Monday smiles – a burning question

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Today’s contribution comes from my very good friend Mary Lynn, via South Africa.

BEST  INSURANCE STORY OF THE YEAR, DECADE, AND POSSIBLY THE CENTURY

This took place in Charlotte, North Carolina.  A lawyer purchased a box of very rare and expensive cigars, then insured them against, among other things, fire.

Within a month, having smoked his entire stockpile of these great cigars, the lawyer filed a claim against the insurance company. In his claim, the lawyer stated the cigars were lost ‘in a series of small fires.’ Continue reading →

Conference – Law, Language and Professional Practice, Naples, Italy

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The English Language Chair of the Law Faculty of the Seconda Università degli Studi di Napoli is organizing its Second International Conference on Law, Language and Professional Practice. Drawing on some of the issues and discussions about the relationship between Law and Language in the first conference (17-19 June 2010), this second conference takes the theme forward by bringing into focus the third perspective of ‘professional practice’, which is particularly relevant to our increasingly globalized world today. Registration for the conference is now open.

Continue reading →

135 Corpus-Based Monolingual Dictionaries

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I love this resource, with fast and immediate results, made available by Leipzig University’s Department of Computer Science. At present 158 languages or sub-languages have been included. The texts making up the databases are general and not specific to law.

When you enter a word, you are presented with significant co-occurrences, as well as left and right neighbours of the word, with their frequencies, and two graphical presentations – a kind of spider’s web showing related words that can be clicked on and explored.

http://corpora.uni-leipzig.de/

Try it out and let me know what you think!

JPC Law uses Facebook to serve Worldwide Freezing Injunction

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Today I have another guest post for you, by Vicki Woolf, a trainee solicitor due to qualify at the end of March 2012. Vicki works at JPC Law (Jaffe Porter Crossick LLP), a commercial and private client practice covering the spectrum of business law as well as individuals’ legal affairs. During Vicki’s GDL she obtained a placement at Bird & Bird, and on graduating she interned at a Wall Street firm in New York.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this interesting development in practice!

It has recently been reported that Hastings County Court granted permission for a Court Order to be served on a Defendant via Facebook.

In 2010, the JPC litigation department successfully obtained an order allowing for a Worldwide Freezing Injunction to be served by Facebook.  The standards for obtaining a Worldwide Freezing Injunction are exceptionally high, however JPC were able to obtain the Injunction and persuade a High Court Judge to allow service by this unconventional method.  It transpired throughout the course of  events that it was the Facebook messages that led to the successful service on the Defendants.

Continue reading →

Reporting from Geneva

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Today, dear readers, I am reporting back from the United Nations Office at Geneva, Switzerland, where I attended the CIUTI International Standing Conference of University Institutes of Translating and Interpreting.

First of all, I have to say that I was delighted to see that several presentations specifically talked about “building bridges”. So it seems that this blog is up with the trends!!! Continue reading →

Abbreviations & acronyms – the bane of my life

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Now before you start getting jealous, I am not writing this on the beach. The picture (Away From Keyboard, in case you’re wondering) is just to try to combat January blues.

Today I have a wonderful discovery to share with you – the Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations.

Abbreviations are one of things that really irritate me. Just made to exclude others who are not “in the know”. Unfortunately, we have to use, understand, and, for some of us, translate these nasty little tikes. And OK, I will admit, sometimes, they can save quite a bit of time writing out long titles. Continue reading →

Coffee break training

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OK, so maybe your daily coffee doesn’t look like the coffee in the picture, but we can all dream, can’t we?

Today’s post is about a great idea from the UK – to provide software training in tiny bite-sized chunks. Their slogan is “IT training, one cup at a time”.

Coffee Break Training have a YouTube channel where they kindly offer some free video tutorials on Microsoft Office products. In their instructor-led sessions delivered by webinar, you can choose half-hour slots when it suits you, and the prices are very reasonable indeed (I have no vested interest in this!).

Finding out about you

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On Monday I added a little poll to the left sidebar of the blog – to find out more about my readership. I will publish the results in a couple of weeks when people have had time to vote.

I’d also like to know what sort of posts you want to see. You can tell me either by email (the form is at the bottom of the sidebar if you scroll down), or by adding a comment to this post.

Do vote in the poll and write in with your suggestions – I really would like to hear from you!

Monday smiles – light bulbs and arks

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As my readers may have guessed by now, I do think that a sprinkling of fun is important in life. Today I have two little texts for you – one lampoons lawyers (my apologies in advance, but hopefully you have a good sense of humo(u)r), and the other bureaucracy and nanny States (no apologies there…!)

So, first “How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?”

And second, “Noah’s Ark Today” (the subject of which is definitely not specific to Canada!)

The texts were posted on an award-winning blog with the unexpected name “Law is Cool“, which addresses “issues related to law school and the legal field with a Canadian focus”.

Have a good week!