I’d like to thank Dominic Jaar for firing up this new screencast on tracking new decisions on CanLII using RSS. The website Dominic uses is called Feedity. A great tool BTW…

I wrote a post back in 1996 on how to scrape cases using Feedtier, the web-predecessor to Feedity. Same software, same technique. But this time you get a great full size movie on how to do it!

Nice work Dominic! . . . [more]

James Hogarth has provided a summary, “How to buy a standard in 10 days“, of the process by which Microsoft’s Open Office XML was approved as an ISO standard (subject to an appeal, as Groklaw notes.) I wonder how many lawyers were involved. . . . [more]

The case of Q. (P.) c. L. (A.), Quebec Superior Court, concerns a claim by a father for damages against his former wife and the mother of his children, based on the fact that she made unfounded allegations of improper sexual touching of their two young daughters against him. The catchlines in 52 C.C.L.T. (3d), 242, say in part, “… Mother’s vindictive behaviour and untimely fashion in which she launched infernal machine against father constituted civil faults for which she was liable”. I cannot find the phrase which was translated into “infernal ma-chine” in the reasons for judgment, though . . . [more]

Times Online has a nice little piece from an interview of Rosemary Martin, the new chief executive of The Practical Law Company, in which Ms Martin argues that law firms will need to change the way they do business, and in particular move away from charging by the hour.

“The clients have been supine,” Martin says crisply. That may be about to change if she has her way. “For the past 25 years lawyers have largely resisted changes. My goal is not to make lawyers poorer but I do want to make law firms more productive and effective.” If

The US SEC website finally has RSS feeds. There’s one for the latest filings received and processed, and one for press releases issued by the SEC.

Thanks to Dealbreaker for noticing. . . . [more]

Scribd is a free service that lets you put your document or image files online, where they are available to the public. Now Scribd is offering to scan your print documents and put those online — for free. You mail in your documents, wait some weeks, and then enjoy your words in pixels. Even accounting for the fact that Scribd is in complete charge of the project and so can move as slowly and as selectively as it wishes, this is a remarkable offer.

…and it got me wondering: would this be a good way to put public domain case . . . [more]

Earlier this week, the President of the Treasury Board tabled the 2008-09 Reports on Plans and Priorities in the House of Commons on behalf of 93 federal departments and agencies.

The 2008-09 Reports on Plans and Priorities (RPPs) are departmental expenditure plans that elaborate on the information contained in the 2008-09 Main Estimates tabled on February 28, 2008.

These RPPs set out departmental priorities, provide performance measurement indicators, and explain a department’s expected results.

The 2008-2009 RPP for the Supreme Court of Canada is included in the list.

One of the big priorities is “court modernization” which includes:

• modernization of

After enjoying years of solid success thanks to its PDF technology, one of the technologies warmly embraced by lawyers, and what must be the number two piece of software in the world, Photoshop, Adobe has begun to move. Google builds a castle in the clouds out of plain boards and fittings, a trifle ramshackle-seeming but for that reason also unthreatening: hey, this is how you’d do it, if you could, honest, simple — not like that pseudo slick Disneyesque Microsoft machine.

Meanwhile, Adobe, having acquired Macromedia and its all-important Flash, has begun to construct its own set of computing in . . . [more]

All is well at the Faculty of Information Studies at the University of Toronto. I was a guest lecturer at the FIS 2133 Law Librarianship and Legal Literature course taught by colleague John Papadopoulos.

I was very impressed at the class’s willingness to discuss and debate issues surrounding knowledge management and the role that librarians can play, particular in a law firm environment.

We discussed such things as: (i) document management, information management, records management and knowledge management and whether and how they were different; (iii) the role – good and bad – that technology plays in knowledge-sharing and . . . [more]

I’m on a two-week trip to Cornell Law Library courtesy of the New England Law Library Consortium (NELLCO). I’m here to check out how they do their work, to learn a little about US law and collections, and to smuggle the ideas back across the border. Just to prove that I’m actually here, and not pulling your collective leg, here are a few snaps:

That’s the law school in the background. Here’s a better shot of the main building, Myron Taylor Hall:

and here’s one of a student at work in the Gould Reading Room:

I’ve got a . . . [more]

Legal blog watch notes the continued use of footnotes in blogs by *some* lawyers.

And guess what? We have the footnote blog plugin enabled here on Slaw! Now, it’s mainly used by the senior members (and by senior, I mean those members way more knowledgeable, experienced, pleasant & nicer looking than myself. [Enough sucking up? – nah, this is Simon & Simon we’re talking about here. They’re nice guys! ] But this could have been footnoted, couldn’t it? oh, but I digress… ).

Ok, Fess up!! Who actually uses that footnote feature! We are in so much trouble… . . . [more]

Back in the 70s, then Professor ((pre Dean and pre President)) Harry Arthurs touted Osgoode Hall as the best law school in the Commonwealth.

I’ve just read an extraordinary newsletter from Oxford which lists such an extraordinary range of academic, comparative and pro-bono activities that I wonder whether any other law school could match it.

Whether this is due to the new (Canadian) Dean of the Faculty Timothy Endicott (whom we have saluted before) or just that for the first time, the whole seems larger than its collegiate parts, but page after page manifests intellectual energy and engagement.

And . . . [more]