Slaw is unusual in that three of the four non-American chairs of ABA TECHSHOW are contributors to a collective blog.

For those who haven’t heard, TechShow is the world’s premier legal technology CLE conference & expo. It’s also the longest lasting – since it started in Dallas back in 1984. The three-day CLE conference is attended by more than 1,500 professionals each year and features more than 50 legal technology CLE programmes and training sessions in fifteen topical tracks. . . . [more]

The New York Times has introduced a trial way of reading the paper on line. The “article skimmer,” supposedly based on the way that people spread out the paper on a Sunday brunch table, displays thumbnails of articles in a grid formation, allowing you to skim over the material easily. The image below shows a portion of the Technology section, and can be enlarged by clicking on it.

. . . [more]

Have you noticed any blanked out avatars or websites in your travels lately? February 16 – 23, 2009 thousands of New Zealanders are protesting “Guilt Upon Accusation” pending new section 92A of their Copyright Act being brought in by Copyright (New Technologies) Amendment Act 2008 No. 27 that they say

assumes Guilt Upon Accusation and forces the termination of internet connections and websites without evidence, without a fair trial, and without punishment for any false accusations of copyright infringement.

This legislation reportedly puts the emphasis on internet service providers (ISPs) having to police who is using their services and, according . . . [more]

As of today, Harper’s Index is free online. For those of you who might not know, Harper’s Index is a collection of information set out in single lines as if it were statistical data and in a way that is meant to surprise and interest you. In the online Index you’re presented with a search box — which will return helpful suggestions as you type, guiding you to those terms that do in fact appear within the index.

For example, a search for “law” produces over half a dozen screenfuls of items, the first of which is:

1/85 Number of . . . [more]

My legal research career has taken me to several different settings in different cities or jurisdictions, and one thing I have found interesting is that there has always been a stronger emphasis on some tools in each of my workplaces. For this reason, I decided to write a series of columns that will address particular research materials or sources of law or legal information that, for one reason or another, I found myself using more in some settings than in others and that generally might be otherwise overlooked as excellent resources. This month, the column addresses law reform bodies and . . . [more]

After doing online writing for about a year and a half now, one of my most read pieces is Employee Privacy in Canada. I also get plenty of legal inquiries by e-mail on it, and of course have to respond that I cannot provide legal advice.

It’s also a topic of interest to in-house counsel, who increasingly have to respond to managers about the checks and monitors they are allowed to use for their staff.

Perhaps then it’s no surprise that the subject was also prominently featured at the OBA 2009 Institute of Continuing Legal Education on Feb. 3, . . . [more]

Following up on Simon’s vaccines post from earlier this week comes the encouraging news that on Thursday (happy 200, Charles Darwin) the U.S. Court of Federal Claims issued decisions in three vaccine-related test cases rejecting any causal link between vaccines and autism.

Yet, much like with the Pennsylvania victory in the battle over teaching evolution, I can only manage a half-hearted cheer at this latest triumph of science over superstition and ignorance. That it is even necessary to take this to trial – to say nothing of the refusal of so many to accept the correctness of . . . [more]

I expect that the needs of lawyers are somewhat different from the general public when it comes to the websites of public bodies, particularly those of regulators and tribunals. What got me thinking about it was a solicitation to provide feedback on the British Columbia Information and Privacy Commissioner’s website as they embark on a refresh or redesign.

I assume that when most public bodies are thinking about their websites, they look at how to make it useful for the general public. Which is obviously important, but I know that I’m a heavy user of a number of government websites . . . [more]

A peer recently brought this image to my attention and it immediately caught my attention and spoke to me. The image is from an article entitled, “What will a World of Warcraft player look like in 2030?”. If, by some chance, you are not familiar with the World of Warcraft, suffice it to say that it is an internet gaming phenomena that has wasted countless hours and more than a few thousand dollars of tuition. The title of the image has been co-opted in various locations to “The future of gaming?” and I have further co-opted it here to . . . [more]

Legal Information & Technology is a new ‘eJournal’ [update: actually a digest service] on SSRN‘s Legal Scholarship Network.

You can preview the first issue collection of references with their summaries here:

Here is a description on the scope:

This eJournal includes working papers, forthcoming articles, and recently published articles in all areas of legal information scholarship. Topics include (but are not limited to): 1) the impact of legal information on domestic, comparative, and international legal systems; 2) the treatment of legal information authorities and precedents (e.g., citation studies); 3) the examination of rules, practices, and commentary limiting

This dispatch arrives from WIRED:

Unix weenies everywhere will be partying like it’s 1234567890 this Friday.

If you needed confirmation that geeky web 2.0 social events have permeated every useful dimension of your existence, here it is. I see that Toronto is not organized yet (also check here), but Vancouver is.

I wonder if anyone will be able to tell us exactly when 0987654321 passed us by, and why we were not informed… . . . [more]

The Supreme Court dismissed the appeals of the Ermineskin Nation et al. against the Federal Court of Appeal ruling that denied the plaintiffs’ claim that the federal government had a fiduciary role under Treaty Number 6 such that the oil and gas revenues resulting from extraction under the plaintiffs’ land should have been invested for their benefit. At stake were some two billion dollars. Justice Rothstein wrote the judgment of the 7 member court: Ermineskin Indian Band and Nation v. Canada, 2009 SCC 9 . . . [more]