I’ve been staring at the horizon again. It’s not hard to see that change to our legal system is on the way. Everywhere we turn we encounter reports of things broken or in disarray. 

For instance, access to justice is a pressing concern. Chief Justice McLachlin speaks about it frequently, as does British Columbia’s Chief Justice Finch (see here). They do important work identifying that access to justice has become a privilege of the wealthy. They applaud the pro bono work of the legal profession, and encourage us to work towards innovative solutions.

Meanwhile, legal aid coverage is shown . . . [more]

We’ve reached a new milestone here on Slaw: comment number ten thousand. The lucky commenter turns out to be a good friend of Slaw, Peg Duncan, as you’ll see in the image below:

Congratulations, Peg.

And heartfelt thanks to all of the thousands who have given us the benefit of their thoughts in the past (nearly six) years. . . . [more]

I used to be asked simple questions like what is the fax number for the Canadian Consulate in Zimbabwe. This is a question that any librarian would be able to find in 1 minute. Go to the topical table of contents for the Canadian Almanac and Directory – Find that Canadian Diplomatic and Consular Representatives Abroad starts on p. 882, flip to page 888 – Fax number is 263-425-2186. It almost takes as long to write the question as it does to find the answer.

These days I am asked for difficult things like what hashtag should I use for . . . [more]

Recently I was invited to attend an information session on the e-disclosure pilot project that is about to get underway for a small number of police divisions in Toronto’s Metro North jurisdiction. While electronic documentation may seem like a 1990s innovation, its adoption by notoriously change-resistant lawyers (on both sides of the criminal bar) and technologically averse police officers, may genuinely herald a new era in the archaic field of criminal law.

Starting immediately, police from the pilot detachment (currently consisting of officers from Toronto’s 31 Division who are not tasked to special teams and rolling out to two more . . . [more]

I, like many people no doubt, have one of those guilty pleasures that make little sense yet is so enthralling: reading up on the lives of the rich and famous. It is actually surprising how great a role law plays in the lives of celebrities, seeing how often the press reports on how they break, bend and use the law to their advantage , but one expression, new to me, has recently caught my eye: the super injunction.

Over the past few months, the British media have been reporting on these so-called super injunctions, which go beyond the prohibition of . . . [more]

Users sometimes want to find law journal articles on a particular subject. Other users know the title of the article they need, but they don’t know what law journal published the article. And sometimes users want to find all the articles an author has published, when the author has published articles in many journals and even in a variety of languages. They can consult standard journal indexes, but other, nontraditional indexes such as the OPACs and databases described below can be useful for more comprehensive and/or up-to-date searches.

The Peace Palace Library at the Hague, the Netherlands, has made its . . . [more]

In light of the upcoming law library conference season (notably including the Canadian Association of Law Libraries conference–CALL 2011–next week), I am taking the liberty of sharing a few reasons why I see conferences as essential to law library staff.

If you have a law library, sending at least one library staff member to a professional conference each year is worth more than the equivalent dollar cost of books.

Let me repeat that in another way: you will get more value from conferences than books.

Radical, I know, and my legal publishing friends are perhaps going to . . . [more]

The time is ripe for the creation of an online repository and clearinghouse for Canadian legal scholarship in digital form. There are perhaps 70 Canadian journals publishing articles on or immediately relevant to law, making for a manageable supply of material. And the software and associated technology is readily available for free or at a very low cost. Of course, the labour necessary to construct and manage such a resource is not free, and may be less than readily available; but it seems to me that the major obstacle at the moment is simply the lack of will. Someone — . . . [more]

There have been two important and encouraging developments on the ethics of cloud computing over the last month.

First, the ABA Commission on Ethics 20/20 has issued an initial set of draft proposals addressing lawyers’ confidentiality-related obligations when using technology. The Commission’s draft report proposes:

• The development of a centralized, user-friendly website that contains continuously updated and detailed information about confidentiality-related ethics issues arising from lawyer’s use of technology, including the latest data security standards.
• Amendments to several Model Rules of Professional Conduct and their Comments to offer specific guidance and expectations relating to technology.

The amendments to the Model . . . [more]

I am always fascinated by how the law is viewed by non-lawyers. Fiction is always a good place to come across these viewpoints. I saw an excellent example recently when reading John Steinbeck’s ,The Grapes of Wrath.

It tells the grim tale of the Joad family, forced off their land in Oklahoma by drought and the economic hardship of the Great Depression.

They pile all of their belongings on to a modified truck and head west, lured by handbills calling for fruit pickers in California. Grandpa dies of a stroke on the road. The family is confronted with the dilemma . . . [more]

“Trainwreck!”

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band are four bars – about eight seconds – into a song during a concert when The Boss yells out, “Trainwreck!”

It’s a song they haven’t played often, perhaps never even played at all. (They do that at times.) They’re close, but something’s off. It’s obvious to Springsteen and probably to the other band members as well – and he wants to fix it before it becomes obvious to the audience.

So he yells out “Trainwreck!” You can hear the smile in his voice; if he weren’t playing in front of 20,000 people, . . . [more]

We haven’t talked much about the killing of Osama bin Ladin here on Slaw, and there is considerable debate in international law over it. Contrary to what Jonathan Kay has said in the National Post, international law is still relevant, and even more so when the tables are switched.

Although it was completely unplanned, the Ontario Court of Appeal released a timely decision on Friday in United States of America v. Khadr dealing not with the more infamous Omar Khadr, but his brother, Abdullah Khadr, on extradition proceedings seeking to have him turned over to the United States.

In . . . [more]