Congratulations to Connie Crosby for penning the 6000th comment for Slaw. I haven’t done any real analysis, but if we assume conservatively that each comment consists of only 50 words, that totals to 300,000 words our readers have written. And if a novel comes in at 50,000 words, say, that means you’ve written six novels in four years — not a bad rate at all. Keep up the good work, please. . . . [more]

This week was for introductions:

• At the Cross-Border Biotech Blog, we introduced a new science writer! Richard Chan started off with his first Friday Science Review and he covered a lot of ground, from obesity to toucans to sushi.
• Direct-to-consumer genetic testing was introduced to Canada this week  and we’ll continue to follow the trend worldwide, all the way to Gattaca if neccesary.
• The Globe and Mail introduced its readers to Canada’s longest-running biotech takeover battle, the JLL-Patheon bid, which has been constant fodder for the blog’s Monday Deal Review since January.
• The Ministry of Research and Innovation

Karl-Heinz Schreiber, who I believe must have set some sort of record for the most appearances of any individual in reported Canadian caselaw. My count is 44 decisions.

Leaving aside the current story, the legal merits and the political background, which are in the hands of the Oliphant Inquiry and in the presciently accurate work of my friendStevie Cameron. The sheer quantity of court appearances and decisions is impressive. Two appearances in the Supreme Court of Canada, and on the extradition issues, as the judge noted, five applications for judicial review, four of which were dismissed, the . . . [more]

Anne Foster Worlock’s comment reminded me of how far we have come in the technology of legal research.

And we had furious debates in the Eighties comparing this to the Walt. There would be a dedicated terminal for legal research in each library. And we had to remember commands like . . . [more]

Canadian law report citations are riddled with “full stops”, more commonly referred to as “periods”, all of which are completely unnecessary. Needless to say, there are crusaders amongst us who would do away with them altogether, sooner rather than later.

I will admit to having been the unwitting source of a number of the offending citations. In the development of Carswell’s series of topical law reports, an official citation was required for each of them. By tradition, it is the publisher who determines what the citation shall be and how it is to be styled. That task fell to me. . . . [more]

I have talked in the past about The Law Librarian podcast on Blogtalk Radio, created by Richard Leiter and Brian Striman. They are starting the show back up again with the aim to make it a little more consistent, at least once a month to start.

The next episode will be recorded live this Friday, August 7th at 2:00 pm CT. The discussion will be a recap of the American Association of Law Libraries conference held in Washington, D.C. last week. I’m pleased to be invited in as a guest participant for this month’s show. Rumour has it if things . . . [more]

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, Quebec, and Yukon. . . . [more]

One of the reasons I might like to practice in the United States is that I’d get to use the squiggly in my documents. Otherwise known as the section symbol or mark, § is one of my favourite typographical elements, having an elegance and symmetry that please me in a way that the mere “s.” we Canadians use to denote a section of a statute simply cannot. It is, literally, twice (as good as) our section character, being two esses, one above the other. Feel free to sprinkle your comments in Slaw with this lovely mark: easy to do: simply . . . [more]

“Eighty percent of the poor in the United States are unable to afford a lawyer or find pro bono help for their civil legal problems, according to the American Bar Association.” That sentence, from an American Lawyer article last month, is not only embarrassing. It’s also an omen.

The article in question, titled “Unmet Needs,” was part of a special series on pro bono in the United States, including the top 100 pro bono-friendly law firms and a powerful critique of big-firm pro bono by Deborah Rhode. The latter piece highlighted how pro bono at too many . . . [more]

Toronto City Council voted 21-17 this week to endorse a new contract with the 30,000 city workers who have been on strike for 39 days.

And although the garbage is being picked up, a political stink is being raised about how the situation was handled. The strikers themselves suggested throughout the strike that the public should be blaming the political leadership, with some claiming he has alienated his key supporters in the labour movement.

But the biggest emerging controversy out of the new agreement is that workers on strike actually gained sick days while on the picket line.

Although Councillor . . . [more]

We’ve blogged in the past about Hugh Lawford and the vision and tenacity that built the Queen’s Law School treaty data processing project into the foundation for one of Canada’s two commercial legal databases.

It’s an accident, of course, that QL was based in Kingston – in the same way that Dayton and Eagan were in the American systems. But that’s where the ideas were.

Kingston was of course where Hugh taught contracts, in between being Lester Pearson’s right hand man in Ottawa.

Today, the Kingston Whig-Standard reported that the remaining QL office in Kingston is to close. Rationalization . . . [more]

I’m not sure whether Mick Jones was inspired or disgusted by his experience at the British Music Experience (probably the latter). In any case, it has moved him to set up a temporary “Rock N Roll Public Library” in some kind of office building under a highway in London. This is a great example of the do-it-yourself ethic that often accompanies punk culture, and which some claim is central to it. Sounds like a great excursion for the whole family to learn about every-day self-empowerment. . . . [more]