The Cyberjustice Laboratory of the Université de Montréal has been developing a courtroom management software application for one year now. Initially, the project, called ISA – a french acronym for « Interface de salle d’audience » (courtroom interface) – had the sole purpose of developing a streamlined interface facilitating the management of the Laboratory’s state-of-the-art technological courtroom software infrastructure.

However, due to the great potential of this software and to the enthusiasm of its first users, a web-based version of ISA was quickly designed. Our main objective behind its development is to extract the management functions from the courtroom’s physical . . . [more]

Have you ever used an app – whether on a phone, tablet, or desktop, and found them lacking?

Developers creating app versions of existing desktop software or online services face a dilemma. Apps are generally slimmed down versions of the original as they need to be used on touch interfaces, and the code needs to be smaller.

So app developers need to decide what features are important, how the app might be used differently in that context, and what can be left out. Even though desktop software is often bloated with features that are rarely used, deciding what to leave . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on technology, research and practice.

Technology

Protect Your Smartphone or Tablet With a Good Case
Dan Pinnington

It takes just one accidental drop to kill an iPad or smartphone. And unfortunately, if the glass cracks, they are difficult or even impossible to repair. To prevent this from happening you want to protect your device with a good case. But there are cases and there are cases. Pretty but flimsy plastic cases will do little to . . . [more]

While you can certainly debate whether ubiquitous internet access is a good or a bad thing, I suspect anyone with a weekly blog commitment to SLAW is looking forward to WestJet’s and Air Canada’s plans to roll out wifi on Canadian flights in the very near future. It is, I’ve learned, very near impossible to write a blog without an internet connection.

Yesterday I instead found myself sitting in seat 12E looking wistfully from my mute and helpless laptop to the pillowy white dunes just beyond the wings of flight WS697. “Cloud computing”, it struck me, was an oxymoron—that and . . . [more]

It would be my view that, even at its very best, the world of legal and professional publishing has been and is one that embraces evolution but not more. We see evidence of this in the recent sale back to its previous owners of American Lawyer Media. What goes round comes around would appear to be the preference and it seems that the major international law publishers were not interested in absorbing ALM. Perhaps this reflects their current view of the market. Still, there can be little doubt that the electronic revolution and the state of the economy . . . [more]

As part of the consultancy work I do, I have the great pleasure and privilege to work with most important, high-profile clients, sometimes to conduct product review processes on their behalf. On a couple of recent projects, an understanding of the status quo was required, combined with an appreciation of the ways in which the products are used and will, most likely, be so in the future. These were to be analysed and measured against industry trends and perceptions and converted into strategic plans for their evolution. The projects were conducted well, I believe and clear directions, pointing out . . . [more]

Technology is becoming an ever greater part of our lives, both personally and professionally.
On a daily basis most of us use a cellphone or smartphone, a desktop computer and the Internet. Many of us will have an iPad or other tablet device and be posting updates on Facebook, Twitter or other social media tools.

Clients expect their lawyers to be technology literate – and there are always new and improved ways for communicating with clients. Here are some newer tools that you can consider using to better serve and communicate with your clients.

1. Help clients find your office . . . [more]

Organizations pursuing civil justice objectives need a website. On this point, there can be no doubt. Often operating with constrained budgets, these organizations need an efficient and appealing means to inform stakeholders and attract supporters and, in this regard, nothing can be more cost effective than a website. It’s now an article of faith that promotion of that website and engagement of those stakeholders also requires an active social media presence. But do the facts support that view?

Based on analysis[i] of social media engagement with CanLII (a free-to-access legal information site containing nearly 1.3 million court and tribunal . . . [more]

Context is everything. Which is simply to say res non ipsa loquitur. Things need more things near them to achieve meaning, significance, import — perhaps even for us to see them. That lump of metal there . . . near the edge of a smoking crater? or on a pedestal in a room hung about with paintings? Big diff.

Now, lumps of metal don’t have as their primary function the carrying of meaning. Words, though, do. Which is to say context is routinely consulted when we utter. Goes without saying — without awareness, most of the time. Some folks, . . . [more]

In Europe, the concern about the NSA and the “five eyes” countries is becoming more and more serious.

One of the more unusual proposals is to legislate against products that are insecure by design. A group loosely associated with the EU Pirate Parties and the Free Software Foundation proposes:

legislation to upgrade all communication among private citizens to provide necessary technical measures for maintaining an adequate implementation of the Secrecy of Correspondence required by most constitutions and human right charters. The law shall include ways to ensure its correct implementation and a transition path from the existing unencrypted systems

In . . . [more]

Microsoft released office for iPad last week. They have promised to release Office for Android soon as well.

The good news is that it is free to download. The bad news is that it can only be used as a reader. If you want to create or edit documents, you need an Office 365 account. And if you have a personal Office 365 account, the terms don’t let you use it for commercial purposes.

Office 365 is Microsoft’s cloud based service that is purchased for an annual fee.

Even if your office has one of the many flavours of Microsoft . . . [more]

One of the most significant threats to client confidential and private information in law firms is bad passwords. Unless lawyers and paralegals are substantially different from the general public, we’re using the same bad practices when we create and re-use passwords as everyone else.

You’ve already heard all the suggestions on using better passwords, so I will leave that dead horse alone. In fact, I’ll suggest that you forget it. If you think you can create sufficient secure passwords for all of your offline and online accounts and devices, you’re a better person than me. The rest of us should . . . [more]