The development of computers changed and enhanced the searching of caselaw.

In 1971 a study of the application of computers to legal research was undertaken by the Federal Department of Justice and the Canadian Bar Association. The study was completed in April 1972 and the opening paragraphs of the report were as follows:

This study referred to as ‘Operation Compulex’was undertaken at the initiative of the Federal Department of Justice and the Canadian Bar Association. The Bureau of Management Consulting of the Federal Government was engaged to carry out the inquiry which began in June of 1971 and terminated in

I’m pleased to announce that Tamir Israel has joined Slaw as a regular blogger.

Tamir is staff lawyer with the Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) at the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, where he conducts research and advocacy on various digital rights-related topics. The issues that concern him at CIPPIC include online privacy and anonymity, net neutrality, intellectual property, intermediary liability, spam, e-commerce, and consumer protection generally. Tamir also lectures on Internet regulation matters at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Graduate & Postdoctoral Studies.

Please welcome Tamir to the company of Slawyers. . . . [more]

Yesterday U.S. Register of Copyrights, Maria A. Pallante, released a Document setting out 17 priorities of the U.S. Copyright Office over the next two years on copyright policy and administrative practice, and announced 10 new projects. Interesting read for Canadians as many of the issues discussed and proposals for the next two years may affect Canadians. As the report states, the “Office’s registration system and the companion recordation system constitute the world’s largest database of copyright works and copyright ownership information.” In fact, many Canadians register their works in the U.S. Copyright Office (since a deposit of the work is . . . [more]

The staff at HeinOnline have a new, free HeinOnline iPad app to access their database.

Logging into the app is easy and users are invited to have their login and password information remembered.

Once logged in, one gets a table of contents of the various libraries in their database, depending on the scope of one’s subscription (e.g., Law Library Journal, US Reports, English Reports, Legal Classics, and so on).

Browsing by law journal title and volume is easy to do. At that stage, there is an option of viewing the table of contents for the particular volume. The screenshot below . . . [more]

I’ve been thinking about mobile commerce recently, in part because I am on a panel at the Canadian IT Law Association annual conference tomorrow entitled “Mobile Business: Industry Trends, Public Policy Issues and Legal Implications” along with Jacob Glick of Google, and Eric Gross of Gowlings.

m-commerce is already here, and will grow significantly in the near future. Consider that mobile devices are outselling PC’s.

North America is not on the leading edge of this. Places like Japan and Korea, and parts of Europe are ahead of us.

As examples of what can be done, take a look at these . . . [more]

Ten years ago, when we had our first child, my wife and I bought a $1,000 video camera that had many features. One of these features was an infrared capability that allowed us to take videos of our sleeping child at night. We used the feature once and then we never looked at it again. Today, with our third child, our video camera sits on the shelf gathering dust and we use our iPhone to take videos.

The iPhone camera app does not have a fraction of the features of our video camera but it is convenient to use and . . . [more]

We need to create an Ontario Legal Corps composed of lawyers and articling students to address the access to justice crisis in this province and we need to do it now. An Ontario Legal Corps will also go a long way to addressing the current deficit in available articling positions.

The articling crisis in Ontario is a supply-side program. It deals with the issue of the scarcity of supply of articling positions. As many judges and now the Governor General have reminded us, we have an Access to Justice crisis which is a demand side problem. The demand for legal . . . [more]

Beware of “rumor about you” DM that is Twitter account hijack exploit

Earlier this afternoon I received the following message from a lawyer I know: “There is a rumor/blog going around about you http://tdotco/abcdefg might want to read it” (TLD is t.co and other part of the URL is s1bYMHV).

If you click on this link and successfully load this site, it sends this message to all your followers. It is currently circulating among Canadian lawyers. Beware and don’t get fooled. . . . [more]

No doubt many libraries in our community have already heard the news: SydneyPLUS has just purchased a big piece of the Inmagic pie. This includes Inmagic’s DB/Text Library Suite of products: DB/TextWorks, DB/Text WebPublisher Pro, and Inmagic Genie.

According to Kathy Bryce via Andornot’s blog:

The move will strengthen both SydneyPLUS and the new Inmagic division by bringing together complementary technologies to meet the needs of special librarians, while allowing Inmagic, Inc. to focus on new markets.

Inmagic, Inc. (the company) will retain its Presto technology and its related products PrestoKnowledgeNet, Presto AssociatioNet, . . . [more]

I like to know things first. It’s a character flaw that is exacerbated by a desire to place the libraries first in the minds of my firm’s lawyers for being the source of current information. With all the technology available for learning things, it should be easy to learn what you need to know. Lately though, I find myself stymied in my desire to know things first.

Today is a good example. Being from an Alberta farming background and growing up with my great grandfather’s shotgun stored in my closet (unloaded of course), I thought I would write about the . . . [more]

Already the subject of Slaw posts in the past with regard to different jurisdictions (see here and here), it is now Quebec’s turn to recognize service via Facebook after the Court of Quebec authorized this past summer a plaintiff to serve its motion to institute proceedings via this social network ing site.

In Boivin & Associés c. Scott, 2011 QCCQ 10324 (CanLII), the plaintiff submitted evidence that it had made every effort possible to serve the defendant by traditional means, but to no avail. Indeed, the defendant had no known address in Quebec and her last known address . . . [more]

Public Law at the McLachlin Court: the First Decade, co-edited by David A. Wright and Adam Dodek, Ottawa law prof and brand new blogger at Slaw, has just been published by Irwin Law.

Dodek and Wright have made the introductory chapter available on SSRN, so you can get a feel for the scope and tone of the book.

From that introduction:

This book focuses on con­stitutional and administrative law decisions rendered in the first decade of the McLachlin Court. It includes contributions in both English and French from leading scholars who examine the Court’s legacy in areas