There is an August 22, 2011 decision from the U.S. District Court, Eastern District, in the Matter of Historical Cell-Site Information, 10-MC-897 (NGG), NYLJ 1202511989637 that Slaw readers may find interesting. The U.S. Attorney’s office wanted 113 days of cell phone records from Verizon Wireless. The court said:

While the government’s monitoring of our thoughts may be the archetypical Orwellian intrusion, the government’s surveillance of our movements over a considerable time period through new technologies, such as the collection of cell-site-location records, without the protections of the Fourth Amendment, puts our country far closer to Oceania than our Constitution

The most recent Canadian Bar Association annual meeting just wrapped up in Halifax, and while I missed this one, I attended many previous editions (more recently called Canadian Legal Conferences) while with the CBA. 

At each CLC, I came to notice, Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin’s keynote address could always be counted on to include a call for the legal profession to do more pro bono work. I suppose the fact that this is an annual request from the chief justice indicates that it’s not generating the results she might like to see. 

But it does illustrate the fact that . . . [more]

The following is a quote from the book, From Third World to First, by Lee Quan Yew, prime minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990. The quote refers to his appointment of ministers.

The attrition rate was high because, despite all the psychological tests, we could never accurately assess character, temperament and motivation.

Here at Maritime Law Book we have had the same experience in the hiring of employees.

Marks at school or university, taken alone, are not determinative of an applicant’s likely success in a position such as a legal editor. Character traits are an important indicator or . . . [more]

Google’s venture capital arm, Google Ventures, is intent on disrupting the legal market.

First, it invested in LawPivot, a Quora-style Q&A platform for providing legal advice to businesses. LawPivot has now opened its platform to the public, allowing lawyers to answer businesses questions in a venue visible to the public.

This new twist on LawPivot’s business model will build up a valuable and publicly-accessible knowledgebase of legal advice for businesses to leverage. LawPivot will also provide lawyers a high-visibility platform to demonstrate their expertise to prospective clients.

Google Ventures has also recently invested in Rocket Lawyer, . . . [more]

TitlePLUS’s Ray Leclair has provided prospective condo buyers with a checklist of things they should know about before deciding to purchase. This list was made available to the public in several real estate publications.

1. Status Certificate: This document should be a condition in any agreement to purchase. It includes important information such as monthly expenses, pending legal actions and other matters, including how much the condo has in reserve funds, which could affect future fees. It also includes the documents governing the condominium: the declaration, by-laws and rules & regulations. These documents govern many aspects of condo life. You

Time and circumstance have been good to me. I began studying China in 1968. Why I did so was a mystery to all concerned. No one in my family had dreams further than the boundaries of Canton, Ohio. As my father, a working man who thought that I was throwing my life away by studying the Chinese language, put it, “You never even met a Chinese person before you went off to college. We don’t even have a Chinese restaurant in this town!” My decision was not based on practical reasoning; I just discovered as a freshman in college that . . . [more]

Background

I initially mentioned the lawsuit against Law Buzz last year when it was first launched. The case settled earlier this summer, with the plaintiff opting to move forward with her business. But a spin-off lawsuit was launched by Tycho Manson, one of the defendants in the original action, against anonymous posters commenting about him on the original case.

Pepall J. of the Ontario Superior Court heard a motion earlier this month in Manson v. Doe, dealing with a various forms of relief by the plaintiff, Manson:

1. an order seeking validation of service by e-mail
2. an injunction requiring

Corruption in government and business can occur everywhere; no country is totally immune. (See, for example, Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index.) But in some countries and in some industries the demands for bribes and kickbacks or the promise of favours for favourable decisions are a serious reality. Governments that wish to halt or hinder corruption have passed anti-bribery and corruption legislation, proscribing not only corrupt acts that take place within their jurisdiction but also acts that take place ex juris if committed by their nationals or businesses incorporated within their jurisdiction. Britain’s Bribery Act 2010, which came into . . . [more]

The Section of State and Local Government Law of the American Bar Association (ABA) hosted a panel on cyberbullying at the 2011 Annual Meeting.

The panelists included James Hanks of Ahlers & Cooney, Grant Bowers, Legal Counsel for the Toronto District School Board, Dr. Jeff Gardere, a psychologist from New York with expertise in mental health, and Kathy Macdonald, from the Calgary police.

Notes from James Hanks’ talk, focusing on American legislation, is available here. This post focuses primarily on the Canadian content by the rest of the panel.

Defining the Problem

Cyberbullying is completely different from . . . [more]

The Canadian Bar Association’s National magazine has just released an article in the July/August 2011 edition, The Best in Digital Marketing. Compiled and edited by Luigi Benetton, the article surveys opinions from Marni Macleod, Allison Wolf, Connie Crosby, Carol Fitzwilliam, Warren Bongard, Jordan Furlong, and myself.

Leadership and innovation was recognized for the following firms:

• Osler for best design
• BCF for best recruitment outreach
• Goodmans for best client outreach
• Hull & Hull for best use of video
• Miller Thomson for best national website
• Brazeau Seller for best regional website
• Foster LLP

Offered in Beta from the Office of the Law Revision Counsel of the United States House of Representatives, this new website offers excellent access to the Code.

The US Code is an official consolidation of Federal US Laws by subject, and highly useful. Its various accessories, such as the indispensable Popular Name Tool make it a first resort of legal researchers. The online version, and various commercial print versions, are not considered official for US courts. However, this particular online version will likely be the most up to date version of the code, given its provenance. . . . [more]

Herewith half a metric dozen sites that deal in words, those pesky bits we use to build and navigate our worlds. (FYI, in Japan sets of objects come in fives, which makes a whole lot more base ten sense, when you come to think of it, than our duodecimal dozen, even though the latter is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, and 6, and pretty much maps onto the lunar months and… Onward. Sorry about that.)

• Let’s start off easy, with a little quiz. The Concise Oxford English Dictionary is 100 years old this year and is throwing a