What lawyer doesn’t daydream about throwing in the towel and leaving practice—at least once in a while? Even if just infrequently like during a trust audit. Or maybe frequently but only during select rituals, like contemplating a depleted retainer, or feeling that file go off-the-rails while pondering what it could be like to have your salary taken care of without all that suspense.

Ruminating about less beaten career paths is perfectly lawyerly. The CBA even publishes a list of career alternatives for lawyers, or writes up profiles of people who have pursued different legal paths from time to time. . . . [more]

Today, the University of Ottawa is organizing Government Information Day to examine the many challenges of organizing, digitizing and preserving often finicky government documents.

We all use them every day: rules and regulations, Hansards, parliamentary committee reports, government agency documents, court records, official stats, public sector scientific and technical reports, etc.

Anyone who has ever had to track down an old order-in-council or find a controversial pollution report by government scientists will appreciate how hard it can be.

For the past little while, the CLA Government Library and Information Management Professionals Network, part of the Canadian Library Association (CLA), has . . . [more]

The Legal Sourcery Blog reported recently that the three Saskatchewan Courts now have a practice directive in place that requires the use of the Citation Guide for the Courts of Saskatchewan.

The purpose of this Guide is to provide a standard set of citation rules for the courts of Saskatchewan. It covers all of the basic citation structures. For citation questions not covered by this Guide, the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation (the McGill Guide) should be consulted. Where this Guide and other style guides differ, this Guide prevails.

A Notice to the Profession outlines some of the . . . [more]

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries‘ Webinar Committee has announced a substantive law webinar series created and presented by former Slaw contributor Ted Tjaden. This follows from a successful Civil Procedure 101 webinar they presented earlier this year. These sessions are aimed at information professionals and others in the legal industry who would like to expand their understanding of the law. All are welcome.

See the details below. Click through the individual topics for more information and to register. Note the mention at the bottom–you can also register for all 5 webinars at a 20% discount (essentially getting . . . [more]

The Canadian Library Association (CLA) and the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD) recently wrote a joint letter to top federal government officials to uphold the fundamental right of people who are incarcerated to read, learn, and access information:

Literacy and the prison library play an important role inside institutions as well as in reintegration planning. The prison library has the opportunity to mirror the outside world and help prepare the incarcerated person for release.

People serving their sentences have not given up the right to learn and to access information, including legal information. Inmates should therefore have access

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries’s 2015 conference program committee has put out a call for program submissions. The conference is to be held May 3 – 6, 2015 in Moncton, New Brunswick.

TURNING THE TIDE / RENVERSER LA MARÉE is the theme for the CALL/ACBD 2015 conference. The extended economic downturn has had wide-ranging effects on law libraries and the practice of law librarianship. We will explore ways in which libraries are confronting the new economic realities and are successfully turning the tide. We will examine ways in which we can improve all our various environments, from the micro . . . [more]

The 2014 course on International Law and Legal Information from the International Association of Law Libraries is taking place right now in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Of particular interest are the Tweets being posted to Twitter with the tag #IALL2014. Today’s content is focussed largely on human rights issues.

Related links:

• #IALL2014 on Twitter
• IALL 2014 Annual course website
• Full conference programme is here (PDF)
• International Association of Law Libraries (main website)

You are invited to participate in a Chat via Twitter being hosted tomorrow by the Canadian Law Libraries. It will take place from 12 – 1 pm EST.

We are using the CBA Futures report as our jumping-off point. The questions outlined below will be posted by the @CALLACBD Twitter account and we will be using the hashtag #CALLFuture to identify tweets from the discussion.

Please join us!

CALL/ACBD is very pleased to welcome Fred Headon, Past-President of the Canadian Bar Association and Chair of the CBA Legal Futures Initiative, who will be joining us for the first part of

The debate about how to improve access to justice most often discusses what lawyers and court institutions can do.

There is another potential player: law libraries. In Canada, a few law libraries offer legal information services to the general public. But there does not seem to be much coordination of these efforts or much analysis of the contributions law libraries can and should be making.

South of the border, the attempt to address this question appears to have been more ambitious, though there is still a long way to go.

For example, the American Association of Law Libraries recently . . . [more]

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) is organizing a live “tweet chat” on Thursday, September 25 with Fred Headon, Past-President of the Canadian Bar Association and Chair of the CBA Legal Futures Initiative.

The live chat on Twitter will take place from 12 to 1PM EST and the topic will be “Does the CBA Futures Report provide opportunities for law librarians? ”

The CALL website has details on how interested law librarians (and others) can join the chat.

People can read more about the CBA Legal Futures Initiative on the CBA Futures website.

  . . . [more]

In the June issue of Technical Services Law Librarian Karen Wahl talks about Kristen M. Hallows‘ article called “It’s All Enumerative: Reconsidering Library of Congress Classification in U.S. Law Libraries” published in the Winter issue of the Law Library Journal.

In her review Wahl says:

The major thesis is that a subject classification scheme, rather than a jurisdictional classification scheme, may better support the needs of users because it will collocate related materials better, leading to better browsability for the patrons. It implies that the hyper-specificity of LCC makes this more difficult for a smaller law

Read the full article here. . . . [more]