Law reform bodies can be a great source for legal research. They often conduct widespread consultation with stakeholders, may compare how other jurisdictions deal with the same problem and they frequently dig into the history of an issue.

Here are a few examples from the past few weeks:

• Law Reform Commission of Ireland Issues Paper on Consolidation of evidence legislation: “As part of its forthcoming Report on Evidence (the ‘Report’) the Commission is considering recommending the consolidation of existing legislation concerning the law of evidence , together with reform of three areas of the law of evidence : hearsay,

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The Canadian Association of Law Libraries is accepting submissions for the May 25-28, 2014 Conference that will be held at the Hotel Fory Garry in Winnipeg. Do you have something to share?

The conference is an exciting opportunity to explore and learn about emerging issues in law librarianship, to acquire the tools for building both hard and soft skills, and to meet with vendors about their new products and the improvements of existing ones.

The theme of the 2014 conference refers to the coming together of our professional knowledge and inspiration. Inspired to seek creative responses to existing or anticipated

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Lately CanLII has been shaking things up. The new search interface, in beta for four more days, is due to replace the current one on September 17. Then there’s the hackathon coming up this weekend in Ottawa, where you’re invited to learn how to become developers of apps that make use of CanLII’s API. And we learn from the recent blog post on CanLII that there’s a new forum for CanLII users, where they can share tips and give CanLII feedback. (At the moment it’s gathering spam, so that has to be cleaned out and blocked, if it’s . . . [more]

On Tuesday, September 10, 2013, Quebec’s Parti Quebecois government led by Pauline Marois released its proposal for a Charter of Quebec Values, which would decree the religious neutrality of the state and its employees and management of religious accommodation. This is not the province’s first attempt. In 2009 and 2011, Marois presented bills “to assert the fundamental values of the Québec Nation,” which we wrote about previously on Slaw. Going further back, the Quebec government says these measures sprouted naturally from the seed planted over 50 years ago in the Quiet Revolution (Révolution tranquille).

The major strategic shift of the past two decades in professional publishing is the decline of the historical duopoly. Lawyers never really wanted to deal with more than a few reliable tradesmen (typically Butterworth and Sweets as was in the UK) and the owners of the primary sources certainly didn’t want just anyone playing with their gems of wisdom. This supply-side duopoly propped up Lexis and Thomson/West in the UK for many decades. It coincidentally conferred on them financial supremacy: deeper pockets than the rest. Pockets they used to ramp up acquisition prices, R&D, front list development, etc in ways . . . [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.

Judicial Review of Refugee Determinations: The Luck of the Draw?
Sean Rehaag
(2012) 38:1 Queen’s LJ 1

Excerpt pp. 47-50

[Footnotes have been converted into endnotes.]

With regard to [the] expected reforms, it should be noted that advocates for refugees have long called for the implementation of an appeal on the merits of . . . [more]

Lawyers and researchers looking into legal issues in international business transactions face a changing research landscape. Traditional tools for cross-border research are falling by the wayside. Lexis stopped updating the Martindale-Hubbell International Law Digests (summaries of foreign law authored by local law firms) after the 2011 edition. Lexis last updated its (now archived) International Multi-Jurisdictional Surveys in 2009. Westlaw no longer includes access to Practising Law Institute (PLI) course materials. Many researchers find print looseleafs difficult to use. Luckily, new research tools are filling the gap. Researchers looking into issues in transnational transactions have some really great, viable online options . . . [more]

I stumbled upon today’s Lifehacker post, Don’t Do Research When You Hit Your Writing Groove by Eric Ravenscraft while on a brief break from report-writing this afternoon. It was well-timed and a useful reminder that when inspiration hits and the writing is easy, the details can wait.

Ravenscraft concludes by saying:

If you hit a stride while you’re writing, don’t ruin it with Google.

While perhaps obvious, this advice is much harder to implement than one would hope and for that reason, I would add that its probably best to close your web browser altogether when you find yourself in . . . [more]

For a week now, users of the social media tool and Twitter data reseller Topsy have been able to search Twitter content from its 2006 beginnings; i.e., “every tweet ever”. (Direct messages not included in Topsy or other data.)

It has been widely noted that this extent of indexed data offers a more practically useful and more comprehensive reach than Twitter itself—and any other reseller—offers. Until last week, Topsy’s reach was to 2010, the middle of the brief period once covered by Google’s real-time search. That Google feature offered some historical research capability beyond the week or so . . . [more]

Lawyers work in one of the least diverse professions in any country, Dr. Arin Reeves told the Monday morning plenary session at the 2013 CBA Legal Conference in Saskatoon. It was something the women and minorities in the largely white, male audience had probably already guessed.

And they no doubt nodded vigorously, or even silently applauded, when she said that “diversity” is not merely a matter of including a few people who don’t look like you on a team – it’s a matter of including them because you value their input, because you know they’ll bring something important to the . . . [more]

Apple revealed its latest iphone yesterday. Or to be more precise, two new iphones – the 5C and the 5S.

The 5C is similar to the current 5, and will be cheaper to buy than the 5S (hence some references to the iPhone Cheap – although cheap is a relative term). The iPhone 5S is the latest and greatest. It is the first phone with a 64 bit processor, has a much better camera (Apple has suggested it is as good as a DSLR), and a capacitive fingerprint sensor to authenticate the owner.

So it is the latest and . . . [more]

A decade ago, the Supreme Court of Canada introduced a new conflicts rule into Canadian law. The rule was fashioned from the ABA Model Rules of Professional Conduct. This new “bright-line rule” generated substantial controversy within the profession. In July, the Supreme Court released its decision in McKercher which both restated and reformulated the “bright line” rule[i].

The “bright-line rule” as first articulated in Neil provided that a lawyer could not act in a matter directly adverse to the immediate interests of a current client without proper consent. The impact of this rule was said to be somewhat . . . [more]