Reading, work and stuff

I have been reading about meditation recently, I have always loved the idea of being able to sit with an empty or focused mind. One of the books I am halfway through is called The Quiet (Paul Wilson). As usual with self help books, I read until it gets to the bit where you actually have to DO something, then I put it down and go back to reading fiction. This includes my copy of Getting Things Done! In this case the fiction is The red Queen by Margaret Drabble, picked up from the local second hand book seller for $5. I will endeavour to actually follow through with the meditation at some point.

I finished the last of my skilling sessions for the month today and will start planning April's next week

Case Research

I have been doing sessions on researching case law in Australia for our legal team this week.

These are the topics I am covering:

Finding cases by citation
Finding cases relating to a specific section of legislation
Finding cases by phrase, party or search terms
Case citators vs full text
Unreported, reported and authorised cases
International caselaw

I am demonstrating different searches using internal, subscription based and public access legal databases such as LexisNexisAU (CaseBase), LegalOnline (Firstpoint), Westlaw, TimeBase (Legislation with Case Link), AustLII and LawLink for Court sites.

This sesion has been popular and I have received good feedback which is nice. I don't think clients realise how great it is to get positive feedback (or any at all in fact, positive or otherwise)!! I have been using NetMeeting software and teleconference facilities to offer these classes to those in our offices around Australia, it is working well.

The end of lawyers?

I just got my hands on the new book by Richard Susskind. It looks like an interesting read, but I will have to skim through it and pass it on to the legal peoples. It would be interesting to hear their thoughts on the book, but I doubt they will have time to enter into a conversation about law and technology.

Reading

Since the title of my blog infers that I like reading, I thought it time I posted about what has been on my bedside table recently. I have just finished Dirt Music by Tim Winton. Winton is one of those authors I long felt I should read but never felt driven to, until now. Due to self imposed budgetary constraints this year I am tackling my pile of purchased and not yet read books. I remember learning about Tim Winton when living in London and seeing Cloudstreet, the play promoted. I wanted to go because it was Australian, but didn't for some reason......

As I started reading Dirt Music I felt as though I couldn't associate with the characters and was put off by the Australianisms and my unfamiliarity with towns like White Point. I found half way through, that I thought about the story during the day and looked forward to my next chance to read. There was something memorable about the characters and especially the relationship between Fox and Georgie that rang true. I often cringe at the Crocodile Dundee like characters and this book was no exception. I guess I have to accept that they exist and effectively represent both the harshness and the earthy humour of Australia. I will read Cloudstreet at some point and see if it helps me decide if I am a Winton fan or not.

Another book recently completed was my Grandmother (Minnie)'s copy of a biography of Mary Reibey. I believe she was a real person, an early pioneering woman who came to Sydney as a convict but soon rose to be one of the wealthiest, through trade and property. It was a bit of a historical romance and the author used quite a bit of artistic license to recreate Mary's character, life and relationships. I loved reading about the early days in Sydney's settlement, which appeared to be historically correct. She is on our $20 note, I wouldn't have known that - thanks wikipedia.....

I also read and wrote a review of The Jihad Seminar by Hanifa Deen for the Australian law Librarian earlier this year.

Executive renumeration Australia

I noted recently that Barack Obama was considering legislative action against company directors who are still taking huge executive salaries even while the government is bailing the business world out of trouble and employees are losing their jobs. I was wondering if Australia would follow and it appears that Kevin Rudd and Lindsay Tanner are considering something similar. Public opinion on this topic is pretty clear at the moment with the news that Sol Trujillo will leave Telstra and Australia $40million (untaxed), richer, as if he needed the money.

Mallensons Stephen Jaques has released Executive Remuneration: Guidelines and Developments - 19 February 2009.

Jureeka

I came across this at the RIPS Law Librarian blog and I love the concept. Eureka for Jureeka?

It's a new Firefox add-on that "transforms legal citations in web pages into hyperlinks that point to online source material."

How many times have I come to the end of an assignment or paper and dreaded the task of creating footnotes for everything I have referenced within the paper? It would be great for online publishers and authors, depending on the ability of the system to find the best source to link to. If you could select sources such as legislation on ComLaw, onlne commentary from LexisNexis, book references to Google Books or cases on Austlii it may actually work? If not and it is completely random, searching acoss the www for anything with that citation, it could be a dangerous tool.

This is actually how I imagined wikis to work, before I used one. I thought that every word in a wiki article that corresponded with an article title would automatically become a hyperlink. I didn't realise that you had to identify works as hyperlinks.

I'll give it a go when I get a chance at home using firefox.....

Executive salaries

How great is this?

President Obama wants to cap executive salaries at $500,000 for companies who take a bail out.

"We don't disparage wealth. We don't begrudge anybody for achieving success. And we believe that success should be rewarded," Obama said. "But what gets people upset — and rightfully so — are executives being rewarded for failure, especially when those rewards are subsidized by U.S. taxpayers."

Anyway you look at it, it just doesn't make sense paying an individual such outrageous salaries, regardless of the results they achieve. How can anyone in their right mind morally accept millions of dollars a year to run an organisation, especially in light of government bail outs and redundancies? If politicians are earning only hundreds of thousands to run our countries what is so special about corporations that they have to pay executives millions or billions?

Maybe the Australian government could follow his example.

I found this story on the Simple Justice blog and the comments made me smile, especially this one.

If the ostentatious show of wealth was a badge of honor before, the threadbare suit will be the indicia of fiscally-sensitive importance over the next few years.

I really hope so......