LexisNexis has just published the first two volumes of a major encyclopedia of Quebec and Canadian law in French – the Juris Classeur Quebec. Modeled on the celebrated series of encyclopedias that have for 100 years set the standard for legal publishing in France, this “made in Quebec” version of the classic French encyclopedia is expected to quickly establish itself as an essential and authoritative element of the practice of law in Canada.

The Juris Classeur is in fact a series of five separate multi-volume encyclopedias known as “collections”, each one dealing with one of the grand subjects of the . . . [more]

Spurred by Doug Cornelius’s post on the Lexisweb beta, I decided to give the new kid a try.

I created a couple of scenarios and compared results in Lexisweb (LW) against CanLII (CL) and Google (G). Of course, I expected a certain variability in the results. CanLII has a deliberately limited scope, and Google extremely large. I expected LW to come in somewhere in the middle, as according to the user’s guide, there is deliberate selection of sources to be indexed. I’m guessing that otherwise, the process is automated, making Lexisweb roughly like MOSS or other enterprise search products.

The . . . [more]

As everyone gears up for Barack Obama’s inauguration tomorrow, other work is being done behind the scenes for George W. Bush’s step into the history books. That includes the creation of a George W. Bush Presidential Library. According to Wikipedia, construction could cost between $200 and $500 million, and it will be located at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Texas. The George W. Bush Presidential Library will be part of the larger George W. Bush Presidential Center, which will also house a museum, policy institute and foundation.

According to the washingtonpost.com:

The presidential center building is being

The medical and law students at UofT collaborated recently to hold the First Annual Interprofessional Health Law Conference.

The health sector is already a significant portion of the governmental budget, comprises a major element of today’s economy, and is relatively recession proof. Legal issues in this growing area will inevitably be part of the portfolio for the lawyer of tomorrow.

The keynote speakers for the event were Dr. Sarita Verma, Deputy Dean of Graduate Postgraduate education at UofT Medicine, and Elyse Sunshine of the Health Law group at Gardiner Roberts.

Dr. Verta explained the role that various stakeholders . . . [more]

Here’s the week’s update on what’s been happening in the comments and on the website, for those who follow us by RSS.

The winner in the comments sweepstakes was Connie Crosby’s LinkedIn Becoming More Powerful for Legal Industry Use, with 8 comments.

Ted Tjaden was a close runner up with the unlikely Jactitation of Marriage – The Unnecessary Legal Phrase of the Day, which garnered 6 comments, if you can believe it.

On the website itself we’ve put The Cromwell Pages back in the box: the links are gone from the front page but you can still read . . . [more]

LexUM has released a digital, annotated version of the Quebec Civil Code. With this release the Code for the first time obtains a hyperlinked table of contents, which even the version on the LexUM supported CanLII lacks. But the new LexUM version offers much more: each section is seeded with caselaw annotations extracted from CanLII and may be further annotated by viewers; there’s an “[add]” button at the bottom of the screen that in good AJAX fashion opens out a form to receive the relevant data about a case. As well there’s an “[annotate]” button allowing the viewer to . . . [more]

British novelist, playwright and ex-laywer John Mortimer died today. He was 85.

He was perhaps best known, and loved worldwide, as the inventor of the fictional character Rumpole of the Bailey whose legal philosophy was summed up in that magnificently witty phrase: “Crime doesn’t pay, but it’s a living.”

According to Amazon.ca:

“Before there was Quincy and The Practice, there was Rumpole. Rumpole of the Bailey is, quite simply, one of the finest television series, and it has served as a model for all law dramas that followed it. Edgy and satirical, Rumpole is based on John Mortimer’s

It’s barely possible that if someone had told me when I was young that you could become an inventor as an alternative to becoming a “doctor, lawyer, teacher etc. etc.,” I would have gone for that as a career. I’ve always enjoyed dreaming up and building devices that do things that don’t get done otherwise or efficiently. Mind you, these contraptions — concatenations of bits and bobs and glue — more often than not turn into Heath Robinson (“I really have a secret satisfaction in being considered rather mad.”) or Rube Goldberg machines. Still, there’s something deeply satisfying to me . . . [more]

Open access is an initiative that seeks to find ways of making the journal literature published online freely available to readers. It is having the effect of not only taking us a step closer to the ideal of universal access to the knowledge needed to advance knowledge, but it is also altering, if every so slightly, the traditional means by which reputations are established and maintained within academic life.

About twenty percent of the research literature published today ends up open access, whether through authors archiving their published work in their library’s open access repository (with the publishers’ permission) or . . . [more]

The Woodruff Library at Morehouse College in Atlanta has just made their collection of M.L.K. papers, books and other items available to the public. Via the website you can find the archival descriptions and other study aides. They purchased the collection in 2006 with the help of the Atlanta Mayor just before it was to go to auction, a coup for the city and an end to the controversy surrounding the estate.

From the website:

The Morehouse King Collection includes approximately 1,000 books from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s personal library with his handwritten notes throughout. In addition, there

IT World Canada has an interesting article today by Grant Gross. Last week, there was buzz about how the National Archives is concerned that the volume of e-mail may overload its servers. Now we hear that 5 million e-mails concerning the invasion of Iraq and Hurricane Katrina have disappeared.

We’re working on strategies at my office to ensure that business related e-mail gets migrated into appropriate repositories. It’ll be interesting to see over the coming months how successful we’ve been in convincing people to move e-mail into those shared repositories, and out of pst folders or other silos.

Outlook is . . . [more]

LegalTech New York (this year February 2 to 4 at the NY Hilton) want the blogosphere to come to the party.

They’ve announced complimentary passes to bloggers, with front-row mains power access seating for bloggers in each room. On the second day, following ABA TechShow‘s Bloggers’ Ball model, Legal Tech has a bloggers’ breakfast from 9 to 10.

[I can’t resist commenting on how great the design is of the ABA page in comparison with the ALM LegalTech, though as a former TechShow chair, I might well be biased.]

LegalTech has always enjoyed strong exhibit space and it should . . . [more]