[this post is one of a series covering the Leg@l IT Conference]

The Judges Panel was the highlight of the conference. I was looking forward to hear the views from the Bench concerning “Judicial IT”. The panel included Justice Bastarache from the Supreme Court of Canada, Justice Morrissette from the Court of Appeal of Québec, Justice Wery from the Superior Court of Québec and Justice Waxse from the US District of Kansas City.

Supreme Court of Canada

Justice Bastarache gave the audience many insights concerning the impact of Information Technology at the Supreme Court of Canada. In appeal, some . . . [more]

The wireless network dropped this afternoon, so I’m resuming the blogging, now not-quite-so-live (!) after a nice Zen AJBM dinner…

[this post is one of a series covering the Leg@l IT Conference]

Me Jean L. Beauchamp presented “Les outils de l’avenir… dès aujourd’hui”. His presentation consisted mainly in an overview of suggested tools for the small paperless law office, including:

• Scanning: VRS – Virtual ReScan
• PDF: Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro: to create, combine, collaborate, collect and control
• Telephony: Skype, using the Linksys IP telephone
• File Management: Filecenter (available in French)
• Outlook synchronization in

[this post is one of a series covering the Leg@l IT Conference]

Michel A. Solis, from Solis Juritech, and John D. Gregory, from the Attorney-General Office (Ontario), presented the session titled “Le cadre juridique des TCI dans les provinces de common law”. Michel piqued the interest of the audience right from the start with the innocuous question “does an email provide the same legal value as a formal letter?”, before he turned the podium over the John.

After briefly referring to 1996 – UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic Commerce, the 2001 – UNCITRAL Model Law on Electronic . . . [more]

[this post is one of a series covering the Leg@l IT Conference]

Professor Simon Fodden – nice to see you blogging too Simon! :-) – is a well-known founder of the slaw community and recently launched another site for debate and data about the Supreme Court of Canada. He was the obvious choice to speak on the topic of blogging by law professors and judges.

When he stepped on the podium and began his presentation, Simon was very candid in sharing his views to the effect that professors are often too ponderons and lawyers are too careful when it . . . [more]

[this post is one of a series covering the Leg@l IT Conference]

Me Bernard Brun presented the session titled “Le blogue: équilibre délicat entre communication et responsabilité”. This is a topic of particular interest to lawyers, as they may be called upon to provide legal advice on the responsibility of blog authors.

Before the issue of responsibility was considered, Me Lebrun explained what is a blog, situated the “blogosphere” in context of other media, noted that the blogosphere counts as many as 75 million blogs and is still growing at a fast rate.

Blogs come in many . . . [more]

I’m here, too, in Montréal, blogging live from this great conference. I’ll let Patrick Cormier do the heavy lifting involved in giving you the content of the presentations. My contribution is a photo of some of the attendees, in rapt attention. The fellow on the right in such deep thought that he needs to support his head is none other than Vincent Gautrais, fellow Slawyer, and, as you’ve learned from the prior post, a panelist here this morning. . . . [more]

[this post is one of a series covering the Leg@l IT Conference]

After the session led by Professor Poulin, Professor Vincent Gautrais, from the Law Faculty, University of Montréal, presented a session titled “techniques du droit du technique”.

After a few witty remarks about palindromes and the title of his session; Professor Gautrais discussed the impact of the Loi concernant le cadre juridique des technologies de l’information (LCCJTI), R.S.Q. c. C-1.1 (An Act to establish a Legal framework for information technology) – in particular:

• Article 5 (“The legal value of a document, particularly its capacity

The Association du Jeune du Barreau du Québec (AJBM) is conducting today an innovative and forward-looking conference on “Legal Information Technology” in Montréal, Québec. The conference is co-presided by Justice Bastarache from the Supreme Court of Canada and Daniel Poulin from the Law Faculty, University of Montreal.

This is the first post of a series covering the conference, live.

Me Dominic Jaar from the AJBM (and blog author of Wines and Information Management) opened the conference. He was followed by Justice Bastarache, who shared with the audience an interesting insight from the bench – lawyers beware: the . . . [more]

There’s a review in the New Yorker (“Elements of E-style” by Nick Paumgarten) of a new book that tackles the difficult matter of how properly to write emails.

It seems to me that to write such a book is, in a way, like trying to teach children after you’ve told them they’re on recess. Those dreaded thank-you letters you were made to write, that awkward and formal condolence letter — that is one thing, but email, your release from all that, is surely whee!!

No?

Not according to David Shipley and Will Schwalbe, who have ventured forth into . . . [more]

Necessary reading for Slawyers 

This just posted on Michael Geist’s Blog

The Hill Times reports this week (issue still not online) that the Conservative government will introduce copyright reform legislation this spring provided that there is no election. The paper points to two main changes from the Liberals Bill C-60 – tougher anti-circumvention legislation (ie. DMCA-style laws that ban devices that can be used to circumvent as well as provisions that block all circumvention subject to the odd exception) and an educational exception that will provide for free access to web-based materials.

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/1875/125/

 

Being here, participating here, even lurking here is a constant learning experience. But it’s not mandatory reading and couldn’t be made mandatory. If there were an “L” after our Simon’s names, it would stand for leader, not Legree. [g]

My point? New Jersey has announced that CLE will be mandatory for its lawyers. (The Law.com article indicates that CLE is already mandatory in 43 US states.) If even New Jersey sees the merits of mandatory CLE, can Ontario be far behind? (Just kidding, folks. Everybody knows that Ontario’s legal education system for students and lawyers is the best of all . . . [more]

Reed Elsevier Plc, owner LexisNexis, today lost a case that denied it the ability to trademark the phrase “lawyers.com” for its Martindale-Hubbell online legal information service.

Martindale-Hubbell had run the Web site for nine years, and was seeking to protect the lawyers.com mark to prevent others from trading on the brand.

The decision is fairly brief – and contains the nicely barbed line:

“For better or worse, lawyers are necessarily an integral part of the information exchange about legal services,”

It continued:

information exchange about lawyers is not at all discrete from information exchange about the law, legal news, and