Nothing like a pending crisis to get law firms to focus on critical issues. No doubt a pandemic has the potential to interrupt many a law office – everything from sending a few staff home sick to entirely shutting the office down for a few days or weeks. Here are some resources to help you and your firm prepare for the eventuality of a pandemic:

• Pandemic Preparations for the Workplace is a great article just published by The Colorado Bar Association in its Colorado Lawyer Magazine
• The ABA Division of Bar Services has a posted a good list of pandemic

The nature of current awareness is changing. It has become increasingly easy for us to read newspapers from other cities, to retrieve transcripts or recordings of television and radio programs. We can monitor the progress of legislative debate without the need to read every word in Hansard. The blogosphere is a source of commentary and analysis. The “current” is more like a tidal wave than ever before.

Librarians are used to providing media monitoring and environmental scanning services. We’ve gone from clipping the local paper and photocopying tables of contents to harvesting RSS feeds, searching global newspapers on the web . . . [more]

Just posted on the web is a recent discussion between Mark Harding, Group General Counsel, Barclays and Professor Richard Susskind, OBE on “The End Of Lawyers?”.

If you didn’t listen to Professor Susskind’s ABA TECHSHOW keynote, here is another chance to hear his take on what the future holds for lawyers. The topics covered include:

• Market predictions and changes – technology and commoditisation
• Law firm management – new approaches for the future
• Innovation and R&D – rethinking the delivery of legal services
• Change management for clients – new ways of working
• Market competition and external investment
• Collaboration – more

Well there’s no getting around the fact that the variously euphemized swine flu is among us, spreading and causing us all to have something of an attention span. It occurred to me that as a public service I might dedicate this fillip to the sneeze, that potent source of contagion. And what better way to begin than with this flu-shot video from Australia showing a number of handsome folks indulging in unconfined sternutation all lovingly captured in ultra slow motion. It’s enough to make you do the elbow thing with those 40,000 droplets. [Click on the image to see the . . . [more]

Macleans is law-baiting again. This time the object of their attention is the country’s law societies, or at least some of them, and the theme is the same old “who will guard the guards themselves?”. The title of the piece by Kate Lunau — “Law societies under fire” — gives the impression that all across the country benchers, or their local equivalents, are hunkered down in bunkers, whereas the body of the article gives us nothing new, nothing that hasn’t been mooted many times before respecting self-governing professions.

Essentially the article points out that in England and Wales, . . . [more]

Lots of activity today on the legislative front in Ontario. Major changes to the Mining Act were unveiled by Michael Gravelle, the Minister of Northern Development and Mines who introduced the Mining Amendment Bill . . . . [more]

I thought that those of you who like to stay on top of the latest in the swine flu outbreak (which is not the same as rising above it) might like to know that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/cdcemergency. (Following 72; 56,452 followers.) Their posts are essentially pointers to specific information for the various organizations that are tasked with preparing for medical emergencies. (This isn’t really an occasion for 140 character data.) But a number are useful for the likes of you and me:

Parents: take steps to protect your family

At this time last year, John Ruggie, the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on business and human rights released a report, “Protect, Respect and Remedy: a Framework for Business and Human Rights” [PDF] recommending, as we reported then, implementation of a framework to give effect to

the State duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties, including business; the corporate responsibility to respect human rights; and the need for more effective access to remedies.

Ruggie has now released a report to the UN Human Rights Council on his work since that time, entitled “ . . . [more]

Having a carpenter for a partner adds an interesting twist to my life. Rather than playing Scrabble or sipping Margaritas on beaches, when he and I take a vacation, it is often to work on the current building project. It also means I take special interest in construction that leads to the courts like McMillan v. Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Eugene Meehan’s excellent publication Lang Michener Supreme Court of Canada L@wletter had this note today:

TORTS: GOVERNMENT AGENCY LIABILITY
The Applicants purchased a condominium unit in a condominium development in White Rock, British Columbia, constructed in 1994.

Dominic Jaar has posted a video of his interview with Canadian Lawyer Magazine on the use of technologies in the judicial system. You’ll find it on his website, Ledjit. . . . [more]

Find a niche with growth potential
Organize information to make it useful
The internet is a distribution channel — not a product
Turn words into maths
Separate the signal from the noise
Computers can’t do everything
Treat content like patented material
Print’s not dead, it just needs online help

Rules that wouldn’t have been recognized by the distinguished figure below:

They’re the distilled wisdom in a well-researched piece entitled Westlaw rises to legal publishing fame by selling free information – St. Paul company outprofits Gannett, McGraw Hill, New York Times

And it started here: . . . [more]

The most recent issue of the AALL Spectrum features a number of articles on law library design as part of its 9th Annual Architectural Series.

AALL Spectrum is the monthly magazine of the American Association of Law Libraries.

From the presentation article:

“This edition highlights the need to innovate to be green, to stretch budget dollars, and to make the best use of space: a law school, Penn State’s Dickinson School of Law, and a law firm, O’Melveny & Myers San Francisco, both aim for LEED certification; a new decentralized library at Bose McKinney & Evans emphasizes green; a