A year ago, we mentioned that the Law Foundation of Ontario had launched a project on access to legal information and legal services by linguistic minorities and persons living in rural or remote areas. It focussed on access to two components (legal information and legal services) by two groups who can face isolation in our communities (linguistic minorities and persons in rural or remote areas). We should have updated that report to note George Thomson’s report issued in January, and the creation of a website on the topic.

It discusses the digital divide in terms of rural access . . . [more]

This morning’s Globe and Mail carried a death notice for Alison Youngman, who spearheaded Stikeman’s Technology and Outsourcing group, dead of cancer at too early an age.

She promoted the adoption of new technologies before it was fashionable to do so. She became a self-taught expert on technology law, creating a nationally recognized Technology and Outsourcing group for Stikemans. She published widely and served her profession by co-chairing the American Bar Association Negotiated Acquisitions Committee Task Force on Joint Ventures.

She was part of the OBA’s Business Law Section on the Modernization of Business Law in Ontario . . . [more]

I just received this message via Facebook:

Hi Creative Commons Cause,
As you have probably heard, Facebook has been revising their terms of service.

This has spawned a grassroots movement inside Facebook to encourage the platform to adopt Creative Commons licenses, similar to Flickr or blip.tv‘s implementation.

The group has gained momentum and already has almost 2,000 members, so we thought we would point it out to you, our supporters.

Check it out if you’re interested in organizing for this feature and see some of the mockups of what CC-in-Facebook might look like:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=55178542061

Thanks for your continued support!

This year’s Canadian Association of Law Libraries conference will be taking place in Halifax, NS May 24-27, 2009 with business meetings on Sunday, May 23rd and sightseeing tours and a pre-conference workshop on Saturday, May 22nd. . . . [more]

A contentious policy week on both sides of the border:

• In Canada, a meeting this week between the Canadian Association of University Teachers and Gary Goodyear, Canada’s Minister of Science and Technology descended into a shouting match over cuts to research funding announced in Canada’s 2009 federal budget.
• In the U.S., old controversies were stirred by the introduction of the Patent Reform Act of 2009(high-tech vs. biotech); by the Supreme Court’s ruling, in Wyeth v. Levine, that drug makers are not exempt from state tort liability (tort reform vs. plaintiffs’ bar); and by the nomination of Kathleen Sibelius to

Canadians used to think about HIV/AIDS as a problem that only affected people in Sub-Saharan Africa, or homosexual males.

Thanks to the efforts of many activists this perception has shifted, and there is a broader awareness of its challenges among the general population.

On May 12, 2009 I will be part of a Canadian delegation that is presenting at the United Nations at the 53 Session on the Commision on the Status of Women. As one of the few law students in the group, I will try to address some of the legal and policy issues facing women in . . . [more]

There are times when you want to know who the head of state / government / power is in a particular jurisdiction, and for those times Rulers is the site you need. Something like CanLII’s new point-in-time legislation database, Rulers offers a point-in-time database of information about who was in charge here, there and everywhere between 1700 and now.

The site offers you four ways, more or less, to get into the data: an alpha index to the jurisdictions, an index of dates (this only back to 1996) of “relevant events,” an alpha index of everything, and a map keyed . . . [more]

Hawaiian legislators are working on a bill to ensure collection of state sales tax on goods and services bought online from out of state, while Idaho legislators have declined to do any such thing:

Hawaii Proposes To Collect Taxes On Internet Sales
Buying tax-free music, books and electronics over the Internet would be a thing of the past under legislation pending before Hawaii lawmakers. The measure being pushed by Senate Democrats is meant to force online shoppers of Amazon.com Inc. and eBay Inc. to pay the state’s 4 percent general excise tax, just like customers who buy the same items

One of the more interesting transitions the web has brought to legal marketing communication is the greater acceptance of informal lawyer commentary. Where formal business writing and legal analysis were once considered the only output for marketing materials, the advent of blogging, and now micro-blogging (i.e. Twitter), has allowed lawyers to create more approachable online personas and to simplify legal writing in a way that appeals to a wider demographic of readers.

This trend of informal communication, while liberating in many respects, doesn’t come without a few pitfalls. One that has become more evident recently, occurs with the automated routing . . . [more]

From Wired, a report that the Diebold Voting System Has a ‘Delete’ Button . And more coverage here. . . . [more]

I wanted to make sure we didn’t overlook this item, even though it was prominent in the news this week.

On Tuesday, March 3rd the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador released the report from the Commission of Inquiry on Hormone Receptor Testing exploring how testing failed to give correct results for women facing breast cancer in Newfoundland over a number of years, and providing a number of recommendations to prevent the same from happening again.

The Commission was established by the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador under its Public Inquiries Act, 2006 on July 3, 2007. The Honourable Margaret A. . . . [more]

About two years ago there was a contest on Slaw to see who could come up with the best collective noun for, well, a legion, a conspiracy, a bombast, an argument, etc. of lawyers. I thought we might revisit the broader topic of collective nouns this Friday, and as a resource to help you follow along you might want to open another couple of tabs in your browser to these two sites (one, two) that have improbably long lists of collectives.

I’m resisting the temptation to delve into the history and origin of the whole business of . . . [more]