Site news for those who read Slaw only via RSS or email

1. Comment Watch:

In the last week there were (once again, exactly!) 33 comments. You might be particularly interested in these:

• (Law) School’s in again, so it’s not surprising there were some meaty comments on Ted Tjaden’s post on “Legal Research and Writing Skills in Law School”

You can subscribe to the comments on Slaw either as a separate matter (RSS, email) or as part of a subscription combining posts and comments (RSS, email).

2. SlawTips

This week’s tips on SlawTips are: . . . [more]

If you’ve done a CanLII search in the last few days, you’ll have noticed that they’ve introduced contextual snippets into the search results. The searched for term is highlighted and shown with some surrounding text, apparently in a number, if not all, of the instances in which the term appears in the relevant document. The graphic below illustrates: . . . [more]

Once again Rich McCue has published the results of his annual survey of incoming law students at the University of Victoria. His executive summary of the results is as follows:

• 84% of incoming law students own “Smart Phones” that can browse the internet (up dramatically from 50% last year), with 42% of the total being iPhones, 13% Android and 27% Blackberry’s.
• 19% of students own tablet devices or ebook readers.
• 98% of students own laptops, and 16% own both a laptop and a desktop computer.
• 50% of student laptops are Mac’s, up from 44% last year.
• The average laptop price

. . . [more]

In the age of social media like Facebook and Twitter, school administrators are asking whether such electronic communication is appropriate between students and teachers. They are wondering where boundaries for such communication should be placed. Many school boards are choosing a strict path, forbidding or restricting any communication via social media between students and teachers.

[ français / English ]

Trop de gens se désolent du manque de conscience citoyenne de certains de nos jeunes, du manque d’implication de nos concitoyens dans les affaires publiques, de la lassitude et de l’incompréhension généralisée face au fonctionnement de nos institutions. Il me semble que nous faisons face à un problème croissant de citoyens qui ne comprennent pas notre système et son fonctionnement.

Cependant, et trop souvent dans le travail que nous faisons chez Éducaloi, certains membres du public voient d’un mauvais œil que nous recevons des fonds des gouvernements dans notre travail… Comme si le fait que . . . [more]

Ted Tjaden’s post today on “Legal Research and Writing Skills in Law School” could not have been more timely for me and my colleagues at the Bora Laskin Law Library.

For the first time that anyone here can remember (*however, see comment 3 below), the UofT Faculty of Law is offering a stand-alone mandatory legal research and writing class for its incoming first year class. It is a 10 week programme of hour-long classes that attempt to address many of the challenges that Ted outlines. This programme was long in the making and was driven by the Law . . . [more]

Although I am reluctant to merely “re-post” a link to today’s “What’s New in Legal KM?” post from Above and Beyond KM – especially since many of you likely already follow Mary’s blog – she provides a great overview of the ILTA-KM sessions, especially for those of us who were not there. There is a lot to mull over in this post and likely hours of useful reading if one were to click through all of the links she has provided. . . . [more]

Next week I will have the opportunity to join with a number of colleagues on a panel to discuss with law school students the importance of legal research and writing, largely in anticipation of them becoming lawyers on graduation and needing to have certain skills in order to excel in their profession (and I think it is great that this law school is making this kind of session available to students).

One of the questions put to the panel in advance of the session was: “What kind of legal research skills should law school students be highly proficient in by . . . [more]

At this moment, Apple’s iPad is without question the tablet that is defining the category and vastly outselling any competition. But it is too soon to write off competition from Android tablets. And Microsoft just yesterday officially unveiled its new Windows 8 operating system at a build developers conference. They gave away Samsung windows 8 tablets to everyone at the conference. Windows 8 is not ready for consumption yet – it will be some time in 2012 before it is ready for use. If you are keen to try it now, you can download the developer preview edition from the . . . [more]

Lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights have filed a complaint on behalf of SNAP, a survivor support group, at the International Criminal Court (ICC) alleging that senior Vatican officials – including the current Pope – have committed crimes against humanity on the basis that “Vatican officials tolerate and enable the systematic and widespread concealing of rape and child sex crimes throughout the world.”

The 84-page complaint is available here (PDF) and makes for interesting, if not depressing, reading. Included in the complaint as part of the factual background is an overview of the abuse that has occurred in . . . [more]

My experience to date with legal knowledge engineering has consisted of using decision trees to automate legal documents in a field known as document assembly. I have never done hard coding or played with expert system shells. Indeed, there are not many of them to play with. The only ones I am aware of are those developed by Neota Logic (formerly Jnana) and RuleBurst (since acquired by Oracle).

So it was interesting to meet Dr. Pamela Gray, a legal knowledge engineer from Charles Sturt University, and her son Xenogene Gray, a computational physicist. Together they have developed a legal . . . [more]

The Ontario Court of Appeal affirmed the convictions of Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb but reduced their sentences by a total of two one years, each.

The reasons in R. v. Drabinsky 2011 ONCA 582 were posted on the ONCA website this a.m.

The reasons are “by the Court”. What comes through clearly (at least to me) is that the judges on the panel were not impressed by any aspect of the content of the appeal arguments. I emphasize content, not manner of presentation.

For those who care, I’ve pasted some highlights in the body of the message after the . . . [more]