TV Ontario’s flagship current affairs program The Agenda featured a discussion last night on TV cameras in the courtroom.

Interestingly, only the judge on the panel seemed to be in favour of the idea.

Panel members were:

• Jamie Chaffe, president of the Canadian Association of Crown Counsel
• Jean Cumming, editor-in-chief of Lexpert
• Mayo Moran, dean of the University of Toronto Faculty of Law
• William Trudell, chair of the Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers
• Raymond Wyant, a provincial court judge in Manitoba

. . . [more]

There’s a bit of irony making its way around Twitter lately, which goes something like this:

Your mobile phone has more computing power than NASA in 1969. NASA launched a man to the moon. We launch birds into pigs.

To which I say, what’s your point?

Perhaps you don’t know about Angry Birds. It’s the #1 paid app in Canada for iPad, iPhone, and available for other smart phones as well. The aim is to launch birds with a slingshot apparatus such that they land on forts built by the egg-stealing green pigs and collapse them, exploding the pigs. . . . [more]

Google UK has created a magazine, or small book, about data for some of its business customers, and, thinking of the rest of us, has put the thing online. The name, Think Quarterly, suggests that we’ll see three more of these during the coming year.

What’s the big deal? Well, in a way, nothing. There are lots of online “books,” and data’s no stranger in the list of current tech topics. But this is Google, albeit a field office, and if there’s a company that should know a thing or two about data, it’s Google. As well, when the . . . [more]

While being a criminal lawyer is unlikely to make you the most affluent guest at a dinner party, it does often mean that you’ll have the most interesting work stories to tell. However, those very same fascinating tales that so enrapture your listening audience often make you the target of the unflinching gaze of the news media. Being able to competently respond to media attention on your cases is an essential skill for lawyers in any field where the bright light of journalism might shine.

Traditionally, there have been two schools of thought on lawyer/media relations.

The strong silent type . . . [more]

This post will focus on the specific requirements under the AODA Information and Communication Standard. The Information and Communications Standard (Part 11 of the PIAR) focuses on accessible information and communications relating to the provision of goods and services. The definition of “information and communication” is very broad and can include such things as websites, brochures, flyers, invoices, order forms, feedback forms, complaint forms, telephone calls, marketing materials, etc. The main goal of the standard is to promote inclusive design of information and communication platforms and to specify requirements to prevent and remove barriers to persons with disabilities when creating, conveying, distributing, procuring and receiving information and communication to and from your organization.

Hackers and cybercriminals have been having a field day recently. Even big oil companies with expansive security budgets can’t keep the bad guys out. In an operation dubbed “Night Dragon” by security company McAfee, Chinese hackers have been targeting several global oil and energy companies since November of 2009, in an attempt to steal sensitive proprietary information about oil and gas field bids and operations. You would think that oil companies would have first class security and defense-in-depth. Apparently, not so.

Law firms should take these attacks against big oil as a warning – and should bear in mind the . . . [more]

Those who don’t always have easy access to the big commercial databases might like to be reminded of the useful free service provided by the Washington & Lee Law School’s Current Law Journal Content, where the tables of contents of nearly 1600 journals are indexed. A few years ago Slaw used this service to offer a page setting out the TOCs of Canadian journals, but it somehow got lost in the first redesign of the blog.

I’ve re-instituted it now. You can always find the link on the new “useful things” item in the main Slaw menu. On the . . . [more]

To supplement an earlier posting on World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Intellectual Property Day, I note that the Canadian Intellectual Property Office is also promoting April 26, 2011 as Canadian Intellectual Property Day! . . . [more]

The long-awaited decision of Judge Denny Chin was released yesterday. The court rejected the settlement because it is not fair, adequate and reasonable. There will undoubtedly be much written on the decision and predictions on what happens next. For some preliminary thoughts, see posting by Professor Kenneth Crews and read Judge Chin’s decision. . . . [more]

I was happy to receive and thumb through the new 4th edition of Daphne Dukelow’s The Dictionary of Canadian Law (Carswell, 2011).

It has been close to 6 years since the previous editon was issued. In that time, Dukelow notes in her preface that one “sea change” in legal language has been a movement to plainer English in legislation and judicial reasons. According to her, the new edition focuses more on pure legal terminology and less on industries and activities regulated by law. Dukelow also notes that Betsy Nuse helped with this new edition (and on a historical note: in . . . [more]

Here at House of Butter we don’t usually go in for advertorials but at the moment we are taken by a piece of software developed by a 25+ year old legal software company out of Sydney called EIS (Eurofield Information Systems) who have told us about an electronic looseleaf concept that they’ve developed out in the wilds of Chatswood (Northern Sydney suburb).

They say their software simply allows users to update a publication securely whilst keeping all past addendums in a easy to view list that also allows one to refer back to previous updates and view them . . . [more]

The Ontario Court of Appeal issued a judgement today that will attract attention for its consideration of an employee’s expectation of privacy in information stored on a work computer. The Court recognized an expectation of privacy in the specific circumstances of the case, but also demonstrated a willingness to allow employers to govern system information through policy and procedure.

A school board investigated a teacher after noticing he had an abnormal pattern of network use. A member of the board’s IT staff accessed his laptop remotely and found nude photographs of a 16-year-old Grade 10 student. Soon after, the board . . . [more]