Those of you on CALL-L will already know this, but the website for the annual conference was launched yesterday. It’s hard to imagine, but we’re already less than 90 days away from the start of the conference!

The Conference Planning Committee and the many volunteers for the subcommittees have been busy, but now the energy is really building! The program is set, social venues booked and we’ve submitted our request for decent weather.With the kind of weather we’ve been having in Toronto this winter, I have no idea what to expect in May.

Special thanks has to go out to . . . [more]

Recent research published by industry analyst Gartner shows that the business process outsourcing sector will expand by 5 per cent in 2012, with multinational companies leading the charge. Business process outsourcing is seen by many companies as a means of reducing costs. Companies have been engaging in outsourcing (both information technology and business process services) for many years. Use of foreign-based third party service providers is also not new. While many of the issues are not unique to offshore outsourcing engagements, offshoring highlights the importance of some of the challenges.

Companies have been outsourcing various types of business processes to . . . [more]

I have a tendency to want to keep my gravy out of my peas — control issues, I know. This makes me work to keep my social media in silos as much as possible, fearing, I suppose, the further loss of privacy if Facebook gossips to Twitter about me and vice versa. The devil — or the deity, if you prefer — is in the intersections, the linkages, the relationships.

This desire for some crafted anonymity or at least a tad of privacy is a forlorn hope, I realize, if I’m online and tweeting, blogging, “plus”-ing and the like, whether . . . [more]

With Parliament back in session, we are seeing more attention on the proposed “lawful access” legislation. There is good reason for that. Many of us believe the proposed legislation is an affront to privacy, and gives law enforcement overly intrusive rights without court supervision that will in practice be no more than expensive, invasive, privacy offensive security theatre.

In this CBC interview, Ann Cavoukian, the Ontario Privacy Commissioner, does an excellent job of explaining the issue. Well worth investing 7 minutes to watch.

. . . [more]

This is the second in a series of columns about developing a library collection development policy. In my last column, I addressed some of the issues surrounding monographs. In this column, I’d like to consider journals, how they’re used in legal research today both in practice and in law schools, and their place in a contemporary law library collection.

Journals vs Serials

I’ve purposely used the specific term “journals” rather than the broader term “serials”. Serials are any publication that is issued either periodically (daily, weekly, monthly, etc) or serially in successive discrete parts, the publication of which is . . . [more]

Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of January 24 – 31.

♨ 1. Jones v. Tsige 2012 ONCA 32

[1] Does Ontario law recognize a right to bring a civil action for damages for the invasion of personal privacy?

♨ 2. Pottruff v. Don Berry Holdings Inc. 2012 ONSC 311

[1] The defendant brings this motion to have two documents, and any copies in the possession of the plaintiff, returned to it. As well it seeks a declaration that the documents cannot be referred to in this litigation because of solicitor and client privilege.

A couple of weeks ago the academic library blog and twittersphere was ablaze reacting to a tweet that “[a]ll of Harvard library staff have just effectively been fired”. As more news came out of a January 19 Harvard town hall meeting it appears that the reorganization at Harvard will not be that extreme – but these will be very challenging times for the Harvard library. The Chronicle of Higher Education has a nice short piece on this situation here. The text of the presentation that sparked the reaction is here. More news is expected next month. . . . [more]

Last week the Federal, Provincial and Territorial Ministers of Justice met in Charlottetown for an annual conference started four decades ago by then Minister of Justice John Turner. With the big price tag attached to the federal government’s omnibus crime bill C-10 and budget cuts on the horizon, there were no significant spending commitments by the federal government.

Legal aid is still on the agenda at these meetings, but barely. By my count, it is item number 16 out of 19 in the post-conference communiqué. Here is what the carefully-crafted language said:

Ministers affirmed their commitment to a responsive,

The state of Indiana may soon become the 23rd state in the US to adopt right-to-work legislation. With the Senate Committee having already passed the Bill, it will go to the full Senate. If there are no amendments, the governor of Indiana could be signing the Bill as early as tomorrow (see a news article here).

Back-to-work legislation prohibits contracts between employers and unions which require all employees to pay union dues as a condition of employment. As such, this type of legislation gives the non-member employee the option of paying union dues (or not). Supporters of this type . . . [more]

It just so happened that as Slaw columnist Ed Prutschi’s “Crime & Punishment in 2012” appeared today, I received the latest emailed copy of Criminological Highlights from the University of Toronto’s Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies. I thought I’d pass on the link to those of our readers who are interested in criminal law or the intersection of law and social behaviour.

Criminological Highlights is a digest of selected academic articles,

designed to provide an accessible look at some of the more interesting criminological research that is currently being published. Each issue contains “Headlines and Conclusions” for

I have the pleasure of attending LegalTech 2012 in New York this week. Though I came to NYC to talk to vendors of legal technology products as my primary purpose, there have been some interesting learning opportunities as well. One session I attended yesterday was titled “Talking Technology to Lawyers”.

The session was moderated by Gina Buser of Travelling Coaches. Panelists were all Chief Informatin Officers at large US law firms: Bob Dolinsky, Terry Pressley, and Kirk Scruggs. Thpugh their titles were the same, their approaches to speaking about technology to lawyers differed. My impression of the panelists was simplified . . . [more]

It’s that time of year again. Judges and lawyers have returned to court sporting freshly bronzed bodies, and Ontario’s RIDE program has tucked away the bulk of its breathalysers until the summer cottage season. A perfect time to transition from reflections of the past to contemplation of the future. And so I bring you my second annual Crime & Punishment Predictions. (If you’re wondering how plausible a prognosticator this Prutschi fellow is, you may peruse my previous perennial predictions here: https://www.slaw.ca/2011/02/07/crime-punishment-in-2011/). 

5. A Return to the 11(b) Crisis

For nearly a decade appellate courts have been discreetly warning their . . . [more]