In my last post, The Dangers of Catastrophizing in Client Communications, I outlined the negative impact of catastrophizing on lawyer well being. While lawyers need to predict outcomes and envision worst-case scenarios, several conditions such chronic pain, anxiety, depression and fatigue are exacerbated by catastrophic thinking. I proposed that our catastrophic thinking could bleed into our client communications and cause them similar harm. We must strike a balance between utilizing our catastrophizing skillset and delivering options to clients in a way that allows them to make informed decisions without causing unnecessary anxiety.

Substituting catastrophic language with more neutral language . . . [more]

In recent years, the number of law librarians in public sector and academic roles has declined. Most notably, the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General (MAG) has reduced the staff of its Toronto-based law library to the point that, as of sometime in 2025, it no longer has a professionally staffed law library.^[2] In other words, no actual librarians work at the law library of the Ministry of the Attorney General.^[3] This deprofessionalization took place quietly and gradually, with no public announcement, no discussion in the legislature, and no opportunity for public scrutiny.

The MAG is not the . . . [more]

This is a fairly specific problem: sometimes a case quotes a section from an older edition of a book and you need to find the quotation in the current edition of the book.

Assuming the most recent edition is available electronically, generally the easiest way is to search for a portion of the quote in the new edition. However, if the wording has significantly changed it may be hard to identify the equivalent in the new edition.

The second way to do this is by using both a copy of the old edition and a copy of the current edition. . . . [more]

This summer our law library intern (shout out to Bailey Kaye!) is reviewing our archival casebook collection for a digitization project. Among them was a casebook for exchange students arriving at Dalhousie Law School in 1978. It outlined an introduction to the common law, as provided by the Sir James Dunn Law Library. In this casebook, the Sir James Dunn Law Library included a helpful list of general information about library etiquette. Let’s review how you were to conduct yourself in the law library of 1978, shall we?

The one rule that has survived nearly word-for-word, across nearly fifty years . . . [more]

I’m thrilled to share with all Slaw readers this great opportunity from our dedicated law students at the Arizona Journal of International and Comparative Law. I work closely with these students either in the Journal or in the courses I teach and I can confidently see that they are hardworking, intellectually engaged and eager to make an impact. The topics of the 2027 Symposium taking place in Tucson will include International Trade Law, Digitization of International Commercial Law, and Indigenous Peoples and International Economic Law. These areas of study have been an integral part of the Journal since its inception . . . [more]

Queen’s University Library has added a new chapter on “An Introduction to Researching Indigenous Legal Orders” to their Canadian Legal Research Manual.

The introduction to the chapter notes that it “provides a very brief introduction to researching Indigenous legal orders. It is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather a starting point primarily intended for non-Indigenous law students researching in an academic setting.”

It includes an overview of the terminology, an overview of sources of Indigenous law, a discussion of ethical considerations and limitations of resources, as well as a list of further reading. Suggested resources include . . . [more]

…All my notions – notions of good and evil, of pleasant and unpleasant, of funny and serious, of ugly and beautiful – are essentially middle-class notions; my taste in books and food and clothes, my sense of honour, my table manners, my turns of speech, my accent, even the characteristic movements of my body, are the products of a special kind of upbringing and a special niche about half-way up the social hierarchy.

-George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier

Many in the legal profession who came from a working- or middle-class background can relate intimately to Orwell’s account of . . . [more]

“Where’s my book?”

“On your bookcase.”

A pause. “Where on the bookcase?”

“The middle shelf.”

Another pause. “Where on the middle shelf?”

I let that hang for a second, my hands covered in the pie pastry I’d been rolling out. Maybe, if I just gave it some time, the book would reveal itself from its sophisticated hiding place of … the middle shelf of a tiny three-shelf bookcase.

It did not. So, I did what mothers do and retrieved the book.

I used to tell this story from my kid’s childhood for laughs, but it points to a deeper truth. . . . [more]

Through my own journey with chronic pain, I am acutely aware of the impact language can have on your health. More specifically, I recognize the role catastrophizing plays in magnifying pain and that simple word substitutions can facilitate healing. It has also triggered a recognition that the language I use with clients may also negatively contribute to their anxiety.

Catastrophizing involves exaggerating the severity of a situation and jumping to the worst possible conclusion. As noted in the recent Psychology Today article, “Catastrophizing”:

Everyone has negative thoughts. But for many people, negative thinking can spin out of control and be

Earlier this year, a motion at the Ontario Superior Court paused while everyone in the room went looking for a quotation. The factum on one side quoted a decision of the Court of Appeal, and opposing counsel could not find the quoted words anywhere in that decision. He suspected the factum had been drafted with AI. The judge called a short recess, so the party who filed it could go and find the passage.[1]

The citation was correct, and anyone who looked it up would have found exactly the case named. In this instance, AI produced a fake quotation . . . [more]

Not all mystery cases are caused by a mistyped citation or AI hallucination. Sometimes people remember only the vague details of a case (“it was an employment case involving someone who insisted on dressing up as a clown at work”) but not the names of the parties. While they may have a vague idea of when it happened, people tend to remember events as being more recent than they actually were.

If you’re missing crucial information about a case and can’t seem to track it down with the information that you have been given, it can be helpful to check . . . [more]

Recently, I was invited to be a guest speaker at a Law and Literature Course here at my workplace, University of Arizona College of Law. As part of our Law Library Team and Professor of Legal Research, the invitation to speak came to my desk almost naturally. Perceptions on the voracious reading habits of librarians permeate even in the hallways of academia. Given my close connections with our Faculty colleagues as well as law students, I was not surprised at all at the speaking request. I have indeed shared with students and colleagues alike my lifelong obsession with reading world . . . [more]