During the past 50-odd years, the North American legal profession has been notable for a ready supply of labour. The post-war population boom and increased access to post-secondary education, combined with the enduring lure of a legal career, ensured that there would always be a deep pool of lawyers into which firms could dip for talent.

When a buyer’s market lasts that long, the buyers’ advantages become locked into the prevailing culture of the marketplace. Much of what we take for granted in modern law firms — hourly billable targets, ever-increasing workloads, lengthening partnership tracks, client hoarding by partners, and . . . [more]

A miscellaneous grab-bag, today, which happens to be both the first of October and the first Monday of October, 2007.

As I type this, it has the potential to be today’s first Slaw.ca post. I’ll be optimistic and type that it is today’s first Slaw post. (I haven’t checked comments but there also aren’t any, yet, in my feed.)

Over on the to-be-bookmarked LLRX.COM, Sabrina I. Pacifici has uploaded Competitive Intelligence – A Selective Resource Guide which is described (on my feed) as a 

revised and updated pathfinder focuses on leveraging selected reliable, focused, free and low cost sites

A nice story on the BBC website today about the digitization & online publication of more than 100,000 19th century books by the British Library.

Not that the digitization of paper is new to anyone here at Slaw, but the girth of the project is certainly worth noting:

“At full production approximately 50,000 pages per working day will be scanned.”

and:

“Approximately 30 terabytes of storage will be required to accommodate the project’s output.

The first 25 million pages are expected to take two years to complete. Texts which are hard to get hold of will particularly benefit from the

Eric Bakovic of the always interesting Language Log posted a slideshow today, with seven pics of a ruler he saw in France that set out SMS abbreviations. The graphic below shows you the sort of thing I mean. (Click on it to go to his slideshow.)

My favourite is a+ — à plus tard — because I’ve convinced myself that the “+” that comes afterwards is “tard”.

Are any of these abbreviations used in Quebec? . . . [more]

In the past week a somewhat disturbing story has been making headlines about access to information in Canada or rather, the lack thereof. An initiative of the Canadian Newspaper Association (CNA) the CNA Freedom of Information Audit 2007 shows “…persistent delays and misunderstandings in the very system that is designed to guarantee the public’s right to information about government decisions.”

For those of you who attended the CALL/ACBD conference in Ottawa last May you may remember a session entitled Are we becoming a secret society? Press Bans, Privacy and Access to Information. For those of you who . . . [more]

gadget – Used as an indefinite or general name for: a comparatively small fitting, contrivance, or piece of mechanism / An accessory or adjunct; a knick-knack or gewgaw

[Origin obscure. Not found in print before 1886.]

But now found online at Boing Boing Gadgets, a recent child of Jackhammer Jill’s venerable Boing Boing. Sporting its own mascot — Jack Hammer? — it brings to our attention the necessary, useless, ornamental, latest, nifty, silly, ingenious…gewgaws and kickshaws and -aws of all kinds.

Today, for instance, there were: three-wheeled cars, mini-robots, new EV-DO interfaces from Novatel, and a long-slot executive toaster. . . . [more]

For those of you that use LinkedIn, you can now add your photo to your profile.

. . . [more]

La Fédération des associations de juristes d’expression française de common law inc. (FAJEFCL) est le regroupement des associations régionales, provinciales ou territoriales de juristes d’expression française engagée à promouvoir et à défendre les droits linguistiques des communautés francophones et acadiennes, notamment en favorisant l’accès à la justice en français partout au Canada.

Particulièrement utiles, peut-être, sont les liens à de divers groupes et ressources francophones. Par exemple, içi on trouve les liens à Centre de traduction et de documentation juridiques, Centre de traduction et de terminologie juridiques, Le Programme national de l’administration de la justice dans les . . . [more]

“Don’t be evil,” is Google’s motto, or one of them at least. But even were that the central pillar supporting the nine-year-old giant, Siva Vaidhyanathan, a Professor at the University of Virginia, would still be worried, worried enough to write a book called The Googlization of Everything: How One Company is Disrupting Culture, Commerce and Community — and Why We Should Worry. Well, to be writing a book called “The G of E etc.”: he’s constructed a blog of that very same name that will document and invite comment on his work as it proceeds. He puts it this . . . [more]

Hello Folks

I just wanted to let everyone know about an interesting phenomenon
occurring on WestlaweCarswell over the past couple of days.

In preparing our “Researching an Essay” session for law students,
my colleague Cathy and I noticed yesterday that when using
the ICLL interface, there is some trouble with the Table of Subject Headings.

This Table actually exists on one of Westlaw’s outside webpages
(not password protected.)
http://www.westlawecarswell.com/icll/index.asp

Yesterday, when I tried to search this Table of Subject Headings
page or to click on any of the alphabet along the top of the page,
I was given a “Page . . . [more]

. . . [more]

This has been making the Internet rounds: Microsoft may be investing $300-$500 million in Facebook. In exchange for the money, it would receive up to a five percent stake in the popular social networking site.

Also, according to the LinkedIn blog, LinkedIn members will soon be able to add a photo to their profile. . . . [more]