I had the opportunity to attend the 105th Annual Meeting and Conference of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL12) this week. AALL12 was my first conference experience with AALL and it was well worth the trip. The programming was informative, the networking opportunities stellar, and the exhibitor contact fruitful.

Programming

Although the AALL is, obviously, an American organization, the content of most sessions and poster presentations addresses matters of broad concern to law libraries without geographic restriction. Several of those on US legal subjects and resources are of substantive edification and are the subjects of some of the stories . . . [more]

Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of July 16 – 23.

♨ 1a. Miguna v. Toronto Police Services Board 2008 ONCA 799 [This opinion refers to an earlier opinion in the matter; as a result, there are two related cases essentially tied for first place.]

[1] For the second time in three years Miguna Miguna’s statement of claim has come to this Court entirely – or, in this case, almost entirely – struck down. In the action he claims damages against the prosecution and police defendants for conduct arising out of his arrest, trial

. . . [more]

On July 25, 2012, British Columbia's Privacy Commissioner Elizabeth Denham published an investigation report recommending changes to the B.C. government's use of criminal record checks to assess current and future employees.

WIPO appears to have resurrected negotiations over its broadcast treaty, which would grant broadcasters a new property right in content they transmit. This treaty has been contentious in the past for obligating signatories to provide a completely unnecessary, redundant and at the same time over-expansive right to guaranteeing broadcasters over the broadcasting of content. This may seriously impact on individuals, particularly as it will be applied to online retransmission:

Granting broadcasters and cablecasters exclusive rights to authorize retransmissions of broadcasts over the Internet will harm competition and innovation by allowing broadcasters and cablecasters to control the types of devices

. . . [more]

Have you applied for insurance and been told there will be a contractual exclusion or increased premium?

It’s more common than you might think.

When a broker provides you with a life, disability or health insurance proposal, the price and contractual benefits assume that you are eligible as quoted.

Insurers will not make you an offer of insurance unless the odds of making a profit are in their favour and most people will receive an insurance offer exactly as quoted. However, there are times when an insurance applicant represents a financial risk that exceeds the insurer’s assumptions due to a . . . [more]

A Facebook comment by a juror made before a trial has resulted in a mistrial. CBC news reports that on the first day of a Moncton murder trial of Fred Prosser, the victim’s family brought to the judge’s attention the fact that one of the jurors was a member of a Facebook group against the accused, and had posted comments on it. The judge declared a mistrial to avoid the possibility that this juror had already tainted the rest of the jury.

You can hear David Fraser’s comments in this CBC interview. David comments that many people don’t appreciate . . . [more]

Co-authored by Anh Huynh, the Competitive Intelligence Manager at Davis LLP

There are fads and good ideas: distinguishing between the two is not easy, but that does not mean we should not be willing to try something new. By informing ourselves, reading the pulse of our institution and using our own good judgement, we are more than prepared to identify an unmet need in our information services and how to fill it.

A number of years ago I kept hearing about CI (Competitive Intelligence). I read articles, went to sessions at conferences and was generally finding that CI was moving . . . [more]

♫ Break down the walls
Yes, we’ll break down the walls…♫

Lyrics, music and recorded by Youth of Today.

 

In June, the Benchers of the Law Society of British Columbia adopted new rules and took some important steps towards expanding the role of paralegals in the province.

A lawyer will be able to designate two paralegals who will be entitled to perform a number of additional legal services. These services will include the giving of legal advice and appearing in court on certain matters.

Specifically there are discussions on holding a pilot project to allow paralegals to appear . . . [more]

Ontario Bar Assoc's magazine gets a makeover

Some colleagues and I are toying with Chatter. Chatter is enterprise social collaboration. We are testing it to see if we have a need for instant message like communication. Chatter is an interesting to use for this experiment because it has some features that could fit with our culture.

• mobile apps for Blackberry AND Android AND iPhone and iPad
• a desktop app
• a web tool
• domain based grouping

The domain based grouping means that:

A company’s individual, private Chatter network is created based on email domain name. To protect your company’s private and sensitive business information, all participants in

. . . [more]

A few months back, Jordan Furlong penned one of his annoyingly insightful articles (“The Problem With Lawyer Advertising”) in which he noted the lack of client focus in most legal advertising, and suggested that marketing is one area where the coming wave of competition from “non-lawyer” entities will soon have them eating your lunch. It is a provocative thesis, and Furlong buttresses it with a link to an extremely compelling 90-second TV spot for British legal franchise Quality Solicitors.

I thought it would be worthwhile to dig a little deeper into WHY legal advertising isn’t consistently better . . . [more]

My friend Mike Seto came a across an interesting survey that lists the main functional technology products that the 200 largest UK firms are using. Many familiar names there – but some news one too.

I am not aware of a survey that specifically lists the technologies used by the the largest North American firms, but (thanks to Catherine Reach), can mention these two surveys that provide global technology use and trend information for North American firms: the ILTA survey (free content) and the Am Law Tech Survey (free and paid content). . . . [more]