As we all know, administrative law nerds (their own expression) received a nice Holiday present on December 19 when the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision in Vavilov. This important event in Canadian law isn’t just fun for the admin law crowd, it’s also an occasion for us, legal information geeks, to live in real time another game of “precedential game of thrones.”

I’ve been interested for a long time in finding signals that could indicate that a case is no longer good law (or at least no longer to be cited without caution). There are ways to spot . . . [more]

When the late Simon Fodden (RIP) asked me to write a column for Slaw, “Canada’s online legal magazine,” I welcomed the opportunity. I could write for a Canadian and global legal audience about foreign, comparative, and international law (FCIL) information resources and about FCIL librarianship as a career. I could help fill in an information gap for this very special law librarian career path. I joined Slaw in 2010, its fifth year in existence, as a “Legal Information” columnist. My first column was on “The State of Digitization of United Nations Documents” (June 29, 2010), wherein I . . . [more]

This has been another very interesting year in the US Capitol. The most recent excitement is about the process of impeachment. I remember the previous two attempts, which ended in a resignation and a failure to convict. I am not going to even try to predict how the process will end this time. But if you want to learn more about this, the Library of Congress has it covered.

On December 9, Andrew Winston posted that “The Library of Congress has updated the Constitution Annotated essays pertaining to impeachment and incorporated them in the annotations to Article I, Article . . . [more]

In my last post, I discussed the benefits of publishing with CanLII. Today, I’d like to dive into some of the options on how you can get your work onto the largest legal information resource in Canada. 

Publish With Publishers Who Share Their Content on CanLII

CanLII’s commentary collection has prospered thanks to the incredible group of publishers, law firms, law centres, and other institutions that have partnered with us. A great way to share your work on CanLII is to publish with one these content providers. Check out this Twitter list or browse our commentary collection to learn . . . [more]

People have been talking more about failure in recent years, and they have been listing the things that haven’t worked out for them on social media or in failure resumes. I have been thinking about this too. I confess I don’t feel comfortable broadcasting a list of my failures here because we live in a judgemental world, though I assure you they happen. That said I think I am relatively comfortable with failures (presumably as a result of regular exposure), so I thought I would take this opportunity of writing a column that will be published on Christmas Eve . . . [more]

2018 was a tough act to follow, but 2019 was, once again, a great year for CanLII, to say the least. More than ever, our successes are due to the relationships we have developed with organizations across the country that have embraced our vision for the future of free access to law. We are grateful they have agreed to share their content with us and hope to celebrate these relationships with this post, among other things.

Commentary

As regular readers of this blog will have appreciated by now, we’ve been multiplying announcements over the course of the year about new . . . [more]

Imagine a library that tried to save money by relying on candles instead of electricity. Any dollars saved come at the expense of knowledge lost. Without adequate light, the contents of a library are as inaccessible as if the doors were closed.

In the world of legal information, light comes to the “library” through indices, key number systems, topic digests, abridgments, and more. Digitization, electronic access, multi-field search, hyperlinks and boolean logic add more light, but are still merely candles.

Candles are discrete tools designed to provide light only within a limited range of where the candle is placed. Compare . . . [more]

On Sept. 23, 2013, the New York Times published an article with the headline, “In Supreme Court Opinions, Web Links to Nowhere,” by Adam Liptak. The article stated that a recent study had found that 49 percent of the hyperlinks cited in US Supreme Court decisions no longer worked.

The article cited the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as a potential model for other courts. That court maintained an archive of .pdf versions of all websites and documents cited in its opinions, at https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/library/webcites/. (These are now available via PACER since Jan. 1, 2016.) The article also . . . [more]

Publishing can sometimes feel like a daunting prospect. Today, we have the ability to make information available to the world easier than ever before, bringing the process of publishing closer to it’s authors. At CanLII, we want to make sure our process is visible, approachable, and maintains a high standard, so that authors can be excited to use our platform, participate in our programs, and feel proud to share their work.

We’re ready

Over the past year, CanLII has gone through some changes. Internally, our team has grown, with a focus on publishing and increasing awareness of our collection and . . . [more]

In 2010, when the American Association of Law Libraries inducted 78 law librarians in its inaugural Hall of Fame, I noted in a Slaw article that eight of them had made major contributions to the profession of foreign, comparative, and international law (FCIL) librarianship. And I wondered what criteria could there be for induction into an International Law Librarians Hall of Fame, and who would be initial inductees. Jolande Goldberg was on that list, and she was inducted into the 2019 AALL Hall of Fame this past July. It’s been almost 10 years, so I thought I’d revisit my list. . . . [more]

I’m spending this summer by the shore of Lake Michigan in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. But I did go back to Washington, DC for the 112^th Annual Meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL), held from July 13 to 16. Despite the usual hot and humid weather, the meeting was well attended and quite stimulating.

I spent a considerable amount of time in the Exhibit Hall, meeting vendor friends and colleagues and catching up on the latest updates. The news that might be of the most interest to you is that access to the Indigenous Law Portal, which was . . . [more]

One of the substantial concerns about the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) in the legal space is about bias, and evidence has shown that this concern is warranted. Given the urgency of this topic as these systems are being sold and deployed, I was happy to be able to speak about it at the Canadian Association of Law Libraries Conference in May and the American Association of Law Libraries in July. Here are some of my thoughts on AI that may not have made it into the presentations.

First some discussion of AI itself — while it’s fun to talk . . . [more]