The Sixteenth Annual Canadian Information Technology Law Association (“IT.CAN”) Conference will be held in Montreal on October 29-30.

IT.CAN has 350 members from across the country who are concerned with IT law. The annual conference is the organization’s major event to help attendees stay current in this rapidly developing area of law.

The full conference brochure including registration details is available on the IT.CAN website. If you have any questions about the program, get in touch with Lisa Ptack, IT.CAN Executive Director at lisa.ptack@rogers.com. . . . [more]

♫ And I could change the world
I could be the sunlight in your universe…♫

Lyrics and music by Tommy Sims, Gordon Kennedy and Wayne Kirkpatrick, recorded by Eric Clapton.

The University of Victoria has been asking law students about the technology that they use for the last 12 years. The latest survey, released in September this year, makes for interesting reading. They had a 90+% response rate, which is astounding in and of itself and indicates the depth of the information revealed in their survey.

Their Executive Summary is a nice recap of their results: . . . [more]

If a brilliant legal treatise is composed by an academic but nobody reads it, does it really matter?

A study last year by Mark Bauerlein looked at books and essays in English literature at several public American universities, and found the vast majority attracted very little attention from other academics. Other research suggests that up to half of university library holdings are never used. There’s no reason to believe that these patterns in library use are any different in the legal field.

Of course despite my initial premise I do believe in the inherent worth of even obscure legal research . . . [more]

This week, it was (on campus interview) OCI week at Western University Law School with law firms recruiting for summer jobs in 2013. For those who don’t know, students who don’t get a summer job are less likely to get an articling position, and those who don’t get an articling job are unable to practice. Not to put too fine a point on it but, 13% of students in Ontario last year did not get articling jobs. So the pressure on students can be immense.

Some students missed my class due to this time-honoured rite of passage that was only . . . [more]

More than a century ago, an early torts scholar (Pollock) wrote that, when it came to causation, lawyers and judges shouldn’t go adventuring with philosophers. Many modern Canadian lawyers and judges are likely more familiar with Sopinka J.’s admonition in Snell v. Farrell against “abstract metaphysical theory” – the claim that causation is “essentially a practical question of fact which can best be answered by ordinary common sense rather than abstract metaphysical theory.” . . . [more]

Normally, I am loath to repeat a post here at Slaw but seeing as how this is the first week of Law Skool I feel like this is an appropriate one to repeat for all of the 1Ls out there whose heads are, in all likelihood, spinning right now following their first four days as a law student.

Orientation week is drawing to a close. 2L and 3L classes have begun with 1L to begin on Monday. To all 1Ls, here is my advice. I know that not all who have experienced law school will agree with these and that’s . . . [more]

It’s halfway through the first week of the new academic term and time for me to revisit my summer projects list. Regretfully, I report I was less successful in checking off completed projects than was Shaunna Mireau in checking off her substantial writing project.

As it turns out, I check off as complete my “standard mundane tasks” and “institutional projects”—so, hooray, me!

On the flipside, the institutional projects consumed most of my available summer hours. By way of either prescience or a well-planned rationalization, though, I had prefaced my project list with this:

Summer rarely seems to offer the

Working in Academia, the day after Labour Day always feels far more like New Year’s Day to me than Jan 1. That being the case the Friday before Labour Day weekend is like New Year’s Eve and my tradition for academic New Year’s Eve is to take a look at the incoming class of law students to see what their mindset is and try to figure out how to relate to them (I dropped my Dragnet reference with regards to legal writing
“just the facts” years ago, which was a shame because I really liked that one). One of the . . . [more]

I missed the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA) conference, which wraps up today in Washington D.C. So my thoughts are turning not only to envy, but also to some of my own KM thoughts mixed with those emanating from conference tweets.

Too often Canadian law firms see KM as nothing more than a repository of documents and clauses: Matthew Parson’s so-called “information landfill.” And because KM is seen as nothing more than a landfill site, firms see KM as nothing more than a software solution to assist lawyers sift through the debris.

What a terrible waste!

But, what if . . . [more]

The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario complaint by Dr. Emily Carasco of Windsor Law recently settled after five days of hearing. Background on the case can be found on Slaw here.

Details of the settlement are currently not public, but coverage of the hearings can be found in The Windsor Star. . . . [more]

The International Legal Technology Association conference is happening right now in Washington, D.C. In addition to the conference blog, Mary Abraham of Above and Beyond KM is sharing reports of the conference on her blog. Mary’s recent posts include:

• Compass and Cloud: Autonomy’s New Direction #ILTA12
• #SharePoint Innovator Award #ILTA12
• Extranets:The Client Disconnect? #ILTA12
• JAG Connect:Army Lawyers go Social #ILTA12
• Frans Johansson Keynote #ILTA12
• Overcoming Law Firm Irrationality [#ILTA12]
• The Alternative Side of #ILTA12

As you can infer from Mary’s post titles, you can also follow the conference by its Twitter hashtag #ILTA12

You can follow the conference by . . . [more]

Law students are increasingly frustrated with the utility of legal education during a difficult economic market. As Cooley law school graduates realized recently, their lack of foresight over job prospects may not be compensable by law.

But still law students and prospective law student are still trying to figure out what the purpose of law school is supposed to be. Law schools insist that the philosophical underpinnings of law are an essential background for entering practice, arguably one of the several distinguishing characteristics from paralegals or other professionals working in the legal field.

Michael Plaxton discusses this question in a . . . [more]