The benefits that knowledge management can deliver to a law firm are well documented. They include reducing wasteful duplication, increasing the firm’s intellectual capital, enhancing the firm’s ability to anticipate and meet client needs, improving the firm’s recruitment and retention arsenal, and more besides. Firms that get KM right, like Morrison & Foerster, have every reason to boast about their success.

But the obstacles to successfully implementing a KM program in law firms are equally well-known. They include:

• Hoarding: lawyers who believe their livelihoods depend on the knowledge tucked away in their files, both print and neural, are

The colour of this post changed given yesterday’s introduction of Bill 61 but I had completed some research on this prior to yesterday and I would be willing to wager that I put more thought into this post than the BGH’s ((Big
Giant Heads)) put into Bill C-61 so I’m going go ahead anyhow.

In May, the Canadian Association of Police Boards released a report which stated that Cybercrime is a close second to Drug Trafficking as the #1 crime committed in Canada. A Report on CyberCrime in Canada. I don’t want to get bogged down in the report but . . . [more]

Sometimes, though perhaps not on Friday, you want to be elsewhere — or elsehow. Come to think of it, wandering and mood-altering were probably among the very first things that people took up way back at the beginning. (A moment of respectful silence for travel and legal drugs.) Now the internet wants to help you escape the moment and the momentary you. There are lots of ways it can do this, and I’m sure you’ve probably discovered most of them. A late entry in the field is Moodstream, by Getty Images, the folks who make available some 70,000,000 still . . . [more]

The BBC is reporting that late Thursday night a convoy of lawyers left the eastern Pakistan city of Lahore to converge on the capital Islamabad to demand the reinstatement of judges who were removed last November. The government is undecided as to how to reinstate the judges, or even if they should. The lawyers are planning a peaceful sit-in after their 270 km motorized trip through various towns along the way to Islamabad.

According to the BBC report:

Organisers said the struggle of the lawyers had now reached a “decisive phase”. The lawyers have been joined by some civil

Today’s The Daily from Statistics Canada reveals new 2007 data from the Canadian Internet Use Survey. Interesting findings include:

• Digital divides in Internet use persist, specifically on the basis of income, education and age.
• High-speed connections are becoming far more popular.
• More Canadians are participating in blogging, chatting and downloading.
• Internet use rates are highest in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario.

This was the first time the survey included Canadians aged 16 and 17. . . . [more]

It has now been posted on the Canadian Parliament website:

Bill C-61 – First Reading

Hat tip to John Sadler, Chair of the Copyright Committee of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries / Association canadienne des bibliothèques de droit who shared the link via the CALL listserv. . . . [more]

Minister Jim Prentice is about to table the government’s new copyright law, Bill 61. Although the text is not available at this time — 12.11 p.m. — it should be online shortly, once Parliament deals with a few other matters.

The press ban is lifted, however, and you can read what the Globe and Mail and the CBC have to say about the proposed legislation.

If someone could post the link to the bill as a comment to this post, that would be great. . . . [more]

From cbcnews.ca (June 12, 2008):

The federal government has introduced legislation to make it easier to prosecute people who download copyrighted material from the internet.

Industry Minister Jim Prentice tabled amendments to the Copyright Law in the House of Commons Thursday. Individuals caught downloading copyrighted files would be fined $500 under the proposed amendments. The current copyright law — intended to catch commercial cheaters — carries a maximum fine of $20,000 for infringements.

The bill has been in limbo since the Conservatives first put it on the Commons order paper in December. Prentice was caught between business interests who wanted

After having solicited suggestions from all and sundry, the U.K. Law Commission has chosen seven projects to work on. According to an article in today’s Times Online these include marriage contracts and separation agreements (referred to by that irritating, to me, Americanism “nups”) the law on intestacy, consumer rights of redress, laws on residential care, treason and level crossings.

Only in Britain could an institution seriously combine interests in treason and level crossings.

The Law Commission’s own Tenth Programme of Law Reform is available as a PDF.

It interests me that the Commission has explicitly chosen to avoid issues such . . . [more]

Even though I’ve got an iPod Touch, I’m still casting an acquistive eye in the direction of the iPhone, now that it’s coming to Canada. (…at usage rates that will doubtless be some multiple of the U.S. rate of about $70 for voice and data, but that’s another story…) But, not being a BlackBerry person and not having to be in constant touch with a firm wherever I am, I’m unclear about the various modalities of wireless communication now literally floating around. The new version of the iPhone boasts that it’s 3G, of course, and so I was really glad . . . [more]

Late-breaking news:

OTTAWA, June 11, 2008 — The Honourable Jim Prentice, Minister of Industry, and the Honourable Josée Verner, Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages, and Minister for La Francophonie, will deliver brief statements and answer media inquiries shortly after the tabling of a bill to amend the Copyright Act. Members of the media will also be able to attend a technical briefing and lock-up prior to the tabling of the bill to amend the Copyright Act.

Date: Thursday, June 12, 2008

Industry Canada News

It looks as if the media lockup will be over by . . . [more]

Prime Minister Stephen Harper presented a formal apology today on behalf of the Canadian government for the damage done to generations of aboriginal Canadians who went through Indian residential schools.

The apology was read to a packed House of Commons in which many aboriginal leaders had been invited to sit. The apology ceremony was broadcast live on TV, radio, and the Internet.

From the 19th century until very recently, in total, about 150,000 aboriginal, Inuit and Métis children were removed from their communities and forced to attend remote boarding schools run by Christian congregations under government contract. Countless children were . . . [more]