (click “download full act for best results), but the coverage is impressive (1834-2010), and on the left sidebar there are a couple useful tools, including . . . [more]

I don’t make a habit of posting my newspaper articles here – but this one has received more than normal attention on my own blog, so thought it might be worthwhile posting it here as well. Its on my blog, and on Canoe

I can’t post it here in full for contractual reasons – but the gist is that a 19 year old student has been sued by the North Face clothing company over his South Butt clothes that mock North Face fleece jackets worn by the popular crowd at his school.

In response to North Face’s tagline, “Never . . . [more]

Maybe its because we’re just on the good side of the dead of winter, but my weekly Slaw assignment led me back to an article I wrote in 2001 in praise of a communication model I learned to appreciate in years spent hanging out at the beach.

I called the article “Windsurfing 101” and described the four-part model I learned way way back in 1984 when I took my first Canadian Yachting Association windsurfing instructor course. Back then I was taught that a good teacher:

1. Sets specific, clear and measurable learning objectives
2. Divides information into logical chunks
3. Maximizes audience participation

I see a change coming on how Alberta Courts deal with costs for computerized legal research. Mr. Justice MacLeod in Aram Systems Ltd. v. NovAtel Inc., 2010 ABQB 152, wrote:

[23] With great respect to those decisions made at an earlier time, I think that the view of computerized legal research as a mere alternative is no longer consonant with the reality of current legal practice. Such research is now expected of counsel, both by their clients, who look to counsel to put forth the best possible case, and by the courts, who rely upon counsel to present