Introduction: Citizen Lawmaking Online

Citizen lawmaking seems ideally suited to today’s Web. Government social media and online deliberation resources, coupled with widespread access to broadband in many nations, and much improved Internet access to laws, combine to furnish citizens with abundant means for participating in the creation of laws online. The category of information and communication technologies (ICTs) that enable online citizen involvement in lawmaking has many names, including eConsultation, eDemocracy, eParliament, eParticipation, eRulemaking, and Dr. Beth Simone Noveck’s “collaborative democracy”.

In the U.S., citizens in many jurisdictions already have the . . . [more]

We note, with mixed emotions, the passing of Canada Law Book, a company whose roots in Canadian law go back a century.

Here is the announcement that it is being acquired by Thomson.

* 04 Aug 2010

Thomson Reuters Acquires Canada Law Book
Combined content and services provide true online and print customer advantages

Toronto, Canada, Aug. 4, 2010 – Thomson Reuters today announced the acquisition of Canada Law Book, a division of the Cartwright Group Limited. Canada Law Book will be aligned with Carswell, a Thomson Reuters business headquartered in Toronto. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

. . . [more]

The Canadian Judicial Council is a source of publications that should interest lawyers. The most recent report is The Canadian Justice System and the Media [PDF], a 2010 update to their publication of the same name in 2007. Although written explicitly for the benefit of members of the press and other news media, the section on Publication Bans and Other Restrictions on Media Coverage provides a handy review of the law in this area.

The Council commissions more frequent analyses on technology and its impact on the judicial system. For example, thus far in 2010 they’ve released four pieces by . . . [more]

Ontario Bill 68, The Open for Business Act, 2010 was recently tabled in Legislature. The aim of the Bill is to create a more competitive business climate in the province, while protecting the environment and public interest. Among the over 100 proposed amendments to various pieces of legislation, broadly stated, the upcoming changes would:

On Wednesday in an Official Google Blog post, Urs Hölzle of Google informed us that Google Wave would no longer be developed:

Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects.

Hölzle goes on to give some hope that some of this initiative may live on in other ways:

The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have

. . . [more]

Markus is a successful lawyer who does great work for clients and who burns out assistants on an annual basis with sarcastic comments and angry outbursts. Jeffrey is a managing partner who likes to lead his firm like a drill sergeant at boot camp. 

I am on a mission to contribute to making our law firms better places to work. One of the big questions I keep grappling with is why do smart, talented, hard-working, ethical people – lawyers – make such a mess out of management? 

One of the answers is found in one of the best reads on . . . [more]

Over the last few months I have noticed a marked uptake on the topic of legal project management in the legal literature and blogosphere. Although I think lawyers have always “done” legal project management (not always well), I also think the recent buzz on the topic is related to the economy and the recent emphasis within the legal profession on changing trends and the need to do legal project management better.

SLAW recently did a book review of Steven Levy’s book called Legal Project Management. In addition to Steven’s book, there is also Jim Hassett’s The Legal Project Management . . . [more]

I’ve long had a fascination with Jorge Luis Borges, the Argentinian writer, mostly because of his short fictions. He combined a wild imagination and calm, disciplined, mannerly prose. A particular favourite — and famous — passage is the list of animals that he says is taken from (his invention) the “Chinese Encyclopedia, the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge”:

1. those that belong to the Emperor,
2. embalmed ones,
3. those that are trained,
4. suckling pigs,
5. mermaids,
6. fabulous ones,
7. stray dogs,
8. those included in the present classification,
9. those that tremble as if they were mad,
10. innumerable ones,
11. those drawn with a very fine camelhair

. . . [more]

There has been a lot of press over the latest countries that don’t want Blackberries in their country unless they can get access to monitor user communications. See, for example, the Washington Post, Techdirt, Engadget.

RIM designed Blackberry communications so they would be secure, in a way that RIM itself can’t even access them. That’s a great feature that makes privacy advocates, corporate users, and individual users very happy. 

But it also makes some governments very unhappy – particularly those who believe they need to spy on communications. Some to the extent that they threaten to ban . . . [more]

I drift along sometimes, dreaming that maybe I can stop learning new technical things for a while and actually use a few technologies to finish some long-term projects. Then something comes along to wake me up. One of the more recent of these wake-up calls came with the announcement of Apple’s iPad. People were complaining that it didn’t support Adobe Flash content.

I don’t generally pay a lot of attention to either Apple or Adobe, because I tend not to associate either one with open standards or open software. That’s just a bias though, and life is never that simple. . . . [more]

Next week, Toronto firms will interview and hire for 2010 – 2011 articling positions. Last fall I wrote a post called “Interview Tips for Summer Students.” This time I thought it would be helpful to give an inside look at the hiring process by describing the steps we at Hicks Morley (a management-side human resources and advocacy firm) go through in selecting the candidates to whom we extend an offer.

What follows is a description of the firm’s process with some commentary on how I’ve worked though it in the past five years or so as a member . . . [more]

My colleague Laurel Murdoch showed me the latest issue of the Harvard Law School Bulletin, the lead article focusing on the changes happening at the Harvard Law Library, led by John G. Palfrey, the Law School’s vice dean for library and information resources (formerly of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society). Palfrey is the author of a very interesting piece that Louis alerted us to, entitled Cornerstones of Law Libraries for an Era of Digital-Plus

Palfrey’s piece ends with a collaborative challenge:

Our next step should be a process akin to a design charrette.60 We ought to

. . . [more]