Reading Susan Munro’s post about some of the interesting products and services she learned of at the CALL conference got me thinking. Susan noted:

Countervailing forces (for example, the common use of Google as a first stop for all kinds of research) pull us away from deep-dive research. I keep hearing about the legal research habits of law students and newer lawyers: they start with Google and often go no further.

It is interesting to step back and think about what patterns exist for legal research. If most often a legal research need is fulfilled by a surface scrape, what . . . [more]

This past spring, I designed and taught an upper-­year course at the Allard (i.e. UBC) School of Law called “Access to Justice and the Modern Litigant.” For three hours each Thursday afternoon, my students and I discussed the deepening crisis in access to justice for working and middle-­class Canadians. We explored the philosophical foundations of the common law, traced the evolution of the concept of equal access to justice, and considered different sociological analyses of how ordinary Canadians interact with the civil justice systems built to serve them. We also reviewed the history of public legal services in Canada, and . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on technology, research and practice.

Research

Canada Day Tribute
Shaunna Mireau

Happy 148th birthday Canada. There is a nice history of Canada day outlined at this federal government website that was updated in June of 2014. It reminds us of some facts. I share those blow that relate to finding the law of Canada Day…

Practice

Inbox Zero: Unsubscribing (And the Next-Best Option)*
Garry Wise

Where do all these email alerts, newsletters, updates, sales pitches . . . [more]

A controversial Private Members Bill that will have a direct impact on unions across Canada is currently working its way through Parliament. Bill C-377, which was passed by the Senate last week, will require unions to essentially open their financial books to the public.

Included in the Bill is a requirement for unions to disclose: a yearly balance sheet indicating their assets, liabilities, income and expenditures; the details of all transactions over $5,000, including the name and address of each party, a statement regarding the purpose of the transaction, and a description of each transaction; a statement indicating the total . . . [more]

There’s an interesting article in the recent issue of AI Magazine called “Truth Is a Lie: Crowd Truth and the Seven Myths of Human Annotation.” AI Magazine is considered the “journal of record for the AI community” and is a product of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. It’s a “delayed open access” journal which is nice because that means the articles are openly available 15 months after they’ve been published.*

One reason this article caught my attention is because I’ve been thinking about Kevin Lee’s comment on my post a couple of weeks . . . [more]

Friends and colleagues of Michael Silverstein recently gathered at MacLean House in Toronto to share reminiscences and a musical tribute in his memory. Michael passed away on May 6, 2015, at age 63.

Michael was best known to the legal research community as the “interpreter” of the Canadian Abridgment. Beginning with the co-authoring in 1989 of the Guide to Research Using the Canadian Abridgment, Michael became known as the expert on the structure and content of one of the most byzantine publications that ever saw the light of day. Over the following decades he guided its restructuring and and . . . [more]

I thoroughly enjoyed attending this year’s CALL conference in Moncton. It was especially interesting to see and hear about some of the new products and services developed by the English legal publishers.

The Incorporated Council of Law Reporting (“ICLR”) is a non-profit that publishes the official law reports for England. For reported decisions, they include links not only to the cases cited, but also to cases cited in the argument.

Justis is an English publisher of unreported judgments; their product Justcite has a fantastic new feature that shows the treatment of cases: a circular visualization of the . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from sixty recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. University of Alberta Faculty of Law Blog 2. Excess Copyright 3. Legal Sourcery 4. Éloïse Gratton 5. Rule of Law

University of Alberta Faculty of Law Blog
Waiving Privilege by Putting State of Mind in Issue

In this video blog, I explore some common issues that arise when a . . . [more]

Love may be the answer, but it may not be in the form of a lawyer.

As the legal profession struggles to reinvent itself and restructure how services are being provided, other legal professionals are being created in parallel. The State of Washington recently licensed its first batch of “Limited License Legal Technicians (LLLTs),” the first of its type in the country, though several states have already indicated they may follow their lead.

The Washington State Bar Association defines LLLTs as individuals who,

…are trained and licensed to advise and assist people going through divorce, child custody and other family

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

CONCURRENCE (LOI SUR LA) : Le pouvoir exclusif de la Cour supérieure lancer un mandat de perquisition suivant l’article 15 de la Loi sur la concurrence ne lui confère pas le pouvoir exclusif de modifier toute ordonnance de mise sous scellés par rapport à l’information reliée au mandat.

Intitulé: Presse . . . [more]

One Sunday each month OnPoint Legal Research provides Slaw with an extended summary of, and counsel’s commentary on, an important case from the British Columbia, Alberta, or Ontario court of appeal.

A.A.A.M. v. British Columbia (Children and Family Development), 2015 BCCA 220

AREAS OF LAW: Family Law Act; Best interests of the child; Guardians

~It is unfair to say that a parent does not regularly care for a child for the purposes of determining guardianship under s. 39(3)(c) of the Family Law Act, when the Director of Adoption and the courts control that parent’s access to the child.~ . . . [more]

It’s early Sunday morning in Greece, but Peter Carayiannis of ConduitLaw in Toronto is up late writing a dispatch from the front lines

Postcard from Greece – A Nation Holds Its Breath

As I write this, it is late Saturday night. Tomorrow is the day of Greece’s referendum. After a tumultuous week that started last Sunday when PM Tsipras & Co. abruptly ended negotiations with European counterparts we are now on the eve of the most important vote in modern times for Greece.

Ultimately, this is a referendum not just on the ongoing chronic economic catastrophe that has been the . . . [more]