Omar Ha-Redeye’s post about e-learning earlier this week prompts me to disclose a possible Law Commission of Ontario e-learning course, in conjunction with Ontario law schools. The LCO is in the process of renewal and one on-going issue is the relationship with the Ontario law schools, especially those schools other than Osgoode (which provides funding – including funding from York University – and inkind contributions to the LCO). Obviously, one manifestation of the relationship is in contracting researchers from the law faculties, in the appropriate case, (improvements in which are also under consideration), but another suggestion, from Western Law’s Dean, . . . [more]

The current #1 on the New York Times most popular articles list is an item that appeared in the Technology section on the weekend: The 3 Facebook Settings Every User Should Check Now.

In terms of complexity, the Facebook privacy settings lie somewhere between the calculations behind a space shuttle launch and figuring out what the Toronto Maple Leafs need to do to win a Stanley Cup. These things are simply beyond most of us mere mortals. I think it is safe to say that most Facebook users do not appreciate all the nuances of Facebook privacy settings, especially when . . . [more]

From Pingdom, the Internet 2009 in numbers:

With such kernels as:

• 1.73 billion Internet users (as of Sept 2009)
• 252,908,000 – Internet users in North America.
• 234 million – The number of websites as of December 2009.

and much more. . . . [more]

I believe that the oldest use of media other than print to teach legal research was a videotape with voice-over by Stephen Borins back in the academic year, 1970-1971 in which he ran through a legal research problem which touched on Priestman v. Colangelo and the liability of police officers. It stressed the reliability of the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest and touched briefly on Butterworths Ontario Digest and the Canadian Abridgement.

The tape required a technician from York’s AV division to run it, and was very much talking head with some close-ups of book pages. It might be in a dusty . . . [more]

This week in biotech focused on cost effectiveness, as everyone from Ontario to Florida and from VCs to pharma companies continue to look for ways to squeeze the most out of every dollar.

In Florida, a report assessing the state’s progress in attracting high value life science jobs showed that in the first six years of its efforts, legislators have spent about $1.4 million for each of the 1,100 jobs created. In the year we’ve been tracking similar data, this is the highest per-job spending we’ve seen.

The Florida report recommended more spending to assist with early-stage capital, . . . [more]

This past week, the Government of British Columbia announced that Information and Privacy Commissioner David Loukidelis would be leaving that post to take on the role of Deputy Attorney General of the province. The transition will be effective February 1, 2010 though his resignation as Commissioner [PDF] was effective immediately.

David was appointed Commissioner in 1999 and he has overseen a dramatic transformation in privacy laws affecting British Columbians. The Personal Information Protection Act came into being during his tenure and his report on the effect of the USA Patriot Act on the privacy of Canadians is known around the . . . [more]

Here is the link to the story – no references to Canada.

And the Wall Street Journal and the ABA Journal are following the same developments. . . . [more]

Richard Susskind of the Times Online has a piece this week on how the College of Law‘s Legal Practice Course is delivered with video, slides, and audio – which can all be paused and started at a student’s leisure in their own home.

He also mentions the online initiatives at the BPP Law School and the University of Strathclyde. The latter actually has students role-playing as solicitors dealing with a real problem in a virtual law firm.

Susskind closes saying,

Sceptics protest. They say that a law lecture should be a communal event at which students are professionally

Here’s a selection from the last week or so of tweets that I and others think might interest those who don’t use Twitter or who don’t follow the authors of these tweets.

If you are on Twitter and read or publish something that you think we should re-broadcast here, simply include the hash tag #slawca in the tweet or retweet. If you’ve published something on Slaw, there’s no need to use that hashtag on Twitter: all it does is bring to our attention things we might not otherwise have seen.

• RT @david_bilinsky: Cdn content and licensing barriers keep coolest

I was a presenter to the CBA BC Branch Work Life Balance Section meeting on January 21, 2010, entitled “The Lawyer Management Challenge: Attracting and Keeping Great Talent.”

The content of my presentation was largely based on my earlier post on Slaw on “How Virtual Law Firms Attract and Retain Great Legal Talent.”

The key three slides of my presentation set out a side by side comparison of the schedule and compensation of an associate working for a traditional law firm versus a contract lawyer working for Heritage Law:

A Day in the Life

View more documents from Nicole Garton-Jones

From Volume III, Issue II of Amicus Curiae, Western Law’s Student Paper

Canada was a different place before Trudeaumania swept the nation, and the man we know as Ivan Rand, founding Dean of this law school and former Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, was a product of his times. It would be easy to dismiss Dean Rand as an intolerant bigot, but as William Kaplan explained to an audience at Western Law on Nov. 11, [2009,] Rand was complicated character.

“Canadian judicial biography has been, with a few exceptions, mostly uncritical and largely celebratory, written by . . . [more]

A recent entry in the ongoing conversation about air travel security is this German TV show that demonstrates an utterly ineffectual body scanner. Some of the comments here and here provide useful links and partial translations of the proceedings (though some others tend to get ranty and off-colour).

One in particular caught my eye at the first link, posted by paul on January 22, 2010 9:03 AM:

It seems we’re back to the classic sensitivity/specificity tradeoff. If an operator passes every scan that look potentially dangerous to the body-search people, you find stuff, but you don’t have the capacity to