Free resources can be great – the revamped Eur-lex in operation
When we use e-resources in the law, there has been a tendency to value the paid resources over the free ones. Sometimes the free resources are not seen as truly comprehensive collections, whereas the purchased ones are; sometimes the linking and cross referencing is more sophisticated in the commercial databases; often the value-added editorial content of headnotes prepared by legal editors has been enough to justify the outlay for these reports and legislation online.

However as more and more bodies such as governments make their resources freely available online, . . . [more]

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) is accepting nominations for the 2014 Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing.

It honours a publisher (whether for-profit or not-for profit, corporate or non-corporate) that has demonstrated excellence by publishing a work, series, website or e-product that makes a significant contribution to legal research and scholarship.

Members as well as non-members of CALL can make nominations.

Nominations can be submitted to Cyndi Murphy, past president of CALL, before February 15, 2014.

The award honours Hugh Lawford (1933-2009), Professor of Law at Queens’ University and the founder of Quicklaw. . . . [more]

Spending time at a law school allowed me to see something very disturbing; law students are actively and deliberately told by law schools to expunge all social media activity.

The clear message to students is: Do Not Have Any Web-Presence Whatsoever.

Given this message, it’s no wonder that most Canadian lawyers view social media with fear and take no part in it. It also explains the shocked looks when I asked my class to create Twitter and LinkedIn accounts – then use them for class participation. Oh the horror!

Imagine if I had asked them to create blogs!

In my . . . [more]

The Russian Federation is the fourth country to ratify the United Nations Convention on the use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts (the ECC). The UNCITRAL press release gives the details.

The other countries now in the Convention, and among which it is in force, are Singapore, Honduras and the Dominican Republic. Russia’s ratification is a step towards spreading the benefits around, and several other countries are moving towards ratifying too.

Should Canada be interested? The Uniform Law Conference discussed the policy questions about how it might be implemented here, in 2010, and adopted a uniform implementation statute in . . . [more]

Access to justice is a quasi-constitutional right in Quebec where the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms guarantees “a full and equal, public and fair hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal.” However, numerous stakeholders, including many in the legal community share a growing concern that access to justice is increasingly posing challenges to those who need it, and obstacles such as time, expense and representation stand in the way of securing this right for all Quebec citizens.

The legal profession is about to start shrinking. That’s the conclusion to be drawn from the United States, anyway, where law firms continue to downsize associates and even partners, and where both law school application and first-year enrollment levels are lower than they’ve been since the 1970s. Canada hasn’t yet experienced such drastic outcomes, but the rising number of graduating law students who can’t find articling positions should be considered a warning alarm of similar trouble.

There’s reason to believe that the total size of the legal profession is shortly going to plateau, and perhaps even reverse. Why? Because work . . . [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.

STATUTORY WILLS FOR PERSONS WITHOUT TESTAMENTARY CAPACITY
Uniform Law Conference of Canada

The paper, excerpted here (pp. 1-3, 12-13) is a Background Discussion on Statutory Wills, as part of the ULCC’s Uniform Wills Act project. The material in the paper has been updated to May, 2012 by Debra Hathaway, with input from Jenna . . . [more]

In early January, London-based global mega-firm Clifford Chance LLP made headlines when The Independent reported that the firm had “quietly introduced a ‘CV blind policy’ for final interviews with all would-be recruits.” According to the report, “staff conducting the interviews are no longer given any information about which university candidates attended, or whether they come from state or independent schools.” The reported aim of the change in practice was to “neutralize” bias towards candidates from elite English universities like Oxford and Cambridge. An anonymous senior employee was quoted in The Independent’s story, saying, “We’re looking for the gems and . . . [more]

This week I’ll be attending the Manitoba Bar Association’s annual Midwinter Conference in Winnipeg. The conference provides lawyers with the full 12 hours of mandatory continuing professional development (MCPD), including 1.5 hours that meet the Ethics, Professionalism and Practice Management requirement, but that’s not why I attend.

In this age of webinars, online courses and individualized learning, I look forward to being in a learning environment with other lawyers, one that invariably includes time allotted for discussion and questions. Often I find I’ll learn as much from the feedback from other participants as I have from the formal presentations. . . . [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. Moore v. Getahun 2014 ONSC 237
   

   [1] On November 12, 2005, the plaintiff Blake Moore’s motorcycle careened out of control. The plaintiff flew over the handlebars. The plaintiff and the motorcycle hit a parked hummer vehicle causing it to move two feet. The plaintiff suffered a high impact fracture to his right wrist and other minor injuries. He was taken to the emergency

. . . [more]

From my holiday viewing habits, Netflix now seems fairly (and justifiably) certain that I will be intrigued by content categories such as “Crime Comedies”, “Absurd Satires”, “Witty British TV Shows” and “Critically-Acclaimed Movies from the 1980s”. A recent article in The Atlantic tells us that Netflix has nearly 77,000 micro-genres and still deeper micro-tagging and rating of the underlying content. This data, combined with monitoring of viewing and clicking activity allows Netflix to, in the words of Netflix’s VP of Product Todd Yellen, put “the right title in front of the right person at the right time.”

The Netflix magic . . . [more]

My team is consumed with rolling out the new WestlawNext Canada platform to our colleagues. This is a big job that many firms will face, so I thought I would share some things we have done to support this project.

First, as with any change, communication is key. Before we started down the rollout road, we discussed it as a library team, then with our key stakeholders – our Library Committee, and also with the Director of IT. We looked at the timing of this rollout from the perspective of capacity of our human resources, capacity of our technology (hardware . . . [more]