Canada’s online legal magazine.

Gathering in Support of the Defenders of the Rule of Law

The notice below went out to lawyers in Ontario and their staff; a similar event took place Sunday in Ottawa.


Show your support for the rule of law

In response to the situation in Pakistan, the Law Society of Upper Canada and the Ontario Bar Association invite you to attend a . . . [more]

Posted in: Substantive Law, Substantive Law: Foreign Law

One Laptop Per Child: Give One Get One Extended to December 31st

Previously reported here on Slaw, the One Laptop Per Child program’s Give One Get One promotion has now been extended to December 31st. So, you now have until the end of the year to order yours if you are in Canada or the U.S.!

Thanks to Chris Brogan for the tip and the additional discussion of the program. . . . [more]

Posted in: Technology

Indian Bar Opposes Foreign Lawyers

The Bar Council of India and the state bar councils have together urged the central government not to alter laws to permit the entry of foreign law firms into the practice of law in India. News.IndLaw.com has the story. In this they’re backed up by the British Indian Lawyers Association, which represents Indian lawyers practising in the United Kingdom and which argues that such a change should be reciprocal, happening only when the U.K. allows Indian firms in. The Economic Times has that aspect of the story. The Times adds it’s voice to the controversy in “India — the . . . [more]

Posted in: Practice of Law

Another Browser-Based Word Processor

We’ve covered a couple of different browser-based tools in the past here, including Zoho, ThinkFree, Buzzword, and Adobe Share. A new competitor, Live Documents, has now entered the fray.

If you think the name sounds suspiciously similar to what Microsoft calls all their products, well, there’s a reason for that. The program is built to integrate closely with Microsoft Office. The interface of its web application is very similar to that of Office, but this online suite goes further. It integrates into your desktop copy of Office (by installing its own toolbar) and allows you to share and collaborate . . . [more]

Posted in: Technology

Nec Piscatorm Piscis Amare Potest

Maybe so, but another fish sometimes learns. 

Sometimes one doesn’t end up where one intended, but once one is there, it’s worth visiting.

Visit http://www.righthandpointing.com

(credit/property: http://www.righthandpointing.com/theologyreels.jpg)

or its sub-site

http://www.righthandpointing.com/latin/ for a useful collection of Latin proverbs with commentary.

Non sine causa sed sine fine laudatus? 

Maybe. But if so, who cares?

—————-

Notes:

1. The device in the picture (borrowed from the righthandpoint.com site) – a reel-to-reel tape recorder – is, for those too young to remember, an archaic precursor of the MP3 player and the IPod.

2. The English translations of the quotations is:

The fish . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Information: Information Management, Miscellaneous

From Snails in Bottles to Nails in Law Library Canteens

Keen readers of the Daily Mirror ((No not that Daily Mirror – the one from Colombo ))will have smiled at the following story:

Nail-biting lunch

By S. S. Selvanayagam

A senior lawyer claimed that he underwent a traumatic experience at the Colombo Law Library canteen while he was having his lunch.

He ordered a plate of rice with vegetables and sat down at a table close to the main counter of the canteen. A little later one of the waiters brought him a plate of rice with vegetables.

As he was partaking of the food, to his astonishment and

. . . [more]
Posted in: Legal Information, Miscellaneous

A Chief Justice for the Charter

The announcement of the death of Chief Justice Antonio Lamer is a significant passage. I can’t think of a single Supreme Court Justice who has had a more profound influence on the criminal law ((Arguably G. Arthur Martin, JA of the Ontario Court of Appeal may have had a more sustained impact on the day to day conduct of the criminal trial)).

Here are the tributes from the Prime Minister ((I can’t find a tribute from the current Chief Justice)), the Minister of Justice, the Globe, the Star, the CBC, the National Post.

Although Lamer . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous, Practice of Law, Substantive Law

Proposed Legislation

Everybody has heard of the proposed amendments to the Criminal Code and Youth Criminal Justice Act that have recently been introduced, but what of the other new bills before Parliament. I decided to take a look and see what lesser known but nonetheless, interesting pieces of legislation are in the works.

The first is Bill C-5: An Act respecting civil liability and compensation for damage in case of a nuclear incident. Which specifies that in the event of a nuclear accident the operators of said plant can be held liable up to 650 million dollars. Summary. (As a sidebar, $650 . . . [more]

Posted in: Miscellaneous

NE2007: Libraries Without Borders – Presentations and Audio Available

I have been remiss in pointing out that our big law librarians’ northeast regional conference “NE2007” a.k.a. Libraries Without Borders held in Toronto last month has PowerPoint and audio files available from the Proceedings page on the website.

The University of Toronto has kindly been hosting this for us. We hope to keep the site up indefinitely; the audio recording was kindly paid for with a grant from the AALL/BNA Continuing Education Grants Program and from LLAGNY, the Law Library Association of Greater New York. A copy of the audio will also be made available from the member section of . . . [more]

Posted in: Education & Training: CLE/PD

Tim Bray on Communication

Tim Bray over at Ongoing does some light speculation about how we should understand the accelerating growth in ways we communicate with each other. He starts with the timeline you see to your left and then goes on to play with ways of comparing and charting the means at our disposal today, wondering where the holes in the map might be that could reveal the spaces for new forms.

Tim, who happens to be Canadian, is director of web technologies at Sun Microsystems and has a background in search technologies. He should do more speculating in public about such things. . . . [more]

Posted in: Technology

Very Short Introductions

Oxford University Press has a line of small books — each somewhere around 150 pages in length — known collectively as “Very Short Introductions” and, well, introducing you to 173 subjects, such as Engels, Atheism, Feminism, American Political Parties and Elections. (The list is so eclectic that it can’t really generate a representative sample.)

These are serious books — hardly Wittgenstein for Dolts — typically written by noted academics or other experts. They are also books that have little to do with Slaw’s usual beat, I admit. At a stretch I could point out . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Information: Publishing, Miscellaneous

Dumpr.net Is One Cool Tool

I came across a great web-tool this morning via Stephen Abram called Dumpr. You can pick one of several free effects, upload your existing images, and then Dumpr creates a new composite image. For anyone in a rush to put together a graphic for a blog or a newsletter, this could be very helpful.

I’ve mangled my company logo for a couple of examples below:

. . . [more]

Posted in: Technology

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This project has been made possible in part by the Government of Canada | Ce projet a été rendu possible en partie grâce au gouvernement du Canada