The ubiquitous Karlheinz Schreiber has lost his latest round of legal whack-a-mole. This morning, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected his application for leave to appeal the most recent court decision allowing his extradition to Germany.

Germany initially requested Mr. Schreiber’s extradition on August 27, 1999. Since then, he has sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada no fewer than five times, and obtained it once (not counting his earlier trip to the SCC in 1998, challenging Canadian assistance to a Swiss investigation). He managed to delay the first court decision on the merits of his extradition . . . [more]

There was an article in a recent number of the Law Times on a conference at Ryerson on legal education. The focus seemed to be on whether law schools should stick with their current model of education, i.e., teaching students “how to think”, not what they need to know to be lawyers—what I call the “Harry Arthurs” model. This attitude was juxtaposed with “clinical” legal education.

It seems to me that this is a false dichotomy and that there is an alternative—whether it’s called a “middle way” or not. One such alternative would be to require students to undertake . . . [more]

Shortcuts, those little things that make our tech-life easier, have been making headlines this week.

Here at Slaw, Dan Pinnington posted about his excellent article on essential technology skills. David Canton followed up with more shortcuts and some pet peeves that came to mind. Technolawyer offered up some iPhone shortcuts (Blackberry users can look here) and the Legal Writing Prof Blog mentiond Dan’s tips. My colleagues in the Field Law library learned and shared some useful shortcuts for our Microsoft Access database: Contrl ‘ (moves to the line above) and Control ; (pastes todays date).

I find . . . [more]

The BBC is currently offering its program, “The Draftsman’s Contract,” online. It’s an examination in two parts of “the people who actually write our country’s legislation…” The first part, 15 minutes in length, is available now and for the next 6 days — after which it disappears, I suppose. The second part will be broadcast on December 17 at 20:45, and will presumably be similarly available for a number of days afterwards as streaming audio.

The BBC uses its own iPlayer format, which contains DRM restrictions, and has been the object of much criticism. . . . [more]

I’m not enough of a sucker for punishment that I’ve ever actually read a credit card application – a terrible thing for a lawyer to admit, I know. The pages of dense text full of words I’m not likely to really comprehend just discourage me. So I just look at the annual fee and rewards offered and go from there.

But it looks like that may change. The government of Canada has teamed up with Mastercard to produce a credit card agreement in plain English. It looks quite simple, readable and informative – like it’s goal is to inform rather . . . [more]

If you’re ever in danger of thinking that you’re a gadget freak who’s gone a phone too far, console and correct yourself by looking closely at Stephen Fry. This renaissance eccentric, one of my faves, is so deeply into the tech of it all that you’ll wonder how he finds any time at all for his acting, writing and film-making. His latest blog post, Gee, One Bold Storm coming up…, is a long, long lovely ramble about the stuff he’s taken with him to New York (it’s his desk you see above), where he is for the next few . . . [more]

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Amnesty International Canada is inviting people to get involved by participating in Write-A-Thon events taking across in hundreds of locations across the country.

More background:

• The 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Worth Celebrating! (Canadian Human Rights Commission)
• Amnesty International Celebrates 60 years of Universal Human Rights Protection

There are such things — that is, lawyers who don’t use BlackBerrys but, rather, Apple’s iPhone. As proof of this I offer iPhone J.D., a blog by such a lawyer, located in New Orleans. For most of you, this site will be a curiosity, but for some (?) it will help you find those apps that make your practising life easier and more efficient.

Since I started using Macs some years ago now, I’ve watched Apple grow and begin to challenge PCs in various environments — I’d hazard that at least 1/3 of laptops in a law school classroom . . . [more]

Dan’s 10 essential technology skills and practices contains some good tips (although I must admit I’m not good with keyboard shortcuts – I think more graphically and tend to use the mouse).

I have a couple more to add.

When creating Word documents don’t use the “enter” key to create spaces between paragraphs. The right way is to use the paragraph settings to set the “before and after” spacing. Otherwise, you can’t make efficient use of things like paragraph numbering or bullets. And by using the “before and after” setting, you can often easily adjust the length of a document . . . [more]

♬ Singing power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people
Power to the people, right on.. ♬

Written and recorded by John Lennon.

The Toronto Star reported today on how Premier Dalton McGuinty backed down on a proposed regulation that would have prohibited teen drivers 16-19 years old with a G2 licence from having more than one other teen passenger in their vehicle in Ontario.

“Transportation Minister Jim Bradley said the 150,000 people who had joined a Facebook protest against the teen driving restrictions clearly had an impact on the government’s thinking, as did people . . . [more]

Technology has become an essential part of practising law and working in a law office (or any office for that matter). My TechTips column from the Summer 2008 issue of LAWPRO Magazine summarizes what I think are the 10 essential technology skills and practices that every lawyer and law office staff person should be familiar with.

Do you know what Alt+Tab does? How about a right-click on your mouse? Do you know how to use Cut, Copy and Paste? How about Paste Special. The text format shortcuts will save you tons of time next time you have to type up . . . [more]

This morning the Bank of Canada announced the reduction of its overnight rate by .75, lower than even predicted by economists. The overnight rate now stands at 1.5 %, a level not seen since 1958. And with it, acknowledgement that Canada is “now entering a recession.” . . . [more]