In one ear we hear the news that thanks to the recession firms are laying off lawyers and hiring fewer; and today in the other ear McLeans tells us that Canada needs more lawyers than its law schools can produce. According to the article, “Where’s a lawyer when you need one?” by Kate Lunau, Canada has fewer law schools for its population than any other Commonwealth country. Lunau explores some of the constraints — provincial refusal to fund new law schools being prime among them — and depends on Vern Krishna’s analysis to a large degree.

It might be that . . . [more]

Those Slawyers in or near Toronto might like to know that Richard Susskind, author of “The End of Lawyers: Rethinking the Nature of Legal Services,” will be speaking at the National Club on Wednesday, February 11 at 5 p.m., courtesy of the Canadian Bar Association. Those wishing to attend can let the organizers know here. The first chapter of Susskind’s book is available on the CBA site in PDF.

The CBA announcement of his impending talk also said that Susskind

has recently agreed to share his expertise with the Canadian Bar Association in the role of Special Adviser. He

I’ve done a quick search of Google Books (“Canada” + “law”)(“canadian” + “law”) and have created a library of some of the resulting material. I chose books published in this century that had a limited preview available and came up with 57 volumes. As you’ll know, I’m sure, Google Books has four degrees of accessibility online: no preview available, snippet view, limited preview and full preview. Those in the last category tended to be the oldest material, typically published in the 19th century.

The books I’ve identified have what I believe is a substantial proportion of their text readable . . . [more]

I spent this past Sunday in Dartmouth at the first Podcamp Halifax. As an enthusiast of the Podcamp movement of grassroots community-run events for the social media set (and an organizer of Podcamp Toronto), I was there to help them kick off their first such event, as well as spend time meeting some fascinating people.

One such person is David Fraser, lawyer with McInnes Cooper with whom I have been corresponding for a few years now, president of the Canadian Information Technology Law Association, and law blogger (see his posts here on Slaw and also his . . . [more]

Yesterday the NFB made a huge collection of its film available to view for free online. They even have the press conference from their launch available for viewing (after a free registration), and a blog post. The site is tricked out with all kinds of 2.0 gizmos, probably enough to satisfy even the most twittery (or is that twitchy?) Slawyers.

A search for ‘law’ brings up three results:

The Days of Whiskey Gap
Colin Low, 1961, 28 min 5 s
Rousing tales of the North-West Mounted Police are brought to life through photos and artists’ sketches. In 1873,

I hadn’t seen before today the Master of Laws Guide which assembles in a single site comparative information for foreign graduate students contemplating the choice of schools where to study.

Back in the last century, when I had to face the same question, one was reduced to talking to law school teachers and colleagues about what they knew of a particular school. The amount of sheer misinformation that this generated was extraordinary. A law school’s reputation (for good or ill) lingers long after any facts may have changed.

My own advice (when asked by students) is to pick people not . . . [more]

Here’s a link to a survey from the Law School Survey of Student Engagement, as reported in (hat-tip to) Inside Higher Education, Writing Lags in Law Schools.

The discussion on Legal Writing is interesting, and I don’t know of any reason why a Canadian survey would be terribly different . . . [more]

Back in November Dave Bilinsky reported on new Client ID and Verification Rules coming into force across the country.  B.C., Manitoba and Ontario‘s just came into force on December 31st.

The Law Society of Upper Canada is holding a teleseminar on January 13, 2009 to explain how these new requirements will affect legal practices and what you should be doing to confirm your client’s identity upon being retained to provide legal services.

Here is the lineup of speakers (subject to change):

• Karen Bell, Karen Bell LLB
• Caterina Galati, The Law Society of Upper Canada
• Ian M.

Most of our readers would be aware of the ongoing strike at York University led by CUPE 3903. York administrators have also indicated serious financial difficulties.

What people may not have realized is that the strike also affects law students at Osgoode Hall.

A second-year Osgoode student, Thomas Wisdom, shares the challenges some of his peers are facing,

First- and second-year students with summer jobs: A lot of people are ecstatic about the fact that they will be gainfully employed at law firms in the summer months… [but] they face the frustration of renegotiation start dates with

When can it be said that a new print publication is in fact “recognized as an authority” by the Canadian legal research community?

This question came to mind when I asked a law librarian attending the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries if she had added Halsburys Laws of Canada to her law library collection. Her answer was that she would do so as soon as Halsburys was “recognized” by the legal research community and not before.

The ultimate form of recognition

Identifying the ultimate form of recognition as an authority is an easy task. It is . . . [more]

Last week I met with Mitch Kowalski of the Legal Post. He mentioned our conversation earlier today on the site, which is the kick in the butt I needed to do my own write-up on it during our break from school.

Mitch is an alumn from my school, Western Law, but has chosen a career path unique from most. After practicing for many years on Bay St. he decided to open a writing center, first at Yorkville, and then moving to a more central location on Bloor West.

And just like those television infomercials, Mitch . . . [more]

CALI – the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction has been mentioned a few times here at Slaw * *. I was reminded about CALI recently by a post of the top ten fall semester 2008 lessons at the Law Librarian Blog.

The CALI site has an interesting first page – a list shows the frequently used material for the day, and week by the student subgroup- 1L, 2/3L and there is a link to more zeitgeist¹ at the bottom of the page. One of the zeitgeist is the All Time Lesson Runs Since 2008-08-01. The following list, . . . [more]