Legal Research

Newsletter hidden gems

By Shaunna Mireau

In the new world order of feeds and blogs and tweets, we don’t talk about newsletters anymore.

Yes my friends, newsletters still exist! Michel-Adrian posted about finding law firm newsletters and Ted mentioned the CCH Law Student newsletter and we all know about the collection of law firm publications at Lexology.

Although the lines blur with technology, I suggest that to be labeled a newsletter, the information must be sent in hard copy or be made available electronically with some sign up action on the part of the recipient. Though signing up for information by a recipient may seem equivalent to an RSS feed, a newsletter differs based on the newsletter publisher’s control of the list. Electronic newsletters posted to a website offer the creator the ability to see how many times and who is reading the information. Newsletters sent by email and print have a fixed distribution list that the creator controls. Definitions, marketing viability, and publication intent aside, newsletters can be valuable sources of data.

My favourite newsletter is Eugene Meehan’s Lang Michener Supreme Court of Canada L@wLetter. This email newsletter is authoritative, timely, and an accurate and readable reflection of SCC decisions. It also often contains great anecdotes and interesting features in the website of the week section and has been frequently mentioned on Slaw as an information source. Sign up today, it is “Scot-free”.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on June 04, 2009 (boomark / email).