Today’s Tip: Life is improved by learning, so educate yourself.

I made some foolish choices in my youth about formal education that I have come to regret.

The good news, for me and others, is that there are plenty of opportunities to educate yourself. Whether it is continuing education about a specific topic or general life-long learning, basic legal research processes, a more esoteric topic like how tribunals can provide excellence in administrative justice, or updates in an area of law you have an interest or practice in, there are opportunities available to learn things.

Take in …

Today’s Tip is by 3rd year University of Alberta law student Elsa Johnson in honour of law student week at Slaw.

I am actually writing a research paper at this very moment, and I was thinking back on first year research and how overwhelming it was. I’m not sure if this is a good “tip” or not, but what really stressed me out was not so much finding material (with all the databases and programs you are almost sure to find a ton of information), it was how to know when you have done enough.

I would always think “Is …

Today’s Tip: wear a hat. This tip could also be, change your “hat” if you need to.

I visited he lovely city of Yellowknife today. It was brisk and breezy, but beautiful as always. As I was walking downtown with very chilly ears, it occurred to me that I hadn’t planned very well. I knew I would be walking about, I knew it would be cold, but I didn’t bring a hat.

To make (the inevitable) analogy to legal research: I failed to look in a textbook.

Wear a hat.…

A tweet by Dan Bowsher @dan_bowsher caught my eye yesterday:
After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses – http://pri.gg/xAKiqE

Dan has some interesting tweets about Encyclopedia Britannica, though there is another twitter conversation you might find interesting:

Richard Cook‏ @Richhjc13
@stevemjones who needs britannica when u have wiki

Steve Jones‏ @stevemjones
@Richhjc13 Yeah but I bet encyclopaedia Britannia never made mistakes with whether people are alive or dead!! #ripbritannica

Today’s Tip: Use authoritative sources.

Encyclopaedia Britannica remains.…

Have you ever noticed something missing when you are searching in a service. Ever said to yourself, I have this document somewhere, why don’t they? Ever noticed a spelling error or a missing connection in a noteup record? If you were a Wikipedia editor, you would correct misinformation, right?

Today’s Tip: Be a Wikipedian, take responsibility for missing data.

By example, I sent this email to info@pco-bcp.gc.ca – the “contact us” email for the Privy Council Office.

Subject: Gap in the Orders in Council Database

Hello, when reviewing recent orders in council this morning, I noticed a significant gap in

I invite myself to meetings all the time, practice group meetings in particular. In our law firm we use Outlook scheduling, at least we try, to reduce the number of “is everyone free for a meeting at X time” emails and phone calls.

When you are meeting with folks outside your organization, you may want to try Doodle for the same effect. Doodle will let you propose meeting times, capture the preferred availability of people you would like to attend, and then assist with scheduling.

Check it out at http://www.doodle.com/.

Hat Tip to Annette Demers who writes for Slaw…

There are two possible approaches to personal current awareness:

1. Develop excellent searching skills so that you can find what you need when you need it
2. Pick a fairly narrow specialty and read everything new about that that you can find

I often recommend the first approach to students or junior lawyers who haven’t decided their particular area of legal interest.  Most lawyers I know make a best attempt at the second approach once they find their practice niche, but then most lawyers I know work at mid-size or larger firms where they refer things outside their niche area to colleagues, …

I wrote about the trouble I have with Acronyms yesterday at Slaw. Today’s Tip: Use an Acronym Dictionary!

I have a nice little book on my reference shelves called Acrobuster. It is a dictionary of Canadian English acronyms, initialisms and abbreviations.  It is available in these libraries. There are other print sources, but I like this one because it is Canadian.

There are also online Abbreviation or Acronym Dictionaries:

Abbreviations.com
Internet Slang Dictionary & Translator
Acronyms and Abbreviations from Businessballs.com
Acronyms search tab at The Free Dictionary

Do you have any favourite sources?…

There is good leagal content that doesn’t necessarily come in the neat packages that we usually look in.  Though our commercial legal database subscriptions have linked, vetted, edited, and easily available content, legal researchers would be remiss if they didn’t look for open access journal content as well.

Regular Slaw and Slaw Tips readers will be aware of legal content on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN).  See Lyonette Louis-Jacques’ May 2011 Slaw post for indexes to this and other journal content.

The University of Windsor Law Library has a nice list of open access law journals. Worth a look …

Today’s Tip is a simple reminder to view by “latest activity date”.

The Parliament is back in session and those Slaw Tips readers for whom monitoring legislation is a regular task will appreciate one of the features of LegisINFO. This feature is to view the new information added to the service using the Latest Activity Date filter.  Latest activity date is a Sort by feature.  The default sort is by Bill number, which is useful if you know what you are looking for, or if you want a snapshot of status for multiple bills.

Check out Sort by Latest …