The publisher Springer Nature is issuing books with such subtitles as A Machine-Generated Literature Overview, while ChatGPT is being credited as co-author on research papers published in Elsevier journals. Yet Springer Nature’s premier journal, Nature, declared in January, that papers generated by a large language model (LLM), such as ChatGPT, will not be accepted for publication: “An attribution of authorship,” states Magdalena Skipper, editor-in-chief of Nature, “carries with it accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs.” This soon became part of Nature’s authorship policy. Then on March 16th, the U.S. Copyright Office launched . . . [more]

The U.S. Bar Exam is a high-stakes gamble for would-be lawyers, and a school’s pass rate is a rather high-stakes marker of a law school’s success in creating lawyers. In the next three or four years, the bar exam will be changing in most U.S. jurisdictions, and this creates a number of opportunities for innovation and opportunities for chaos.

Why is the exam changing? The National Conference of Bar Examiners puts it this way: “Set to debut in July 2026, the NextGen bar exam will test a broad range of foundational lawyering skills, utilizing a focused set of clearly identified . . . [more]

Several times each month, we are pleased to republish a recent book review from the Canadian Law Library Review (CLLR). CLLR is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD), and its reviews cover both practice-oriented and academic publications related to the law.

Law, Life, and the Teaching of Legal History: Essays in Honour of G. Blaine Baker. Edited by Ian C. Pilarczyk, Angela Fernandez & Brian Young. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022. 532 p. Includes illustrations, appendix, bibliography, contributor biographies, and index. ISBN 978-0-2280-1206-1 (hardcover) $140.00; ISBN 978-0-2280-1207-8 (softcover) $39.95; ISBN 978-0-2280-1226-9 . . . [more]

Periodically on Thursdays, we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form.

Fundamental Law for Journalists

Author: Mark Bourrie
Publisher: Irwin Law Inc.
Publication Date: January 1, 2023
ISBN: Print (Paperback): 9781552216699
Page Count: 232 pages
Regular Price: 40.00 $

Excerpt: Introduction and Chapter Six “The Civil Law System”, pg. 111 [Footnotes omitted]

Introduction

I went to law school after working in the media . . . [more]

Preamble

This post is the first of a series considering three major issues under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: the impact of how the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) has defined rights; the relationship between rights; and the relationship between guarantees of rights and freedoms and section 1 of the Charter.

I focus the discussion of these issues through the lens of section 3, which guarantees the right to vote and to be eligible to sit in the legislature. Following the exploration of the SCC jurisprudence relating to each of the three issues in relation to . . . [more]

“Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. … [The English language] becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. …”

George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language”

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.

CONSTITUTIONNEL (DROIT) : L’application de la Loi sur la sécurité privée à une entreprise qui exploite un centre d’appels d’urgence dans un aéroport ne cause aucune véritable entrave aux activités de cette dernière dans leur spécificité fédérale; le juge de la Cour supérieure a erré quant à l’intensité des effets . . . [more]

That v-Lex and Fastcase have merged, now called v-Lex Group, is an important and certainly interesting development for customers on both sides of the Atlantic and far beyond, continuing a process in which the two businesses have been steadily advancing through acquisition and consolidation. The deal, ironically, was announced within days of Thomson Reuters having sold, to an alternative asset management firm, a majority stake in one of its significant businesses aimed at legal markets.

Some might argue that neither v-Lex or Fastcase is young enough genuinely to be labelled “disrupter”, but both have built reputations . . . [more]

Each Friday, we share the latest job listings from Slaw Jobs, which features employment opportunities from across the country. Find out more about these positions by following the links below, or learn how you can use Slaw Jobs to gain valuable exposure for your job ads, while supporting the great Canadian legal commentary at Slaw.ca.

Current postings on Slaw Jobs:

• Director, Policy and Public Affairs (Full-time) | Ottawa, ON
  (Federation of Law Societies of Canada)
• Policy Counsel (Full-time) | Ottawa, ON
  (Federation of Law Societies of Canada)
• Solicitor Associate (Full-time) | Vancouver BC
  (Bernard LLP)
• Family Lawyer (Full-time) | Langley,

Written by Daniel Standing, LL.B., Editor, First Reference Inc.

In 2023 CanLII 13643 (CALA), arbitrator Graham J. Clarke examined the question of conflicting medical evidence in an accommodation matter and determined the employer was wrong to have ignored the employee’s evidence while preferring that of its own doctor. The outcome was to send the parties back to the drawing board, illustrating how tricky it can be for the employer to make the right choice when the medical evidence points in opposite directions. . . . [more]

One of the interesting things that came out of my research into the results of the Canadian Legal Problems Survey is how people pursue different courses of action to resolve their legal problems and how the different courses of action interact.

Here is a graph of the frequency of course of action and and how actions co-occur. The actions are ordered from left to right in order of how helpful people found the action to be.

You can see an accessible and animated version of the graph with data available for download here. . . . [more]