Around for more than thirty years and often mistakenly* called “listservs,” email lists were for a long time the most productive way for groups of people to argue and exchange ideas on the internet. We’ve touched on them on Slaw a number of times, particularly in the writings of Lyonette Louis-Jacques, the “queen” of law lists, her most recent contribution on the subject being A Few Good (Email) Lists. 

As Lyo says in that piece, we might imagine that this tired old format is “pretty much dead.” But in fact, she came up with a dozen or so email . . . [more]

. . . is a game. You’re an alien who has crashed on Earth and must collect bits of things from a farm to repair your spaceship. It’s fairly sophisticated for the sort of animation you get on a Goodle. Try waking up the kid. I gave up too soon.

. . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada launched a new design for its website a couple of weeks ago. According to Michel-Adrien Sheppard, this was in order to come into compliance with the Treasury Board Secretariat Web Standard on Usability. The content appears to have remained unchanged.

The new design for the home page is set out below, followed by an image of its previous design:

The new design is generally cleaner and more readable than the former, which, by contrast, was a bit cramped. But to my eye there’s not a lot of improvement when it comes to aesthetics. . . . [more]

Recently my friend and colleague (and fellow Slaw-yer) Joan Rataic-Lang and I spent five six weeks walking the historic pilgrimage route, the Camino Frances, which for us started in St. Jean Pied-de-Port, France, and carried us through the Pyrenees and across northern Spain–a total of 780 km. We learned many personal lessons along the way, but surprisingly we also learned many things that apply to work. I thought it time to start sharing some of what I learned.

Most days we got up at 6 am and started our walk at 7 am. Ideally we would have some yoghurt . . . [more]

Last week Tomee Sojourner, who happens to be a lesbian, filed a complaint of bias against the judge who had presided over a hearing at the Québec Rental Board of a complaint by Ms Sojourner’s landlord. In the words of the news release on the website of Montreal’s Center for Research-Action on Race (Ms Sojourner is Black):

According to her complaint with the Council, the presiding judge, Luce De Palma, repeatedly referred to her as a man (by calling her “il”, “lui” et “monsieur Sojourner”), despite being reminded by Ms. Sojourner and the landlord’s representative that she is a woman.

It is common, when the question is raised of how to best respond to the influx of self-represented litigants (“SRL”) in court and other legal proceedings, to see the issue described as a challenge or burden upon the profession. Verbs used to describe the response of lawyers or judges to the SRL often include words like “manage” or “survive” and others that carry similar connotations of a problem in need of a solution.

But the SRL is not a problem; self-representing litigants are rather a symptom of a complex bundle of problems in the design and functioning of our legal . . . [more]

Like many people, I suspect, I’ve been thinking about the lack of privacy in my comings and goings on the internet and wondering what, if any, steps I should take to prevent or impede the collection of data about me and my acts. Thanks to a tip from David Collier-Brown, a frequent commenter on Slaw, I’m exploring a site called PRISM Break that lists and gives a brief explanation of nearly eighty free alternatives to the more popular “proprietary” applications and operating systems. By and large the thought here is that these popular systems and software are likely to be . . . [more]

Connie kindly updated Slawyers with key links relating to the flood situation in Southern Alberta. As you can imagine, for those of us with close family, friends, colleagues and clients in the affected areas, the situation of our Southern neighbours is top of mind.

I am so proud of the way my colleagues have dealt with this situation. Our Calgary Managing Partner, Doreen Saunderson, has been keeping our staff updated with information. Her first email, June 20, 2013 just shy of midnight shared “We hope that all of you and your families are safe. Caring for them is your . . . [more]

One of the costs to the justice system is the failure of many who are accused of summary conviction offences to appear at scheduled court hearings. A group of researchers in the US studied the effect on the no-show rate of sending out reminder postcards. These would be cheaper than the reminder phone calls typically used in many jurisdictions. The study sample was roughly 8,000 “misdemeanants” in Nebraska, a selection of whom received one of three postcards, each with somewhat different wording (as to consequences of failure to appear). The results are described thus in the current issue [PDF] of . . . [more]

Slaw readers interested in the theatre may want to mark the date of the Shylock Appeal, which will take place at the Stratford Festival on Saturday, October 5, at the Studio Theatre (behind the Avon Theatre), at 10:30 a.m. Alan Lenczner and another leading advocate will argue Shylock’s sentence before a panel of judges including Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin and former Justice Ian Binnie. With actors in the other roles, this day in court will be as entertaining as it is judiciously sound. . . . [more]

One of the perqs (?) of writing for traditional, paper, law journals is the author’s offprint. One of the problems of writing for those journals is what to do with most of those offprints if one wants to keep one’s friends who aren’t compelled to accept one. They (the offprints, not the friends) aren’t as convenient as the old-style paper matchbooks for levelling off-kilter restaurant tables and the like.

I received, this morning, 3 packages which, when opened and emptied, yielded an about 14″ (about 35.56 cm) stack of offprints containing my recent too-long article “Factual Causation in Negligence After . . . [more]

Like most Canadians I have been watching the news of flooding in Alberta. The images of downtown Calgary and other communities under water have been shocking. Our thoughts go out to colleagues, friends and family affected by the floods–we wish you a safe return to home and work.

Here are a few key websites with more information:

• Donations to the Alberta Floods support – Canadian Red Cross
• Flooding information (emergency information, advisories, community updates, disaster recovery) – Government of Alberta
• How you can help – (donations and volunteering) – Government of Alberta
• Court-related closures – (emergency information) – Alberta