It’s a big freebie today, a big filmic freebie: HotDocs, the great Canadian documentary film festival, has opened its online library to us all. I count 171 movies for you to choose from, some as short as 6 minutes, others a full hour-and-a-half.

The basic site lets you browse the films sorted by title or by year (1951-2009). And there’s an alternative version of the site done in Flash that lets you filter by subject, time, date and language, or a combination of these facets. As well on the Flash site you can create your own playlists.

What do . . . [more]

London may still be for the moment the “libel tourism” capital of the world for affronted folk, but Paris has its strong points, too, if the case of Professor Joseph H. H. Weiler is anything to go by. A professor of law at NYU and the editor-in-chief of the European Journal of International Law, Professor Weiler was summoned to appear in French criminal court to defend himself against a complaint of criminal libel lodged by Dr. Karin N. Calvo-Goller, a senior lecturer at the Academic Center of Law & Business in Israel. The basis for her complaint? Professor Weiler . . . [more]

These days, it’s a given that within its collection of web properties, a law firm must have its own website. Every year, the legal industry spends a pretty penny hiring consultants, designers and copywriters to produce a website that will serve as the firm’s online headquarters. 

Much attention is given (at least we hope it is…) to the aesthetics: colour and font choices, graphical images, photos, etc. And if the firm is smart, the actual content of the website is given just as much consideration. But what about the site’s most basic, fundamental element: the domain name? How much thought . . . [more]

Statistics Canada has released a study of how often immigrants who studied outside Canada for “a regulated occupation” wind up working in that occupation. Of the various regulated professions, law admitted the least number of foreign-trained immigrants. According to the full report of the study, which used 2006 data,

Immigrants who studied law outside Canada had the lowest match rates of all fields of study leading to a regulated occupation. While 69% of the Canadian-born who studied law worked as lawyers, the corresponding figure was 12% for immigrants, making the Canadian-born with law degrees almost 6 times as likely

Facebook appears to let you list only a single website or blog on your profile page.

Of course, many people have a website and a blog, and loads of us have connections with multiple websites and/or blogs.

With this simple trick you can list multiple sites on your Facebook profile page: Simply list the URLs for multiple sites in the Website textbox and separate them with a comma. They will display properly as separate links on your Profile page. Not sure if there is an upper limit, but I currently list 5 websites and blogs on my Facebook profile.

Previously . . . [more]

The WSJ has an interesting question,

Is more plaintiff-side work on the horizon for BigLaw?

The query stems from an observation of substantial profits by large U.S. firms using alternative billing arrangements for plaintiff-side antitrust cases. They don’t foresee doing personal injury or products liability plaintiff work, but tax and customs cases using contingency fees may arise.

Although the diversity of litigation might make for a more interesting workplace, it would be one heck of a headache for conflicts checks. . . . [more]

Controversy has developed in the US about whether it is appropriate for law blogs to be ghostwritten. The ABA Journal has an article on the topic, and many comments that are about evenly divided pro and con.

Some would distinguish between a law firm blog, which sounds more like other publicity material that the firm may generate, and individual blogs that appear to – and thus arguably should – be the product of the individual personally.

Would it matter in either case if the ghostwriting were disclosed? Would disclosure matter if the firm or lawyer in whose name the blog . . . [more]

Irwin Law’s new e-book platform is now available.

[Note of disclosure: Irwin Law is a publisher for me and also for Simon Fodden but I regularly post on e-books (see here and here, for example) and will continue to do so regardless of publisher].

It appears that Irwin Law has made huge improvements over earlier efforts of making their books available online. I think their new online platform will come closer to addressing some of the concerns that Angela Swan (see here) and others have expressed over how e-books in law may change or affect legal . . . [more]

Just over two months ago I did posts on SLAW and AvoidAClaim that warned family law lawyers to be aware of bad cheque scams on matters involving the collection of outstanding spousal support. [See either of the earlier posts for the actual text of one of these messages.]

Family lawyers continue to be the targets of fraud attempts – even more so than two months ago. On an almost daily basis I am getting at 2-3 calls and emails from Ontario lawyers who have been approached to act on matters that are clearly frauds. On some occasions it appears dozens . . . [more]

The Official Google Blog is reporting a conviction yesterday of three Google employees by a court in Italy of failing to abide by the Italian privacy code. According to Google, the gist of the matter is this: about three years ago some Italian students in Turin uploaded a video to YouTube that showed them bullying an autistic classmate. Google took the video down “within hours of being notified” of its existence and helped the police identify the uploader and those in the video. Subsequently, a prosecutor in Milan indicted the Google employees for criminal defamation and the privacy offence mentioned. . . . [more]

The Checklist Manifesto
by Dr Atul Gawande
published by Metropolitan Books, December 2009
price: $29.50
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9174-8

“Gawande shows how using checklists can significantly improve workflows and outcomes at work. The book has real lessons for lawyers and lawfirms”

In The Checklist Manifesto, Dr. Atul Gawande examines how the use of checklists can significantly improve workflows and outcomes in the work environment. He focuses primarily on the aviation and construction industries, and analyzes where and how checklists are used. He speaks as well about his experience in a WHO-sponsored initiative bringing checklists to surgical operating theatres around . . . [more]

The annoyingly named Truth in Sentencing Act (S.C. 2009, c.29) came into force on Monday, February 22.

Given third reading in October of last year, the statute amends Criminal Code provisions concerning judicial freedom to take into consideration, when sentencing, time already spent in custody. (As always, the Library of Parliament summary and backgrounder is thorough.) The “common but not automatic” practice of the courts was to count pre-sentencing incarceration as double time. Now, the new rules require that courts may only count on a one-for-one basis, unless “the circumstances justify” granting the prisoner 1 1/2 days for . . . [more]