It was being reported generally yesterday (BBC News, New York Times) that hackers, a group called Anonymous, broke in to Governor Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email accounts and copied some material which they then made public.

It doesn’t seem as though the material taken will in any way compromise or even embarrass the Governor — except in so far as it reveals her injudicious use of a large public email system in connection with government and important personal matters. It’s unlikely that any of us will suddenly find ourselves nominated for vice-president of a country, even a small . . . [more]

Ever since Adrian Lurssen over on the JD Scoop blog from JD Supra posted the suprising list 145 Lawyers (and Legal Professionals) to Follow on Twitter last week, I have had a dramatic increase in lawyer, law student, and law librarian followers to my own Twitter account. I was surprised to be placed at #2 on the list, only behind our own Steve Matthews in the #1 position. Wow! Well, Steve gets special Twitter link love for having created Legal Voices, a website pulling together a number of key legal Twitter feeds.

I was asked by a friend in . . . [more]

If you’re a lawyer and you’re reading this, you’re unusual. If, by chance, you’re reading this on an RSS feed reader, you’re extraordinary. The 2008 ABA Legal Technology Survey Report is out, with results that confirm most folks’ general impressions:

[W]ebsites and e-mail newsletters are still the digital way that most at­torneys stay current with the news. A small minority reports reading blogs; but actually creating a blog is something the geeky lawyer down the hall—or, more likely, across town—is into.

RSS feeds—a technology that displays headlines from many sites on a single webpage, which greatly speeds the consumption of

The development of technology and its extensive use in the legal field now requires technical competency for ethical practice.

The Ethics and Professional Issues Committee of the Canadian Bar Assocation (CBA) has developed a new Guidelines for Practicing Ethically with New Information Technologies.

These guidelines are intended to help lawyers take full advantage of technology while remaining in complaince with the CBA’s Code of Professional Conduct.

The marketing section mentions blogs starting on page 13, saying that marketing principles and advertising rules must also be abided by. I never thought until today that broken links could be unethical. . . . [more]

The Register directs our attention to a recent case from England, Oxonica Energy Limited v. Neuftec Limited [2008] EWHC 2127 (Pat), in which a talented but testy Deputy Judge slowly removes strips of the skin of a person who drafted the contract under review. Peter Prescott, a highly respected litigator and someone with a masters degree in physics, opens his judgment with:

How do we interpret a formal commercial agreement if it is ambiguous and we have reason to believe that its draftsman did not have a deep understanding of the relevant law? I think that is what this case

♫ If you’ve got a plan
If you’ve got a master plan
Got to vote for you
Hey hey, got to vote for you
‘Cause you’re the man… ♫

Words and music by: Marvin Gaye and Kenneth Stover.

The fall election – in both Canada and the USA – is taking place at a particularly interesting time. Courtesy of blogs, the public are making their voices heard to a degree that has not been possible in the past. Access to the media was not particularly easy in the past, but by virtue of the Internet, that no longer matters . . . [more]

The Sedona Conference Institute is offering the 1st Annual Sedona Canada Program on Getting Ahead of the e-Discovery Curve, to be held at the Boulevard Club in Toronto on October 23 – 24.

This information-packed Conference will include panels focused on (1) The Sedona Canada Principles; (2) Management of Electronic Information; (3) Cost-Shifting and Sanctions – Judicial Advice; (4) Legal Holds: The Trigger and the Process; (5) Multi-Party, Multi-Jurisdictional, Class Actions & Other Complications; and (6) Cooperation with Opposing Counsel on eDiscovery
Issues.

For a complete agenda, a run-down on the faculty, and a registration form, visit the Program . . . [more]

As Michel-Adrien Sheppard reported here last week, the Supreme Court of Canada has a newly refurbished website. It was in fact launched over the weekend and is now up and running.

I find the re-design an improvement: there’s a more open feel from a greater use of white and lighter colours. The old site had a tendency to feel a bit claustrophobic at times.

If you’d like to see how the site had changed over time, pay a visit to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, where there are S.C.C. pages from 1998 to the present. Sadly, the . . . [more]

An article about Avner Levin’s new study about young people and technology ran in itWorldCanada yesterday.

The article, and presumably Levin’s research, considers ways that today’s employers can keep employees happy by resisting the urge to ban instant messaging within the office. I understand the need to ensure that employees don’t feel that walking through the office doors equates to a step back in time; however, I remain unsure about the final object here. Are we simply trying to keep the employees happy as they IM with friends and utilize social networking tools at work, or is there a greater, . . . [more]

Via the Register:

Section 11.1 of the new Google Browser Chrome’s EULA:

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content, you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and

The combination of the launch of the Google Chrome browser, and the current PC hardware refresh occuring in our office got me thinking about programming philosophies.

Chrome reviews say it is faster and uses fewer computing resources than the competion. And the reason we replace our PC’s every few years is not so much that the hardware is broken, but that the computing resources software requires are constantly increasing.

To some extent that is understandable, and just the nature of the beast. Hardware is constantly improving, so it is natural for software designers to take advantage of that.

But that . . . [more]

♫ Oh I…
I want to be with you everywhere… ♫

Words and music by Christine McVie, recorded by Fleetwood Mac.

It seems that we are living in a mini-renaissance with new technology applications being released seemingly daily. Google has released Google Chrome (see Simon Fodden’s post of Sept 1, 2008) with the stated justification that the web needs a solid foundation for modern web applications. Law firms face a similar problem – the need for a solid foundation for capturing of all the myriad bits of information that form the electronic client file into one place. . . . [more]