Morris Leo Cohen died on Saturday, December 18, 2010. He had recently celebrated his 83^rd birthday. More than a few of us call Morris mentor. During his years at Yale, Harvard, Penn and SUNY Buffalo, he attracted disciples with ease and grace. I trust that a round of tributes will follow his passing, but one aspect that may be neglected is the symbolic value of it for librarianship. Morris was the last great scholar bibliographer of his generation in American law librarianship. Not a scholar who stepped into the role of librarian, Morris was a scholarly bibliographer, a man . . . [more]

Bruce Carton at Law.com’s Legal Blog Watch has honoured Slaw by picking it as one of his “10 most watched” blogs of 2010. He’s got a video of them all, which just so happens to start with you-know-which blog. Click on the image below to go to his post and the video.

We are proud to be in the company of the following great blogs:

1. Consumerist
2. Jonathan Turley
3. Legal Juice
4. Legal Satyricon
5. Lowering the Bar
6. Simple Justice
7. Slaw.ca
8. SPAM Notes
9. Texas Lawyer
10. THR, Esq.

Many thanks, Bruce. . . . [more]

For a short moment, we had some innovative law firm marketing going on with Blakes flash mob dance! The Youtube video was here. That is until lawyers for the Black Eyed Peas called copyright foul. Youtube is now displaying the infringement image below:

I say boooo to the Black Eyed Peas and Will.I.Am. It’s tough enough to get lawyers to leave their offices and walk down a couple flights of stairs for a fire drill. Can you imagine getting close to 50 of them dance in the middle of a shopping mall? Unheard of.

Happy holidays! :) . . . [more]

This continues the comments on The Language of Law Reports. I couldn’t figure out how to put images in a comment.

The following croppings are from Chadwyck-Healey’s Early English Books Online, via ProQuest. First is the title page of the 1604 edition of volume 4 of Coke’s Reports:

Next is the top of page 91a, giving part of the record in Latin:

Next is the top of page 92b, the beginning of the report in French:

It’s still “en bank le Roy.” . . . [more]

Slaw readers might be interested in a recent judgement from the US District Court, in which two law professors, editors of a looseleaf service, sued the publisher for issuing a release under their names when they were not involved in its production. The release consisted of just 3 new case references and subscribers were charged $50 for it. Brief but briliant expert testimony on the nature of pocket parts was provided by a local law librarian to enlightened jurors, who awarded the plaintiffs $2.5 million in damages. The verdict was reported in the Philadelphia Enquirer yesterday (Dec. 21) and has . . . [more]

As this is my last Slaw post before the holiday, I would like to wish Slaw readers (and of course all the Slaw contributors) a happy and safe holiday season. Please enjoy the card, which was created for our firm by a London artist (a higher resolution image is here), and the Harrison Pensa Christmas video.

. . . [more]

My quest for better file access started with a nagging suspicion that my shrinking storage containers would be my downfall. I went mobile with a laptop, which was smaller than my desktop and was portable. Then I added a handheld computer, which was still smaller and even more portable: no cords, no bags. On to USB thumb drives and finally shifting to a 2 GB micro SD card about the size of a raisin. Portability raised the likelihood of my files being lost or stolen if I misplaced the container in which they were stored. I solved the problem . . . [more]

I recently participated in a panel discussion called “Unbundled Work/Unbridled Success: Sourcing Canadian Legal Services Differently” at the Sixth Annual Canadian Bar Association Law Firm Leadership Conference. A significant portion of the conference covered legal process outsourcing (“LPO”). Professor Richard Susskind moderated the session on LPO. The conference was well attended by virtually all of the major law firms in Canada and the majority of the attendees were the managing partners of these firms. 

The conference was a personal highlight for me, for two reasons. Firstly, Richard Susskind was the moderator of the LPO session. Need I . . . [more]

As readers know, SLAW has regularly posted on the good work of the people at the Canadian Legal Information Institute and the free access to law movement.

I see they are now advertising for the position of CanLII President. If you are interested in applying, or know of someone who you think would be interested, contact information for applications is providing on the page at the foregoing link. . . . [more]

In the spirit of the season, here are some iPad apps of possible interest to SLAW readers:

• Dragon Dictation: I am excited to "train" this new version of Dragon Dictation for the iPad but have been too busy to do so. I have heard good things. I remember trying version 1 of Dragon Dictation on what I think back then was a 486 computer. One assumes this new version will work more smoothly.

• UTL Mobile App: Perhaps of more interest to those in the Toronto area is the free University of Toronto mobile app, which allows for searching

This week in biotech was all about surveillance:

Two Toronto scientists studied over two million tweets to assess the social network’s value as a public health surveillance tool and came away impressed. Even though social networks open some completely new avenues to gathering data and interacting, for the most part they are just valuable tools for use in traditional processes according to a recent Deloitte report. and .

MaRS CEO Ilse Treurnicht, doing a bit of surveillance of her own on some publication surveillance data, noted that China is now second in publication of biomedical research articles globally . . . [more]

There’s an interesting conversation over at Edge — not the legal consulting company, but the foundation that holds colloquiums on important issues in science, philosophy, and art. This discussion is entitled Who Gets to Keep Secrets? and the question was posed by Daniel Hillis, a computer scientist, who amplified it thus:

The question of secrecy in the information age is clearly a deep social (and mathematical) problem, and well worth paying attention to.

When does my right to privacy trump your need for security? Should a democratic government be allowed to practice secret diplomacy? Would we rather live in