Sometimes — or more often — it’s hard to let go of that gravitas thing that stops you from floating off into complete and perfect silliness. But it’s a Friday in August, clients are all on holiday, and no one’s looking: it’s time for something completely different. And really quite silly.

Who better to bring you this than Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy, Vampire Slayer? Now he’s back and he’s bad! Hell, he’s Dr. Horrible. Thanks to the TV writers’ strike, Whedon was prompted to write a three part movie series for the internet. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is the . . . [more]

The Center for Constitutional Rights has been litigating since 2004 in an attempt to “hold accountable the high level [U.S.] administration officials responsible for sending Maher Arar to be tortured and interrogated in Syria for a year.”

[T]he first ruling, in February 2006, dismissed the case on the grounds that allowing it to proceed would harm national security and foreign relations. CCR appealed the decision, arguing before a three-judge panel in November 2007, but the Court of Appeals issued a 2-1 decision in June 2008 along similar lines

Now the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a rare order . . . [more]

Is there anyone else out there who is tearing their hair out over Ontario’s antediluvian system of providing access to court records?

In the Federal Courts, the Supreme Court of Canada, and (to some extent) the Manitoba courts, one can obtain free, web-based access to case and docket entry information. In British Columbia and Quebec one can also obtain such information via the web, though it is not free.

Meanwhile, in Ontario, we are making do with pencil and paper. No, I’m not joking. For actions commenced after April 25, 2008, so I’m told, searches – by . . . [more]

The Conference Board of Canada’s new report “Bridging the Gaps: How to Transfer Knowledge in Today’s Multigenerational Workplace (July 2008)” is full of ideas on how to transfer and retain knowledge between the generations in corporate settings. After providing an overview of the concept of knowledge transfer (knowledge transfer life cycle, types of knowledge, etc), the report goes on to describe how to select an effective knowledge transfer method and discusses 15 specific methods. Methods discussed include blogs, wikis, instant messaging, mentoring, and storytelling. For each method, the report examines its benefits, common business applications, good practices, and . . . [more]

Georgia has instituted proceedings [PDF] against Russia at the International Court of Justice. The action claims violations by Russia of the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD), alleging, among other things, that Russia:

has practiced, sponsored and supported racial discrimination through attacks against, and mass-expulsion of, ethnic Georgians, as well as other ethnic groups, in the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions of the Republic of Georgia.

Georgia is relying on article 22 of CERD to give the ICJ jurisdiction in this matter:

Any dispute between two or more States Parties with respect

In this, the first of hopefully many columns, I wanted to take a few moments to introduce myself. My name is Gavin Birer and I am the founder and president of the first Canadian offshore legal outsourcing company. I am called to the Bar in Ontario and admitted as an attorney in the Supreme Court of South Africa. My legal experience is as a corporate commercial lawyer, practicing in Bay Street law firms and in-house as a General Counsel.

This month’s column is going introduce you to the offshore legal outsourcing industry (also commonly known as “legal process outsourcing” or . . . [more]

We are all publishers now, but are bloggers journalists? Frankly, I don’t think so, and I don’t pretend to be a journalist (even though I have been writing a weekly newspaper column for several years) – although the issue has been subject to some debate.

Wikipedia defines a journalist as: “a person who practises journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues and people.” – although it defines journalism as “the profession of writing or communicating, formally employed by publications and broadcasters, for the benefit of a particular community of people.”

Bloggers are often treated as . . . [more]

The Department of Canadian Heritage has released my colleague Prof. Pina D’Agostino’s report, “Fair Dealing after CCH.” It is available in HTML online and in downloadable PDF. She warns against ad hoc attempts to fix this aspect of copright law alone, whether through some legislative implementation of the CCH factors or via a borrowing of foreign provisions. Industries can and should work to develop “best practices” concerning fair dealing, which can guide behaviour and, potentially, give industry “advice” to the court in future cases.

[via CultureLibre.ca] . . . [more]

Someone at the Ontario Ministry of Engergy and Infrastructure has been pumping bookmarks up to delicious.com (a service formerly known as del.icio.us) under the username of mei.govonca. They’re up to 314 as of yesterday. Nothing wrong with this, of course: I doubt that anyone is going to glean information that would otherwise be secret from scanning the list of bookmarks, nearly all of which are tagged “stakeholder” in addition to whatever other labels they may have. Still, it feels odd to find a government ministry making use of a service outside of the firewall like this.

It might be . . . [more]

Well Thomson Reuters reported this morning and as is consistent with its competitors’ results, this hasn’t been a happy quarter.

Thomson has had indigestion-expenses from the Reuters acquisition, but even so, the sort of profit margins that management have been expecting over the past decade from legal publishing haven’t been as easy this year. . . . [more]

[Image via Wikipedia] The United Nations is a huge source of legal information, much of which is available in searchable databases. (I’ve not found any single entry point into all of the U.N.’s legal and law-related material.) A number of these sources are marked by the “LEX” in the URLs or titles. To wit:

• ILOLEX
  ILO database on international labour standards. A list of the database contents is available.
• NATLEX
  Another ILO database, this one containing national labour, social security and related human rights legislation. The database offers 65,000 records covering over 190 countries and over 160 territories

I imagine not a few Canadian lawyers might be in China right now, and even if they are ‘on business’, they might be checking in with the office now and then. If this describes you, then take a look at his note from GigaOm, which surveys some of the security risks posed by the unique reality of a regulated internet. . . . [more]