♫ They used to tell me
I was building a dream.
And so I followed the mob
…
Brother, can you spare a dime? ♫

Lyrics by Yip Harburg and music by: Jay Gorney.

There is one magical quality of a picture – it can convey information in a manner that drives home a point faster than text could ever hope to do.

Accordingly it is one thing to read about the layoffs in the legal profession in a serial fashion in the news – it is entirely another to see that same information graphed and displayed in living . . . [more]

The CanLII blog announced that their new legislation system is now live. It is not a Friday.

The main improvements introduced by this new approach are:

* Versions of statutes and regulations reflect real changes;
* Legislative updates are carried out on a weekly basis;
* Versions’ dates correspond to legislative changes, such as entry into force, amendment or repeal;
* You can search a legislative text as it was legally binding on a particular date in the past. Historical coverage is approximately five years;
* You can compare two different versions of a particular document;
* You can

Current CALL President Anne Matthewman announced (via CALL-L) the election results for the 2009-2011 Executive Board on Wednesday. Those were:

• President: Rosalie Fox
• Past President: Anne Matthewman
• Vice-President: Cynthia Murphy
• Treasurer: Sandra Wilkins
• Secretary: Ann Marie Melvie
• Member-at-Large: Susan Jones
• Member-at-Large: Gregory Wurzer

A big Slaw congratulations to each of you serving on the new Board! . . . [more]

As of April 1, 2009, Alberta’s minimum wage will increase to $8.80 per hour from the current $8.40.

What about the rest of the country? The Alberta government news release backgrounder gives all the details, including where provinces fall in the minimum wage comparison after July 1, 2009.

Alberta’s minimum wage as of April 1, 2009

1st Ontario* $9.50
2nd Alberta** $8.80
3rd(tied) Saskatchewan $8.60
3rd(tied) Nova Scotia** $8.60
5th (tied) Newfoundland and Labrador $8.50
5th (tied) Quebec $8.50
5th (tied) Manitoba $8.50
8th (tied) British Columbia $8.00
8th (tied) Prince Edward Island $8.00
10th New Brunswick $7.75

Alberta’s minimum . . . [more]

Legal IT 3.0 is coming up on April 20 & 21 in Montreal. Dominic Jaar is once again heading up the organizing committee and has put the program together along with Xavier Beauchamp-Tremblay.

It is the largest and the most important event of the year in Canada on information technology for law. Dozens of experts from Canada and internationally (United States, France and Australia), including the keynote speaker Ronald J. Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab, will be there. You will also see some Slaw folk speaking including Simon Chester, Steve Matthews, me, and of . . . [more]

CALL’s Vendors’ Liaison Committee is conducting a brief survey of Canadian law libraries. If you are the person responsible for administering the budget for your library, please take a moment and reply to the survey here. . . . [more]

A few weeks ago Simon Fodden wrote about the “Ontario in the Creative Age” report that basically says we need to turn more to creative work to be successful economically. That builds on the creative class theory that says communities with a higher % of the creative class tend to do better economically.

Especially in light of that, its dissapointing to see that an ITU report that measures the use of information and communications technologies in more than 150 countries dropped Canada from 9th in 2002 to 19th in 2007.

Michael Geist comments that:

No country in the top 50 . . . [more]

March 13th is the deadline for comments on our family law project options paper. We’ve taken a different approach to this potential project compared to how we selected previous projects. . . . [more]

Congratulation to Slaw’s own Dominic Jaar, who has just been named CEO of the Canadian Centre for Court Technology. From the press release:

The mandate for the CCCT is:

1) Bringing the justice sector stakeholders together, including deputy ministers, lawyers, senior court administrators, judges and representatives of the public, to create an atmosphere favourable to technological innovation and excellence in our court systems to enhance access to justice.
2) Supporting the effective transfer and sharing of information between courts and other elements of the justice system.
3) Providing the tools and activities needed to exchange information and

Looks like CLB Media is pulling the plug on their Canadian Lawyer Associates magazine. This from an email I received yesterday:

“The Spring edition of Canadian Lawyer Associates magazine, now in circulation and available digitally at www.canadianlawyermag.com/associates, will be the last printed version of the publication. Market conditions have prevented this very well-received publication from gaining the advertising traction it needed to sustain its publishing schedule.

We wish to thank all those in the legal community who supported the publication through advertising and by supplying story ideas and editorial content which allowed us to publish and distribute five excellent issues

ABA TECHSHOW 2009 is quickly approaching – April 2-4 in Chicago – and as the earlybird registration was just extended to March 6, you have a few more days to save up to $400 on registration fees.

After several years on the organizing committee, and as Chair of ABA TECHSHOW 2007, it could easily be claimed that I am a tad biased about this conference. I won’t deny that – but I think this conference speaks for itself.

ABA TECHSHOW, now in its 23rd year, is the world’s premier legal technology CLE conference and expo. The conference offers more than . . . [more]

The Bank of Canada has just announced it has dropped its target for the overnight rate by 50 basis points to 0.5%. You may recall back in December that we started on this descent into unprecedented lows known as the “race to zero”. The goal is to help the Canadian economy recover from the current recession. According to Bank of Canada’s news release: . . . [more]