Already here in May, it seems inevitable that the new law school year in September will not be carried out entirely in person. Universities ranging from McGill in Canada to Cambridge in the UK have already announced that their Fall 2020 classes will begin online, and while most American universities have delayed making similar announcements, it’s hard to see how campuses can be retrofitted over the summer to accommodate the physical distancing demands that the pandemic has created. Even if some schools insist on starting in person, will that continue through an expected second wave of infections in Autumn?

Law . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on practice, research, writing and technology.

Research & Writing

Finding Government of Canada Publications
Susannah Tredwell

One of the challenges of the last few months has been accessing materials that my library does not own. With the majority of libraries being closed, we have not been able to borrow these materials from the usual suspects. …

Technology

Master Research Tools While Working Remotely
Emma Durand-Wood

The Law Society of Saskatchewan has just launched a new . . . [more]

The Bora Laskin Faculty of Law was founded in 2013, to much fanfare. It was the first Canadian law school to offer an integrated licensing curriculum, and has mandatory courses in Aboriginal law.

Since that time, the school has also had its challenges, most significantly, the resignation of Angelique EagleWoman as Dean in June 2018, citing systemic racism in the law school. Given that she was the first Indigenous law dean in Canada, this resignation sent shock waves throughout the school.

EagleWoman expressed these concerns internally in writing as early as March 7, 2018, leading the university to request that . . . [more]

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Ju stice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

PROCÉDURE CIVILE : En raison de leur caractère général et impersonnel, les décrets et les arrêtés gouvernementaux adoptés dans le contexte de la pandémie de la COVID-19, qui sont contestés par le demandeur, constituent des actes normatifs à vocation générale visés par l’article 529 paragraphe 1 C.P.C. dont le . . . [more]

Administrator’s note: The ever-evolving COVID-19 pandemic has posed a challenge to long-term content planning here at Slaw. Please note that this column was written in late April 2020.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a “game changer.” Health and family have always been the priority for me, and that has always been my message to those working with me and my clients. To each and every Slaw contributor & follower: in these turbulent times, I hope you and your family are staying safe.

Governments across the globe are mandating social distancing and related business shutdowns in an effort the “flatten the curve” . . . [more]

Each Friday, we share the latest job listings from Slaw Jobs, which features employment opportunities from across the country. Find out more about these positions by following the links below, or learn how you can use Slaw Jobs to gain valuable exposure for your job ads, while supporting the great Canadian legal commentary at Slaw.ca.

Current postings on Slaw Jobs (newest first):

• Managing Director (Full-time) | Toronto, ON
  (Legal Information and Resource Network (LIRN)

May is typically the beginning of the season for conferences that law librarians attend, kicking off with the CALL/ACBD conference. This year, we are attending virtually, and you are invited to our events!

You may consider yourself a law librarian, knowledge manager, legal researcher, legal information provider, legal technology developer, legal information specialist or user, or not – it doesn’t matter to us – you are welcome to join in. You may be a member of CALL or a member of a law library sister association, or not – regardless of whether you paid your modest CALL/ACBD membership fee for . . . [more]

This is the third article in a series about mismanaging projects, or throwing away the bad stuff to leave only the good – or at least better – stuff.

There are five aspects you have to manage to move projects forward effectively:

1. The project itself, discussed in the January column.
2. Time, which we covered in part in March. We’ll get to the rest here.
3. Money
4. The client.
5. The team.

The Matrix of Project Times

The table below flags time-related issues on three different scales for various aspects of a project or team, the first of which is the . . . [more]

Ever since Washington, DC, shut down two months ago, I have been inundated with offers of free Zoom webinars and all sorts of interesting virtual meetings. I will attempt to point out some of the more relevant and interesting information that has come to me, with a focus on legal information sources and a bit of personal enrichment.

My friends at the Law Library of Congress have continued to update Congress.gov and provide legal research support through their Ask a Librarian service. The main Library of Congress webpage leads you to a treasure trove of digital resources including the World . . . [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 this last week:

1. Arconti v. Smith, 2020 ONSC 2782 (CanLII)

[19] In my view, the simplest answer to this issue is, “It’s 2020”. We no longer record evidence using quill and ink. In fact, we apparently do not even teach children to use cursive writing in all schools anymore. We now have the technological ability to communicate remotely effectively. Using it is more efficient . . . [more]

Efforts to respond to and get under control the coronavirus pandemic have led to government actions that many people would be unlikely to accept in less dire times. Many of these have been at the provincial and municipal levels with emergency measures that have restricted a wide range of business, social and recreational activities that we had previously taken for granted. Another set of restrictions have been in relation to whether we can visit other provinces. Some provinces closed their boundaries early in the pandemic and some are now restricting who can enter provinces as they open their business, social . . . [more]