We mourn the passing of Steve Jobs, whose singular achievements are recounted by the HuffPost, MTV on his impact on music, Washington Post , Wired and the Daily Telegraph.

For the legal community, the perspective is slightly different. Jobs contributed to a host of patents reviewed here. Law firms toyed with Apple computers for a while in the 1980s, but currently the only firms that are using that platform tend to be IP and media law firms who are following their clients – the creative community has always loved Apple machines. And of course there are . . . [more]

I’m new to the cloud, just having opened a Dropbox account a couple of weeks ago. Still even to a newbie like me its clear that cloud computing on a larger scale can raise many legal issues about privacy and security. As it turns out the potential new law and policy issues are many. To address these issues the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law is hosting an all-day conference on Friday October 14 entitled Cloudlaw: Law and Policy in the Cloud. The conference will consider the issues that may arise . . . [more]

I have the pleasure of presenting today in Calgary at an Advanced Legal Research Seminar sponsored by the Legal Education Society of Alberta. Included on the panel with me are a number of experienced legal researchers from Alberta, including SLAW’s own Shaunna Mireau.

What makes the seminar interesting is the variety in topics covered, including core research competencies and how to effectively approach research, traditional and non-traditional gathering paths, comparative research (the art of comparing and analyzing), foreign and international legal research, and advanced legislative research. In addition, there is what we are calling a “speed dating” session after lunch . . . [more]

We tend to get requests at Slaw to publish notices of upcoming events of interest to the legal profession. And often we’ll come across such planned events in the course of checking out the news of the day. This use of Slaw for announcements is somewhat haphazard, though — and an entry about an event soon disappears off the main page. So to see if we can improve our reporting of upcoming events, we’ve launched TalkLaw/ParLoi. (You can get to it via either http://talklaw.slaw.ca or http://talklaw.ca.)

TalkLaw/ParLoi is essentially a cluster of Google calendars for various Canadian cities where . . . [more]

One thing guaranteed to get attention and create buzz is any new Apple product unveiling – whether or not one is an Apple fanboy / fangirl. Yesterday’s was no exception. It was noteworthy in part because of the absence of Steve Jobs. But Tim Cook and other Apple executives did not disappoint.

Various products were updated, but the new iPhone 4s gets the most attention. Here is a summary from the Canoe Tech blog about the 4s and its introduction in Canada. Here is a link from the Apple site that has more detail and a couple of videos. 

One . . . [more]

I couldn’t help being struck by the contrast between two seemingly unrelated events last week: Eddie Greenspan attacking his former client Conrad Black in the Globe and Mail, and the B.C. Supreme Court striking down money laundering laws insofar as those laws apply to lawyers.

In Federation of Law Societies of Canada v. Canada 2011 BCSC 1270, Madam Justice Gerow found that federal money laundering laws violate section 7 of the Charter to the extent that they apply to legal counsel and law firms. She further found that the violations could not be justified under section 1. Justice . . . [more]

The past two months have seen a flurry of innovative activity in the corner of the legal technology world that concerns free access to law and open legal information. Here are some developments that seem noteworthy:

Open Legal Educational Resources

New, free, and open versions — in ePUB and .mobi formats — of U.S. federal court rules have been published, jointly by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law School and CALI, The Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction. This is the latest addition to the ePUB-based open legal publishing endeavor that John Mayer describes in this recent post. . . . [more]

I just stumbled upon the fact that the decision to discontinue publication of the print version of the federal Table of Public Statutes was reversed.

An issue, up to date to Sept 30, 2011 is now available from:

Queen’s Printer

or from

Federal Publications Inc.

This is good news! . . . [more]

Way back in March, LexisNexis Canada announced an app for Quicklaw on the iPhone. Ted Tjaden covered this new development with a review. The app was updated recently, and I thought it might be worthwhile checking out the new features, including an enhanced search interface and results list.

My personal test of the app found it a bit buggy: app shuts down if you go back to the app from the “view in browser link”, view in browser asks for a client id rather than transferring. This may have been due to settings on my device, or my internet connectivity. . . . [more]

We’re pleased to announce that Adam Dodek is joining Slaw.

Adam is an Associate Professor in the common law section of the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law. He teaches and writes about public law, legal ethics, the legal profession and the Supreme Court of Canada. He is a founding member of the Canadian Association for Legal Ethics (CALE). And at the moment he is writing a book about solicitor-client privilege. You might take a look at his recent work, “Courthouse Cancellations and Challenges to Self-Regulation: Correspondent’s Report from Canada” (Legal Ethics, Vol. 14, No. 1, . . . [more]

In the various provincial election campaigns across the country, there is little attention being paid to the funding of the civil justice system. Among elected officials, the dominant paradigm is one that sees funding of the civil justice system as an obligatory expense for the government. The costs appear unlimited and ever increasing. The challenge within this paradigm is how to minimize this expensive item while still meeting their basic obligations. The results are evident in court delays, the ever increasing number of self-represented litigants, increasing restrictions on access to legal aid, and a myriad of unresolved civil disputes in . . . [more]