An important legal research tanslation skill is the ability to look at a case citation and understand what it means. Today’s Tip is in honour of the forthcoming 8th edition of the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation.

There are plenty of  resources on legal citation, but these tips will help when you decipher citations:

• round brackets at the beginning of a citation give you the year that the decision was released
• square brackets at the beginning of a citation mean that you need the year in order to find the correct volume of the reporter to locate the

All too frequently, we have all faced the frustrating “printer is low on ink” warning – usually when we are printing something urgent.
Do you need to immediately change
your cartridge? No. If, despite the low ink warning, you are still getting good quality print jobs (i.e., no fading or streaking), carry on printing. In most cases, you will be able to print a few, several or even more pages without problems. Change your cartridge only when the quality of your print jobs starts to decline.…

Are you thinking of building (or updating) your law firm’s website?

As my firm begins an overhaul of our ten-year old site, I’ve certainly learned it can be a bit of a daunting task.

Website-building for lawyers has become considerably more complicated over the last decade. The public has become much more sophisticated in its expectations of professional websites and the extension of law firms’ online presence, beyond websites to blogs and social media, creates challenges for firms seeking to maintain a consistent message and identity online.

There is no “one size fits all” solution or template that will meet …

Today’s Tip is inspired by my colleague Jane Symons. As we occasionally do, Jane zipped out to another library to borrow a book for one of our lawyers – yes folks, print is still necessary for legal research.  She was looking for something in a government documents collection – yes folks, that is correct, not all government documents are on the interweb. The item was not where it was supposed to be on the shelf.

Jane says the library gods were smiling on her when after carefully scanning each item on the surrounding shelves she happened to glance a …

After spending money to buy a new TV, you want to do everything you can to get the best possible picture. One of the tempting additional purchases – often pushed on you by the salesperson – is an expensive gold-plated HDMI cable. They come in large fancy packages and with big price tags – up to $100.

Are they worth it? No – save your hard-earned money for something else. You will get a decent picture with the basic $20 cable. For longer runs – 3 or more metres – best to stay away from the real cheap no-name cables, …

♫  Doin it right, doin it right
Doin it right, doin it right
The blues bands cookin and the drummers burnin down
Doin it right on the wrong side of town!!!  ♫

Lyrics, music and recorded by the Powder Blues.

Law firms like to think that they do things rather well.  Exceptionally well, as a matter of fact. Particularly the biggest ones.

Only problem is, not everyone agrees with that perception.  Take Casey Flaherty for example.  Casey just happens to be the General Counsel at Kia Motors America.  In his words (and this is an exact quote) “Lawyers see …

This post first appeared on Slaw July 2, 2009 and it is still relevant advice.

In this world of super fast document retrieval it is sometimes important to remember the basics. I was just asked for a decision where the style of cause and the citation both contained errors. The “help I can’t find this case” is usually one of my favourite problems. This Thursday after a mid-week Canada Day off is a lot like a Monday.

The citation that was given to me was a 1983 case from the O.L.R.s – obviously that was incorrect as the Cardiff Index

Not sure if the experts will say this is a scientifically helpful idea for falling asleep (IMHO it seems better than just counting sheep), but sometimes you will want to listen to music as you (hopefully) fall asleep.
But how do you set things up so you aren’t stuck listening to music all night? Just create a playlist for the songs you want to listen to – even if it is just one song. You get silence – and hopefully sleep – when the playlist is done. Here’s to falling asleep faster!
And a bonus tip: If you want a …

After months of nagtext messages from my cell carrier, all promoting  my available hardware upgrades, I finally made the move several weeks ago and switched to a sparkling new iPhone 5s.

I wasn’t much interested in the new (for me) Siri functions, to be honest. I had long ago lived through my friend’ eager demonstrations of Siri’s amusing ability to handle their obscene test questions with digital grace. There was little novelty left.

Little did I realize that the technologies associated with Siri would ultimately be a pathway for my rediscovery of the long-lost art of dictation.

Back …

Today’s Tip: wait with patience.

I often find myself using curse filled phrases when everything (websites, videos, my Blu-ray player, my Starbucks app) is too slow to load. That little rotating circle symbol, the hour glass, even PayPal’s rounded square that ticks away while the web does its thing drive me nuts, nuts, nuts. When my children slide the symbol to answer my phone calls and don’t speak immediately, we have (annoying to them) conversations about appropriate telephone etiquette.

This 4:11 YouTube clip of comedian Louis C.K. with Conan O’Brien “Everything’s Amazing and Nobody’s Happy” shared by Jason Thomas …