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.

Data & Diversity in the Canadian Justice Community
Sabrina Lyon & Lorne Sossin
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2389410, Draft January 21, 2014

Part One: Diversity & the Judicial Appointment Process

Judges in Canada are no longer simply selected behind closed doors. While serious gaps in transparency remain with the appointment process both provincially and federally, all judicial . . . [more]

This week is the 25th anniversary of the creation of the Internet a.k.a. the World Wide Web. Yesterday Google shared a message from the Internet’s Web’s inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee. In March 1989 he shared a proposal for “a ‘web’ of notes with links between them” or a non-linear system using “hypertext” which I remember (as someone who used the precursors of the Internet) as a hot topic at the time.

Berners-Lee takes the opportunity to ask some important questions in urging us to keep the Internet open and free:

So today is a day to celebrate. But it’s also

I came across a new research paper today via SSRN titled, “What Makes Lawyers Happy? Transcending the Anecdotes with Data from 6200 Lawyers“.

The legal profession has done a much better job of addressing (or at least discussing) the issue of lawyer well-being in recent years. And thank-goodness for that! We are all very aware of the unfavourable statistics regarding mental health, substance abuse, and the general unhappiness that can show on some faces. So the idea of quantifying these factors — both positive and negative — cited by practitioners seems like a practical piece of work. . . . [more]

The announcement comes in a communication from David A. Wright, Chair of the new Law Society Tribunal:

I am delighted to announce that with the formation of the Law Society Tribunal today by Bill 111, the Modernizing Regulation of the Legal Profession Act, 2013, we are launching our new website. The website is designed to provide lawyers, paralegals, the public and the media with easy and transparent access to information about the Tribunal. Many resources may be found here, including legislation, rules and forms, guides for self-represented licensees, notices to the profession and a “reach out” to stakeholders. I

Apparently, the brain is the least understood by the medical community of all the human body parts.

Some doctors say that a healthy brain is partly dependent upon physical exercise and a proper amount of sleep. Apparently good things happen to our brains when we are sleeping. John Ratey of the Harvard Medical School and author of the book, Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain (2013) states: “Exercise is the single best thing you can do for your brain in terms of mood, memory, and learning”.

A healthy brain includes the conscious and the unconscious. Unconscious . . . [more]

Digital Globe, a commercial satellite image company, has started a crowdsourcing campaign to help find the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. You can go to their Tomnod site, look at satellite imagery of where the plane might be, and tag anything that may look like wreckage or life rafts.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that satellite imagery, especially high resolution near real time imagery, was exclusively for government spy agencies.

Now anyone can obtain up to date satellite imagery with remarkable resolution. (The best resolution is still reserved for government use.) If a recent image is not available . . . [more]

With so many new gTLDs (“generic Top Level Domains”) coming online this year, I thought it might be worth exploring their value and potential use in law firm marketing. 

The simplest example of a gTLD, of course, is .COM, which makes up about 50% of all domains registered. In the past, most prospective owners found themselves wishing for a .COM, and given a lack of options, were willing to settle for a .ORG or .NET. In Canada, we might also take the alternative of our country code domain (.CA), if it was applicable to restrict or focus our desired audience. . . . [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. Nearctic Nickel Mines Inc. c. Canadian Royalties Inc. 2012 QCCA 385
   

The world’s largest public relations firm, Edelman, released the results of its annual Trust Barometer study in February.

Each year, I look forward to the results for no other reason than to gauge the impact of changing public expectations on the business of law.

Edelman’s methodology included surveying 33,000 people in 27 markets around the world regarding their trust in information sources and the specific issues that influence trust in business and government.

Some of the statistics in this year’s study surprised me. There are implications for private law firms both big and small.

1. Trust in non-governmental organizations . . . [more]

The Law Society of Alberta requires members to declare their intentions about continuing professional development each year. Each March members of the bar are required to think about and report on the activities they will undertake to maintain their competence. Alberta and Newfoundland and Labrador are the only jurisdictions without a minimum hours requirement for CPD.

I was thinking about the requirements for lawyer CPD while chatting with my match from the Canadian Association of Law Libraries Mentoring Program. My mentee and I chat on the phone, engage in email correspondence and very occasionally meet in person. Every time . . . [more]

When can a party put into evidence a settlement reached between the parties, and to what end? In most cases, the answer is never. Not only are parties generally careful to insert a confidentiality clause in the settlement agreement, but in many cases, the relevance of a related settlement is doubtful to say the least. The situation is different in class action matters, where parties will inevitably have to publicize any settlement that has been reached, its terms and the amounts the Respondent has agreed to pay. Just last month, the Quebec Superior Court rendered a judgment in Cunning v. . . . [more]

Do you ever wonder about how all that tech that you’re using every day really works? What powers all those social networks that seem so important? Is that website really magic? How does Dropbox work anyway? Building and managing all this tech was once the arena of specialists, developers, programmers, system administrators and such. This is no longer true.

Thanks to advances in technology it’s possible for you to hold a fully functional Internet server in the palm of your hand. Add in a handful of open source software and you’re well on your way to understanding just how all . . . [more]