It isn’t uncommon to read in local, national and international newspapers stories of domestic workers being ill-treated, underpaid and overworked. While Canadian employment standards offer some protection to domestic workers, this certainly isn’t the case across the globe.

With the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) International Labour Conference currently taking place in Geneva from June 1 to June 17, with the agenda including an item entitled “Decent work for domestic workers”, there are hopes that a Convention supplemented by a Recommendation will be adopted to afford what is seen as urgently-needed protection to domestic workers (see the ILO website for more . . . [more]

There’s been a good couple of years since the credit crunch kicked in that Law Librarians News and House of Butter have really quite enjoyed reporting the business of legal publishing.

Revenues & profits down at the duopoly, talk of Google Law and more; as well as a host of new ideas and concepts for the future of legal publishing. OK some of those ideas were either over ambitious or a little bit crackpot, but fun to investigate and report.

At least though, it felt for a glorious 18 months or so that change was in the air.

And change . . . [more]

From Dr. M Veerappa Moily, the Centre’s Minister of Law & Justice comes a Press Release:

The scope of this program is creation and management of the ‘National Legal e-library’ for 933 schools in India, Bar Associations, Government Legal departments etc. and meet the needs of academic librarians, students, faculty and young practitioners. It aims to provide a practitioners view and a comprehensive understanding of core subject areas of law.

Various technology tools that make the concept of E-Library indispensable are Easy Access to provide a campus wide access using IP Authentication, Results clustering to familiarize new users

Generations of law students cut their research teeth on the Index to Legal Periodicals . On June 1, its publisher the H.W. Wilson Company and EBSCO Publishing announced a merger, under the EBSCO Publishing banner. . . . [more]

It is not surprising that many Canadian are cyncial of their federal Parliamentarians.

Example in point: Bills C-1 and S-1 have been published. Despite respectively being – in name – “An Act respecting the administration of oaths of office” and an “Act relating railways” – of course neither bill has anything to do with either topic and neither bill will pass first reading.

Apparently, it all has to do with a “custom” dating back over 400 years ago for “pro forma” bills. I didn’t find the explanation on LegisINFO or Wikipedia to be entirely satisfactory. Wouldn’t . . . [more]

At today’s Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC), Apple’s Steve Jobs announced a new set of cloud services, dubbed iCloud, that will integrate with iOS-based devices, such as the iPad and iPhone, and Mac OS X. The new services will bring tight cloud-based data synchronization to Apple’s desktop, laptop and mobile device lineup.

iCloud will allow you to store all of your documents, calendars, emails, photos, and more in the cloud, and will automatically synchronize this data to all of your devices. Additionally, iCloud will make your music available across all your devices.

Backup services will also be incorporated into iCloud. . . . [more]

If you have not had a chance to attend ABA TECHSHOW, now is your opportunity to sample the quality of the educational sessions. The ABA Law Practice Management Section, producer of the annual technology conference has, for the first time, released most of the slide presentations from the sessions at ABA TECHSHOW 2011. Take a look at the range of topics covered each year so you better understant why over a 1,700 lawyers, IT staff, paralegals, legal assistants, and product vendors attend this 3-day conference in Chicago.

The educational sessions are just one part of TECHSHOW; the . . . [more]

Finding something on Social Media 101 for the right audience can at times be a challenge. There are plenty of basic documents for business, marketing and Public Relations. But what about lawyers, librarians and others? What if your audience does not care about “building a strategy” but just wants to know what social media is and how it is used?

On a recent hunt for just such material, I came across a nice briefing series from the Canadian Library of Parliament written last year. The series includes five publications on selected topics:

• Social Media 1: Introduction by Michael Dewing (Feb

For nearly 20 years, organizations that outsourced part of their functions to service providers have relied on SAS 70 reports to gain assurance that proper controls relevant to user entities internal control over financial reporting are in place at service organizations. With the globalization of outsourcing services and changes in regulatory landscape, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants Auditing Standards Board issued Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements (SSAE) No. 16 in January 2010. SSAE No. 16 is effective for reporting periods ending on or after June 15, 2011 which means that the new standards could affect organizations as . . . [more]

We human beings like to pride ourselves on being, uniquely, the reasoning animal. Yet we are actually poor at reasoning in a lot of contexts, if the aim is to produce good outcomes. We do badly at judging risks, for instance , as when we shun cucumbers because of an e-coli outbreak on the other side of the Atlantic yet yak on the phone about it while driving. So psychologists have started asking themselves with increasing frequency why, if reasoning developed to help us, does it lead us to screw up so often. Now a group of researchers has proposed . . . [more]

Most online defamation actions I encounter primarily seek one form of relief – the removal of the offending material from the Internet. Damages and costs are often a secondary concern to clients, albeit important ones, especially in offsetting the impact on the individual’s reputation and the inconvenience of litigation.

A Malaysian case this week highlights another creative remedy that might be of interest to litigants structuring an out-of-court settlement. The Daily Mail describes the case,

Fahmi Fadzil, an opposition politician’s aide and respected commentator, claimed on the social networking site [Twitter] that his pregnant friend had been

Here’s a report alleging that Telus drove a BC woman out of business by maniplulating regulators and courts with false information.

via BoingBoing

Her story seems legit. If so, it’s a real failure on the part of our justice system. . . . [more]