Two cases that show that one can’t necessarily rely on judges for judgement.

The first is the wonderful tale of how a judge who was spurned for a post-retirement judge took it out on the firm he had hoped to join. Sir Peter Smith will now be remembered as much for this case ((Howell & Ors v Lees Millais & Ors [2007] EWCA Civ 720 (04 July 2007) )) in which he is censured in the strongest terms by the Court of Appeal as for his Da Vinci Code judgment ((Baigent & Anor v The Random House Group Ltd . . . [more]

Ross Perot is putting his copy of the Magna Carta up for sale. Although it’s not one of the originals from 1215, this 1297 copy is still expected to bring $30 million when auctioned off in December.

Only two of the 17 copies are held outside England — one by Perot and the other, also a 1297 copy, by the people of Australia. This is a great opportunity for Canada to acknowledge this seminal event in its legal heritage by buying the Perot copy. It would take flair and a decent slice of some otherwise grey budget: is the government . . . [more]

I reproduce the text of a major announcement this morning

To: All Canada Law Book Customers
From: Stuart Morrison
Date: September 26, 2007
Re: LexisNexis QuickLaw / Canada Law Book

Canada Law Book’s databases, including the Dominion Law Reports, Canadian Criminal Cases and Labour Arbitration Cases will no longer be available on LexisNexis QuickLaw after the current publishing licence agreement expires on March 31, 2008. To continue to have access to these and the other Canada Law Book databases from April 1, 2008 please register online at www.canadalawbook.ca/databaseregistry.html

Canada Law Book has a long publishing history within the Canadian legal

According to today’s Vancouver Sun and the Globe and Mail Davis & Co has just opened its latest office:

In a cobbled street in Zurich across from a newsstand and conveniently located near a rapid transit line, although most visitors would likely teleport in rather than take transit.

Up the slate-looking steps, the door opens onto a large lobby with a large round reception desk and the requisite office ferns. A notecard on the desk welcomes the visitor: “Davis LLP is an international full-service law firm”.

The lawyers involved include Dani Lemon, colleagues Sarah Dale-Harris, known as BarristerSolicitor Underwood . . . [more]

Ontario Law Schools are being introduced to EASElaw, a Career Services software product of eCampusRecruiter.ca. It looks like in addition to EASElaw there is EASEmba (is EASEmd on the horizon?). EASE stands for Electronic Applications for Students and Employers.

The product is being pitched to current law students as an information management tool; just this week Queen’s Law launched EASElaw (the Q’s log in screen is here: nice crest) in order to bring some order to the On Campus Interview (OCI) process.

Students have been asked to register with EASElaw in order to access their customized schedule of . . . [more]

About a month ago, Agnes Caruso posted some thoughts about potential uses of facebook at work. A few days ago, I came across a story with another novel use: public health. The Globe and Mail reported that Toronto Public Health officials used Facebook to locate a woman who had been bitten by a rabid bat. Apparently the phone book, the police, and the media had failed. Even Google, whose “mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” couldn’t find her. But Facebook came through.

In an amusing twist, the article notes: “Employees of the . . . [more]

This morning, Simon complained about the NY Times having changed the Freakonomics blog feed to send only excerpts to your RSS reader. I was irked by that myself a few weeks ago, but have since solved the problem.

The solution is available here. You can simply enter the address of the partial feed, and it will pump out a url for a full feed of the same blog. Just cut and paste the new feed into your RSS reader. . . . [more]

Regular Slaw readers will recall that whenever we’ve talked about the outsourcing phenomenon, we’ve directed people to an extraordinary blog by our friend Ron Friedmann in DC.

Today Integreon, the global BPO operation, has announced Ron’s appointment as Senior V-P.

Integreon is already asking North American law students whether they want to work abroad as an intern.

Offshore internships for US, South American, European and Chinese law school and business school graduates

The Integreon Offshore Internship provides exposure for recent graduates of US, South American, European and Chinese law schools and business schools to business intelligence, research and

It started with the new laptop – the one with the network analyst who started telling me every time I lost my internet connection. I knew I had an issue with “dropped connections” but I did my best to ignore the issue. Once I started to count the number of pop-ups from the network analyst, however, it became clear it was time for action.

The first few calls to tech support were not helpful. They assured me that, at the moment we were speaking, I had a good connection – so it became a battle to see if I could . . . [more]

Freakonomics Blog (which I read less and less now that the RSS feed serves up only excerpts, thanks to the NY Times) points me to a paper accepted for publication in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Legal Education. Douglas Rush and Hisako Matsuo examine ((

Does Law School Curriculum Affect Bar Examination Passage? An Empirical Analysis of the Factors Which Were Related to Bar Examination Passage between 2001 and 2006 at a Midwestern Law School , full paper available in PDF

))whether success or failure on the Missouri bar exam is correlated to the courses taken by a . . . [more]

The newswires have just reported that the Library of Congress has awarded ATS Corporation a $14 Million contract to enhance the Global Legal Information Network.

Hebrew and Chinese content is coming: . . . [more]

The folks at William S. Hein have launched a new blog talking about their popular web-based service HeinOnline. The blog is called, appropriately enough, HeinOnline Weblog, and can be found at http://heinonline.blogspot.com/.

Hein have been very good at sending out updates to customers via email; however, for new subscribers or non-subscribers, there is no access to previous messages. Now they seem to be posting these notes to this blog for everyone, which will be helpful. Also, subscribers won’t have to save up past messages. . . . [more]