The ABA Techshow “tips” issue of Law Practice Magazine is live today. The Editor in Chief is Dan Pinnington, and the issue is full of practical technology tips. I am not sure that I am truly “totally mobile” as described, but I do have some tips in that regard in my article Working Virtually: High-Productivity Tips for Traveling Lawyers. . . . [more]

Olivier Charbonneau, doctoral candidate in law, associate librarian at Concordia University, blogger, and all-around legal information expert, has a post up on VoxPopuLII, the blog associated with Cornell’s Legal Information Institute. In “Collaboration and Open Access to Law,” Charbonneau talks about certain aspects of his research work on the way in which the public and legal documents interact with each other on the web.

In this post he gives only a few suggestions as to how we might improve this interaction and points us to his paper submitted at the Law via the Internet . . . [more]

Simon Fodden already mentioned Avvo, a website that rates lawyers which was ironically sued soon after its launch.

I’ve noticed some traffic recently from one of their pages for Top Legal Blogs. Slaw ranks quite well at #26, which is rather impressive when you consider the size of our American counterparts (there aren’t many other Canadian sites in the listing).

Their methodology is based on Alexa Rankings, which do have significant flaws, and are subject to manipulation. The page might still serve as a useful resource for some of the top law sites out there, . . . [more]

CaseStudiesOnline.com is a new web site with hundreds of social media marketing case studies, all fully indexed and searchable. The site was created by Tod Maffin, a well-known strategist, consultant, speaker and thought leader based in Vancouver. The site is currently in beta with more case studies being added each day. Maffin also plans on interviewing both thought-leaders in social media marketing and the people in the trenches who are putting these tools into action.

Here’s a short video by Maffin showing how CaseStudiesOnline.com works:

I took the opportunity to interview Tod Maffin over the phone last week to . . . [more]

This year’s Legal IT conference, Legal IT 4.0, is scheduled for April 26 and 27th. Each year the conference looks at information technology and its impact on the law. I was fortunate to attend last year’s conference, and found the audience and presenters to be a stimulating mix of thought leaders and those new to many of the concepts.

The program has largely been set, and the 50-plus speaker roster is being finalized. The subject areas being covered:

Day 1:

• Cyber crime
• IT in courtrooms
• Tech Showcase – written communications
• e-Discovery
• Early adopters
• Tech Showcase – research and

I thought I’d draw Slawyers’ attention to a new student-run blog on international law, Legal Frontiers, run by law students at McGill University (my own alma mater). The site officially launched in January, and the content so far looks very interesting. Check it out and post a comment. . . . [more]

There may be stars in your eyes, soon. Google has introduced a search facility that lets you star certain search results, in effect marking them as “faves” the way that Google Reader does. Then those items will show up in a special box at the top of your searches — whenever they’re relevant, of course.

The Official Google Blog uses the example of having “starred” your favourite football teams’ websites. A subsequent search for “nfl,” for example, will bring these up in the star box.

In my view, the idea has merit as a substitute for bookmarks in certain contexts. . . . [more]

As many of our readers surely know, Google has been reassessing whether to continue its operations in China following a series of hacking incidents that allegedly originated from that country.

Prof. Ronald Deibert of UofT revealed today that the hackers also attempted to access Google directories, which was not widely reported when the story first broke. Deibert is one of the experts Google is consulting with on how to respond to the incidents.

Despite the The Investigative Powers of the 21st Century Act (IP21C) that was tabled before the prorogue, Deibert claims that cyberspace generally operates in a policy vacuum . . . [more]

Every now and then it is “improving,” as the Victorians used to say, for a lawyer to be caught up in the toils of another profession, in order to recapture the client experience of uncertainty in the face of an opaque problem. I’ve had the fortune, recently — I wouldn’t label it “good” — to be in that situation and it has occurred to me, not for the first time, that there is a way to make the experience better for the lay person, a way that is all too seldom taken. My small suggestion is that professionals who deal . . . [more]

Oh, all right: I’m only sidling up to the matter of predicting the technology/internet future, a venture that would have foxed even the greatest classical soothsayers, surely. The current augur of the moment is Google Vice President of Global Ad Operations, John Herlihy, who, according to SiliconRepublic.com, told a conference recently that “In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs.”

As of 9.30 GMT this morning, this was the top Twitter trending topic in the UK, according to The Independent. (Fortunately or not, it’s since been . . . [more]

Two Supreme Court stories from me this week:

1) The Supreme Court of Canada has released a special edition of its Bulletin of Proceedings that provides a statistical overview of its activities for the period 1999-2009.

It provides information on leave applications submitted, appeals heard, judgments, and time lapses (time between the filing of a complete application for leave to appeal and the Court’s decision on whether leave should be granted; time between decision to grant leave and the hearing; time between the hearing of an appeal and the judgment).

2)The Court, the Osgoode Hall Law School . . . [more]

I’ve just come across a Ph.D. thesis from 2007 by Christine Vanda Burns called “Online Legal Services — A Revolution that Failed?” [PDF 729pp]. Dr. Burns looked at what we might think of as the first generation of “online legal products which ‘package’ legal knowledge” and supply it to commercial enterprises, governments, and other consumers of law. As you would imagine in a dissertation, she examined the relevant literature and also did some empirical work in Australia, her home.

Interesting, to me, is her conclusion that while there are lots of difficulties surrounding the implementation of such products, . . . [more]