#Clawbies2019 Are Here!

As it does every year, December 1st has snuck up us. The date arrives just as the holiday busy season is heating up, and folks are packing their days and evenings with holiday shopping, parties, card-writing and travel plans. In the midst of all this, we ask the Canadian legal community to add one more thing to their plate: participating in the Canadian Law Blog Awards, fondly known as the Clawbies, now in its 14th year.

Thankfully, no one ever complains about this “one more thing”. In fact, many folks say they are grateful for the opportunity to reflect on their community and send their appreciation and admiration out into the digital universe! Indeed, for us here at Stem, we love the Clawbies season in part because it brings such refreshing feelings of positivity and gratitude to the otherwise busy (and sometimes stressful) holiday season.

For this year’s Clawbies, we’re doing something a little different. Over the past few years there’s been an explosion of interesting and exciting commentary on formats like podcasts and vlogs, and on platforms like CanLII and social media. Rather than making these alternative (to blogging) formats the exception to the awards, we are going to officially bring them in.

As I noted in this morning’s kick-off post at Clawbies.ca, “It’s all going to be fair game: blogs, podcasts, videos, social accounts, legal newsletters, platform commentary, CanLII Connects, whitepapers, a stellar SSRN account or a serial magazine column. We’re basically looking at everything that’s online and free, short of books. ”

As always, you can get all the details over at clawbies.ca, but here’s the short version of what you need to know:

• Nominate up to 3 of your favourite Canadian legal commentary sources via a blog post or Twitter (be sure to tag your nomination tweets with #clawbies2019).
• Don’t nominate your own work (really). By nominating others, your blogs or projects will also be considered!
• Nominations are open until end of day on Friday, December 20th, and winners will be announced on New Year’s Eve.

Happy nominating!