First, I congratulate Treasurer Thomas Conway for opening up Convocation to the public via the internet – this has been a long time coming and has permanently shredded the mystique that has surrounded Convocation for far too long. Hopefully this opening up will inspire a new, fresher slate of benchers to be elected in 2015.

But there is still work to be done.

It was said at the last Convocation, and in various other forums, that democracy is messy but it’s better than the alternative. Cue the dramatic music.

That kind of cold war rhetoric is quaint and interesting, even . . . [more]

In a country as large as the United States and one boasting as many law schools as it has, the attraction of ranking is almost irresistible. How else to make sense of the profusion? A sensitive and nuanced differentiation and description would tax critics’ creative powers to bankruptcy. Not only, then, are law schools ranked, but law journals also. And here, too, it’s the simple numbers that get used because . . . they’re there, the most important measure being the frequency with which articles from the journal are cited by others (though whether the “others” must be published in . . . [more]

Today the Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) once again considered the issue of what to do with articling in Ontario.

Once again, the matter was webcast so that all could see the debate.

Once again, viewers were shocked by what they saw.

Once again, Benchers came across as clubby and out-of-touch.

Time and again, they stood up and made verbose, rambling arguments based on nothing more than anecdotes, personal experience and emotional pleas.

Given that most are litigators, it’s astounding that so many do not understand how to make brief, pithy remarks; they’ve clearly been trained (perhaps during articling) . . . [more]

Next week Benchers of the Law Society of Upper Canada will (hopefully) decide on the future of articling in the province of Ontario. So, rightly or wrongly, one piece of the legal training puzzle in Ontario will be determined.

The elephant in the room however is the law schools.

Many will say that law schools are there simply to serve the purpose of providing a legal education that students are free to use in whatever fashion they choose; ensuring students become lawyers is not the role of law schools.

This is naïve. And it would only be the most hard-hearted . . . [more]

I’ve just emerged from a few weeks of first-year law student legal research instruction. During that immersion—that is, when I didn’t have time to read it—I came across an interesting post on the RIPS Law Librarian blog: Michele Thomas’s “Guiding Principles for Enhancing Classroom Experiences.” The principles arising from the author’s reflections are sound and broadly applicable, in my view.

Our teaching team happened to implement this year or have in place some of these, at least in some form. I expect we’ll look at more of these, or others, next year.

My favourite tips are Ms . . . [more]

You may have already seen this, but it was new to me. In 2010-2011 Harvard Law School and New York Law School hosted a year-long contest of ideas respecting legal education called “Future Ed“. One of the results was the book Educating the Digital Lawyer edited by Marc Lauritsen and Oliver Goodenough. The book explores the question “What will legal education look like as we train our graduates to be effective lawyers in the digital world of the 21st Century?”

Published by LexisNexis, a complimentary copy of the e-book format is available here [note: clicking on this link . . . [more]

Yesterday I visited the 2nd year Reference and Research class at Grant MacEwan University’s Library and Information Technology Program. I was the wrap up guest lecturer for the legal information component of their course. It was fun being surrounded by enthusiastic learners who are preparing to embark on a career in my chosen field.

One of the things we discussed was how things have changed for library technicians engaged in legal information management since I graduated from Grant MacEwan’s program (ack) 20 years ago. The changes are substantial and when you consider some of them:

• The Internet
• Courts and

I attended the annual IT.CAN conference Monday and Tuesday in Montreal. I find the IT.CAN conferences are consistently high quality, and the best continuing legal education option for lawyers practicing in the tech space. Topics at this conference included things such as content convergence and the regulatory framework, legal issues surrounding cloud computing, social media, digital commerce and clean tech, advanced software licensing, an annual update on IP issues, privacy and anti-spam updates, health care IT, outsourcing trends, public sector IT issues, and cyber libel. 

While attendance was strong, and included (as always) many well-known IT practitioners, there is always . . . [more]

What if a law society created an articling task force that canvassed the view of stakeholders over the course of many months, prepared an interim report, then a final report and then asked for a vote.

One would think that a vote would then take place, no?

No.

Today the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Bencher debate was hijacked by a group of Benchers who – wait for it – wanted even more time to study the issues and seek stakeholder input.

The climate of fear in Convocation was palpable as a number of Benchers seemed completely unprepared to vote . . . [more]

The Law Society of Upper Canada just released the final report of the Articling Task Force, Pathways to the Profession: A Roadmap for the Reform of Lawyer Licensing in Ontario. This Task Force was formed to address concerns about the articling program, and in particular relating to the growing number of unplaced licensing candidates. The report outlines a various options for adapting or changing the articling process, including ending the articling requirement as we otherwise know it today. Needless to say, this report and the future of articling have generated a lot of discussion and debate.
On October 25, . . . [more]

The second #lawstudent #twtmoot competition will take place November 20, #twtmoot organizer @WCELaw recently announced. Participating #lawschool teams will again #twtmoot an #envlaw question, addressing before the #STCC (Supreme Twitter Court of Canada) the question of a public right to a healthy global atmosphere. West Coast Environmental Law was successful last time in raising awareness not only of the #twtmoot event, which trended in #Canada at the time, but also of #envlaw issues—the focus the environmental #lawfirm brings to the event. Last time around—just this past February—#Osgoode was the #winning team. I could be #biased, but I seem . . . [more]

The Articling Task Force reported this morning.

The Executive Summary reads: . . . [more]