Today’s Tip FWIW: Understand the Acronym.

Robert Fulford, from the National Post, wrote about acronyms in his article When Words Die yesterday when he had to use acronymfinder.com to decipher FWIW.

Thanks for the link Robert. For what it’s worth, I was happy that you spelled out FWIW for me in your post.

Acronym Finder has the search benefit of a search for either and acronym or a phrase translated into an acronym with their ‘word in meaning’ search. Since, as Robert’s article points out, acronyms are making their way to common media, rather than just texts and twitter, it is handy to be aware of acronyms and as a potential search term.

A useful example of a search term is the 750,000th definition in the acronym finder database. From their blog:

The abbreviation added was NPQTL, which stands for “National Project on the Quality of Teaching and Learning”, an Australian education project to develop and implement national teacher competency standards.

NPQTL – you would definitely want to search both the acronym and the phrase in order to find out everything about this project.

HS [happy searching]
BTW – this post uses the words acronym and initialism interchangeably for convenience. Acronymfinder.com does not distinguish between the two either.

Ah proclamations. I am sure it isn’t just Alberta where a coming into force section of an act can look like this:

Coming into force
98(1) Sections 77, 78, 79 and 85(a) and (b) come into force on January 1, 2011.
(2) Sections 31, 34, 35, 39, 41, 43 and 49 apply with respect to the next election that is held at least 6 months after the coming into force of this section, and subsequent elections.
(3) Sections 21, 54, 76, 83, 84, 86(b), 87, 88 and 94(b) come into force on the day that a writ is issued under section 40 of the Election Act for the next general election after this section comes into force.
(4) Sections 45, 56(f), 57(a), 58(a) and (b), 62, 63, 89, 90 and 97 come into force on Proclamation.

If you have trouble reading an act that has some sections that will come into force (and you aren’t in Ontario when e-Laws does a great job of this, or looking at Federal legislation, where the DOJ does as well) why not make your own act with ‘pending amendments’ included.

1. Take a Word version of the act before the amendments.
2. Grab a Word or pdf version of the assented or bill form legislation.
3. Insert the amendments before or below the sections that change.

I prefer inserting the amendments in text boxes because they can be shaded – just like the Justice Canada Laws and Ontario e-Laws websites show pending amendments.

Today’s Tip: if you can’t find something the way you need it, build it yourself.

Thanks to David Paul of Paul & Co in Kamloops who wrote a great article for Canadian Lawyer recently called Useful Google tips and tricks for lawyers for today’s tip.

As Mr. Paul put it:

daterange provides documents that have been modified in the given interval. Unfortunately, Google requires that dates be entered in Julian format, e.g. charter scc daterange:2451193-2455757. Click here for a Julian date converter.

How is this useful for legal research? When you have a inexact facts that you need to verify. Perhaps you want to find information about a motor vehicle accident in Edmonton in January of 2009. Try this Google search:

accident edmonton daterange:2454832-2454862

The search will net you news stories, YouTube videos, and other interesting results.

CNET offers further details about date range searching with Google.

Can you think of other useful date range search scenarios?

Today’s Tip is an expansion on my post to Slaw.ca yesterday. In Tip language, my post would have said “do not panic if a commercial legal research site is down, there are other ways to find decisions.”

Anyone who has ever talked to me about case law research has (been forced to) listen while I wax poetic (or pedantic) about my true belief that the best and fastest way to retrieve the most usable copy of a judicial decision is by using an electronic research source. We are blessed in Canada to have many roads to Rome with commercial and public electronic legal research sources.

What do you do when the whole internet is down and you need ‘the leading case’?

Remember the basics! Find some commentary in a textbook or the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest or Halsbury’s Laws of Canada – your local courthouse or university library likely has the print. Look at the footnotes to see case references. Use the print noting up tools – the Canadian Case Citations – again you may have to visit or phone your courthouse library for assistance from a print copy.

The internet going down is not unheard of: In March 2010 an earthquake damaged undersea internet cables, cables were cut in December 21, 2008 which affected 75 million people. Recent history tells us that political activities can affect the web. Though you won’t be able to read this post if the web is down, perhaps you will remember not to panic.

Today’s Tip: Learn what you have access to.
This pithy statement could be read a couple of different ways in the context of legal research.

One meaning is to remember to search your library catalog – in your firm, at your local courthouse or law society library, at your nearest public library, at your local law school. Even law librarians who help fill the shelves should remember to look in the catalog. Favorite sources are great, but other sources should not be overlooked. Searching a library catalog will remind you that there are additional sources to refer to.

Another meaning is to remember to look at the database content of your electronic resources. If you don’t know that a particular source stopped being added to in 2009, you may think that you are finding everything when there is a great big gaping hole in your gathering strategy.

What do you think of when you read the phrase “learn what you have access to”?

Today’s tip involves following up.

When your research is initially prepared, you will likely find new items, or pending legislation. These future things may change the landscape that your initial research analysis paints.
Today’s simple tip is to diarize. Everything.

I use my Outlook calendar to diarize either recurring daily or weekly checks for things (like expected orders in council; court of appeal decisions, the expected publication date or comment deadline for draft regulations, etc.) It is very simple to create a calendar appointment that will popup a message to check for something on a future day. I use calendar appointments for this so that I can easily change the date, and I always see a popup reminder. I can turn the reminder into an appointment for my staff if I need to delegate, or I can forward the item as an email. It is very easy to turn an email into an appointment with a drag and drop as well.

What method do you use to diarize research followups?

Today’s tip: Find a trusted source.

This is a bit of a repeat, but also wisdom from my daughters.
Dominique (15) says: I don’t use Wikipedia first because it can be changed.
Genevieve (16) says: When we do research at school, all the kids bolt for the computers and I go to the encyclopedias because they are cross referenced.

Whether, like Gen, your trusted source is a printed text, or like Niq, your trusted source is your Mom, you should find your trusted source.
There will be more than one. It will be the top of your link list, your first favourite, a widget on your home page, something downloaded to your mobile device or the text that everyone knows is most likely in your office. It might even be speed dial number 1 or your regular Wednesday coffee date.

Related posts:
An expansion of go to the source
Keep your rules handy
What’s on your browser’s homepage

Editor’s note: Thanks to Karen Sawatzky of the Tapper Cuddy Library in Winnipeg for today’s tip. Follow Karen on Twitter, read her column at Slaw.ca or her posts at Library Technician Dialog or visit her at LinkedIn.

I got a request to find the top 5 London law firms, and then find the lawyers in a particular practice area.

I sent a message via Twitter to a London law librarian I know only from Twitter, and he replied immediately with the info I needed. It cut my research by several hours.

The point I want to make is that if you focus your “tweeple” in your field, you’ll find you have sources to go to when you get those out of left field questions.

Today’s Tip: Go to the source

What I mean by go to the source is this:
If you have exhausted the traditional places to look for something (case law databases – both free and commercial; journal article sources; local libraries that you may borrow from; a general web search) and have not located a specific item that you need, go to the source.

Who authored the work?

• Phone the arbitrator
• Call the judge’s assistant
• Email the news reporter

People are amazingly helpful and willing to share what they have or what they know if you ask, infrequently and politely of course.

Special thanks to Arne Peltz of the Winnipeg law firm of Orle • Davidson • Giesbrecht • Bargen LLP for the advice this week on where to find one of his arbitration decisions from the late 90’s.

Today’s tip is for the watcher. Quite often a court proceeding of interest will be reported in the media as the case is heard. Decisions, especially in civil cases, usually come down at some future time. There are a couple of ways to virtually ‘watch’ for decisions of interest.

• Try a Google News alert – if the case was media worthy when it was being hear, there may be a media report of the decision which a Google alert will send to your email inbox.
• Create a CanLII RSS feed for a search of the decision – even if a party name search results in no hits, you can still create an RSS feed that will send the result to your reader when the decision appears in the database

Anyone have another new case watch method to share?

• Nicholas on Software Tools for Editing
• Jamie on Software Tools for Editing
• Steve Coughlan on ‘I Hope This E-Mail Finds You Well’
• Lyn on Womxn
• Celia Chandler on Gross Negligence

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