While I was pondering the angle to take on the new television show Pan Am, I came upon Patrick Smith’s article on Salon.com, “Why I’m not watching Pan Am”. The author (a pilot) offers (in jest, I assume) that he feels hurt that he was not invited to provide his expertise as a technical advisor, and “it’s a TV show, not a historical documentary, and I’d be liable to find myself sitting there grumbling at the screen, pointing out inaccuracies and taking the whole enterprise a little too seriously.”

In a way, the reason why I wanted to watch . . . [more]

The possibility of losing any portion of your benefit due to your insurer’s insolvency has probably never crossed your mind. Why should it? After all, we live in a country with a carefully regulated and stable financial services industry. As a result, I think it’s unlikely that your insurer will become insolvent. However, there is a risk, albeit a very small one, and it has happened three times.

In 1992, Les Coopérants became the first Canadian insurance company to become insolvent. This was followed by Sovereign Life in 1993 and Confederation Life in 1994. This affected over 1.1 million Canadian . . . [more]

The Harvard Business Review has an interview with Jeff Weiss and Jonathan Hughes, “Implementing Strategies in Extreme Negotiations,” that contains advice that may help with any important and difficult negotiation. In essence, the advice is to:

• “understand what’s motivating the other party;
• “come up with a variety of possible solutions and invite critiques;
• “use facts to persuade;
• “demonstrate a commitment to a fair and reasonable outcome;
• “build trust over time;
• and focus on actively shaping the process of the negotiation.”

In preparing for a negotiation, Weiss and Hughes suggest using a “seven-elements checklist” developed by their colleagues at . . . [more]

It is important that every business or organization has their domain names (eg slaw.ca) registered in their own name, and that the administrative contact is a senior person within the business.

There are a couple of reasons for that.

Domain names are often registered by an advertising agency, web designer, or IT provider for one of their customers. They should register it in their customer’s name, but often register it in their own name because it is simpler and easier for them.

Given that domain names are valuable assets, they ought to be registered in the actual owner’s name. The . . . [more]

A recent ethnographic study at a number of Illinois academic libraries suggests that students who have grown up with computer and Internet access are not as sophisticated at accessing the world of online resources as is often assumed. A very brief article on the project appeared in many daily papers last month and my colleague Humayun Rashid brought a much more detailed report in Inside Higher Education to my attention. The Inside Higher Ed. article provides an excellent summary of the study.

The results of the ERIAL Project (Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries) are perhaps not very surprising to . . . [more]

I have in the past complained about the abysmal lack of online access to Canadian court dockets at the same time as trying to compile a list of known links to Canadian court dockets to my Case Law research page on my legal research and writing website.

In addition to the new LexisNexis Canada dockets service I mentioned last week, a colleague has pointed out the free Canadian Federal Courts dockets service at IPPractice.ca, a website maintained by Alan Macek of Dimock Stratton LLP, a great site that does not yet appear to have been mentioned on SLAW . . . [more]

[W]e’re writing these things that we can no longer read. And we’ve rendered something illegible. And we’ve lost the sense of what’s actually happening in this world that we’ve made.
Kevin Slavin, How algorithms shape our world, TEDGlobal (July 2011)

I finished my last post speculating that the business of law will be changed by programmers in the same way one might boil a frog. That is, it will happen slowly under the guise of software support for all of the decision making you have to do every day, and you’ll accept that support, incrementally, because you are a . . . [more]

Library and Archives Canada announced today that, to celebrate the 170th anniversary of the Canada Gazette (on October 2), the back issues of that publication have been made available and searchable online. There are four entry points to the database:

• Keyword Search
• Advanced Keyword Search
• Search the Consolidated Regulations of Canada
• Find an Issue

Issues published since 1998 have been available online for some time.

[hat tip: @richards1000] . . . [more]

The 7th edition of the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation is over a year old already. In a normal world, the newness and newsworthiness of this book (commonly known as the McGill Guide) would have worn off. Still, whenever someone asks for assistance with citing materials, I find myself in need of ‘more’ information. What are you citing, cases, articles? For whom, an academic paper, an internal document, the courts?

A book review published in the 2011 Saskatchewan Law Review at Volume 74, page 275 tells me that I am not alone with struggling for the correct answer to . . . [more]

This news story caught my eye yesterday: an elderly woman in British Columbia is suing her children for parental support. Ms. Anderson is asking that her two children each pay her $750 a month to make ends meet.

Most provinces in Canada have some legislative obligation for children to support their parents. For example, the Civil Code of Quebec stipulates that:

585. Married or civil union spouses, and relatives in the direct line in the first degree, owe each other support.

A few decisions in Quebec have been rendered under this section; however, it is clear that this provision does . . . [more]

I was part of the Apple IIe generation – we installed them in the school I worked at in the 1980’s. They seemed great, but somehow the DOS computers that started to creep in seemed to allow us to do more in the background, and the techies decided that this was the way to go. I learned some Unix along the way, and that helped me create some smart databases in 1990 in my library, but I soon joined the crowds. My first computer purchase was a Windows PCc, and for more than 20 years I stuck with PCs. I . . . [more]

To what extent should judges be involved in mediation?

The Chief Justice of Ontario addressed this thorny issue in The Advocate’s Journal, Winter 2010. He considers it from the perspective of the public, the bar and the bench, provides a brief history of judicial involvement in settlement discussions, adumbrates the arguments for and against judicial mediation, and asks whether it is a reality or a fantasy.

There are so many issues.

How would it be different from the pretrial rule which is designed “to provide an opportunity for any or all of the issues in a proceeding to be settled . . . [more]