With Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation coming into force on July 1, 2014, you may have noticed an increasing number of “confirm your email” opt in messages. Though there is a transition period where consent to receive commercial electronic messages is implied, most organizations are getting their express consent ducks in a row.

Today’s Tip is to be list conscious…or more practically, think really hard before you decide to unsubscribe.

Personally, I am making sure that legal publishers I deal with are able to send me email. Though there are plenty of ways to stay up to date on new publications and …

Slowly scrolling through a webpage to find a specific term is not the most efficient or fastest way to find the location of the information you are looking for, especially if the page is a long one.
One simple keyboard shortcut can help you instantly find the location of specific terms on a webpage. Use Control+F on a PC or Command+F on a Mac to find specific terms on a webpage. Press this shortcut, enter your term in the search box, hit Enter and you will instantly jump to the first location of that term. Look for arrows next to …

♫  I want security, yeah
Without it I had a great loss, oh now
Security, yeah
And I want it at any cost, oh now…♫

Lyrics and music by: Margaret Wessen, Otis Redding; recorded by Otis Redding.

I have been giving a number of presentations lately that in part, deal with the (in)security of law firm systems.  This is based on the findings of the Legal Technology Resource Center of the ABA (“LTRC”) in their 2013 Legal Technology Survey.  They reported that 15% of reporting law firms acknowledged that they had a security leak.  43% reported being infected by a …

When you are citing a web resource, provide the URL – the whole URL that links directly to the document you are referencing.

What am I talking about? As an example, when you cite a federal regulation, you identify it with the SOR number not the page  number of the issue of the Canada Gazette that the regulation came from. The URL reference should be equally as direct in my opinion.  A hyperlink or URL that points to the SOR – in this case the HTML version of the individual regulation from the Gazette website – not the PDF link …

When you create a profile on LinkedIn, the default URL LinkedIn creates for your profile page will end with a jumble of letters and numbers. Yuck!
You can make your profile look more professional and have a profile URL that is easier to remember and share by claiming your own LinkedIn vanity URL. It will look like this: www.linkedin.com/in/yourname.
You can customize your public profile URL when you edit your public profile. Follow these steps:

• Move your cursor over your picture icon (to the left of the Share an update… box) and click on it. This takes you to your

♫ I close my eyes, then I drift away
Into the magic night, I softly say
A silent prayer like dreamers do
Then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of you…♫

Lyrics, music and recorded by Roy Orbison.

Well we are heading into the Canadian annual right of spring – the Victoria Day long-weekend.

With images of heading to the cottage, heading to the condo at Whistler or just kicking back and taking a few days to relax, I thought I would share my tip for the best music website that I have found to relax…or work ..to.…

The librarians in our firm library often have questions on topics that are outside our experience.  This is no big deal.  As well trained and experienced legal information specialists we know the steps to follow to gather information on whatever topic comes our way.

One of the things that we have to remind ourselves to do, most especially this decade, is to constantly reorient ourselves to texts and other commentary that we have access to in our constantly changing and growing web based research tools.  I am not talking about how Google grows or new tools like CanLII Connects, but …

Audacity is a free, multi-track audio recorder and editor that runs on Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to record live audio through your computer microphone, an external mic, mixer or other line in input. For example, you can also use it to convert your records or cassette tapes into digital recordings. Depending on your sound card, Audacity can also capture streaming audio. It will let you edit WAV, AIFF, MP2, MP3 and various other types of audio files. You can cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together and dub over existing tracks …

So, WalMart shoppers can now obtain $99 wills at four in-store kiosk locations in the Greater Toronto Area, with more to come:

Behind the plastic jugs of liquid Tide stacked near the entrance of a new Walmart in Markham is an innovation in discount retailing: Axess Law.

Founded by Toronto lawyers Lena Koke and Mark Morris, Axess Law provides fast and affordable legal services to time-pressed shoppers.

Simple wills are $99. Notarized documents are $25, plus $19 for each additional document.

This should come as no surprise to those of us who have been eyeing the tea leaves for some …

Whenever we give legal research training to law students one of the sources of valuable up-to-date commentary that we emphasize are papers from continuing legal education seminars. This type of material provides valuable local commentary, often on changes to the law, that is specific, succinct and to the point.

In Alberta, we are lucky that the cataloguers at the Alberta Law Libraries create a comprehensive search of the table of contents for material in their catalogue.  In addition to finding tools from the publishers of conference papers, a keyword search of the library catalogue will find the title or author …