This one comes under the conflicted heading of “fairly nifty / kind of creepy.” IBM’s Research Labs have come up with a Firefox plugin called CoScripter Reusable History that records every single click and entry you make in the browser — and then lets you search, replay, and share that history, hence the “reusable.” This graphic (click to enlarge) will give you a quick sense of what’s on offer here. (There’s also a video and a further explanation here, that should clear up any confusion.)

I can see some uses for this — and, of course, some dangers for . . . [more]

London’s business press is reporting on the challenging results that Reed Elsevier posted for 2009 and the strategies that the new CEO Erik Engstrom will have to consider to turn the company around. Erik Engstrom is the third CEO within the last twelve months (To lose one CEO is a misfortune; to lose two seems like carelessness).

Reed reported a 36 per cent fall in pre-tax profits to £487 million, and flat revenues for 2009. It expected the first half of 2010 to remain challenging and described last year’s performance as “relatively robust given the depth of the global recession”. . . . [more]

I know this is Gavin’s beat, but the press this week has had a lot of activity in the outsourcing arena.

First news is Microsoft’s announcement today that it’s following Rio Tinto’s lead and route a fair amount of routine legal work to Gurgaon. Microsoft has been outsourcing basic intellectual property and patent maintenance to CPA Global since the mid-Noughties with around 70 CPA staff. However, this is a separate new arrangement for general legal work.

Second development goes in the other direction. CPA is inspecting sites in Northern England for its own outsourcing centre to take on 10-20 . . . [more]

François Senécal blogue en direct de la conférence Droit Civil et Technologie sur Ledjit.ca

A study commissioned by the U.K. Ministry of Justice, “Are Juries Fair” [PDF] by Cheryl Thomas, examined the following issues:

• Do all-White juries discriminate against BME defendants?
• Do jurors racially stereotype defendants?
• Do juries at certain courts rarely convict?
• Do juries rarely convict on certain offences?
• Do jurors understand legal directions?
• Do jurors know what to do about improper conduct in the jury room?
• Are jurors aware of media coverage of their cases?
• How is the internet affecting jury trials?

concluding that there was “little evidence that juries are not fair” and that “research from other jurisdictions should . . . [more]

Stephen Mason and Nicholas Bohm have an interesting article, “Identity and its verification”, published in Computer Law & Security Review, Volume 26, Number 1, January 2010, 43 – 51. (Professor Stephen Mason has written a book on electronic signatures and runs a journal on similar topics. Nicholas Bohm is a security expert.)

It’s available on Science Direct [PDF] and also . . . [more]

A post today from Andrew Gomez on the Google Blog:

Imagine being in a foreign country staring at a restaurant menu you can’t understand, a waiter impatiently tapping his foot at your tableside. You, a vegetarian, have no idea whether you’re about to order spaghetti with meatballs or veggie pesto. What would you do? Well, eventually you might be able to take out your mobile phone, snap a photo with Google Goggles, and instantly view that menu translated into your language. Of course, that’s not possible today — but yesterday at the Mobile World Congress we demonstrated a

. . . [more]

I periodically get asked what courses are available for getting up to speed on how to conduct legal research. Clare Mauro has been the instructor for the Legal Research on the Web course at the Professional Learning Centre, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, for a number of years now. The next sign up for this popular course (with description) is as follows:

Legal Research on the Web
Mon. 1 Mar 2010 – Sat. 17 Apr 2010
7 weeks
Instructor: Clare Mauro
Fee: $435.00 Cdn
Location: online
Cert: optional
Status: open

This is an in-depth instructor-led web course focusing on

. . . [more]

[A post for Ontario lawyers]

As of January 1, 2010, big changes to three parts of Ontario’s Rules of Civil Procedure came into effect. These changes are intended to streamline the litigation process and increase access to justice. Many of the changes to the rules are a result of the Civil Rules Committees (CRC) consideration of the Osborne report. These are the most extensive amendments to the Rules of Civil Procedure since they were first adopted in 1985. There are no general transitional provisions and in most cases these amendments apply to existing proceedings.

Taran Virtual Associates has created . . . [more]

Mike Kujawski recently posted an item to the Public Sector Marketing 2.0 LinkedIn Group about an online database containing links to the social media policies of dozens of organizations around the world.

If your library, law firm, agency or organization is thinking of creating policies and guidelines for the use of blogs, wikis, or social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook, this is a good place to look for guidance and examples.

Kujawski publishes the Public Sector Marketing 2.0 blog. . . . [more]

Ask anyone. It’s all about value these days. We have entered an era where costs no longer determine the price of legal services. Value determines the price. The drive to achieve value is challenging the status quo in the legal services industry. Historically, lawyers have set the price for their legal services by determining their costs; and then adding their profit margin in order to arrive at the final price for their services. Isn’t this the antithesis of the way in which most other industries determine the price for their goods and services?

For most other industries, the price for . . . [more]

Ley.mx is a Justia site that provides free online access to federal and state legislation for the third amigo in the NAFTA trio. The Federal constitution, codes, regulations and other statutory instruments are available in both HTML and PDF formats. The same documents for the 31 states seem to be available only in PDF; though you’ve got the choice to download them or view them online within an embedded Google viewer. As well, there are links to the appropriate government sites, law schools, and a number of law firms.

The simple and attractive site is in Spanish, as are all . . . [more]