The Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) is dealing with a highly contentious issue – the future of articling in Ontario. After consulting with stakeholders and reading submissions from across the province, Laurie Pawlitza, the former LSUC Treasurer described the feedback as “disparate” in the 2012 Canadian Bar Association (CBA) National Student edition.

The Articling Task Force released their Final Report this week, . A preliminary cost assessment of the minority view’s preliminary cost is also available. But what is the Law Society to do, with such polarized views on the subject?

Public engagement theory has steadily moved . . . [more]

This morning, by 6 to 1, the SCC dealt with pornography on a work-issued computer and whether an employee had any reasonable expectation of privacy. The majority of the court set asise the Ontario Court of Appeal’s order in R. v. Cole, to exclude the evidence on the basis that it was obatined in breach of ss. 8 and 24(2) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Abella J. would have continued the exclusion. A new trial will be held in any event.

Here is the headnote: . . . [more]

Following yet another Apple-Samsung court battle, this time over tablet infringement, a ruling out of the UK has the Judges ordering Apple to make a public online apology. One of the first references I came across this afternoon, and not yet having read the judgement, was a Gizmodo post that poked fun at the Judges’ very specific directions, that Apple is Forced to Run their Public Apology in 14pt Arial font.

I thought it was pretty funny. That the judges would dictate the actual font and font size that must be used; and that Apple, of all companies, . . . [more]

The American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) and the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) have co-published a white paper called The New Librarian that looks at the new skills that today’s information professionals need to have or acquire to do well and survive. It is full of examples of how law librarians in different contexts are facing up to the challenges of constant change.

In her introduction, Kate Hagan, Executive Director of AALL, writes:

This joint white paper acknowledges the strategic alliance that has developed between the law librarian and technologist in driving efficient and effective legal information management. The

Lexum, the company that puts the opinions of the Supreme Court of Canada online, has updated the judgments page. The new page shows off Lexum’s product Decisia, software to assist courts and tribunals to put their decisions online.

The new page offers you a few recent decisions and a few news releases, with the option in each case of browsing through the entire database. Judgments can be browsed by date, case name or subject. Sophisticated searching is also possible, of course.

The only suggestion I’d make (after a very few minutes of using the Decisia layout) is that . . . [more]

The second #lawstudent #twtmoot competition will take place November 20, #twtmoot organizer @WCELaw recently announced. Participating #lawschool teams will again #twtmoot an #envlaw question, addressing before the #STCC (Supreme Twitter Court of Canada) the question of a public right to a healthy global atmosphere. West Coast Environmental Law was successful last time in raising awareness not only of the #twtmoot event, which trended in #Canada at the time, but also of #envlaw issues—the focus the environmental #lawfirm brings to the event. Last time around—just this past February—#Osgoode was the #winning team. I could be #biased, but I seem . . . [more]

If you could detect an attack on your computer system and defend against it, would you want to do it? should you be allowed to do it? What if defending meant harming the computer of the attacker? What if defending meant at least getting information about intermediate computers between the attacker’s and yours?

There are legal and ethical questions here. A review of the ethical ones appears in Stewart Baker’s blog, Skating on Stilts. (He is a former General Counsel of the US National Security Agency, among other high-level achievements.)

Mr Baker argues for private defence as well as . . . [more]

Online advertisers intend to ignore ‘do not track’ settings set by default. Here’s a story on OutLaw.com about that practice: Advertising industry standards do not “require companies to honor DNT signals fixed by the browser manufacturers and set by them in browsers”. So much for the ‘better business’ in Better Business Bureau. ‘Better For Business…’ appears more accurate.

A very pungent description of the ‘Privacy? Never heard of it!’ world of advertising and the discussions about these standards can be found on ZDNet. (h/t David Cheifetz)

And even browsers set to ‘do not track’ will not comply with the . . . [more]

The 2012 Law Via the Internet conference took place Oct 7-9, 2012 at the Cornell University Law School in Ithaca, New York.

The conference brings together people from the Legal Information Institutes (LIIs) from different countries and continents that together form the Free Access to Law Movement.

Many of the presentations are already online.

Three Australian scholars who took part in the conference, Andrew Mowbray, Philip Chung, and Graham Greenleaf, published an interesting overview of the Free Access to Law concept. Their paper, The Meaning of ‘Free Access to Legal Information’: A Twenty Year Evolution, is available on . . . [more]

Yesterday, my partner Anne-Sylvie Vassenaix-Paxton gave a talk to ALAI Canada (L’Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale) on the impact the new French HADOPI laws no. 1 and 2, have had on peer to peer file sharing and protection of personal data under French law.

The acronym stands for the Haute Autorité pour la Diffusion des Oeuvres et la Protection des Droits sur Internet (HADOPI), a body which co-ordinates a variety of legal measures against illegal downloading including sanctions against parents of downloaders.

Two points are interesting from a North American perspective. The French Constitutional Council threw out a draft of . . . [more]

Virtual delight echoed in tweets, posts, and emails in my corner of the web late Wednesday, upon the release of Judge Baer’s opinion in Authors Guild, Inc. v. HathiTrust 11 CV 6351 (S.D.N.Y.). Very shortly after its release, Prof. James Grimmelmann posted the opinion on Scribd.

Briefly, for those unfamiliar, the plaintiffs and defendants had each sought summary judgment in respect of the plaintiffs’ copyright infringement claim. HathiTrust and related university defendants saw near-entire success in their summary judgment motions, failing only on a standing question not consequential to the result. The outcome: Fair use protects the defendants’ participation . . . [more]

We all should do more to protect our social media accounts from being compromised. On an almost daily basis you hear about a celebrity that has had their account or smartphone hacked – and no doubt – there are thousands of otherwise anonymous non-celebrities that suffer the same fate each and every day.
So what can you do to protect yourself? Yes, a stronger password is a start, but there is a lot more you can do. A ReadWriteWeb post I came across today has a fantastic infographic that does a great job of explaining the basics of social media . . . [more]