Sadly the CCHatter Blog is currently on hiatus. Keep checking our Tax Chat and HR Blog for continued and regular updates and posts.

Gone are the days of the “shushing” librarian with a grey bun and a disapproving glare. Modern librarians are more likely to be gadget-toting geeks who love nothing better than a new technology application – especially if it makes it easier to get the right information to their clients. That certainly describes me!* So perhaps it’s no wonder that the presentations that really stuck out for me revolve around how technology is changing our profession and the services we provide our clients.  Please note that the headings will take you to the abstracts, but to access the full papers and podcasts you need to be a member of ALLA and register on their website.

Implementation Overload Begone: Implementing an Effective RSS Current Awareness System
I’ve always believed that RSS is the future of enterprise Current Awareness services, and Mallesons have proven that potential by developing a fantastic Current Awareness service using RSS (a communication standard) and Drupal (open source software). If you’re sick of subscribing to email newsletters and forwarding them around your firm take a look at what Mallesons have done. Ben Clemson’s presentation is here, the podcast is here and the full paper is in the Australian Law Librarian (v.18 no.2 pp 99-111).

The Coffee House Effect – social networking and some of its impacts on the legal profession, legal scholarship and law librarianship
Mark Engsberg draws an intriguing parallel between “coffee house culture” of the 17th and 18th centuries and the legal blogging culture of today. The Enlightenment boom in science, art, literature, and industry were all tied to coffee house culture, demonstrating that the volume of discourse significantly influences the rate of change. Spirited and rapid debate facilitated by “pamphleteering” (short written pieces that could be rapidly and widely distributed) were features of this culture that are now replicated in the online environment of blogs.

The rapidly expanding legal blogosphere is taking over from conferences and journals as the site of cutting edge debate. If the volume of discourse does inform the rate of change, what does legal blogging mean for the development of law in general? We are still finding out…

(Full paper here)

From Legal Pad to iPad: Mobile content delivery and the law
Mobile content delivery is a special interest of mine so I was quite excited about Richard Gray’s presentation. He conducted a survey of the legal faculty at UNSW which showed that 60% of participants owned a smart phone. 94% of the smart phone owners used it for email and 22% used it as an ereader, however quite a few weren’t very familiar with the functionality of their phones. 84% indicated that they would be interested to access legal or academic information from their device. Richard went on to discuss the characteristics of usable apps and evaluate current legal market offering against that list.  The full paper is here.

Honourable mentions go to Matthias Liffers for his presentation on practical applications of the cloud and Alison Jones on using Sharepoint in a Special Library. There were many more fantastic presentations on everything from civil liberties to new developments for ComLaw and AustLII. I highly recommend that ALLA members check out the podcasts and presentations – I know I will be!

* ok, so I have been known to glare disapprovingly at noisy colleagues on occasion – but then sometimes I’m the noisy one!

In my last post I gave some overall impressions of this year’s conference. Now I’m going to concentrate on the two feature panels.

Firstly – the Publisher’s Panel. What a great initiative, an opportunity for librarians to ask the tough questions and find out what’s in the pipeline. Also interesting for us publishers to hear what’s top of mind for our customers, not to mention find out a bit about what our competitors are up to!

The dominant themes were classics – what do ebooks mean for publishers and librarians, and how do we manage the tricky issue of “perpetual access”? As always there are no easy answers, but the entry of e-readers into the Australian mainstream with the Kindle, Kobo and iPad makes the discussion more urgent than in previous years. Most of the publishers have initiatives underway around ebooks, but unfortunately the fact that there were 6 panellists and limited time meant we could really only get a general overview.

The Future of Law Reporting was equally as interesting – and also frustrating. I think this would have benefitted from being a structured debate rather than a panel session. The speakers were formidable (click here and scroll down to see who they were) but the arguments were diffused by the format. Partway through the panel Oren Bigos laid out the issues rather neatly (perhaps not surprising given he’s a barrister!). They were:

1. should every judgment even be made available to the public (eg on Austlii)? This is before we even get to the concept of “authorised” and commercial publishing. It comes down to issues of transparency (the public’s right to know) vs a judge’s workload (having to write a judgment up properly even if there is no lasting value to anyone but the parties)
2. Is the current collection of Report Series the “best” way to filter and identify significant judgments? Yes, filtration is necessary but the current reporting process is cumbersome. What would an alternative be?
3. Now there are multiple versions of cases available both freely online and in various report series, all of which are promptly updated with any changes made by the court, is it a form of favouritism for individual judges to demand that only one specific version be handed up in court?

These issues are significant and complex and certainly not solvable by one panel. I felt more time could have been spent really digging into them. Despite His Excellency The Honourable Peter Underwood’s excellent and humorous chairing, there was unfortunate tendency for the discussion to get off track. Nonetheless I am sure it is a debate that will be continued.  In fact you don’t have to look far - there is a debate on the related topic of headnotes happening around the legal blogosphere - check out this post on Canadian blog Slaw and also the (American) Law Librarian Blog.

Next up - some of the papers from the conference that most interested me.

Ray Dalio is the head of Bridgewater hedge fund and a very successful one as that if you go by the billions he had made in the murky world of finance.

He loved the work-hard, play-hard environment at the Harvard Business School, dabbled in commodity trading in the summer break and after a two-year stint in Wall Street started his own hedge fund, Bridgewater.

Admirably he admits that he is not your “Ralph Lauren” poster child of success. Deep pockets habour still deeper thoughts.

“Principles”, although coming from a dealer in structured finance is mercifully free of derivative algorithms and mind boggling chart packs, is a guide to life at Bridgewater.

It was circulated to the staff and contains 300 or so suggestions that would make the employees at Bridgewater as successful as their boss. At least the read will not bore you boneless and neither is it simplistic.

Ray Dalio

There is a very compelling equation since Einstein rather ingeniously conceived the energy equation: E= mc2. Dalio’s real life equation goes like this:

Pain + Reflection = Progress

This sounds and feels a tad morbid. Pain is integral to progress. Most of us will cringe at this recipe for progress let alone agree with it.

The principles are a veritable mix of hard -learnt wisdom and real world practicality.

According to the Principles there is a lot of merit in the evolutionary cliché “survival of the fittest”:

“When a pack of hyenas takes down a young wildebeest, is this good or bad? At face value, this seems terrible; the poor wildebeest suffers and dies.

Some people might even say that the hyenas are evil. Yet this type of apparently evil behavior exists throughout nature through all species and was created by nature, which is much smarter than I am, so before I jump to pronouncing it evil, I need to try to see if it might be good.

When I think about it, like death itself, this behavior is integral to the enormously complex and efficient system that has worked for as long as there has been life.

And when I think of the 2nd and 3rd order consequences, it becomes obvious that this behavior is good for both the hyenas who are operating in their self-interest and in the interests of the greater system, which includes the wildebeest, because killing and eating the wildebeest fosters evolution, i.e. the natural process of improvement.

In fact, if I changed anything about the way that dynamic works, the overall outcome would be worse.”

Now comes Principle number 114 and runs like this:

“…To be a successful manager at Bridgewater you must sincerely care about the people who work for you. While it’s also desirable to convey these feelings, having them is more important. Try to be there for weddings, births and funerals (which is something that I have problems doing, though I will be there for anyone who really needs me). Personal contact at the time of personal difficulty is a must.”

I wonder who the wildebeest would have liked to have at its funeral, that is if they found its remains after the feast of its feral antagonists perched high up on the evolutionary chain.

As is increasingly common we can’t have a major legislative change without an accompanying set of regulations. The Competition and Consumer (Australian Consumer Law) Amendment Regulations 2010 will sit alongside the new Australian Consumer Law and the Competition and Consumer Act 2010 (as the Trade Practices Act 1974  will be known from 1 January 2011). 

A consultation draft of the proposed regulations was released in September 2010, the consultation period ended on 13 October and they are planned to commence on 1 January 2011.

My original plan for this post was to discuss the content of the regulations, but I think there is a more fundamental issue.

I didn’t really know anything about the proposed changes to the TPA and related state legislation until earlier this year. It is only a couple of months since I realised that the descriptor “consumer” was misleading as it applied to the changes. The consultation period for the draft regulations had closed before I was aware it had opened. I have yet to investigate the proposed changes to state legislation to reflect the changed Commonwealth legislation and past experience shows that even if it is described as being identical a close review will be required as there may well be slight differences between the various versions of the legislation or how it is implemented.

I am a lawyer working in a reasonably-sized Australian subsidiary of a large multinational corporation, I receive regular emailed updates on changes to the law and I am having trouble coming to terms with the impact of these changes. What hope for small business, one of the supposed beneficiaries of the changes?