Last week I was asked why my library wasn’t physically smaller.

“Isn’t everything online?” No. “Did we really need all these old books?” Yes. “Wouldn’t it be more convenient for lawyers to be able to access library materials regardless of their physical location?” Definitely.

Although we are moving towards the reality of a digital library, we have not arrived there yet.

What is available?
The most considerable barrier to the fully digital library is that many legal resources do not exist online. Legal publishers have digitized and made available online many Canadian primary legal resources such as case law and . . . [more]

The United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois – Eastern Division released a decision on Friday in Apple, Inc. et al v. Motorola, Inc. et al, dismissing the case with prejudice, effectively ending what has been a highly charged and contested conflict.

The two cases were consolidated for judicial economy, with each party claiming damages. Apple’s claims focuses on patents 6,493,002, 6,343,263, 7,479,949, and 5,946,647, and Motorola’s claim centers around US patent 6,359,898. The dispute began in 2011, with Apple initially claiming 16 patent violations, and Motorola claiming 6. From the . . . [more]

The most recent annual report of the Law Commission of England is now available.

The report includes highlights of the past year’s work. In particular, the Commission saw two pieces of legislation that derive from its work reach the statute book: the Estates of Deceased Persons (Forfeiture Rule and Law of Succession) Act 2011 and the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012.

A number of other reports are awaiting implementation in the areas of trust, marriage breakdown, conspiracy, business partnerships, renting homes, etc.

Part 4 of the report is entitled “Measuring Success” and provides interesting stats about the . . . [more]

It’s barely conceivable, but some Slaw readers may not resort to Google today, what with the fact that it’s a Saturday, summer and all. That’d be a shame, because today the Google Doodle is honouring that tragic hero of the modern age, Alan Turing. And Google’s done it right: the doodle is an animated take on the Enigma Machine, challenging you to solve the puzzle and spell out in binary the Google name letter by letter. It ain’t easy: the ground keeps shifting underneath your trials.

In case you’re of a mind to cut to the chase, it being . . . [more]

Friday, aka: The day of Firge or Venus; while Fridays are nice and all, I often find it harder to get out of bed on Friday than I do on Monday. While that is a personal observation I’ve another observation about Friday that I’ve found is shared with others; that is, weird things happen on Friday. Working in a an academic law library that is open to the public I’ve found that it is often on Friday, and more specifically, Friday afternoon that the individual who wants to challenge the constitutional validity of income tax arrives at the library looking . . . [more]

Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of June 15 – 22.

♨ 1. Musselman et al v. 875667 Ontario Inc. et al 2010 ONSC 3177

[2] Toward the end of the meal, Gloria Musselman left the table to attend the ladies washroom. Washrooms were located at the basement level one floor below the dining room. To gain access to the washroom, Ms. Musselman was required to descend a series of steps comprised of eight risers. She then had to turn ninety degrees to her right and descend two further risers to reach the basement

Okay, so it’s way past the start of summer, at least where I am. And wherever you are, cold or hot, you’re thinking of going somewhere else, quite likely, because that’s what many of us do in summer. So I thought it might be a good idea to show you a few dozen photos of great destinations. If you can’t pack up and take off right now, you can at least plan, or, all else failing, dream of visiting one of these fascinating locations.

UNESCO World Heritage Site is an unofficial (!) tribute to that agency’s chosen protectorates, so to . . . [more]

Persons who design and arrange the shelving of items in a supermarket or in a cafeteria or books in a library can affect the choices people make. Such persons are choice architects and they have the opportunity of nudging people to make choices that may be good for them. The position of items can affect the choices that people make.

Whenever choices are made by individuals there is an opportunity for choice architects to affect individual decisions. For example, in organ donation some nations have a very high participation rate by requiring a negative choice on drivers’ licences. That is, . . . [more]

This is a post in a series appearing each Friday, setting out some articles, videos, podcasts and the like that contributors at Slaw are enjoying and that you might find interesting. The articles tend to be longer than blog posts and shorter than books, just right for that stolen half hour on the weekend. It’s also likely that most of them won’t be about law — just right for etc.

Please let us have your recommendations for what we and our readers might like.

The Ecojustice Clinic at the University of Ottawa has established the online Ecojustice Environmental Hansard.

According to its website description, the site is “an easy-to-use collection of all House of Commons discussions and debates about Canada’s environment.”

The site suggests 4 different ways to access information:

1.Use the homepage to review featured topic summaries and debates from the previous sitting week.

2.Use the search box to query by topic, content or MPs involved in a debate or exchange in the House of Commons.

3.Browse debates by date or look for ones relating to specific categories.

4.Read topic summaries that

A recent post by Rich McCue on his blog Rich’s Random Thoughts got me thinking. More: got me motivated into action. Rich is a systems administrator at the University of Victoria (and someone who was helpful getting Slaw launched, back in the day) who is interested in helping academics do their thing better. In this case, he’s put together a set of instructions for making e-books — at no cost to the management.

Essentially it involves composing in Google Docs, converting the exported HTML file into the industry-standard ePub format using an open source app called Sigil, and then, to . . . [more]

Let me throw some controversy into your world today.

When I speak to groups about innovation in legal services the topic that always hits a raw nerve is the subject of office space. Next to personnel costs, office space is one of the largest fixed costs of any business, including law firms. However, much like the weather, every lawyer talks about it, but no one does anything about it.

It is a space planning rule of thumb that law firms need between 600 – 1,000 square feet of space per lawyer. Think of the savings if that number could be . . . [more]