Angela Swan recently wrote a post on “legal education, the alternatives”. Her motivation was a conference at Ryerson on models of legal education, “the how to think” model and the “how to do model”. Angela suggested this was a false dichotomy and I agree completely – I’d be surprised if anyone actually thought either model in its extreme, as presented here, was an appropriate way to train law students. The real issue is how well the two models are integrated and here law schools differ in their programs. The multilayered, multifaceted life (even in my limited experience of it) . . . [more]

There was a time before Twitter, which first appeared on our radar not quite a year ago (Some Folks Are A-Twitter). Facebook was invented in 2004 and didn’t take off until some years later. There was even a time before RSS, and certainly a time before it became a routine way to pull information. And, of course, we’re told that there was indeed a time before blogging — but that’s pre-history and there’s no written record from that time…

So my question is: what is the new technology that we’re not quite seeing at the moment?

I’m not . . . [more]

Today saw the release of an Ipsos Reid survey on the legal problems faced by low-income British Columbians. More than 80 per cent have faced problems since 2005 that have been serious and difficult to resolve. The poll was commissioned by the province’s legal aid program.

Consumer, money, and housing issues topped the list of legal problems with employment and family relations following close behind.

“The high incidence of legal problems is troubling,” said Mark Benton, QC, Executive Director of the Legal Services Society, the organization that provides legal aid in BC. “This survey, along with other research . . . [more]

I came across the following enthusiastic review of a new book on the law of Bail:

Faris on Bail is the most extensive and insightful book written on the law and practice of bail in Victoria. It is clearly written and structured and includes a reference and link to every relevant case on the topic. It provides lawyers and judges with a complete resource on the relevant law and is one of the few legal publications that provides an exhaustive treatment of a subject matter.

Well what’s unusual about that, you might ask.

Legal publishing in jurisdictions like Victoria – . . . [more]

Last week Family Law Education for Women (FLEW) unveiled a public education campaign called “All Women. One Family Law” to ensure that women in Ontario know their legal rights under provincial family law. FLEW is a public legal education project funded by Ontario to develop materials to inform women’s decisions about family law issues.

Here is the English language website, the French website and news announcements in both English and French. The information itself is in English, Chinese (traditional), Punjabi, Tamil, French, Chinese (simplified), somali, Urdu, Arabic, Farsi and Spanish.

I particularly liked the embedded video in the . . . [more]

The folks over at Orange Legal Technologies have put together a news feed they are calling “Unfiltered Orange” focussing on electronic discovery. You can access Unfiltered Orange a few ways:

• directly from the Orange Legal Technologies website. Scroll down for the latest headlines, click through for the full news item from its original source.
• if you are on Twitter, follow the tweets from @complexd.
• if you are using a feed reader, or want to repurpose the feed, the RSS feed is available here.

They are apparently using Twitter to create the original feed. They have created this . . . [more]

Canadian citizen Omar Khadr is the only Western national left in Guantánamo Bay. Khadr and fellow detainee Mohammed Jawad are believed to be the first child combatants ever to face prosecution of alleged “war crimes”. Khadr was only 15 years old when he was captured by US forces in Afghanistan and later transported to the infamous US detention centre where he has now spent more than a quarter of his life. Khadr faces trial by US military commission. The military commissions fall so far short of international human rights standards that it is impossible for Khadr to receive a fair

Earlier in the year, I came across an article in New Scientist titled “Forgetfulness is key to a healthy mind”. In this article a case was described:

A 42-year-old woman from California, AJ remembers every day of her life since her teens in extraordinary detail. … AJ is locked in a cycle of remembering that she describes as a “running movie that never stops”. Even when she wants to, AJ cannot forget.” … “She described her constant recall as “non-stop, uncontrollable and totally exhausting” and as “a burden” of which she was both warden and victim.

The syndrome . . . [more]

An article in the recent Communications of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery), “Got data?: a guide to data preservation in the information age,” makes the case for urgent investment in data cyberinfrastructure — whatever is required to store, manage, catalog and access data.

(Note: that link won’t give you much joy unless you happen to subscribe to the ACM portal. Fortunately, the author, Francine Berman, who is Director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, has put up on her website a version of the piece in PDF, “Surviving the Data Deluge.” Such is the . . . [more]

Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
– Master Yoda, P.C., C.J.C.

In this award-winning 2006 film produced in cooperation with the CBC, Steel Toes tells the story of a neo-Nazi living in Montreal. He viciously attacks an Indian immigrant without provocation, mistaking him for a Muslim, with serious injuries that resulted in death.

He is frustrated, angry with the millions of immigrants who come to Canada and reproduce in large numbers. They supposedly take jobs away from working-class whites like him and are changing his . . . [more]

Twitter users have been abuzz over the Shorty Awards, The best producers of short (140 characters or less) content in 2008.

After a little bit of pestering there is now a law category.

There are some heavyweight “Tweeters” among Slaw readers and contributors, so I figured this would be of some interest. . . . [more]

I guess I don’t know how to set up delayed posts yet very well… Anyhow, my Friday post is now visible further down the page… and at: https://www.slaw.ca/2008/12/12/the-british-colonist/ . . . [more]