Great posting from an Illinois site discussing legal research assignments that is just as relevant here.
Considering the advice is so sensible, this news needs to get wider circulation:

Here is the information that should be transferred, and so often isn’t:

* The name of the case, the identity of the party we represent, and how to bill the time;
* The issue that needs to be answered;
* The facts of the case I think are most pertinent to the issue;
* The procedural posture of the case and how the work product will be used–for a motion to . . . [more]

Readers of slaw should also be aware of a wonderful magazine that our friends in Eagan, MN put out three times a year, called Perspectives: Teaching Legal Research and Writing is a print newsletter published by West three times a year for legal research and writing instructors and law firm and law school librarians. The newsletter provides a forum for discussing the teaching of legal research and writing, focusing on research materials, tools and theories. Among the subjects frequently covered in Perspectives are trends in electronic legal research; solutions to legal research problems; and recently published legal research and . . . [more]

Up at dawn and then to read Mr. Pepys his Diary, which is a worthy account, published each day of his life and times, as observed by a witty and informed gentleman about town. And as one might expect, Mr. Pepys knows about the law of his times
A remarkably active blog, and a creative use of the technology – what I also enjoy is the erudition of the commentariat: see this example.
I can understand why The Guardian described it as one of The Ten Best Book Blogs . . . [more]

1. Michael Affronti
2. search.subscribe.share
3. RSS Aggregation – Part 1: The Partnership
4. search.subscribe.share: RSS Aggregation – Part 2: Our Implementation
5. LawLibTech: Outlook Does RSS: Permanent Link
6. Toronto Association of Law Libraries
7. TALL: February 2, 2006, lunch meeting
8. Ontario Bill 14
9. RefLex: IRB decisions
10. Refugee Caselaw Site
11. RefLex: CANLII case law citation resolution
12. Privacy Commissioner’s Findings
13. Privacy Commission advanced search
14. Ontario A.-G. announces a new law reform commission for the province
15. Michael Geist
16. Michael Geist: Cleaning up Copyright
17. Stephen’s Lighthouse blog entry on January 3, 2006
18. Encyclopedia Britannica
19. Neil Sedaka: Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
20. Brett Tabke
21. Webmasterworld
22. Craigslist Blocks Search Engine

Michael Affronti, Program Manager for Microsoft Office Outlook, is working on RSS, Instant Search, and Sharing technologies for Outlook. Recently in his blog search.subscribe.share he talks about integrating RSS feed aggregation inside a future version of Outlook. See his two posts:

RSS Aggregation – Part 1: The Partnership (Dec. 22/05)

RSS Aggregation – Part 2: Our Implementation (Jan. 3/05)

Could this be the application that will bring RSS and feed reading over into the mainstream? Providing it is kept elegant and simple, I think it might be. Looks like he takes comments over at his blog, so head over . . . [more]

The Toronto Association of Law Libraries (TALL) is hosting a February 2, 2006, lunch meeting regarding Bill 14 in Ontario, which, if passed, would introduce the Legislation Act, 2005, which would have the consequence of making e-Laws official. Non-members of TALL are eligible to attend the meeting. The description of the meeting is as follows:

Bill 14, the Access to Justice Act, includes the Legislation Act, 2005 which, if passed, will make e-Laws an official source of law in the province. Join a panel from the Ministry of the Attorney General – John Gregory (Policy Division), Mariam Leitman (Office

When was the last time you, as a researcher, heard that decree from someone assigning research? When I started as a reference librarian, most requests started with the words “Get me everything on…” Then I would run around pulling out books, law review articles, legislation, case law, news articles, or whatever else might be vaguely applicable. I would search catalogues from other larger libraries, search the legal literature indices (usually on Quicklaw) and, depending on the time frame, either provide a list of cites or track down the items themselves from outside libraries. Everything!

More often than not the results . . . [more]

My attention was drawn to a question about Immigration and Refugee Board decisions today, one of the many areas of law about which I know nothing. I learned that some IRB decisions are reported in Lexis/Quicklaw’s Immigration Law Cases and WestlaweCarswell’s Immigration Law Reporter, and that the best online source is RefLex, a database available on the IRB site. RefLex makes available a selection of digested facts and decisions from among the thousands of cases, with no report of the legal analysis or argument, the principal aim of which is to inform Board members of what their colleagues have . . . [more]

Today Ontario’s Attorney General announced a new law reform commission for the province:

January 4, 2006 16:00 Attorney General To Establish New Law Commission Of Ontario Commission To Make Justice System More Accessible

TORONTO, Jan. 4 /CNW/ – The McGuinty government intends to establish a new Law Commission of Ontario, Attorney General Michael Bryant announced today at the Opening of the Courts ceremony.
“We will pursue discussions with the Law Foundation of Ontario, the Law Society of Upper Canada, Ontario’s law schools, and the legal community,” said Bryant. “The goal is to create a modern, relevant and responsive commission . . . [more]

In case any readers of Slaw are not receiving the posts by Professor Michael Geist on copyright law and his recent posts on political fundraising donations allegedly being made by the pro-industry/copyright owners lobby to Canadian politicians directly involved in affecting copyright policy, his postings are worthwhile reading. One of his most recent is called “Cleaning up Copyright” and proposes that politicians take a pledge to not serve as Minister of Canadian Heritage or sit on relevant committees if they have taken financial contributions from copyright lobby groups. . . . [more]

Thanks to the Stephen’s Lighthouse blog entry on January 3, 2006, for pointing out the December 14, 2005, online article from Nature magazine by Jim Giles comparing Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Brittanica. According to the comparisons of 42 entries/articles undertaken by Nature, both encyclopedias had errors, with the Wikipedia entries averaging about 4 errors per article and the Encyclopedia Brittanica entries averaging about 3 errors per entry. The online article from Nature goes into a lot more detail about the nature of the comparisons and the types of errors caught. The ultimate conclusion you likely draw as a . . . [more]

Most websites can’t resist the traffic that Google, MSN and Yahoo provide, but there seems to be a new trend developing where large sites of destination are denying the Search Engines (‘SE’) indexing access.

A month or so ago, Brett Tabke of Webmasterworld (by far, the largest webmaster forum on the internet) pulled access to all SE spider bots. There was much speculation on why Brett had done this, and more specifically, many were wondering if he was testing his website’s dependency on the SEs. If any content based website could pull this off, this was one of them. . . . [more]