Attention: what follows is not me, my head shot above is not representative of the following paragraphs. Over the course of the summer Veronika Kollbrand has been of invaluable assistance working with us as a reference assistant. Veronika has completed her first year as an Information Management student here at Dal and will be embarking on her 1st year at Schulich Law in about a week+. As I have done previously I wanted to give her a Slaw blank slate to post on a topic she was interested in, the only guidance I provided was to generally keep it . . . [more]

by Sukhpreet Sangha*

The “articling crisis” has a face. It is mine and it might be yours and it is certainly many others’. It belongs to me less than to others, but for approximately eighteen hours my face, and my selfhood, had this crisis written all over it.

As those fortunate enough to be absented from the articling mêlée might not be aware, August 13^th-15^th marked the main, Law Society of Upper Canada-governed, Toronto articling recruitment process. Those in downtown Toronto might have noticed an odd confluence of anxiety-ridden baby lawyers running around looking out of place . . . [more]

We have talked about TED Talks before–a series of talks that get us thinking in new directions. They are usually both informative and highly interesting. TED has released a list of 20 most-watched talks to date on its blog:

1. Sir Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity (2006): 13,409,417 views
2. Jill Bolte Taylor‘s stroke of insight (2008): 10,409,851
3. Pranav Mistry on the thrilling potential of SixthSense (2009): 9,223,263
4. David Gallo‘s underwater astonishments (2007): 7,879,541
5. Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry demo SixthSense (2009): 7,467,580
6. Tony Robbins asks Why we do what we do (2006): 6,879,488
7. Simon Sinek on how great

Via a post on the Legal Writing Prof blog, I’m reading an interesting paper, “Say Goodbye to the Books: Information Literacy as the New Legal Research Paradigm,” by Professors Ellie Margolis and Kristen Murray of Temple University. The paper is available for download in the SSRN Working Paper Series.

Purely coincidentally, a similar thought arose this morning in an internal planning meeting about our legal research and writing instruction this fall. It was expressed that to introduce online research resources by reference to or comparison with their print counterparts is likely no longer a suitable approach. The argument is not . . . [more]

The Canadian Bar Association (CBA) is the voice of the legal profession in Canada. It promotes the independence of the judiciary and legal profession, seeks to improve the law and administration of justice, and promotes equality.

But none of that is possible if lawyers aren’t members of the CBA, because membership is voluntary. Approximately two-thirds of all lawyers in Canada are CBA members, and the 37,000 members include lawyers, judges, notaries, law teachers, and law students.

Changing times mean changing demands from the membership, and at the past annual meeting earlier this month in Vancouver, council approved a resolution that . . . [more]

You might have read about LawMeets: It was profiled this week in an ABA Journal news item as the subject of a $500,000 US National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research grant to its developer, entrepreneur and corporate and securities law Professor Karl Okamoto of Drexel University.

Professor Okamoto is also Director of the Business and Entrepreneurship Law Program at Drexel and founder of ApprenNet, which operates the LawMeets venture. The new LawMeets is an online experiential learning initiative, the virtual evolution of Prof. Okamoto’s live National Transactional LawMeet program, which – live or online – might . . . [more]

I have been working with some very talented folks planning the CIAJ Annual Conference. The conference will take place October 10-12 at the Fairmont Palliser Hotel in Calgary.

The program (English PDF) for the conference “The Courts and Beyond: The Architecture of Justice in Transition” is very exciting and features a keynote on building justice with architect Jack Diamond, dinner with award winning journalist Paula Simon, and an opening reception at the beautiful, Calgary Courts Centre. The program features fantastic speakers from the bench, the bar, and the academy, including Slaw Columnist Nicolas Vermeys.

I am looking forward to . . . [more]

ABA Decision Not to Accredit Foreign Law Schools Means Canadian Law Schools and Students are Winners. . . For Now

Last week the ABA`s Section of Legal Education and Admissions to the Bar decided not to get into the business of accrediting foreign law schools. The vote was unanimous. However, sounding somewhat like the Federation of Law Societies of Canada in its report on accrediting the Common Law Degree, the Governing Council of the section acknowledged that it needs to establish sandards and procedures for licensing foreign lawyers who want to practice law in the United States.

ABA accreditation . . . [more]

One of the many highlights for me at last month’s American Association of Law Libraries 2012 Conference was the opportunity to meet Priya Rai of the National Law University in Delhi and to observe her presentation, Access to Legal Information in the Digital Age: A Comparative Study of Electronic Commercial Databases and Public Domain Resources in Law.

Ms Rai is an accomplished law librarian and legal research instructor trained in law. One of her accomplishments is participation in the Information Institute of India Project. She attended and presented at AALL 2012 as the recipient of the FCIL Schaffer Grant . . . [more]

I had the opportunity to attend the 105th Annual Meeting and Conference of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL12) this week. AALL12 was my first conference experience with AALL and it was well worth the trip. The programming was informative, the networking opportunities stellar, and the exhibitor contact fruitful.

Programming

Although the AALL is, obviously, an American organization, the content of most sessions and poster presentations addresses matters of broad concern to law libraries without geographic restriction. Several of those on US legal subjects and resources are of substantive edification and are the subjects of some of the stories . . . [more]

Has everyone recovered from the CALL/ACBD 2012 conference yet? Toronto is gearing up now for another major law librarian conference — the International Association of Law Libraries. This will be the 31st annual conference which takes place in a different country each year (2011 was in Malaysia).

The theme of the conference is Canada: The Cultural Mosaic and International Law. Topics reflect Canada’s unique perspectives on international and domestic issues. Speakers at the sessions include top Canadian legal academics, scholars, legal practitioners and law librarians. A preliminary programme is available from the website – http://iall.org/iall2012/ .

The . . . [more]

Following the inspiring lead of Connie Crosby and Shaunna Mireau, I’m sharing a summer project list. I have quite a long summer project list, and it has had to face regular trimming. Summer rarely seems to offer the generous spare time foreseen during the hectic days of the late spring term.

My summer project list contains standard mundane tasks like reorganizing files – physical and electronic – as well as institutional projects difficult to achieve during the academic term, and taking a bird’s-eye view of library collections and services. I won’t bore anyone with those.

Some of the invigorating . . . [more]