Lawyers want to find information quickly. I often hearken back to now-increasingly dated LexisNexis workplace productivity surveys – 2008 and 2010 – for data on this need. Desktop search periodically raises its profile as one of the tools that lawyers can use. Vivian Manning and Catherine Sanders Reach have both taken a look at some of the tools commonly discussed in legal circles and they provide a good short list of products to review.

We had a recent need for a simple tool to roll out to a small group of researchers and decided to take a look at desktop . . . [more]

Each Thursday we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form.

An Old-Fashioned View of the Nature of Law
James Boyd White
Theoretical Inquiries L. Vol. 12, no. 1 (2011): 381-402

Excerpt: pp. 387-389

II. TENSIONS IN LEGAL THOUGHT AND EXPRESSION

Exactly what are the tensions of which I speak, and how do they work? How are they to be addressed? What does it . . . [more]

A Spanish citizen has compelled Google to delete links to online newspaper articles that described the person’s debt problems in the 1990s. The European Court of Justice held that the information was ‘no longer relevant’ and it thus violated the man’s privacy for it to be available through an easy search. (A Spanish court had earlier refused to require the newspaper sites to take down the information, which was perfectly true.)

So: does this ruling make any sense at all, to impose the obligations of a ‘data controller’ on a search engine?

How can the search provider know for sure . . . [more]

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. GFL Environmental Inc. v. Registrar of Motor Vehicles, 2014 ONSC 2728

[1] The Applicants, GFL Environmental Inc. and GFL Excavating Corp. are operators of commercial motor vehicles whose safety is rated by the Registrar of Motor Vehicles. On January 16, 2014, the Registrar advised them that he proposed to downgrade their safety ratings from “Satisfactory” to “Conditional.” After the Applicants responded . . . [more]

I am an avid reader of the website Lifehacker. Every day, there are new posts on an incredible range of topics with the single goal of making life easier. Yesterday, for example, there were hacks on communicating with seniors, peeling hardboiled eggs, getting roadside assistance for your bicycle and applying the GTD philosophy in dealing with your emails.

Lifehacker absolutely lives up to its motto:

Tips, tricks, and downloads for getting things done.

I’ve noticed that Lifehacker has a way of pinpointing issues in my daily life that I’ve not yet identified as issues, and in many cases, . . . [more]

I was poised to write about change when I found Kate Simpson’s post: The Speed of Change. I agree with her that ‘change’ is the buzzword du jour and I have been encountering the word almost everywhere. Recently I listened to the keynote speeches and attended a track on change at Computers in Libraries 2014 and I took a MOOC about Library Advocacy which stressed that libraries need to change the way they do their advocacy. I want to share some of what I have learned.

My focus here is on change in libraries, which are viewed by non-librarians . . . [more]

Dean Beeby, “Justice Canada Chops Research Budget by $1.2 Million” (May 12, 2014) Globe and Mail online.

This report solidifies what librarians and critics of this government’s approach to evidence, information, data and research have been decrying since the discontinuation of the long-form census; information and data is to be manipulated so as to support the government’s political agenda.

“Previous legal research in the department sometimes caught senior officials “off-guard … and may even have run contrary to government direction,” says an internal report for deputy minister William Pentney.”

Some past projects have “at times left the impression that . . . [more]

The media was abuzz last week over the Chief Justice and Prime Minister’s interactions with respect to the Justice Nadon appointment issue.

The controversy is taking away from what I think should be the bigger issue.

Quebec has a constitutional right to have three appointed members of the Supreme Court of Canada. That is the undisputed effect of the Supreme Court’s decision in Reference re Supreme Court Act, ss. 5 and 6. Yet despite this constitutional right, there has now been a vacancy in Quebec’s representation on the Court for over eight months. 

The unexpected twists from the Nadon . . . [more]

Last year my oldest daughter worked in an office supply store. She has a remarkable gift for the retail concept of up-selling and because her store was across the street from my office, I was frequently a target customer. One of the items I purchased was a Kobo eReader (on sale, plus the employee family discount – a deal). For some time I had been wanting to experiment to see if providing a device loaded with firm owned eBooks was a workable concept.

The Kobo became the property of my law firm library and it holds a selection of ABA . . . [more]

Speaking of media neutrality … a US judge has ruled that a search warrant served on Microsoft in the US required the company to divulge records stored on servers outside the US. An account of the decision is here.

The company argued that the court could authorize a search only of premises within the territory of the court’s jurisdiction. The court held that a search warrant that applied to electronic records was in the nature of a subpoena as well as a search warrant. Since MS had control of the documents, it had to turn them over.

Does this . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on technology, research and practice.

Technology

Use High Dynamic Range or HDR for Better Pictures on Your Smartphone
Dan Pinnington

Most smartphones now have an option called HDR, which is short for High Dynamic Range. When you take a picture in HDR, your smartphone camera actually shoots three pictures at three different exposures. Your phone then combines these photos to create one composite image that will be sharper and have more vivid colours. . . . . . [more]

I live in Whitehorse, Yukon — Canada’s “top left hand corner”. Recently I was in Toronto on a business trip. When making the travel arrangements, I scheduled my departure for 24 hours after the end of my meetings so I could hook up with a few of the people I know in that great city. So, instead of departing Toronto late on a Friday afternoon and being back in Whitehorse that evening, I left on Saturday afternoon leaving the enjoyment of 7 hours of flying time to a Saturday night. This 24 hours, I thought, would give me plenty of . . . [more]