I was at a conference on CASL (anti-spam) last week chaired by Barry Sookman. His summary of conference highlights is worth reading. Below are some of my observations based on both that conference and my CASL dealings with clients so far.

Large companies are spending millions of dollars to comply with CASL. Small business is struggling to comply and to make sense of how to comply and why it is even needed. But you can bet that the true spammers will just continue to try to hide from the regulators.

Opt-in rates for attempts to get express consents so far . . . [more]

The second annual FutureLaw Conference took place last Friday at Stanford University. Hosted by Codex – Stanford Center for Legal Informatics this was a conference “focusing on how technology is changing the landscape of the legal profession and the law more broadly.”

Judging by the comments in the storified #FutureLaw Twitter stream it looks like it was a very interesting and successful event. It was also live streamed and the day’s videos will be made available soon for those of us unable to attend.

Richard Susskind opened the proceedings with a talk entitled, “The Future of Lawyers: From Denial . . . [more]

Today’s New York Times has started a new feature, taking the more outrageous elements of the US litigation system and dramatizing them.

This is quite wonderful – stick until the end.

They take verbatim (word for word) legal transcripts into dramatic, and often comedic, performances. Here you will find re-creations of actual events from the halls of law and government. You, our readers, can help us find material for future episodes. Have you come across court trials, depositions or government hearings that you think are surprising, bizarre or baffling — and lend themselves to performance?

Hat tip to Stan Freedman . . . [more]

Recently I’ve been playing around with a linked data application called Callimachus.* So far I’ve successfully installed the program on my DigitalOcean server and hope to be able to report positively about developments in the weeks ahead.

Part of the playing around process included watching some of the video tutorials that Callimachus sponsor 3 Round Stones have made available. Along the way I found an interesting unrelated introduction to linked data by David Wood, the CTO at 3 Round Stones called Linked Data: Structured Data on the Web. But it was the sub-title that really caught my . . . [more]

Technology is becoming an ever greater part of our lives, both personally and professionally.
On a daily basis most of us use a cellphone or smartphone, a desktop computer and the Internet. Many of us will have an iPad or other tablet device and be posting updates on Facebook, Twitter or other social media tools.

Clients expect their lawyers to be technology literate – and there are always new and improved ways for communicating with clients. Here are some newer tools that you can consider using to better serve and communicate with your clients.

1. Help clients find your office . . . [more]

Today marks the unofficial end of the school year around here with the last exam being written this morning. It has now been several years since we have adopted exam writing via computer and it is a now the standard. With that standard there are a few changes from the traditional scribbled examinations. Firstly, faculty members far prefer marking word processed exams as they no longer have to obtain special qualifications in hieroglyphics in order to mark exams. That alone is enough of a plus in the eyes of most and it is not really necessary to extoll the virtues . . . [more]

April launched an exciting development for BC legal researchers and for the open law and open data movements. QP LegalEze, the BC Queen’s Printer’s deep and highly functional subscription service for current and some historical legislative information, is no more. Or, more accurately, it is by subscription no more.

All of its content and functionality now is available through BC Laws, the free site also offered by the Queen’s Printer:

BC Laws has been upgraded to provide enhanced searching and more content including historical legislation and related publications such as BC Gazette, full text Orders-in-Council, and Tables of Legislative

Nike just announced that it is exiting its FuelBand fitness tracker business.

Another article claims that “it’s only a matter of time until [Google Glass] joins devices such as the Zune, the Kin, the PlayBook, and the Xoom in tech hell.”

Despite musings that wearable tech is dead and dying, these are just growing pains.

Wearable devices are still in an early bleeding edge phase where manufacturers and users are trying to figure out what works, what users want, what users find creepy, and what users are willing to pay for.

Take Google Glass, for instance. I have no doubt . . . [more]

It was Record Store Day on Saturday and I did my part to support record stores. This year, thanks to my friend Dave C., I was flipping through bins of records at BJ’s Records and Nostalgia up in Barrie. This activity brings back many happy memories of my once annual pilgrimage to Sam the Record Man every Boxing Day. I absolutely love the physical process of search and discovery, finding a new or unknown album that sparks an inspiration to try looking down a new path.

I like vinyl records too and not just because of the perceived quality . . . [more]

Technology, particularly legal technology is supposed to make the delivery of legal services more convenient. However, sometimes lawyers get in the way and muck things up. Teraview is a perfect example.

Back in the day, anyone could walk into the local registry office and register any document they wanted. Since the mid-1980s registration documents were not witnessed, nor were signatures checked. The system was one of openness and accessibility.

Then along came Teraview – which allowed registration from anywhere in Canada via the internet. A seemingly great idea that would make real estate transactions faster and smoother. However, everyone forgot . . . [more]

This article provides more details on the following comment that I posted (April 10^th) to Dan Pinnington’s article of April 8^th, “Ontario Judge Strongly Pushes for Greater Use of Technology in Courts and Orders E-Trial”:

My Comment, excerpted:
Make the preparation work of a lawyer making production comparable to that of an accountant. The client doesn’t give the accountant 100,000+ records and say, ‘here, you make up our financial records and then do the audit.’ The litigation lawyer should be able to work the same way, by combining the searching and reviewing into

The presentations from last year’s Semantic Web in Libraries (SWIB13) held in Hamburg, Germany, were posted a few months ago. Lots of great stuff relating to linked data, metadata, classification mapping and ontologies, including a few case study reports (e.g. Europeana updates).

I recommend to you Dorothea Salo’s presentation, “Soylent SemWeb Is People! Bringing People to Linked Data.” * Drawing on a rather stretched analogy to the Charleton Heston movie Solyent Green she explores this question:

“… how do we best invite people — including skeptical people, reluctant people, less-technical people, people committed to different data structures