In a rare immersion into a point of family law for something I was researching last week, I stumbled across – by accident because I wasn’t researching it – the phrase “jactitation of marriage” as a potential cause of action and recall having stumbled across the phrase in the past, having looked up its meaning in the past, and (of course) subsequently forgetting what it meant every time I came across it.

I assume that perhaps only two of our SLAW readers know the meaning, being the two Simons, one of whom wrote a book on family law and the . . . [more]

There have been numerous blog posts in the blogosphere on Richard Susskind’s new book, The End of Lawyers? Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services, including a recent post from Adam Smith, Esq. and several SLAW posts.

I finally read the book last night and enjoyed it, although it is largely a continuation of many of the same trends in the legal profession that Susskind has previously identified, essentially being “a market pull towards commoditization and [a] pervasive development and uptake of information technology” (p. 1). However, the book remains essential reading for anyone connected to the legal . . . [more]

I made that comment as an aside in an earlier post. This thought also ties in with a couple of Simon’s posts, and another of mine.

This is true for not just legal documents, but for things like legislation, business and government policies, and processes.

The operating manual approach means being a slave to precedent documents, processes or decisions and applying or using them blindly without enough independent thought as to how it fits the current situation.

The context approach means figuring out what the facts are and what result is needed, then using precedent as a . . . [more]

♫ What’s new pussycat? Woah, Woah…♫

Words and music by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, recorded by Tom Jones.

My old Law School Dean Edwards (Manitoba) used to continually say to us: “Nothing is really new under the Sun”.

I suppose he was trying to give us a sense of perspective in the law – to acquire a gently skeptical eye towards ‘new’ ideas and learn to gauge things relative to their place in the history of things. . . . [more]

Traditionally, a key indicator of the quality and the utility of any case citator is the breadth and depth of its coverage. The better citators purport to cover all of the cases reported in print. Law reports published by a competitor are included as a matter of course, both as an original reference and as a correlative or parallel citation.

Online databases and “electronic citations” have not been treated in the same manner. Initially electronic citations were not seen as “legitimate” citations and were considered to be unworthy of the same attention as print citations. Case citators ignored them. There . . . [more]

“We’ve decided that it will be better for his later development if we speak to him only in legalese.”

. . . [more]

A project that may seem a bit different from Stem’s usual path, this past Monday we launched a new blog to track information and issues related to lawyers facing addiction. This latest website, the Lawyer Addiction Blog, will be tracking the flow of information coming from LAP programs across North America, and increasingly, from around the world.

To provide a bit of background here, on Monday Stem also announced a new client, The Meadows Addiction Treatment Center. As I described with a bit more detail on Stem’s blog, I view this relationship as a rare opportunity; to pair . . . [more]

Can we stand to hear about one more Toronto-based event?

Parliament 2009: What Kind of Country Will We Have?
A Forum Exploring Parliamentary Democracy in Contemporary Canada

is an evening being hosted by the The Churchill Society for the Advancement of Parliamentary Democracy

Date: Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Time: 7:30pm – 10:00pm
Location: Campbell Conference Facility, Munk Centre for International Studies
Street: University of Toronto, 1 Devonshire Place
City/Town: Toronto, ON

Please register by emailing awards@churchillsociety.org
by January 18, 2009.

Description

The political crisis that occurred before the Governor General prorogued the most recent legislative session on Parliament Hill caused . . . [more]

I want to take the opportunity to let Slawyers know about a law reform symposium that the LCO is organizing for this coming May 12th and 13th, in collaboration with Lorne Sossin, the Director of the Centre for the Legal Profession at the University of Toronto. It will be held at U of T. The Symposium will explore the interrelationship between theory and practice in law reform and will include people with strong opinions about what law reform should mean and activists who have played a major role in reforming law, and will be based on an attendee participation format. . . . [more]

Just posted to the CanLII blog:

CanLII invites you to a user meeting in Toronto

CanLII is pleased to invite you to a user meeting in Toronto on February 11 2009. On the agenda:

• demo of SATAL – the point-in-time legislative system soon to be launched on CanLII;
• creation of a CanLII users group;
• demo of APIs developed to streamline use of CanLII content by institutional users.

The presentation will be followed by a cocktail. They ask you inform them if you plan to be present.

For more info, check their blog post for time, location and RSVP contact . . . [more]

I hadn’t seen before today the Master of Laws Guide which assembles in a single site comparative information for foreign graduate students contemplating the choice of schools where to study.

Back in the last century, when I had to face the same question, one was reduced to talking to law school teachers and colleagues about what they knew of a particular school. The amount of sheer misinformation that this generated was extraordinary. A law school’s reputation (for good or ill) lingers long after any facts may have changed.

My own advice (when asked by students) is to pick people not . . . [more]

Here’s a link to a survey from the Law School Survey of Student Engagement, as reported in (hat-tip to) Inside Higher Education, Writing Lags in Law Schools.

The discussion on Legal Writing is interesting, and I don’t know of any reason why a Canadian survey would be terribly different . . . [more]