I see that SLAW contributor David Cheifetz has an interesting article in the most recent edition (2007, 33 Ad.v Q. at 46) of The Advocates’ Quarterly called “For Whom The Bell Tolled: An Examination Of Some Consequences Of HSBC Securities v. Davies, Ward & Beck And The Repeal of The Ontario Negligence Act, s. 8.” Looks interesting. Now if only Canada Law Book would create a digital version of that journal (and of the Canadian Business Law Journal), I wouldn’t need to walk down to our library and hunt for the print copy (it wasn’t on the shelf . . . [more]

I am currently struggling with a challenge (but it is a good one).

The challenge is in having to combine Knowledge Management duties with Library Services duties in a law firm setting. In many (if not most) firms, the positions are split and separate. For now, I am (in theory) divided 50% between each function. A colleague with a financial background put his understanding of the situation in these terms: KM is all about harnessing the “internal” information (getting and organizing law-related information that is in lawyers’ heads and in their documents) whereas Library Services is all about the “external” . . . [more]

It’s been a hectic year (my excuse for a lack of SLAW posts). As I gear up for a really busy fall at my new firm, I’m rather amazed that after 29 years in law firms, the debate between the browsers and the searchers has still not received the level of visibility that I think it deserves.

The issue is very important to the many law firms who are now involved in portal and enterprise search projects. At last week’s ILTA Conference in Orlando, there was certainly evidence of the continuing interest in enterprise search – Microsoft’s SharePoint Search continues . . . [more]

The recent posting on SLAW about Carl Malmud’s “maverick” actions of shaming the U.S. government by himself publishing American case law on the Internet got me thinking.

Can we in Canada not shame our governments into digitizing the historical versions of federal and provincial legislation in a manner similar to that done in Alberta through the Alberta Heritage Digitization Project (AHDP)?

Perhaps this will be a topic to be discussed at the 8th International Conference of Law Via the Internet conference in Montreal in October.

If not, treat this post as a rallying cry.

Surely it would only be . . . [more]

There was a really interesting article in the NY Times on Sunday about the consequences of information floating around forever in cyberspace. Apparently the Times’ aggressive search engine optimization techniques are resulting in old, negative, and sometimes erroneous articles about people surfacing in search results.

Many of these people have requested that the articles be removed from the archive – which, for obvious reasons, is not an ideal solution. The Public Editor doesn’t have any solutions of his own, but offers a number of questions and a few intriguing suggestions, such as an archive programmed to “forget” less important information . . . [more]

Last week’s discussion on reading digital books had me thinking about another way of getting them into your head – having someone read them to you. Every week I get an e-mail from the Economist telling me their audio edition is now available online. I can download the parts that interest me (or the whole thing if I’m ambitious) and have them read to me in a soothing BBC accent.

And yet, even though it’s so easy, I never do. The idea of podcasts has always appealed to me, but somehow I never get around to listening them. They’re one . . . [more]

While the Law Society and Great Library websites are unusually silent on the topic, the American library blogosphere is proudly proclaiming that David Whelan has been appointed Manager of Legal Information for the Law Society of Upper Canada Pause to note that Great Librarian was a wonderful and hallowed title – why would it have been abandoned?
He has written High Octane Internet Legal Research, recently published by the Ohio State Bar Association, 2007 and is obviously dynamic and talented.
From a Slaw perspective his most interesting accomplishment is his work as Director of the American Bar Association’s Legal . . . [more]

In one of the longest decisions in the Court’s history, the Court has closed the book on the case of R. v. Truscott:

we have concluded that, while it cannot be said that no jury acting judicially could reasonably convict, we are satisfied that if a new trial were possible, an acquittal would clearly be the more likely result. Having regard to the highly unusual circumstances of this Reference, we have determined that the most appropriate remedy is to enter an acquittal.

Accordingly, in the words of s. 696.3(3)(ii) of the Criminal Code, the appeal is allowed, the conviction

Both the BBC and the Sunday People are reporting that Her Majesty has become fascinated with her BlackBerry which she uses to surf the net for racing results.

Prince Philip sounds more like his age, reported as commenting “At 85 he’s more reluctant to embrace technology and thinks his wife is like a distracted teenager.

“He even muttered he wished she would ‘get rid of the bloody thing’.” . . . [more]

Timothy Wu, at Columbia Law’s Program on Law and Technology, and the Silicon Flatirons Program at the University of Colorado law school have launched AltLaw, a convenient way to find and search the full text of 170,000 decisions of the U.S. Supreme and Circuit Appeals Courts. The coverage of the database is described here. There’s an advanced search function and the ability to browse cases chronologically.

There is a press release.

[via DigitalKoans] . . . [more]

We alerted you a couple of months ago, and now we remind you: Lexum is hosting the 8th International Conference of Law Via the Internet in Montreal on October 25 and 26. You can see the schedule of events below, with session titles linked to the official site’s descriptions.

According to the conference blog, 16 LII’s have registered to attend. So should you. As you’d imagine, you can register online. See you there.

SCHEDULE

Thursday – October 25, 2007

• 09:00 – 09:30
  Greetings from honorary guests
• 09:35 – 10:35 Session 1
  Free access to law: impact on emerging countries

John Baez — for those of you over 60 that’s John, not Joan — is a mathematical physicist who specializes in quantum gravity and n-categories, both of which seem like thoroughly Good Things. Which should show you how much I know about physics, or any categories if it comes to that. And that carefully curried ignorance has the potential to make me a crackpot, I learn from John’s 37-item crackpot identification list. The great thing here, apart from the fact that the list is amusing, is that it might, with some small modifications, be made to apply to those . . . [more]