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]

The debate over legal outsourcing is going mainstream, with a special report in yesterday’s Toronto Star (print copy only; Legal temps fill holes, cut costs).

The article focuses on Toronto-based LexLocom, a joint venture between Warren Bongard of legal recruiter ZSA and Scott Ewart. The services offered range from senior counsel with specialized expertise for specific projects, to low-end document review and due diligence work, and do it for about a third less than traditional firms.

Sue-Lynn Noel of Livingston International explains in the article why she used LexLocom’s services, when the boss of her in-house legal . . . [more]

A hat tip to my good friend and Sooner Jim Calloway for pointing out this helpful ZDNet iGeneration blog post on locking down Facebook.

While privacy as we used to know it is dead – unless you stay off the web (and even that probably doesn’t work anymore because your friends will post information or pictures about you), you can still do things to keep your Facebook page information a bit more private (Note: I didn’t say totally private). The difficulty is that Facebook frequently changes its profile and privacy settings pages, and with all the different pages and . . . [more]

From the Law Library of Congress, a new report: New Zealand: Maori Culture and Intellectual Property Law.

The protection of the traditional cultural expressions of indigenous people from inappropriate use raises issues relating to the differences between standard intellectual property concepts and the “worldview” of such groups.

This report might ring some bells in Canada. The Maoris work to maintain traditional forms while addressing current issues, as in this powerful video. As usual, one of the main troubles is actually cashing the cheque. Perhaps a tipping point is approaching, especially for those with some cultural capital. . . . [more]