Legal Research

Legislation on the go

By Shaunna Mireau

Thanks to a good question from a new associate I have done some exploring of mobile access to legislation. The question was, “Is there any way to have a copy of an act that I use all the time available on my Blackberry?”

I can now say, “Yes”, and here is the method:

1. Open your Blackberry (or other smartphone)
2. Go to the mobile Web Browser and enter the URL for Canlii
   I suggest going directly to the URL for the language and jurisdiction of your choice (http://www.canlii.org/en/ab/laws/ for example)
3. Once there, you can search for the act name by navigating down the page to the Title box
4. Enter your act name and navigate down to the Search button
5. Select the search result – your current act version

A great thing: CanLII uses linguistic, persistent, and readable URLs which make direct browsing easier.

Another great thing: You can use the Find function to jump to a section or a piece of text.

A not great thing: You must navigate to the search button to execute your search as the Blackberry enter key doesn’t start the search process – this may be a user error on my end.

Anyone have alternative solutions?

Hat Tip to Bonnie Bokenfohr who joined our firm this week.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on April 08, 2010 (boomark / email).