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]

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]

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]

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

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

One of the things that surprised me when I started working with law firms is that most firms and most tech people ask one question repeatedly that seems to stifle innovation and the development of new concepts and ideas. When presented with something new, most ask: “which other law firm is doing this?’ While this makes some sense and provides a way of weeding out wacky ideas with no traction, it also limits innovation and creativity. What about ideas emanating from other professional service firms? Other service firms? From industry in general?

Take for example the semantic web:

• “…

The Civil Justice Reform Project in Ontario, chaired by Coulter Osborne issued a Summary of Findings and Recommendations today. The Report is posted on the Attorney General’s website, available in both French and English. This Summary is a seminal report which will be studied closely across the country. Mr. Osborne is expected to deliver his full report later this year. . . . [more]