The two leading Canadian legal publishers, Carswell Thomson and LexisNexis Butterworths, have something in common – both face a major challenge for continuing relevance in the Canadian market. Interestingly enough, the real challenge does not come from each other, but from free services and technological advances, and increasingly from small but nimble legal publishers committed to the delivery of high quality competitively priced products. How each of them responds to this challenge will determine their ultimate role as providers of legal information in the Canadian legal market.

Meeting the challenge has been made more difficult because of the unrealistic expectations . . . [more]

Great sign from Frank Hatzman on Cottesloe Beach, Perth.
. . . [more]

As we said last year on the first Monday in August:

Slaw will be quieter than usual today: it’s the August civic holiday here in most of Canada, which, as befits our particular federation, goes by various names across the land —

Alberta (Heritage Day)
British Columbia (British Columbia Day)
Manitoba (Civic Holiday)
New Brunswick (New Brunswick Day)
Northwest Territories (Civic Holiday)
Nova Scotia (Natal Day)
Nunavut (Civic Holiday)
Ontario (John Galt Day + Simcoe Day + others)
Prince Edward Island (Natal Day)
Saskatchewan (Saskatchewan Day)

[source: Wikipedia]

– or is not celebrated at all, as in Newfoundland & Labrador, . . . [more]

No, this is not about Caribana taking place in Toronto this Simcoe Day long weekend. Rather, it is about two reciprocal blog carnivals that were posted yesterday. You may recall a blog carnival is a review of recent blog posts on a topic that rotates around, hosted on different blogs. While the subject matter may be serious, blog carnivals have a playful element. You may also recall we hosted Blawg Review (the law blog carnival) #249, here on Slaw.ca in February, written by Omar Ha-Redeye.

This time around, Ed, the Editor of Blawg Review, and Charles H. Green, co-author . . . [more]

Earlier this week the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) called for a tightening of the Takeover Code because too many British companies were being taken over by foreign interests,

It agrees with business secretary Vince Cable that many mergers fail to create value for shareholders, and that our liberal takeover regime means British firms attract more bids than European and US competitors.

The CBI’s views were contained in its submission to the Takeover Panel, which is reviewing the rules after last year’s uproar over the £11.7bn takeover of Cadbury by Kraft of the US. The public consultation on possible reforms

Cromwell J. and Fish J. put on a solid display of written advocacy in today’s Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Cornell.

A 4-3 majority held that the Calgary Police Service did not violate section 8 of the Charter by the manner in which it conducted a “dynamic” or “no-knock entry” search of an accused person’s home. The appeal was made as of right, and caused the justices to answer a question of mixed law and fact based on a very physical fact scenario. This set up a clash of language used by the majority (in a . . . [more]

Two interesting topics have come up in recent days; both of which seem connected. The first is Amazon’s prediction that ebook sales will overtake paperback sales by the end of 2011. Not entirely surprising, considering they’re already outselling hardcovers (“180 e-books for every 100 hardcovers”). And on it goes: paperback sales are eclipsed, ebooks will then be compared to the combined sales, paper becomes the minority, and so on. I think we all know the trend.

So if the market’s future is digital, what exactly do we want from the experience? The answer to this question depends a lot . . . [more]

My salad days,
When I was green in judgment: cold in blood . . .
Anthony & Cleopatra, Act 1, Scene V.

And in a sense these are the salad days — not that we’re inexperienced or at the peak of our powers, two ways in which that phrase is now understood — no, simply because it’s high summer, when edible green begins to tumble out of the bushel baskets at the market and it’s too hot to cook. Who better to discourse on salads than we here at a blog named Slaw?

Well, the New York Times, for one. . . . [more]

There isn’t a great deal more to say about the great census debate than has been said in different fora in different ways. It all comes down to whether Canadians should have the policy that affects their daily lives determined on the basis of reliable data capable of tracking long-term trends (or developments about which much fuss may be made, but that have no longevity) or not. At the Law Commission of Ontario, we can say that law reform agencies are as reliant on the rich core of data produced by the census as are many other organizations. Being able . . . [more]

As was mentioned a number of years ago here on SLAW, the free Thomson Reuters newsletter called Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing was a useful assortment of articles for those who are involved in teaching legal research and writing.

Word comes now that the newsletter will no longer be published in print. Anyone wanting to receive the newsletter, however, can sign up for free delivery by email of an electronic version. . . . [more]

From the Crime Writers of Canada, a list of summer titles for 2010’s backyard hammock days. . . . [more]

One of the most complicated things to address as part of a long term outsourcing is the implications of change. Gartner Group recognized this when it released the results of a survey in which it found:

• 55% of enterprises have renegotiated their outsourcing agreement terms within the lifetime of the contract;
• 15% of such renegotiations occurred within the first 12 months;
• only 23% of enterprises did not expect to enter into renegotiations; and
• nearly 8 in 10 outsourcings will go through renegotiations at some stage.

According to Gartner’s survey, one of the biggest issues leading to contract renegotiation was a . . . [more]