Every day, lawyers are engaged to help individuals and companies respond to damaging web-based communications. Though engagement is a measure of final resort, issues about evidence preservation arise at the point counsel first picks up the phone. What are we to do?

I’ve endorsed different means to preserve evidence of web-based communications in practice, each meeting the essential requirements for preserving admissible and credible evidence but none perfect in all regards. I’m not going to propose a solution though. For one, I’ve confirmed through discussions with a computer forensics friend that preserving web pages is challenging and that there is . . . [more]

Dear Dr. Neelie Kroes, Vice President of the European Commission:

I was recently a guest at your launch in Ghent of the European Commission’s OpenAIRE initiative. You spoke eloquently and forcefully about how OpenAIRE is providing infrastructure for “open access” across the European Union, and how it represents a strong stand for both mandating and supporting open access to research funded by the European Commission. You, indeed, made it seem the only sensible way for research to progress in this new century.

It was deeply stirring to see a continent-wide embrace of open access. The Open Access Infrastructure for Research . . . [more]

This week, we’ve been outlining the biotech industry trends we’ve been following on the Cross-Border Biotech Blog and noting some recent developments and directions for 2011:

Social media in biotech and healthcare continues to grow in importance to the industry. At this week’s JP Morgan conference, there are live blogs and Twitterati galore. And when even the government gets in on the game… well, the FDA hasn’t issued social media guidelines for regulated companies, but it’s using the web and Twitter frequently and well, so companies had better be listening.

Every drug company is talking about getting “the right medicine . . . [more]

Kendall Gray over at The Appellate Record has had some fun recently reformatting a Supreme Court of Texas opinion in an attempt to apply modern typographical practices to a product that still owes its shape to the typewriter. I won’t repeat here his layout choices and reasons—you can read them for yourselves—and see the before and after examples he gives.

I’ve long griped about the ugly way our courts publish their decisions, which look like something from the (by now) fuddy-duddy fifties, replete with double-spacing, two spaces after periods, 1 inch margins, etc. So I thought I’d take Gray’s choices . . . [more]

I gave a presentation yesterday to some friends at the CBA Alberta Research Lawyers North subsection on using social media sources for legal research. My definition of a social media site is web delivered information that invites dialog. Perhaps my definition is over broad, but I include publicly available legal texts, like Mike Semple Piggot’s Contract Text that we have discussed at Slaw.

Lady luck was on my shoulder yesterday.

I rarely have an opportunity to research matters relating to criminal law. Perhaps if I had more experience in the area, I would know about Romaniuk’s Search Warrants Considered . . . [more]

We’ve discussed Google Scholar on SLAW before. Google Scholar allows you to search legal opinions and journals for free, and while the coverage is primarily American, there are a significant amount of Canadian materials available. Not everything in Google Scholar is available in full-text; in some cases only the citations are included.

Google Scholar supports most of Google Search’s advanced operators (e.g. “phrase search”, + and -). It also allows users to limit their searches by date with the caveat that “that some web sources don’t include publication dates, and a date-restricted search will not return articles for which Google . . . [more]

You can use Twitter to learn about new top level court decisions in Canada.

We’ve compiled the list of the forty most popular downloads for 2010. Many of them are consistently popular year to year, such as Peg Duncan’s e-Discovery reading list, limitation periods charts, retainer precedents and various technology articles (such as Essential Smartphone Apps and The best Blackberry tips). Some more popular recent articles include:

• The Sample Budget Spreadsheet continues to grow in popularity, up 20% this year compared to last (in which it had doubled in downloads from 2008). Clearly lawyers are intersted in taking steps to improve their bottom lines.
• There was also obviously a desire for

. . . [more]

ACJNet from the Legal Resource Centre Alberta has long been a mainstay for Canadian legal researchers. This resource has now been relaunched as three new portals for the public and those who work with the public:

• LawNet Canada
• LawNet Français
• LawNet Alberta

The press release from the Legal Resource Centre:

LAWNET IS NOW AVAILABLE!

Friday, January 7, 2011

The Legal Resource Centre is pleased to announce the launch of LawNet, three web portals that will help you find the legal-related information you need: LawNet Alberta, LawNet Canada, and LawNet Français.

What can LawNet do for you?

LawNet

. . . [more]

It would not be a gross generalisation to say that many in the legal profession in the UK would wince at the idea of young people being taught to use the law as a tool to manage their affairs and claim their rights. Common reactions may well focus on the old adage that “a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing”, or the absurdity of young people needing to know anything about the law. But, in these gloomy economic times when young people’s (particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds) debts spiral, their advice and support services downsized or removed, and . . . [more]

Glen Greenwald on Salon has a thrice-updated story on the U.S. Department of Justice’s attempt to obtain from Twitter as much information as possible about a number of people associated with Wikileaks. On December 14, 2010 a U.S. Magistrate Judge made a sealed order requiring Twitter to divulge:

A. The following customer or subscriber account infomation for each account registered to or associated with Wikilcaks; rop_g; ioerror; birgittaj; Julian Assange; Bradley Manning; Rop Gongrijp; Birgitta Jonsdottir for the time period November l, 2009 to present:
1. subscriber names, user names, screen names, or other identities;
2. mailing addresses, residential addresses,

. . . [more]