Legal philosopher and public intellectual died yesterday: February 14, 2013. He was 81.

It’s fitting that leading U.K. – the Guardian – and U.S. – the N.Y. Times – obituaries present different pictures of him, even to the extent of seemingly disagreeing on which of his books and other writing was the most important and on his significance in the world of legal and moral philosophy.

For example, the central paragraphs about his legal philosophy in the Guardian’s obituary are:

His books were immensely influential, especially in US law schools. He published many articles both in technical law journals and

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Scholarly publisher bepress recently launched The Digital Commons Network that “brings together scholarship from hundreds of universities and colleges, providing open access to peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, working papers, conference proceedings, and other original scholarly work” [About page]

One of the subsets is the Law Network, which already has more than 100,000 articles from 170 institutions. The institutions all seem to be U.S. universities.

It is possible to sign up for free to follow all new legal scholarship, content in a specific practice area, from a specific institution or author.

This appears to be an interesting complement . . . [more]

We're proud to announce that four new lawyers have joined the roster of columnists, who write for Slaw in particular areas.

On February 7, 2013, LegalForce opened up a three-level retail store called BookFlip, in Palo Alto, California, that sells books, holds classes and connects customers with attorneys for legal advice.

We all know that person who constantly sends emails that lack a subject line. Or who sends rambling, lengthy emails that don’t seem to have a point. And there are those who send emails with open ended questions that require a game of email ping pong. You would never do any of those things – would you?

Sending a clear, concise and actionable email is the best way to get a proper response. Here are five ways to make sure your recipients open, read, and respond to your messages.

1.) Make the Subject Count

In Barbara Mento’s book Pyramid Principle . . . [more]

Each Thursday we present a significant excerpt from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site's contact form.

The Future of the Future H. Patrick Glenn 2. The Concept of the Future and Its Possible Decline We know the future in opposition to the past, and the future is therefore present as the ultimate destination in a linear progression from the (even distant or 'deep') past through the present (always with us) to the future.

The actions of policing bodies towards community members, and more specifically, towards “victims” of crime, has been impossible to litigate in Ontario. In 2011, in the Wellington v. Ontario decision (2011 ONCA 274), the Court of Appeal firmly stated that there is “a long list of decisions rejecting the proposition that the police owe victims of crime and their families a private law duty of care in relation to the investigation of alleged crimes.” In Wellington v. Ontario, the family of a young man killed by two police officers sought to bring a claim in negligence against the Special Investigations . . . [more]

The Vancouver Sun recently described the issue of insufficient access to justice in British Columbia as a “fast-approaching cliff” and urged the Law Society of British Columbia to lead efforts to address the problem.

That article reminded me of the oft-cited metaphor used by Richard Susskind in describing legal services as providing either a fence at the top of a cliff or an ambulance at the bottom.

The United Nations’ Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, in its’ 2008 report Making the Law Work For Everyone identified access to justice as one of four pillars to legal empowerment of . . . [more]

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For the week* of February 6 – 10:

1. Meads v. Meads 2012 ABQB 571
   

   [1] This Court has developed a new awareness and understanding of a category of vexatious litigant. As we shall see, while there is often a lack of homogeneity, and some individuals or groups have no name or special identity, they (by their own admission or by descriptions given by others) often fall into

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A law firm client once asked me to facilitate their retreat—with two weeks’ notice. Gulp. 

At the hastily called planning meeting, I asked the crucial question: why were they having the retreat? From my knowledge of their situation, I could have anticipated any one of several answers—except for the one I got. The managing partner first looked puzzled by the question and then said, “Well, we always go away somewhere!”

OK, so maybe I should have asked what they wanted to achieve, or what their goal was, or what they saw as the theme…but actually, I’d rather have an . . . [more]

The American Bar Association’s Task Force on the Future of the Legal Education met this past weekend to discuss what is seen as an urgent need for bold changes in the legal education in the United States, as reported in a New York Times article. 

According to this article, some of the suggested changes are described as follows:

Many recommended reducing the core of law school to two years from three to cut costs. Others suggested that college juniors should be encouraged to go directly to law school, the bar exam should be simplified, accreditation standards should be relaxed

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I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Stephen Abram yesterday. The Edmonton Public Library brought Stephen in to do some work with their organization, and they generously invited members of Edmonton’s library community to attend a portion of their event.

An interaction with Stephen Abram is always thought provoking, often inspiring and generally entertaining, whether it is reading his blog or seeing him in person. Stephen’s address was geared toward public libraries, but really it was about libraries and librarians finding ways to keep making a difference in our communities, for law libraries, perhaps our communities of practice. . . . [more]