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?

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 am impressed with the sharing aspect of Canada’s legal community, and the generosity everyone shows in blogging. Every day we see great new examples of this with both thought leadership and informational blogs. On Friday members of the CALL-L listserv received a note from the CALL/ACBD Website Editorial Board chair Michel-Adrien Sheppard reminding us about the blog on the Canadian Association of Law Libraries/L’Association canadienne des bibliothèques de droit website.

Even as a CALL/ACBD executive board member I didn’t quite realize how much blogging was going on inside the members’ area! Fortunately now members have the option of . . . [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

Last week there was a a challenge and a follow up thread at 3 Geeks and a Law Blog. The challenge was a plea from Nina Platt that law librarian bloggers write about issues that would be useful to us (as opposed to writing about the future of law or legal publishing news). The challenge was answered with a list of themes and ideas that I urge you to read.

Nina identified law librarian issues, including topics like these

• How we can support changes in the legal industry?
• What technology will help get us through these changes?
• What staffing,

The Uniform Law Conference of Canada is holding its 95th annual meeting in Victoria, BC. As noted last week, the ULCC has adopted more than 120 model or uniform acts to date. What’s the difference between the two forms?

As set out on the ULCC website, uniform acts (lois uniformes) are recommended for implementation by all relevant governments across Canada. For example, at the 2012 meeting, the ULCC adopted the Uniform Reviewable Transactions Act and the Uniform Trustee Act. In comparison, model laws (lois types) are put forward as a tool for harmonising laws . . . [more]

I now continue sharing some of the lessons I learned from walking the historic pilgrimage route in France and Spain, the Camino Frances, over six weeks in May and June. Sometimes we are our own worst enemies. Fear or a negative attitude can prevent us from getting to where we want to be or getting what we want. We saw this time and again on our walk. Allow me to share two such stories that stand out in my mind:

One day toward the beginning of our trip we had a very long, tiring journey. We arrived into a . . . [more]

We have The Court for Canada, the New Zealand Supreme Court Blog, for New Zealand, and SCOTUSblog for the United States. As of last week, Australia also has a blog dedicated to discussion of the decisions of its highest court: Opinions on High. Indeed, Melbourne Law School, at the University of Melbourne, expressly noted the influence of these three blogs in the development of its own high court commentary site.

It seems an objective of the Opinions on High is to engage a wide audience. Melbourne’s Associate Dean (Engagement) Professor Miranda Stewart not only expects the site to . . . [more]

Though others have posted about it, Slaw has not yet reported on the upcoming CanLII Hackathon. The two day event, hosted by CanLII and the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law Centre for Law, Technology and Society — and properly titled Law, Government and Open Data Conference and Hackathon — will be held in Ottawa on September 13 and 14 at the Desmarais Building, Room 12101, 55 Laurier Avenue East.

According to the CanLII announcement:

The two day event will be roughly split as follows:

• Day 1 describes the public policy objectives of access to information and introduces the

Summer, that fleeting season of long days and special projects, is half over. Insert anxious gasp. I am certain that I am not alone in the horror that begins on the Tuesday after the August long weekend when approaching the To Do list. The projects that are contemplated in May or June are often overshadowed by other important work.

There are some great books on legal project management. I have Jim Hassett’s book Legal Project Management Quick Reference Guide, 3rd edition 2013, on my desk. Ted did an thorough review of the 2nd edition, and the 3rd edition . . . [more]

Next week marks the 95^th annual meeting of the Uniform Law Conference of Canada in. Founded in 1918, the ULCC is Canada’s oldest and longest serving law reform agency. As set out in its Constitution:

The mandate of the Uniform Law Conference of Canada is to facilitate and promote the harmonization of laws throughout Canada by developing, at the request of the constituent jurisdictions, Uniform Acts, Model Acts, Statements of Legal Principles and other documents deemed appropriate to meet the demands that are presented to it by the constituent jurisdictions from time to time.

The constituent jurisdictions are . . . [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]