I stumbled across this post by Marc Luber yesterday that I thought I would share.

Marc identifies five different things that are not taught in law school:

1. How to be a Lawyer
2. Career Planning
3. Legal Career Paths
4. Alternative Careers for Lawyers
5. How to Sell your Legal Skills to Employers

It was 10 years ago that I entered my first year of law school. All five of the items mentioned by Marc were as true in 2003 as they are in 2013. With law school enrolment numbers up, and articling placements becoming increasingly difficult to obtain, it still boggles my mind . . . [more]

The summer’s blue moon has come and gone, the evenings are decidedly chilly (here), and sunrise wakes me at an ever more humane hour.

And another sign of autumn’s impending arrival: Planning the fine points of our first-year Legal Research and Writing course occupies a large share of mental space.

Clearly others are also pondering LRW ideas at the moment. The season and a bit of serendipity brought to my screen an interesting question from Dean Kim Brooks of Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie:

Thinking about revisions to LRW – anything you wish you'd learned in first year LRW?

. . . [more]

I am a woman. I am a mother. I am a law librarian. I am a leader. Except for the leader, and law librarian bits, I rarely think about what the other two “I am” statements have to do with my job. Attendance at the Monday morning Plenary session at the CBA Legal Conference 2013 where Arin Reeves of Nextions presented “The Next IQ: The Next Level of Diversity & Inclusion for the 21st Century” caused me to reflect on being a woman and a mother in the context of my career.

I have rarely felt diminished, oppressed or that . . . [more]

I’d like to use this space to profile an upcoming event hosted by The Public Legal Education Association of Canada/L’Association canadienne des organismes d’éducation et d’information juridique . On October 9 and 10, 2013, the National PLEAC Conference and AGM will take place in Vancouver.

Wednesday, October 9 will see the AGM and the business meetings of the members of PLEAC/ACOEIJ, along with a social celebrating public legal education and, specifically, PLEI in BC.

Scheduled for Thursday, October 10, is what looks to be a stimulating and worthy event called Opening Doors. This day is planned to be

a public

. . . [more]

Preparing for the bar exam was one of the most challenging things I have ever done.

I attended law school because I wanted to use the law to foster systemic change. I knew law school would be challenging. And it was, not just due to the work load, the social pressure and job application process, but also because the road well-travelled for law students is a corporate one. The law is conservative, slow changing and it looks backwards. Nevertheless, I flourished by taking a mixture of ‘black letter’ law classes, critical theory seminars and clinical legal programs.

Students often talk . . . [more]

In a conversation the other day we touched on the differences between how (or if) electronic legal research was taught when I was in law school, and then a few years later when I first instructed legal research and writing. We recalled the equipment, manuals, and peripherals the publisher(s) sent us, and a perception of their complexity.

Serendipitously, the same day, I noticed Sarah Glassmeyer of CALI wrote on LLRX about an idea to collect those old things and more.

Note: It’s not that she’s a hoarder. Sarah happens to want to collect and preserve “our shared legal technology . . . [more]

We have a new associate starting this week. New lawyer hires are a frequent event at my firm. There have been 15 so far in 2013 (including students) which is a big number if you are dealing with onboarding on an ad hoc basis.

Like most others, my firm has a program in place for onboarding new hires. Our summer and articling students have a formal orientation program. We have a training and desk support program for legal support staff and administrative staff. Lateral lawyer onboarding is a bit different.

New lawyers, like everyone else, have technology training and orientation. . . . [more]

It’s not enough that there are some who claim there are already too many law schools in Canada, too few articling positions, and too much competition in the job market for junior lawyers. Now they want to make another law school which appears reserved for homophobes, or at the very least a law school which explicitly states that homosexuality is wrong.

The proposed law school would be housed at Trinity Western University (TWU) in Langley, B.C., a private Christian institution associated with the Evangelical Free Church of Canada, with approximately 3,500 students. The school has a Community Covenant Agreement which . . . [more]

On July 15, 2013, the Ontario Human Rights Commission launched a new policy on removing the 'Canadian experience' barrier in recruiting. A requirement for Canadian experience, even when implemented in good faith, can be an impenetrable barrier in recruiting, selecting, hiring or accrediting, and may result in discrimination.

Many of us enjoy attending and sharing knowledge gained at conferences, and several fellow Slaw bloggers recently have done so in respect of last week’s American Association of Law Libraries annual meeting. An understated newer highlight of the AALL annual meeting is the poster sessions exhibit, introduced in 2012. I took a couple of turns through the exhibit and was impressed by the depth and range of projects and studies carried out by fellow law librarians, instructors, and researchers. The AALL annual meeting site contains the full list of accepted poster sessions, with descriptions. Below are brief notes . . . [more]

While travelling home from Seattle last week after the AALL conference, which Connie, Kim and I blogged about here and here and here and here, I had an interesting seat mate. More than one interesting person actually. My philosophy is that if you are stuck on a plane and there is someone conversationally inclined, it is a good idea to put down your novel and learn. Every conversation is an opportunity to learn something, whether it is with a student travelling for the first time, someone on the way to visit a grandchild, or someone travelling on a business . . . [more]

One of the final sessions at this week’s American Association of Law Libraries conference offered participants a guided opportunity to work with the yet-in-beta Congress.gov. As THOMAS “himself” confirmed, the venerable THOMAS.gov — now the ripe age of 18 years — is looking to retire:

THOMAS will be retired! Tomorrow at 2:30 PDT we'll tweet about its replacement, #Congressdotgov. #aall13 http://t.co/FIOKzk6K7Q

— Congressdotgov (@congressdotgov) July 15, 2013

As we noted and discussed at the time, the Congress.gov public beta was launched several months ago. It has received several iterative updates since then: inclusion of the Congressional Record, . . . [more]