As Connie mentioned, there are a number of us in Calgary sharing good times at the Canadian Association of Law Libraries Annual Conference.

One of the great things about our group, and this event in particular, is the opportunity to get together in special interest groups. Our SIGs, as we call them, are communities of practice whether that be a workplace type, like the Academic Law Libraries SIG or a broader topic like the Access Services and Resource Sharing SIG. The CALL website offers details about all the committees and special interest groups as well as contacts.

The Private . . . [more]

[This is the fifth in a series of columns about the trends, theories, principles and realities that have influenced the redesign of the new library of Osgoode Hall Law School – part of the renovation and rebuilding of the School currently underway.]

The topic of this column was suggested to me when I read Karen Sawatzky’s interesting column on “Future Ready Libraries”. In her column, Karen refers to The ARL 2030 Scenarios (Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries, October 2010), which imagines four possible futures for our research libraries. I find such exercises interesting and a good catalyst . . . [more]

Howdy from Calgary! I am at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries.

There is a lot of interest in the discussions taking place at this year’s conference. I am hearing from law librarians, legal publishers, knowledge management directors, and many others as to how they can follow along if not in attendance. There is a lot of buzz about greening the library, time management, workflow, digitization, budgeting, cost recovery, legal project management, and ebooks. All the hot buzzwords! I have had more than a few people ask me to let them know the outcome of discussions. . . . [more]

This week’s Lawyer’s Weekly features an article by Luis Milan titled Experts Warn Cloud Computing Still Risky. The article cites recent data breaches at Sony Corp. and Epsilon Data Management as a catalyst for concern around cloud computing, and goes on to cite several experts on the potential privacy implications of these data breaches.

The only problem? Neither data breach, as the article’s title implies, has anything to do with cloud computing.

The Sony data breach, where personal information for millions of its Playstation Network users was compromised, was not the result of Sony’s cloud computing infrastructure being . . . [more]

Should there be a legal duty to notify people about whom a story is to be published, to give them an opportunity to go to court to stop the publication?

Max Mosley, former Formula 1 motor racing chief says so.

The News of the World, a UK tabloid, ran a story a few years ago revealing that Mosley had taken part in a sadomasochistic orgy with prostitutes. In 2008 Mosley won damages from the UK High Court of for breach of privacy.

Mosley claims that the UK is in breach of human rights laws because there is no remedy for . . . [more]

In an April 18, 2011 post on the Minnesota State Bar Association’s Practice Blawg, it was announced that the MSBA trust accounting guides are now available to non-MSBA members. In the past these guides were behind a members-only wall.

These guides help lawyers work with trust accounts in the several commercially available mainstream accounting programs. There are 5 guides including:

• Keeping Client Trust Accounts with GnuCash 2.2.4
• Keeping Records for Client Trust Accounts Using Microsoft Office Accounting 2006 or 2007
• Using QuickBooks 6.0 for Lawyers’ Trust Accounting
• Trust Accounting with QuickBooks 2005 Professional
• Keeping Clients’ Trust Accounts with QuickBooks

SkyNews is broadcasting live the hearings at the UK Supreme Court. As the site says, “The Court normally sits between 10am and 4pm” UK time, which means that most of Canada will have to get up very early to enjoy this show. At the moment (10am ET), however, I’m watching something called Scottish Widows plc (Respondent) v Commissioners for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (Appellant) (Scotland) – UKSC 2010/0178. (Perhaps it’s been recorded and is being re-played.) The court and the hapless barrister are fumbling for perhaps fifteen minutes as the lawyer tries to direct the court to the correct . . . [more]

Several weeks ago I spoke at the Sinch Online Legal Services Conference in Sydney. My topic was the state of play in legal innovation and I covered what I thought were the most significant events of the past year (and of the near future). This column addresses some of those events. Special thanks goes to Jordan Furlong and Stephanie Kimbro for their input and, as always, to Simon Lewis for organizing the conference.

Disruptive Business Models

In November, 2010, Thomson Reuters acquired legal process outsourcing company Pangea3 and at the same time put bar examination preparation course provider BAR-BRI up . . . [more]

With the relative newness of digital licensing and the growing opportunities for licensing electronic content (including on social networking sites), there are a number of misconceptions already developing. By discussing and clearing up these misconceptions, it will help clear the path to an easier negotiating road and to better licenses.

Misconception #1: Not all licenses are negotiable. Almost every licence is negotiable, but often you have to ask the other side if they are willing to negotiate so that you will have a licence that meets your needs. Always remember to only accept a licence and arrangement that works for . . . [more]

Kent Law School in the UK has launched the inaugural issue of a new open access journal, feminists@law. This from the journal description on the home page:

feminists@law is a peer-reviewed online journal which aims to publish critical, interdisciplinary, theoretically engaged scholarship that extends feminist debates and analyses relating to law and justice (broadly conceived). It has a particular interest in critical and theoretical approaches and perspectives that draw upon postcolonial, transnational and poststructuralist work. The journal publishes material in a range of print and multimedia formats and in English and other languages. The journal is committed to an

I have never seen so much enthusiasm over access to judicial hearings as I have this past week. The Supreme Court of Canada heard the appeal of the B.C. Court of Appeal’s decision in Attorney General of Canada, et al. v. PHS Community Services Society, et al., dealing with the safe injection site in Vancouver known as Insite.

The case deals with ss. 4(1) and 5(1) of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, and an exemption under s. 56, which allowed the clinic to stay open.

The buzz extended well beyond the legal community, and included poverty and . . . [more]

A simple question for Slaw-yers: was #Elxn41 the “Social Media Election”?

The term was tossed about during the campaign with conjecture on how social media would impact the election; so now that the election is over and we have had some time to reflect, was it the “social media election”? I am unsure, but my inclination is that it was not. Primarily because I did not see a lot of content generated specifically for social media, nor have I observed an impact that can be attributed to social media. I saw of lot of content generated in a traditional fashion . . . [more]