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.

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You may have heard about helicopter parenting – the overprotective parent who hovers over their child on the playground, maybe takes them to university, stays in the dorm for a few weeks, maybe even to law school… Well Justice McGee of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice will have none of this! In 2011, she issued an ex parte order preventing a party’s mother from representing him in a family law case. Mom had represented son in his Nova Scotia divorce proceeding. The divorce proceedings were acrimonious and the ill-feelings between Mom and her former daughter-in-law are evident in the . . . [more]

I just learned of the existence of a bulletin called Connected, which is published by two US-based organizations, the National Center for State Courts and the Conference of Court Public Information Officers.

According to the inaugural April 2011 issue:

“This newsletter will provide news, information and resources on topics such as how courts are using new media, the impact of new media on court proceedings, ethical implications of judges and court staff using new media, and court policy issues relating to new media.”

The focus is American but there is occasionally material about non-US matters, as in . . . [more]

http://www.charterproject.ca/

WHY SHOULD I CARE ABOUT THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CANADIAN CHARTER OF RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS?

LOVE IT, HATE IT, OR JUST DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU THINK, IT’S TIME TO JOIN THE DISCUSSION!

As millions today around the world are protesting for basic freedoms, on April 17, 2012, Canadians will mark 30 years with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a document which seeks to guarantee fundamental human rights, from speech, to religion, to association.

At the University of Windsor, Faculty of Law, the Class of 2012 knew that their graduation coincided with the Charter’s 30th anniversary and decided . . . [more]

Lacking The Right Stuff, Sylvio Langevin finds his Galaxy Quest over just as he launched his Mission to Mars. With the prospect of A New Hope subject to leave of the Men (and women) in Black, perhaps he should seek Serenity, abandon his quest and make The Voyage Home.

In a Langevin (Re), a decision released last week but published on CanLII just yesterday, the Quebec Superior Court declared Langevin a “quarrelsome litigant” and barred him from bringing any further action without leave.

That order alone, though infrequently issued and a factually and legally . . . [more]

AALL Spectrum was kind enough to publish in their March 2012 edition my article called “Legal Project Management for Law Librarians” (PDF, 4 pages).

Legal project management (LPM) has already been a popular topic on SLAW for some time now (click here for past stories).

Although the foregoing article is a shortened version of my longer paper from last year entitled “Project Management in Law Firms: A New Role for Librarians?” available on my website, in the 10 months or so between articles I have seen a steady and growing interest in LPM in Canadian . . . [more]

The law faculty at l’Université de Montréal (UdM) has obtained accreditation (with conditions) from the Council of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada (FLSC) to implement their new national common law program and degree of Juris Doctor (J.D.).

In 2011 the Education Advisory Board released a report, Redefining the Academic Library: Managing the Migration to Digital Information Services, which looked at trends in academic libraries and the direction in which they were going. Although I work in a private law library while the report deals with academic libraries, I found the report very interesting; a number of challenges that it identifies are also faced by private law libraries.

The usual suspects are here: rising journal costs, the challenge of being a library in the age of Google and Amazon, and trying to do more with less. The . . . [more]

♫ Our generation has changed
The way we communicate
A hundred and 40 characters to say what you’ll say…♫

Lyrics, music and recorded by @gabebondoc.

 

 

The Courts of Nova Scotia are the First in Canada to Enter The “Twitterverse”

The Courts of Nova Scotia have achieved a “First”. They are now “tweeting” news and information about the Courts, decisions of the Courts, and notices to the Bar as a way to better serve the public, the legal profession and the media.

The Nova Scotia courts, on their web page, state that Twitter “replaces a similar but . . . [more]

Publishing academic monographs – the kinds of books that may sell only a few hundred copies – in an era of digital platforms and shrinking library budgets is a serious challenge. Earlier this year leaders from many of the major US libraries and academic presses were hosted by Robert Darnton, the Harvard University Librarian, to discuss the idea of a Global Library Consortium (GLC).

In a nutshell something like the GLC would allow academic library members of the consortium to work with publishers to identify which monographs they would be willing to purchase. The more purchasers for a specific title, . . . [more]

HOT UPDATE (2:35 p.m. 2012-02-29): Seemingly out of nowhere has come the new and rapidly rising #1 most-consulted case for this week:

Langevin (Re) 2012 QCCS 613

[1] Sylvio Langevin réclame la propriété de la planète Terre[1]. Dans un autre dossier entrepris le même jour, il réclame celle des planètes Mercure, Vénus, Jupiter, Saturne et Uranus, ainsi que des quatre grosses lunes de Jupiter[2].

[2] À l’audience, le requérant souhaite amender ce second recours pour y ajouter ses revendications sur Neptune et Pluton, ainsi que sur l’espace entre chaque planète, à la grandeur de la galaxie[3].

I think I

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Relationships and a strong word of mouth reputation are how lawyers get their work. Always has been. Always will be.

Ask the best lawyers in your firm. Ask the lawyers in your community who have the best business. Ask the managing partners leading successful law firms. Ask the chief marketing officers of major firms.

All of them will tell you that a lawyer’s best work comes from relationships and a strong word of mouth reputation. All of them will tell also tell you that relationships and a strong word of mouth reputation are the result of networking.

The Internet doesn’t . . . [more]