The office of the Chief Justice of Canada issued the following press release April 26, 2013:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Supreme Court of Canada conducted a thorough review of its records and it does not have any documents relevant to the alleged communications by former Chief Justice Bora Laskin and former Mr. Justice Willard Estey in relation to the patriation of the Constitution of Canada. This concludes the Court’s review.

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POUR DIFFUSION IMMÉDIATE

La Cour suprême du Canada a complété un examen exhaustif de ses dossiers. Ceux-ci ne contiennent aucun document au sujet de communications que l’ancien juge en . . . [more]

Another year of classes and exams has come to an end, which puts me in a reflective frame of mind; recently a topic that has been turning over in my mind is curriculum reform, which is a hot button topic on this Blog and at many law schools across this country and North America in general. As I survey the conjecture on the topic there is one thing that I do not see addressed that bothers me and that is the topic of preparatory reading or rather the lack thereof.

As anyone who has a law degree, or is pursuing . . . [more]

Slaw is proud indeed to report that Nathalie Des Rosiers and Sarah Sutherland have joined Slaw as columnists.

Nathalie Des Rosiers has been General Counsel of Canadian Civil Liberties Association since July 1, 2009. She was previously Interim Vice-President (Governance), University of Ottawa (2008-2009), Dean of the Faculty of Law – Civil Law Section of the University of Ottawa from 2004 to 2008 and President of the Law Commission of Canada from 2000 to 2004.

She obtained an LL.B. from Université de Montréal and an LL.M. from Harvard University, and received an honourary doctorates from the Law Society of Upper . . . [more]

One hoary definition of a gentleman is: a man who can play the accordion — but doesn’t.

Now, thanks to the magic of a Friday fillip, here’s your chance to lose that straitening status of gentlewoman or gentleman. What’s that you say? You can’t play the accordion? But you can, I assure you. A charming (looking) young Russian, Artem Polikarpov has created a website, Garmoshka, that is an accordion. Sort of. (“‘Garmoshka’, by the way, is a diminutive of гармон (‘garmon’) / гармоника (‘garmonika’); as with the Finnish ‘harmonikka’, the Russian ‘garmonika’ means accordion, not harmonica (an example . . . [more]

A computer trainer I know well tells me that there was much discussion in his company as to whether they should charge for searches that returned no results. After great debate it was concluded that zero hits was a legitimate search result, and, as such, the company should charge for it. I think anyone who carries out research would agree with this: knowing that something has not been considered or talked about is important. The difficulty with this is knowing if zero genuinely is the answer, rather than the result of not using a relevant resource or search term. It’s . . . [more]

The Pew Internet homepage is noting a new section addition (or rather, subdomain) that aggregates Pew publishing on digital libraries. See: libraries.pewinternet.org

Pew Internet has maintained a category dedicated to digital library trends for a few years now, so the site hosts a reasonable volume of material. It also includes a blog. The new site’s About page is unfortunately a copy-over from the main website; but with any luck, someone will add that background context soon.

If you don’t regularly visit Pew’s work on Internet trends, I highly recommend it. And for the law library crew here at Slaw, . . . [more]

The May 2013 issue of the AALL Spectrum, the monthly publication of the Association of American Law Libraries, is devoted to law library architecture south of the border. Nice pix.

From the presentation:

The 13th annual architecture series features two new buildings and four remodels/renovations from two public law libraries, one law firm, and three academic libraries. Both new buildings aim to achieve Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certifications. In Baltimore, the library transitioned from occupying two floors to being spread over six, and in Denver, the new library bridges print and electronic.

In Seattle, the law firm

. . . [more]

I was honoured to be a part of panel discussion at the recent Georgetown Law Center Symposium “The Shrinking Pyramid: Implications for Law Practice the Legal Profession.”

Several thoughts occurred to me while attending this event; one of which I’ll share with you now.

There was some discussion about the fact that lifelong partnership at one firm is a relic of the past; there is a constant merry-go-round of lateral partners moving from firm to firm to firm. We see this in Canada as well. Lateral hires typically move for more money (and sometimes for firm management reasons) but paying . . . [more]

With this entry Slaw goes past an impressive milestone: our bloggers and columnists have given our readers ten thousand posts since Slaw began very nearly eight years ago. In that time we’ve acquired thousands of readers from Canada and around the globe and our complement has grown from half a dozen bloggers to a robust two dozen bloggers and sixty columnists.

This is a good occasion to say thank-you to those of you who now write for Slaw and to the many who have contributed over the years. And thank you especially to you, our readers, who are the reason . . . [more]

Beginning September 2, 2013, foreign nationals applying for Canadian visas from countries such as Haiti, Jamaica, Saudi Arabia, Albania, Afghanistan, Sudan, Syria, Columbia, Burma, Egypt, Yemen and Pakistan, will undergo mandatory fingerprinting and digital photo collection at new visa application centres being established by Canada overseas. Citizenship and Immigration Canada has indicated that the new measures are necessary because of a "rise in global identity fraud" and technological innovations that "make it easy to steal, forge or alter identity documents."

More than 1200 legal marketing professionals gathered in Las Vegas for the industry’s largest conference earlier this month. This where marketers with a shared obsession for business development and client retention, sharpen their skills.

Here are the best nuggets from the sessions I attended:

1. Client focus simply defined: always doing what’s best for the client.
2. Understanding the client’s business means being responsive because you understand (and share) in the urgency, follow client directions and never, ever, undermine general counsel.
3. Business strategy knowledge includes understanding the products, competitors and their geographic market.
4. Law firm client relationships are stickier than first thought

. . . [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.

Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and the Refugee Determination Process
Nicole LaViolette
Paper prepared for the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada in support of a presentation made to the Board members. March 2, 2010

[Footnotes omitted. They are available in the PDF of the full paper available via the link on the title.] . . . [more]