There’s a tendency, and I can be more guilty than most, to moan about how awful can be the major international professional information providers. Yet, compared to so many other sectors that affect our private, community and working lives, they’re, in relative terms, harmless and not especially evil. It’s not that they’re the oil polluters, the auto industry, the military-industrial complex, the tobacco industry and the like. Law publishing causes few deaths, helps professional advisers to perform valuable work and is generally on the positive side of the balance between democracy and totalitarianism.

So, for a change, I’d like . . . [more]

Last week Amazon’s popular AWS cloud computing service suffered an unprecedented multi-day outage. The outage brought down thousands of websites, including popular websites such as Quora, Reddit and FourSquare, and generated coverage from mainstream publications such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.

While many are quick to point to the outage as a sign that cloud computing is unreliable and not ready for mission-critical applications, the outage has simply brought a reality of both on-premise and cloud computing to light: systems fail, and mission critical applications need to be designed to expect failure.

The media . . . [more]

Research suggests that to be Canadian is to be a volunteer. A 2003 national survey found that 19 million Canadians do volunteer work every year. This is estimated to be 2 billion hours of volunteer time per year. That’s equivalent to 1 million full time jobs. The same survey found that only 7% of volunteer time consists of sitting on board, while the other 93% finds people helping to deliver programs and services or fundraising. Another national survey found that Canadian volunteers contributed, on average, an astonishing 166 hours each in 2007.

If Canadians are serial volunteers then Canada’s lawyers . . . [more]

The latest edition of LAWPRO’s webzine has a number of articles specifically for litigators. One of them is an excellent paper from Justice Carole Curtis called Dealing with Difficult Judges.

Litigators of all stripes will find helpful reminders and suggestions on such topics as knowing your judge, planning strategy in advance, avoiding ‘head butting’, and protecting the record, your client and your reputation.

Justice Curtis alse describes the categories of difficult judges, and attempts to answer the question of the frustrated litigator: what does the judge want? . . . [more]

We’re pleased to announce that Slaw has a new member. Geneviève Lay will be joining us. Geneviève is a new lawyer at Ogilvy Renault in Montreal, practicing in the areas of employment and labour law. Prior to joining Ogilvy, she clerked for the Honourable Marc de Wever and the Honourable Marie St-Pierre of the Quebec Superior Court. She was also director of community services for the McGill Legal Information Clinic. She is also co-editor and contributor to the Quebec Labour Law blog.

Welcome on board, Geneviève. . . . [more]

Are you ready to meet the future? Special Libraries Association members have been exploring this question on the Future Ready 365 blog, discussing potential and what it takes to make us as individuals, an association, and the profession as a whole ready for the future. SLA President Cindy Romaine explains that being “future ready” for members, the Association and the profession is supported by four pillars:

• Collaboration to accelerate the availability of useful information
• An adaptable skill set that anticipates and responds to the evolving marketplace
• Alignment with the language and values of the community you serve
• Building a

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Collaborative blogs, and inviting guest bloggers, is one of the most effective ways to maintain continuity for professional blogs. But who owns the intellectual property of the posts, especially if the site goes commercial with the intent to gain profit?

Jonathan Tasini started writing for the Huffington Post when the site was just 7 months old, writing 216 pieces, and stopped blogging on February 10, 2011, just 3 days after a purchase of the site by AOL was announced.

He’s launched a class-action lawsuit against AOL Inc., TheHuffintonPost.Com, Inc., Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer for damages and injunctive relief. The . . . [more]

It’s been a month since the Google Books settlement was rejected, as reported to Slaw here, and a number of themes have emerged in the online discussuion.

Some of the most cogent comments come from Robert Danton, Harvard’s University Librarian, an opponent of the settlement: Six Reasons Google Books Failed (New York Review of Books).

Perhaps the most balanced and detailed guide to the decision itself comes from the Association of Research Libraries:

• A Guide For the Perplexed Part IV: The Rejection of the Google Books Settlement

. . . [more]

Alan Borovoy, General Counsel Emeritus of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, is the recipient of the 2011 Award for the Advancement of Intellectual Freedom in Canada. The Award is given by the Canadian Library Association:

Throughout a remarkable career as one of the undisputed leaders in the civil rights movement in Canada, Mr Borovoy has been a tireless advocate for freedom of expression, along with its corollaries freedom of the press and freedom of association; and equally activist for equality and procedural fairness. June Callwood, a recipient in 2006 of the same Award, dubbed him “Mr. Civil Liberties.”

Mr

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The Osgoode Society for Canadian Legal History has been publishing a new blog, Canadian Legal History, for just over a month now. (Shame on us for not finding out faster. Shame on them for not telling us.) With the exception of the first welcoming post by University of Toronto law professor, Jim Phillips, all the posts thus far are by Mary Stokes, the R. Roy McMurtry Fellow in Canadian Legal History at Osgoode Hall Law School. Posts are running at about one or two a week.

Currently on Blogspot, the blog will be moving to the Osgoode Society’s new . . . [more]

In a recent training session I attended, I was surprised to hear how many of the participants indicated that, to control business-related driving hazards, they use global positioning systems, or GPS, to help keep track of their employees, whether using an employer-provided vehicle or personal vehicle.

An information bulletin by Michael Watts, Roger Gillott and Sarah Harrison of Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP from October 22, 2010, Proposed legislation aims to create greater public accountability, has garnished quite a bit of controversy this week.

The article discusses the Broader Public Sector Accountability Act, 2010 (BPSAA), which received Royal Assent on December 8, 2010. The Act creates new rules for transparency and accountability for publicly funded broader public sector organizations, including hospitals and LHINs.

The new rules come into force on January 1, 2012, and amend the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy . . . [more]