Anyone following me online right now knows that I’m currently on the West coast. Considering that last year I mentioned that social media can potentially affect home insurance premiums, why aren’t I being more surreptitious about my travels?

For me it probably has a lot to do with the net worth of all of my belongings at home being no more than a few hundred dollars on the Craigslist or Kijiji markets. But not everyone lives so sparse, and there are some emerging solutions to help mitigate the risk of robbery when people are posting their travels. . . . [more]

I am currently in Philadelphia for the American Association of Law Libraries 2011 conference. Today is the PLL Summit put on by the Private Law Libraries Special Interest Section (PLL-SIS). I have live-blogging the sessions I attended:

• James Jones on Understanding Law Firm Trends
• Esther Dyson on Technology Changes in Business and Libraries
• Steven Lastres, Julie Bozzell and Toby Brown – Moving Beyond the Library Walls to Support Strategic Knowledge Management
• Joan Axelroth – What Law Firm Administrators Want Librarians to Know
• Greg Castanias – How librarians add value to their law firms
• David Curle on transformations in the

. . . [more]

Corruption is likely very much near the front of your mind these days as the Murdoch/Tory/Scotland Yard revelations continue in Britain.

At the same time, the US GAO has revealed an astounding 16Trillion dollars in bailout funds (not 800 Billion, as previously reported), delivered in many cases to companies with strong, current ties to the granting agencies.

Meanwhile, Canada has decided to send Lai Changxing back to China for trial. His extensive (alleged) smuggling operation flourished under the aegis of Jia Qinglin,

…now the Communist Party’s fourth most senior leader, [he] was the province’s party chief. It was one

. . . [more]

I was a big fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation. But a couple of things irritated me about it. One was William Riker. The other was their insistence on having Captain Picard badger the replicator for Earl Grey tea.

I don’t hate Earl Grey, but I don’t like it either — who would want good tea adulterated with bergamot, apart from JLP, I mean? It’s… medicinal. Nevertheless, there seems to be the notion floating around this side of the Atlantic that Earl Grey is the best, the fanciest, or the finest tea, which, I guess, is why they programmed . . . [more]

This is a post in a series to appear occasionally, setting out some articles that contributors at Slaw are reading and that you might find interesting. These tend to be longer than blog posts and shorter than books, just right for that stolen half hour on the weekend. It’s also likely that most of them won’t be about law — just right for etc.

Please let us have your recommendations for what we and our readers might like.

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What do your clients find when they Google you?

The answer to that simple question lies at the heart of the personal digital profile concept. For most lawyers, your law firm website bio will be front and center in the results, and that is as it should be. While ensuring that particular page is prominent in search results for your name is a necessary step, my own view is that it is not a sufficient one. 

Lawyers are inherently predisposed to manage and minimize risk, and building out your digital profile is a strategy for doing just that when it . . . [more]

Update on the Claude Robinson plagiarism case: Cinar did plagiarize Claude Robinson's ideas and work.

US Court rejects constitutional challenge to airport body scans.

The .XXX top level domain application period is underway. This has been a very controversial topic. The XXX domain is available for users in the “sponsored community”, being the “adult entertainment industry”.

One of the criticisms of this TLD is the fear that people will try to register domains using names or trade-marks of those outside of the sponsored community. disney.XXX, or apple.XXX for example.

So a procedure is in place called “Sunrise B” where for a short period of time (September 7 to October 28), trade-mark owners can apply to have their marks blocked from registration. The . . . [more]

According to a survey conducted by the Outsourcing Centre, almost 50 percent of the ITO and HRO deals were renewed. Companies often instinctively renew outsourcing contracts, especially if the existing relationship has no major issues. While it may be tempting to renew the deal because negotiating a new deal requires both parties to invest significant energy, time and money, customer must decide whether or not renewal is the best option. Renewal is not always the right choice. 

The survey conducted by the Outsourcing Centre also shows that about 30 percent of the customers renewed the deals for a better pricing . . . [more]

A short while ago the first issue of the UC Irvine Law Review became available via the UC Irvine website. Given the school’s initial growing pains it is welcome to see this first issue. Many SLAW readers may remember the political controversy involving the initial offer, withdrawal of offer, and rehiring of leading US constitutional law scholar (and frequent critic of the Bush administration) Erwin Chemerinsky as the school’s Founding Dean. Dean Chemerinsky addresses the controversy in the journal’s opening article on the school’s founding and his vision for a new law school. Of interest to SLAWers is that . . . [more]

Law students or young lawyers sometimes struggle when they are faced with a complex research problem. Where do they start?

At the root of this is the need to think strategically about the problem to identify what sort of problem it is and how to best break it down into manageable pieces.

In retrospect, I realize that I in fact don’t necessarily address this challenge head on in my book, aside from citing some of the suggestions on how to analyze the facts and the law made by Maureen Fitzgerald in her Legal Problem Solving – Reasoning, Research & . . . [more]