This is a live blog from the keynote address by G. Burgess Allison at the Twentieth ABA TechShow.

Not surprisingly, it’s a bit of a pot-pourri.

Burgess Allison has been a visionary leader of the legal tech community for more than 20 years. As Technology Editor and a columnist for Law Practice Management magazine, Burgess’ practical advice and irreverent style made his column the most popular feature in the magazine for more than 18 years. His 1996 book, The Lawyer’s Guide to the Internet, introduced us to the vision and potential downsides of what has turned out to be

The wonderful Internet Archive that tries to preserve some of the material that evanesces from the web is also in the business of acting as a repository for files of media in the public domain. I noticed for the first time that the initial category in text files is Canadian Libraries.

(The libraries involved in depositing texts into this repository are: University of Toronto, Library and Archives Canada, Memorial University of Newfoundland, McMaster University, Ryerson University, University of Ottawa, Toronto Public Library’s Research and Reference Libraries, and, oddly enough, St.Mary’s College of California in partnership with the University of . . . [more]

I was surprised to hear there is currently a travel advisory cautioning Canadians about travel to Iowa, put out by the Public Health Agency of Canada.

According to CTV news this morning, a mumps outbreak has spread to nine mid-West states. It is the worst U.S. mumps outbreak since 1988. Many people who have contracted the fast-spreading disease have previously been vaccinated, putting into question whether the vaccinations are as effective as once thought or whether a more virulent strain of the mumps has developed. Most people who have contracted it are college age, between 18 and . . . [more]

Delightful homenaje a Joan Miró today.

They make it new. They make us smile . . . [more]

Another top court goes live to the web. Tonight’s decision of the Corte Suprema di CassazioneWikipedia’s take on the Court is so lame one wonders why they bothered. Far better is the official account of the jurisdiction of the Italian courts on the election last weekThe centre-left coalition of Romano Prodi won the majority in both houses in the parliament with a slim margin, clearing the way for Prodi to form a government next month. is much less controversial than Gore v. Bush, but that doesn’t mean that it’s being accepted without fuss. Former Prime Minister Berlusconi is . . . [more]

I’ve only just noticed that there’s a Faculty Blog at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. It seems to be a project of four faculty members, Anver Emon, Ariel Katz, Benjamin Alarie, Lorne Sossin, and has posts in the following categories: Administrative Law, Competition Law/Antitrust, Current Events, and Intellectual Property. I have to say that the rate of posting has to go way up before this becomes a useful law blog: 4 posts in February, 1 in March, and 2 thus far in April. For those who want to track it, the feed is http://utorontolaw.typepad.com/faculty_blog/index.rdf . . . [more]

I know many Slawyers read the Globe and Mail, but just in case not everyone managed to get to the Review section, let me pass on the burden of a story found on the lower left of today’s p.R1: The Canadian Almanac and Directory is going south. The Michigan company ProQuest bought Micromedia, owners of CAD, in 2002, and decided a couple of weeks ago that Canadians would no longer manage the Directory: control of that venerable and encyclopedic institution has been whistled south to Ann Arbor.

How venerable is the Canadian Almanac and Directory, of which even I . . . [more]

Timing is everything.

The day I post on the Law Commission is the day they issue a sixty-four page report on Law in a Globalized World .

The issues examined are important although there are massive constitutional, political and international law implicationsImplementation would require amendments to the Constitution Act, 1867, the Vienna Convention and a bundle of new federal and provincial laws – don’t hang on too long waiting for implementation – this is a provocative think-piece. hanging over them:

LAW-MAKING, LEGITIMACY AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Treaty Negotiation (pp. 18-19)
1. Who should negotiate Canada’s treaties? Should there be a formal

Lawyers use PDF files a lot. One of their virtues — the files’, that is, not the lawyers’ — is that they can be “locked down,” as it were, fixed such that the content can’t be altered once released, or, if the author wishes it, copied or printed. Well, it turns out that Gmail has the capacity to produce an HTML version of PDF files that are attached to emails: even if they’re protected to prevent copying or printing of the content, Gmail’s HTML makes it easily possible. Of course, the formatting is messed up, but that might not matter . . . [more]

I have been following 3L Epiphany posts for a while and I was pleasantly surprised to see that some judges are blogging.

The author has even sent the following survey – two judges have answered and granted permission to publish their answers to the following questions: . . . [more]

Modern tax laws lack old-fashioned charmBy Vanessa Houlder in FT March 3 2006
The volume of income tax legislation has expanded five-fold as a result of a painstaking effort to rewrite its Byzantine terminology in plain English.

The rewritten legislation, now spread over five volumes, is much easier to use and understand, according to a survey of tax professionals by Mori for Revenue & Customs.

But the survey uncovered pockets of resistance from experts who missed the “charm” of the old jargon, a lot of which dated back to 19th century legislation. A Customs official told Mori: “When . . . [more]

This is something I received from a newsletter from UVic computer services concerning a new academic search engine. To quote:

“Academic searching on the Internet can be a challenge, but some new services are making the task easier. Beilefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) is a system developed by Beilefeld University Library in Germany and provides a simple, fast search site. Google is testing a similar search site. These resources complement the licensed (read “cost money” ) databases provided by the UVic Libraries.”

An interesting perspective – it would be nice if Google Academic et al. could even begin to match . . . [more]