Back in the 80’s – well before the availability of such innovative distractions and time wasters as the internet, Netflix, DisneyXD or PVRs – the late afternoon viewing options for pre-teen couch-potatoes were pretty sparse. Worse still, most of what was available often tried to impart important life lessons to impressionable young minds. Anyone remember the ABC After School Specials?

Some of those lessons must have stuck, because I can no longer hear someone say “now I know” (or some such) without reflexively adding the GI Joe inspired response: “and knowing is half the battle!”

So it . . . [more]

We all like to avoid thinking about bad things like earthquakes, tornadoes and other natural disasters. We also tend to avoid thinking about other things that might impact on our personal and professional lives. However, major and minor disasters abound, are a fact of life, and will occur whether we like it or not, due to natural causes or by human error or malicious actions.

And while major natural disasters are typically the ones that get the most attention and headlines, even minor disasters – a burst pipe in the server room or the sudden and unexpected departure of a . . . [more]

The North Carolina State Bar has revisited its proposed Formal Ethics Opinion (FEO) on cloud computing and addressed many of the concerns the legal cloud computing community had previously expressed.

The main point of concern with the previous opinion was a list of minimum mandatory requirements that an attorney had to ensure was met by their cloud computing provider. In an open letter to the NC State Bar, the Legal Cloud Computing Association outlined its concerns with the proposed FEO; prominent bloggers such as Carolyn Elefant, Stephanie Kimbro, Erik Mazzone and Niki Black also outlined their concerns about . . . [more]

We’re very pleased indeed to announce that Colin Lachance and Joan Rataic-Lang have joined our roster of columnists.

Colin Lachance is the newly appointed President and CEO of CanLII. A lawyer by training, his career before CanLII was largely focused on communications law and policy. Following a few years in the marketing and government relations ends of the telecommunications industry, Colin started part-time studies towards an LL.M. at the University of Ottawa. As he puts it, to his “surprise and delight,” grad school opened him up to very different possibilities and ultimately a career change that brought him to CanLII. . . . [more]

Congratulations to Ted Tjaden who is featured in the Autumn 2011 issue of University of Toronto Faculty of Information alumni magazine Informed article “Alumni to Watch.” He also graces the cover.

The article traces Ted’s career from practicing lawyer in B.C. to library student at the Faculty of Information (now known as the iSchool) at the University of Toronto, to law librarian at the Bora Laskin Law Library at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law and adjunct professor for the Faculty of Information, and finally to his current position as National Director of Knowledge Management at McMillan LLP. . . . [more]

In Canada there are companies that provide “litigation financial services” for personal injury, class actions and many other types of claim. These “Plaintiff’s Loans” are generally up to 10% – 20% of the value of the claim. No payments of principal or interest are required until the settlement or judgment is paid. If the amount recovered is insufficient to repay the loan, some lenders hold the borrower liable for the balance. Other lenders make non-recourse loans in Canada.

The loans made by these Canadian companies are frequently to personal injury plaintiffs and in the region of $10,000 – $20,000.

In . . . [more]

Lest anyone have forgotten Rule 1.6 of the ABA Model Rules, here it is – and similar rules apply everywhere:

Rule 1.6 Confidentiality Of Information

(a) A lawyer shall not reveal information relating to the representation of a client unless the client gives informed consent, the disclosure is impliedly authorized in order to carry out the representation or the disclosure is permitted by paragraph (b).

(b) A lawyer may reveal information relating to the representation of a client to the extent the lawyer reasonably believes necessary:

(1) to prevent reasonably certain death or substantial bodily harm;

(2) to prevent the . . . [more]

Following my post earlier this week about the injunction obtained in New York, lawyers for the movement brought their own respective motions in B.C. and Ontario.

Associate Chief Justice Anne MacKenzie of the B.C. Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the protesters must leave the Vancouver site by tomorrow, and a similar injunction was granted in Victoria.

I attended the motion in Toronto on Friday, where the judge has reserved his decision until Monday. Justice Brown was extremely accommodating to members of the media, allowing non-disruptive recordings of the proceedings and the use of electronic equipment, including social media. . . . [more]

Reading some posts and tweets (p&t’s?) on standards for legislation and opinion metadata lately, I was surprised to bump into a side-issue, “side” at least in this context, on whether the US Bluebook can have copyright in its citation styles. Apparently some development of legal style at Zotero has been hindered because of objections from Bluebook. See this contribution to a discussion on the Zotero forum on September 18, 2011:

Hi, I’m the author of the “Bluebook 19th ed.” style. The style itself is incomplete, which is the cause of the “bb-periodical-subsequent” string that you’re seeing in the output.

I

A recent working paper by Mark K. Osbeck of the University of Michigan Law School, proposes a framework for understanding, and teaching, good legal writing.

Available via SSRN, What is “Good Legal Writing” and Why Does it Matter?, the paper provides an overview of the major reports and other documents that have called for increased attention in US law schools to practical “lawyering” skills, starting with the MacCrate Report of 1992. It then provides a conceptual framework for defining good legal writing, and a detailed discussion of its various elements:

[The paper] argues that legal readers judge a document

I recently posted about hyperlink being legally defined and that got me ta thinkin’, in terms of Internet innovations has the hyperlink been topped? In many respects one could assert that the hyperlink is the Internet as we know it today. Yes, I know that the ‘Net is an interconnected web of computers etc. etc. but in terms of modern usage of the ‘Net, absent the hyperlink most would not recognize the Internet, and we would all know far more command prompts.

In doing a bit of research it seems that the term “hyperlink” has been around since the . . . [more]

Well today is Friday, and if our friends at CanLII have predicted correctly, they will soon be delivering more than one million search results!

Congratulations to everyone involved in making CanLII happen. It’s quite a milestone! . . . [more]