While we’ve had discussions from time to time about Second Life, but we missed telling you about a novel virtual workshop on innovative forms of library services through virtual worlds. The workshop explored the benefits and challenges of operating a virtual world law library program, leading to practical advice on how to create and present a program or topical resource within Second Life.

The website noted that a legal community is developing in Second Life: over 65 lawyers and firms have an official Second Life presence, the “Second Life Bar Association” has 200+ members, and the ABA has recently . . . [more]

It’s still summer, if only barely, and there’s a long weekend ahead of us, which might mean that you could make some time to play around with a new piece of software. Let me suggest Ubiquity. Mozilla has released this program in alpha, and I haven’t been this excited about an application since… I can’t remember when.

In a nutshell: it’s a Firefox 3 plugin that lets you issue commands from within your browser to web apps even when they’re not currently open. I can, for example, highlight something on a web page, call up Ubiquity (hot-key: alt-space, but . . . [more]

Chris Bentley, Ontario’s Attorney General announced today a new one-stop “Justice Ontario” Website And Hotline to provide access to legal information

Justice Ontario is billed as providing

An online door to the justice system including easy-to-use information on family law, criminal law, lawsuits and disputes, human rights, estate planning and tickets and fines

Easy access to legal resources such as lawyer referral services and family law information centres

Toll-free telephone access to the same information in 173 languages at 1-866-252-0104.

The Press Release states that “Improving access to justice for all Ontarians begins with better, easy-to-use legal information,” a point . . . [more]

As law schools explore more team learning (though they’ve a long way to go to get to the Business School small group culture), the possibility of collaborative tools becomes more important. Remember the line from Google’s Joe Kraus that “”the nature of information discovery is changing … from a solitary activity to a social one”.

That’s why a posting on the Italian blog Programmazione.it v6.0 beta caught our attention. A post on a tool for group collaboration, describing a free Internet Explorer plug-in that allows groups of people to collaborate on Web searches . The features include include group query . . . [more]

Inspired by the map that “Mr. Peabody” made of law firm locations in Manhattan, I’ve started to map the location of Canadian law firms, starting here at (my) home, Toronto. Thus far I’ve only got 30 or so mapped. If anyone spots a mistake, please let me know. If your firm is missing… read on.

I’ve opened the project to anyone who wishes to collaborate with me on this. Think of it like doodling: nothing much to do at that meeting? add a firm or two. It’s actually easy to do, and if you find yourself having difficulties, . . . [more]

Announcement today from GlobaLex about some useful new Legal Research Guides

GlobaLex has published several updated research guides this month:

• International Criminal Courts for the Former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone: A Guide to Online and Print Resources by Amy Burchfield
• The Legal System and Research of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): An Overview by Dunia Zongwe, Francois Butedi and Clement Phebe
• A Guide to Legal Research in Bosnia and Herzegovina by Mirela Rožajac-Zulčić
• Russian Federation Legal Resources in English: Selection of Research Material by Lucy Cox
• A Guide to Legal Research in Russia by Arina Popova and Lev

Courtesy of PC Magazine, here is a list of a gross of sites that has something for everyone.

Here are three snipits:

TripIt takes the hassle out of travel itineraries. Simply forward your travel confirmation e-mails to its e-mail address and TripIt will build you a master itinerary, complete with flight/hotel info, maps, driving directions, weather reports, and much more. TripIt is also rolling out automated travel guides so you know what to expect once you get there.

Want to know what’s going on in the chambers of the highest court in the land? Scotusblog is an excellent blog

Here’s Technology Review’s list of 2008’s best innovators. Some great projects here. Seadragon is a really interesting one, with its application in Silverlight. But I didn’t know about Xobni, which I’m going to try today. . . . [more]

The next time you’re in N.Y. on business you might find it helpful to have a link to this Google map on your PDA. Someone with the nom de net of Mr Peabody (a character in one of the all time great cartoon shows on TV — q.v.) has located approximately a hundred law firms in New York city on a Google map. He’s also provided addresses, phone numbers and websites as well. (Some are marked with blue buttons, others with red — I have no idea what the difference, if any, might be… Political leaning?) . . . [more]

Two articles this week take apparently opposite views on this – although on reflection both probably just say that there are factors that can prevent technology from helping. I think the save us viewpoint wins out in the end.

Chris Anderson of Wired wrote an article in Newsweek entitled Why Technology Hasn’t Saved Us From Inflation (but still can). It essentially says that technology could have prevented our current problems with energy, the environment, and the economy – but political issues got in the way.

Shelly Palmer wrote a post entitled How Technology Is Costing Companies Millions . . . . . [more]

Well Saturday saw the unveiling of the Canadian Bar Association Task Force Report on Conflict of Interest which was adopted virtually unanimously by Council on Sunday morning. While implementation of the reforms will be up to the Law Societies, and the acceptability of our analysis awaits the judgment’s of the courts in adjudicating conflicts cases, one important part of the Report is a Toolkit of conflicts management materials which is available for use by Canadian lawyers right now. . . . [more]

We’ve mentioned The Lawyer’s Guide to Collaboration Tools & Technologies, Dennis Kennedy’s and Tom Mighell’s book, a few times here on Slaw. We’re big fans of both the authors. Now it’s time to report that they’ve started a companion blog — of the same name, natch. A month and a week old, the blog has a couple of interesting entries and we expect more of the same in the future. . . . [more]