A frequent topic of posts here at Slaw and elsewhere in recent times has been the nature of print v. electronic publishing and what the future holds. It is a worthy topic that affects us all and fuels much discussion. In the midst of that I simply want to point out a publication that I find interesting in this information world, I'm not attaching special significance to it beyond the fact that it is interesting to point out. Grantland has been mentioned here at Slaw previously in the context of the Slaw feature You Might Like. Named for Grantland Rice, a prominent early 20th Century sportswriter, Grantland is a website or possibly more accurately on online magazine that is dedicated to long form writing or narrative journalism regarding sports and popular culture. While that may sound like a somewhat narrow focus, there is an ecletic group of columnists and contributors that delve into interesting topics and goes into areas of thought that you might not see elsewhere.

Grantland is an online forum that is born digital and has worked backwards, so-to-speak, to the point where it also publishes, in print, a quarterly edition which is intended to highlight some of the more notable pieces at the site over the past quarter. It is this born digital and then published in print significantly later that I find interesting. In this case the print form is being used as a review or perhaps sober-second-thought. I do not think that this is paradigm shift in the nature of publishing but it do find it interesting that it exists. The current quarterly is only the second issue, so I cannot ascertain whether the print venture has been a success or what it means, perhaps it is an exception that proves a rule but the existence of the print edition in this form is something to note.

Speaking of paper, today is a special day at the Schulich School of Law as it is the day we hand out special paper or parchment that takes at least three years to obtain. I just want to use this platform to wish our graduates the best. I know many of them and can attest that they will do well for themselves and represent the school well in their future endeavours. If you happen to be an alumnus or are just interested in convocation and a well done valedictory address you can find a web archive at this linked url.

They are, respectively, dropping and falling, these metaphors being used to describe the AUCC/ Access Copyright (AC) deal struck in in mid April. It being a month since that model deal was announced, it seems that mid May was given as a deadline for the schools that previously opted out to express their intent to sign the model deal. The long and strange journey of the AC copyright tariff for universities has been documented here at Slaw and at other locations fairly extensively; if you are interested in this issue you are no doubt aware of the developments. If you are not interested in these developments then you likely do not have someone close to you in university in Canada nor are you interested in copyright, fair dealing or open access, that last one should be a hook for many that haven't paid attention up until now because, as my Slaw colleague Michael Lines pointed out back in April, this model deal is a swipe against the the free flow of information and an attempt to cut open access off at the pass, so to speak.

The shoes, or dominoes, are: UBC which in announcing it will not sign the model deal, described the move as ""taking the bolder, more principled and sustainable option." The University of Calgary, in a nuanced statement has announced it will respond in the affirmative in intent and use the the interval before signing the deal to more closely examine the implications and options that are available. Athabasca University has also stated it will not sign the deal. MacMaster has announced it is signing on.

I'm not going to go into great detail here but a quick summary of the most objectionable points in the model deal include:

• Defining of a link as a "copy" of a work, despite what the Supreme Court of Canada stated in Crookes v Newton, 2011 SCC 47. The definition of a link in that case and previously in Canadian precedents seemed fairly clear to me where a hyperlink was described in para 2 "….as being a portal to additional, related information. Clicking on the hyperlink connects the reader to that information."
• Timing. A loooooooooooooooooooooooooong awaited Bill to amend the Copyright Act in on the precipice of being passed with revised definitions of the educational exemption and fair dealing. Perhaps this might have something to do with the timelines in the model deal?
• Licensing. Most universities already pay substantial amounts to various databases for the use of the material that is covered in the model deal so those that sign on, are signing on to pay for that material twice.
• Research. As in how to do it, the model deal attempts to dictate to scholars how they conduct their research and how they collaborate with their colleagues.

The above list is not exhaustive, I could go on but will refrain; but given that, why would an institution sign on? In short, cost certainty. There is little, that administrators like more than cost certainly and risk aversion, the model deal provides them with that, as in $26 per student, that will no doubt be added on to tuition fees this coming September. There really is not more nuance to add to it. This is simply a case of cost certainty winning over principle…. yet again.

Because two new Supreme Court judges were recently appointed, the Court has released an updated brochure [PDF] containing information about, and photographs of, the building and the judges. Little if any of what's in here will be news to most lawyers, but you might find it useful to pass on to anyone you'd like to educate about the top court, its jurisdiction and its history.

Some of the historical photographs are interesting, but all of the images could be improved: the PDF renditions are not sharp, and they lack captions. I particularly like the skeletal view of the building as it was (presumably) on the day the Queen Mother laid the cornerstone, a slice of which photo you see above.

New, in reference to time, could be one day, one week, or a couple of years. In law librarian terms, I still feel new to my job because it is contantly changing. If like me, you are a librarian who didn't go to law school, the Canadian Association of Law Libraries can help you cope with the burden of 'new'.

We have written before about CALL/ACBD's New Law Librarians' Institute. The institute is an intensive, week-long program aimed at developing librarians' skills in the key competencies of law librarianship. The program is an excellent mix of substantive legal topices (constitutional law, torts, contracts, criminal and property law) and skills sessions for the type of research that law librarians deal with on a daily basis. Class size is set at a 25 person maximum and it is an excellent opportunity to make quality contacts among leaders in the field.

Hosted at Western University in London, Ontario, the program runs from May 27 to June 1, 2012. There is still time to register.

Related posts:
A New Law Librarians' Institute? by Karen Sawatzky
New Law Librarians' Institute by Ted Tjaden
New Law Librarians' Institute 2011 by Connie Crosby

Since Sunday I've been at the Canadian Association of Law Libraries annual meeting, which wrapped up moments ago. I'm a new member of the organization and this was my first CALL conference. I'm pleased to have put so many faces to names, avatars, and handles. I also enjoyed reconnecting with many people I've worked with over the years in several domains all over the country.

The conference presented much enriching content, and also highlighted that many involved in different legal libraries, in different sectors, share many concerns and challenges. This knowledge came to light during networking times and in sessions.

As is so commonly done these days, and as Shaunna noted yesterday, many of us tweeted what we heard and thought about during the sessions and in conversation. We used the Twitter hashtags #call2012acbd and #call2012; I urge you to search or scan those streams on Twitter (within a few days) if you're interested in peeking in.

For posterity, I Storified a few themes:

• a summary of the legal publisher vendor demo session,
• conversations about looseleaf subscriptions, and
• a session on mobile library sites.

This Saturday, the University of Toronto Law is hosting the second annual lawTechCamp. The schedule is available here, and it's no surprise that you'll see many familiar law bloggers, including a significant presence of Slaw contributors.

You can read reviews of last year's event on Slaw here and here, and background on what this kind of tech camp is about here.

One significant difference with the event this year is that there are a number of sessions which are CPD accredited. Considering the cost of attending is still free, the event promises to be well-attended and characterized by lively debates.

The Journal of the Digital Humanities just released its inaugural issue. It is an open access journal with a new take on the peer review process. As described in the editorial, the idea of community is the starting place for the journal. 

Reversing the 'closed' selection and review process usually used, the journal starts with the materials noted on the Digital Humanities Now blog, which itself is a selection from the materials available through all the websites included in the very comprehensive Digital Humanities Compendium. Interestingly, anyone can add their site to the Compendium, so accordingly there is no formal submission process to the Journal. If you want to be considered, get your stuff into the Compendium. How you do it is not an issue.

The materials are winnowed down to a few dozen in the Editor's Choice, and then further selected, reviewed, edited, copyedited, etc., until an issue is produced. This inaugural issue worked with materials appearing in the last three months of 2011, so undoubtedly they are now working hard on the next issue right now.

Also worthy of note: the license allows commercial use of the materials (with attribution), and the journal is available in EPub format, which should go well with your tablet.

Chief Judge Looks to Pro Bono to Address Access to Justice Concerns

The Chief Judge of New York State announced that henceforth (did I really use that word?) all applicants for the New York state bar must complete 50 hours of pro bono work. Can he do this? Yes he can. In New York, as in many states, lawyers are licensed and regulated by the courts. Many state courts have delegated this power to state bar associations, but not New York state. Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman said that the new requirement was intended to provide badly-needed legal services in urgent cases like foreclosures and domestic violence. New York is the first state to enact such a rule; others may follow. Could this happen in Canada?

Dare to Dream

In an interview in the December 2011 edition of the CBA's magazine The National, the Governor-General reiterated the substance of his provocative remarks at the CBA's August 2011 Legal Conference in Halifax. In the interview the GG asserted:

I would be inclined to say we should see 10 per cent of our time devoted to pro bono causes as part of our professional responsibility. The figure is about 3 per cent now.

I'd hoped for a happier first post for my return to Slaw, but I do think it's important to shine the light on the forthcoming reductions to Library and Archives Canada and any broader impact or mirroring of reality. The cuts to the LAC announced in last month's budget received some media coverage and commentary from interested parties at that time. This coincides with LAC's announcement of a phased-in shift in the manner in which reference services are handled, to provide service with reduced staff.

This week we learned more precisely the nature of the impact on LAC. According to reports in the Globe and Mail, 235 LAC workers received notice they are "affected" by the cuts, and, specifically, 105 positions are expected to be eliminated; the goal is to eliminate 215 positions. The cuts also reach departmental libraries and archives across the federal public service, some of which are closing altogether.

The Canadian Council of Archives will close its Ottawa office at the end of this week. The chair of the Council, Lara Wilson, who is also University Archivist here at UVic, noted the "impact on archives users, genealogists, scholars, writers across Canada," in a news report published this morning.

Today, the Canadian Association of University Teachers voiced harsh criticism, saying the cuts "undermine the capacity of Library and Archives Canada to fulfill its legislated mandate to acquire, preserve and make accessible Canada’s history.” These concerns echo those the Canadian Association of Research Libraries voiced in its excellent committee submission in respect of Budget 2012 last August, in which it advocated that then-current funding levels be maintained.

Interesting to me about these measures, and the arguments recited in opposition to them, are the parallels we see in discussions about funding of other libraries: law firm, university, public. In particular, LAC will no longer take walk-in reference requests; these will be by appointment only, and there is a move toward "modernization" in the suggestion, for example, of videoconferencing.

What do others think of the cuts to LAC and departmental libraries and archives, and any possible parallels to libraries in other sectors? New paradigm? Modernization? Necessary austerity? Short-term solution?

The National Law Journal reported that the UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco will reduce the size of its student body by 20% over the next three years. Hastings is ranked 44th in the US News and World Report rankings of US law schools.

At a time when new law schools are opening in Canada, and some schools have increased their enrollment, the reason for the reduction in the class size as stated by Hastings' Dean is very interesting and timely given the New York Times declaration last November that "legal education is in crisis", and SLAW's own Omar Ha Redeye's excellent commentary on the market and career prospects for new lawyers here last week. As quoted in the National Law Journal Dean Frank Wu states:

The critics of legal education are right…There are too many law schools and too many law students, and we're going to fix that. We would easily be able to fill 425 seats, but to do so would be irresponsible.

While there will be staffing cuts, including to the library, the school plans to fill new faculty positions. The details can be found here in a message from Dean Wu to the Hastings community.

For early reactions to the announcement see here and here.

The Toronto Star recently reported that the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto may change its grading system in an attempt to reduce the stress that law students feel, specially during exam time ("Yoga, foot massage and dogs: This is law school?" by Louise Brown):

[T]he University of Toronto’s law school could become the first in Canada to scrap the often nerve-wracking letter grades of A, B, C, D and F for the kinder, gentler ratings of Honours, Pass and Fail.

I've got three thoughts about this, as reported.

First, the writer was wrong to scoff at the law students' stress. It's been known for decades that (for reasons that aren't entirely clear) law school is at the top of the stress causing educational experiences, more stressful in some respects than medical school according to at least one study. It's worrying and disheartening to be in a position, as I was when Associate Dean, to have to deal with the impacts of this stress on students, and anything that might alleviate it should be tried.

My second thought is that the revision to the grading system, at least as reported in the article, is unlikely to accomplish this alleviation. The exact nature of the proposal is a little unclear. The passage quoted above suggests a move to three grading categories. But later on in the piece, we're told that the:

faculty is considering a plan to ditch its seven old letter grades (A, B+, B, C+, C, D, F) and introduce five broader categories of marks; High Honours, Honours, Pass, Low Pass and Fail.

My sense of it is that moving from A, B+, B, C+, C, D, F to A, B, C, D, F would do little if anything to help and might in fact increase student stress (some of which comes from the pressure to excel rather than the fear of failure) by removing possible marks of achievement (real or spurious). Certainly calling a C a "pass" or a B "honours" would change nothing. This is particularly true if the law school is planning to introduce a mandatory grade curve, as the article suggests. If it wasn't the case before, with a curve the competition to escape the force of gravity exerted by obligatory Cs and possibly Ds will be intense.

Finally, I want to note that there is nothing new whatever in this proposal. We at Osgoode mooted this very sort of change to the grading system at least three times during my 30 years on the faculty, even going so far as to consider a simple pass-fail system. And I'm sure we weren't alone among Canadian law schools in seriously reviewing the system. As I recall, in every case students were hotly opposed to these efforts by faculty to shift the focus off marks and on to learning itself. Students want law school for the credentials it gives them, and the more slices of that baloney the better, even at the cost of gut-wrenching anxiety.

Access Copyright appears to be on the verge of successfully cowing Canadian universities into paying for their own harassment, and is doing so with the full support of the AUCC. In fact, as Ariel Katz describes it, the particular steps the AUCC has taken in the matter virtually coerce individual Universities into accepting this very bad agreement, and in fact the AUCC paid for legal advice from sources inimical to the interests of their stakeholders.

If you get the feeling, as a student, a taxpayer, or an University employee with any residual sense of commitment to fair play, that you are being fleeced… well, you are. The result will be bad.

The good news is, of course, that this is a blip. The worldwide trend is to open access materials, as recently demonstrated by TOR (a publisher which recently removed DRM from all its works), by the University of Minnesota (which has just catalogued open access electronic textbooks), and by Harvard, which informed their faculty that they cannot afford to pay for journals anymore, and asks them to cease supporting commercial journals with their submissions and editorial work.

The full quote is actually, "(t)here are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics"; it is on odd quote to lead off with in a post where I am going to urge you to attend a session on getting, "Behind the Numbers: Statistics for Librarians", but I believe it is appropriate. The line could be interpreted in several ways, one way to interpret the quote, the positive way, is that understanding statistics allows you to understand a given set of data or information in a multitude of ways, not just: "52% percent of people say blank" that you often see. And that is the point behind the above titled session which will be occurring in just over two weeks at the 2012 CALL/ACBD Annual Conference that is, to understand what the statistics truly say, or do not say, in their entirety.

• What makes Prince George Canada's "most dangerous" city? Do you ever wonder about the crime statistics you read in the media? Or do you just accept them as indicators that the world is getting more perilous?
• Every year since 1950, the number of American children gunned down has doubled." Why is this the worst statistic ever?

A line I have often heard when discussing statistics with colleagues is (to paraphrase) "statistics are great and all, but you academics are really the only ones who have use for that, we don't need that in my organization." Nothing could be further from the truth, especially with the recent development of CANSIM being made available for free. As my colleague here at Slaw stated

CANSIM is Statistics Canada's key socioeconomic database, receives periodic updates daily to its various tables, and "provides fast and easy access to a large range of the latest statistics available in Canada"

Anyone who does not have the ability to utilize that vast wealth of data, is placing themselves, and their organization, at a competitive disadvantage. The session which will be hosted by the Committee to Promote Research and conducted by Prof. Nicole Doyle, of the School of Justice and Emergency Services at Durham College, is intended to be an introduction to the use of statistics and illustrate how they can be used to your advantage. Or as the summary says,

Does looking at a statistical table make you dizzy? Does the thought of opening Microsoft Excel make you want to turn off your computer? Whether you realize it or not, statistics and research studies are a huge part of our everyday lives and the lives of our libraries….Once we see how easy it is to understand statistics, we'll discuss how they can be used to make you and your library shine!

The line quoted at the beginning of this post, is one of my favourites but it is also one of the most falsely attributed quotes of all time. Many attribute the quote to Mark Twain in his autobiography; however, in his autobiography Twain attributes the quote to Benjamin Disraeli. Twain himself actually wrote,

Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."

However, further research has shown that Disraeli is not likely the originator of the line. There are several possible origins of the line all coming in the from the early 1890s, take your pick for the true origin of the line making the quote, a bit of a lie itself.

From Gov't of Canada Publications: "… the decision has been made to completely transition all publications published by the Publishing Program and publications provided by departments to the Depository Services Program from traditional print to exclusively electronic publication in two years. " My first question is, does this include primary materials such as bills, gazettes and acts?

While we may have been expecting this transition to occur in the future, the question was always when does that future become the present? For now, that time looks like it is 2014, the question being is this the right time to make this transition?

The most recent data from Statistics Canada indicates that roughly 20% of Canadian Households do not have internet access at home, with age and income level being significant determinants in those numbers. With the impending end of the CAP program are we, as a society, comfortable with one-fifth of the population being unable to access government publications without some degree of difficulty?

CALL/ACBD's 50th annual conference is only weeks away. The CPC, our volunteers and the CALL Executive are looking forward to welcoming you to Toronto's Royal York Hotel, and to the many events we have planned. I've already raved about the program and the social events. This conference also offers a few innovations which I hope you will enjoy.

CALL/ACBD launched a new website earlier this year, and the 2012 CPC was the first group to use the new conference templates. Feedback on its usability and structure would be very welcome, and will go into our report to the Executive and the 2013 CPC.

The Executive will be staffing a booth in the trade show. Drop by to say hello, offer feedback or volunteer for a committee. New talent and new ideas are always sought by this hard-working group.

The publishing industry is going through a period of rapid change, to say the least! Sunday afternoon, you'll have a chance to see a showcase of some of these innovations at the vendor demos in the Ontario Room. The Vendors' Liaison Committee will also be hosting its annual Open Forum on Tuesday.

Do take some time to chat with our exhibitors about the evolution of technology, content and the marketplace. There will be ample time during breaks, and two specific social events in the exhibit hall – a Wine and Cheese reception on Monday evening, and lunch in the exhibits on Tuesday.

Another innovation is a product of the imaginations on the CALL Webinar committee. "Webinitos" are mobile-friendly videos, which you'll be able to access via QR codes. You'll find the codes scattered around the conference. All you need is a smart phone or tablet, loaded with a QR code reader (which are available for free on the web (including the iTunes App store).

You still have time to register for this event. Full details available at http://www.callacbd.ca/en/content/2012-conference

The inaugural UCLA Cyber Crimes Moot concluded today, with participants from across the U.S. and an international judging panel. Yes, my participation in the preliminary and final rounds of the event is what qualified the event as internationally judged. The winners this year were from GW School of Law, and their coach was none other than Orin Kerr.

The competition focused on a fact pattern based on the 2010 case of United States v. Warshak, dealing with the unconstitutional search and seizure of e-mails under the Stored Communications Act, and whether they should be excluded as evidence or allowed under good faith. This was the first United States Circuit Court of Appeals decision to find that the content of e-mails enjoyed Fourth Amendment protections, creating a reasonable expectation of privacy for e-mails stored on a third-party server.

Although the constitutional analysis is different, Canadian courts regularly deal with similar issues and closely watch developments in the U.S. The Queen's Bench of Alberta in R. v. Weir as far back as 1998 referred to the American case of United States v. Maxwell . More recently, the Ontario Court of Appeal in R. v. Jones referenced several American cases, demonstrating how similar the public policy considerations are across jurisdictions.

Legal argumentation is — or can be seen as — a branch of the age-old discipline of rhetoric, latterly "informal logic." After all, people have been trying to persuade each other forever, whether in connection with rules or not. Though most lawyers rely on law school training, the discipline of actual practice and intuition as the instruments to guide and hone their rhetorical skills, some might wish to think directly about the art of persuasion itself. In which case, the new Rhetoric & Communication Research Network (RCRN) within SSRN's Humanities Network should prove useful.

Law is more directly addressed, of course, within the SSRN's Legal Scholarship Network. But there's much in the new RCRN that speaks to law. Like the other research networks, the RCRN is divided up into a number of e-journals, to which you can subscribe. To give you a quick sense of what's available that might appeal to some of you, I've picked more or less at random an article or two from some of them:

• Similarity, Precedent and Argument from Analogy, by Douglas Walton (University of Windsor) – Rhetorical Theory eJournal
• What is ‘Good Legal Writing’ and Why Does it Matter? by Mark K. Osbeck (University of Michigan) – Rhetoric Educator: Communication, Composition, Rhetoric, & Writing eJournal
• The NFL, Intellectual Property, and the Conquest of Sports Media by Eric E. Johnson (University of North Dakota) – Rhetoric & Public Discourse eJournal
• Ensuring an Impartial Jury in the Age of Social Media by Amy J. St. Eve and Michael A. Zuckerman (Duke Law & Technology Review) – Writing Technologies eJournal
• Argument Diagramming in Logic, Artificial Intelligence, and Law by Fabrizio Macagno (Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Chris Reed (University of Dundee), Douglas Walton (University of Winnipeg)

These are notes are from a plenary talk by Jim Calloway at the American Bar Association's ABA Techshow 2012 on Friday, March 30th. Note: these are my selected notes from this session; any inaccuracies or omissions are my own and not the speaker's.

Our future is cloudy, with nothing to do with cloud computing. Will it be The End of Lawyers?

Fred Ury predicts that within the decade, there will be 10-40% fewer lawyers than there are today.

What if all your clients got together and formed a union to pay less legal fees? They already have via the Association of Corporate Counsel. The ACC Value Challenge: if you want more value from the law firm doing your outside legal work, you have to train them to work more efficiently.

Meanwhile, new lawyers continue to enter a saturated market. From 2000-2010, law school enrollment went up by 22,000. 7 new law schools opened in North Carolina. One of those is a for-profit law school aiming to graduate 1000 students in a class. There will be 45,000 new graduates annually looking for 25,000 jobs.

If it wasn’t for their huge law school debt, we would have the most socially active group of lawyers; instead, this will mean a lot of lawyers will be unemployed or hired by big corporations.

The trend toward commoditization of legal services is not going to be good for consumers. Examples:

I too am at the ABA TECHSHOW 2012 in Chicago organized by the American Bar Association's Law Practice Management Section. This has been my first time at this conference. A few things struck me immediately:

• this is a very different law conference; and
• everyone is extremely friendly.

I arrived on Wednesday evening during a reception before the LexThink.1 event that Jason Wilson wrote up for us yesterday.

I noticed that there was a group of people huddled around an easel and announcements about making guesses about the weight of a food truck. Huh? What were they doing?

Here is a nice, printable, breakdown of fallacies commonly deployed in argument. Helpfully, the authors have also provided an example of analysis, applying the typology to a published opinion on same-sex marriage penned by Cardinal O'Brien, Britain's foremost catholic cleric.

I have been privileged to teach legal ethics at the University of Ottawa and before that at Osgoode Hall and U of T. I love teaching legal ethics because students have fresh and valuable perspectives on so many important issues in the legal profession. Legal ethics is a branch of "professional ethics", special ethical rules that apply to members of a profession. What we think it means to be "a good lawyer" , "a good soldier" or "a good doctor" may differ from society's general understanding of what it means to be "a good citizen". In legal ethics we struggle with these issues as we analyze and debate topics like choice of client, access to justice, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, being a criminal defence lawyer, being a government lawyer, etc.

I have found that our students have great perspectives on these issues because they were so recently members of that ridiculous term that only lawyers use: "lay people". While law school is certainly a socialization process for the legal profession, law students have not been fully socialized. Many remain (and hopefully will remain) strongly idealistic. They remember their previous professions or occupations or status as simply ordinary non-legal folk and they are less willing to accept the "that's the way it is" explanation for ethical rules in our profession. Students challenge us in the academy to be better and they also challenge us in the legal profession to do better. Some students do great work and fortunately there is recognition for outstanding legal writing by prizes such as the JSD Tory Prize in Legal Writing awarded at Canadian law schools and the recently established Reuter Scargall Bennett LLP Essay Prize in Legal Ethics awarded by the Chief Justice of Ontario's Advisory Committee on Professionalism. Some of these papers are published and their ideas can be shared with the legal community.

But law students produce great writing every day that never sees the light of day. Such writing may be pleasurable for law teachers to read and the grade awarded may bring a smile to the law student's face, but it is rarely shared with others. This year students in my first year and my upper level Legal Ethics and Professional Responsibility courses at the University of Ottawa inspired me to reach out to Slaw.ca editor Simon Fodden and ask him if he would be interested in publishing some of their work on this blawg. To Simon's great credit, he quickly accepted. I hope you will find the students' blogs this week interesting and will offer your comments on them. If you don't like one of the blogs, you can always blame the teacher…

Some interesting data about law schools and the broader ecomony is collected in this Atlantic article. The main point is that while a slow job market has meant rising demand for education in the past, today's law school enrollment has fallen off along with the rise in unemployment numbers.

Many SLAW readers will already be familiar with the excellent video legal research tutorials that the Courthouse Libraries BC have put together. If you are not I encourage you to check them out. The videos look great and really demonstrate the power of the medium as a teaching tool.

The tutorials provide the novice researcher with an excellent introduction on how to approach researching legislation and case law. For those of use who are librarians or lawyers working with students, the tutorials are a wonderful resource for supplementing and reinforcing our instruction and giving students something short and engaging to refer to when we are not available.

The Researching Legislation tutorials are especially effective at using screencast technology to demonstrate how online and print resources are used together to trace back a piece of legislation to its origin and to research legislative intent - both still largely paper based forms of research, and very tricky to teach. I never thought one could make looking through a print index to Hansard interesting, but the BC Courthouse Library managed to pull it off!

The Library also provides an 8 part series on finding cases on point that walks through how to use the CED, LawSource and CANLII to find and note-up relevant case law, as well as a 3 part series on finding forms and precedents including a tutorial on using O'Briens.

The law faculty at l’Université de Montréal (UdM) has obtained accreditation (with conditions) from the Council of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada (FLSC) to implement their new national common law program and degree of Juris Doctor (J.D.), which is a combination of the LL.B. and J.D. in North American Common Law. This program was established by UdM in 2010 and already accommodates 50 students annually.

In 2011, Montréal submitted its application to the Council of the Federation of Law Societies of Canada with respect to how its J.D. would meet the National Requirements. More information on the program is found below.

As stated on the FLSC website, among other conditions that must be met by UdM,

The Federation’s recommendation for approval will now go to the individual law societies for their review and approval, as they have the ultimate authority to recognize Canadian law degrees conferred upon individuals seeking admission to law society bar admission programs.

In Canada, each provincial and territorial law society determines whether the holder of a Canadian law degree is entitled to apply for admission to its bar admission or licensing program.

The Federation of Law Societies of Canada has the authority to review and make recommendations with respect to new Canadian law degree programs leading to the conferral of common law degrees.

If the UdM Juris Doctor program obtains final approval, graduates of this new common law program with a Juris Doctor appellation will have the option to enrol in any one of the law societies in any Canadian common law jurisdiction and some United States bar associations that recognize the degree, such as New York and Massachusetts.

Prior to this, UdM law graduate who wanted to practice outside of Quebec but in Canada would sometime have to obtain a Certificate of Qualification issued by the National Committee on Accreditation (NCA) before they could seek admission to the law society of their choice.

According to the FLSC report on UdM’s submission for the new J.D. program, the university says that the program’s objectives are:

• To provide students with an understanding of the institutions and history of the Canadian and US common law systems
• To enable students to proceed to comparative analyses of common law and civil law systems
• To provide students with comparative skills in the main areas of Anglo-Canadian and American law
• To enable students to develop a critical approach and outlook on Quebec, Canadian and American law
• To impart students with the ability to use different legal systems to bring innovative solutions to complex problems
• To offer students holding a bachelor degree recognized by the Quebec Bar a training that gives them the opportunity to be admitted to the Bars of common law provinces or other common law jurisdictions

Among other considerations sought from UdM by the FLSC to meet the requirements of the national common law program (see Appendix A of the report), the university is adding two more classes to its program: Integration Workshop (problem-solving, research and oral and written legal communication skills) and Ethics and Professionalism, which requires students to demonstrate “an awareness and understanding of the ethical requirements for the practice of law in Canada.”

The lists of criteria that UdM is required to meet to obtain final approval of the standard for the national J.D. program are found in the report (see above link).

The J.D. is a graduate degree requiring applicants to have an LL.B. degree with a minimum average of 2.7/4.3. Students are expected to demonstrate their command of both French and English.

The J.D. program is composed of 11 courses (32 credits). The academic programs submitted for recognition last on average four years and total 133 credits (101 for the LL.B. and 32 for the J.D.).

Note that UdM will not accept graduates with civil law degrees from non-Canadian universities into the J.D. program.

Many other Canadian universities already have common law programs or have implemented JD programs that meet the FLSC national standards, among them McGill university, University of Ottawa and the University of Windsor. So this is not a first in Canada or in Quebec. What makes this a great initiative, now Quebec students who want to study common law in Quebec with the option to work outside of Quebec have another option than having to apply at McGill.

This seems like a positive move at a time when labour mobility initiatives are facing obstacles and Canadians as well as Quebecers are looking farther from home for work. And any action to increase trans-jurisdictional understanding of Canadian laws should have positive results. Maybe if the lawyers can start agreeing to get along, it’s possible to imagine the premiers will get along too.

The Conference Planning Committee for CALL 2012 is fully immersed in the final details – making sure that the little things are under control, so that the big event looks effortless and professional. It’s nice to take a step back every now and again, and look at the big picture. And what a picture it is!

 We have dazzling venues, from the Royal York (our conference hotel), to the Ontario Legislature at Queen’s Park (the home of the opening reception), to the Liberty Grand (where we’ll be kicking off our 50^th anniversary year). You’ll be learning more about the social program and tours in coming posts. Today I want to brag about the program.

 A creative and well-connected Program Committee has been able to assemble an inspiring learning event. SLAW contributors dot the program, including Ted Tjaden, Shaunna Mireau, Karen Sawatzky and Annette Demers. The topics are wide-ranging – no matter the type of workplace or stage of your career, there is something for you here.

 Want to add to your practical skills? Check out sessions like Doing Due Diligence, and Tim Knight will be bringing us news on the further development and potential of RDA.

 Interested in expanding your portfolio? Stephen Lastres, Ted Tjaden and Karen Sawatzky can introduce you the possibilities of Knowledge Management, while Shaunna Mireau and Rebecca Strange will challenge you to Innovate! In our opening plenary, Rick Powers will talk about how librarians contribute to an organization’s reputation management.

 Need a crystal ball to help you envision the future? We’ve got Nigel Holloway presenting a plenary on Future Trends in Legal Information and Law Libraries, and a concurrent session on the history and future plans for CanLII, with Colin Lachance.

 Want to explore your inner techie? Come learn about mobile with Sarah Glassmeyer, usable website design with Stephanie Poce, and (relatively) painless ILS implementations with Sarah Sutherland.

 Managers, and soon-to-be managers can explore statistics, collection management and the development of the next generation of law librarians. Joe Janes’ plenary on professional growth will challenge not only managers looking to nurture the next generation, but will call upon that younger cohort to really think about their goals, and strategies for achieving those ambitions.

 Of course, I can’t talk about the program without mentioning Eileen Lewis’s session, Tales from the Flat Track. Yes, she for real skates in a roller derby – not only have I seen her skate, I’ve seen the bruises that result. This session promises to be a lively one!

 This only begins to scratch the surface of the program – I encourage you to go check out the entire lineup. I guarantee that there will be something there to educate, inspire or challenge you to look for the Towering Opportunities in your career and in your library.

Early bird registration closes March 15, 2012.

Getting the word out about copyright compliance is never easy; once a year you can be part of an international trend and plan a copyright education and awareness day with posters, discussions and more. The Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) has helpful archives from its 2011 Copyright Day.

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) lists three “special days”:

1. World Intellectual Property Day. April 26 is a day to highlight creativity and innovation in all of our lives. WIPO has press releases, posters, bookmarks and special publications to help member States celebrate this day. The 2012 theme is: Visionary Innovators.
2. World Book and Copyright Day. The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designates April 23 as the day each year to promote the protection of written works and to recognize authors and their rights.
3. World Anti-Counterfeiting Day. The Global Anti-Counterfeiting Group (GACG) selects a day at the end of June each year to raise the awareness and costs of counterfeiting and piracy.

Many governments and organizations promote and have appropriate activities on the “special days” set out above. Check out the links and get ideas for your Copyright Day.

Many readers will already know that Toronto is hosting the annual conference and general meeting of CALL/ACBD in May. This gathering is a high point in the association’s calendar, and this year is even more special, as we are marking the start of our 50^th anniversary.

The program is relevant to a wide audience – no matter your level of experience or expertise, you should find something to pique your interest. The exhibit hall will offer opportunities to learn about new developments in legal information, and the social program will give you a chance to meet new colleagues, catch up with familiar friends, and to relax.

Toronto is an expensive venue, and our fundraising team has been working exceptionally hard to ensure that we have adequate resources. Traditional sponsors such as Thomson Reuters and LexisNexis are coming through with their usual generosity, but with tough economic times and consolidation in legal publishing, we have fewer sponsors upon whom to rely.

Ted Tjaden (ted.tjaden@mcmillan.ca) and Eric Leduc (eleduc@dwpv.com) have sent letters to the local firms asking for support. I urge the librarians in those establishments to put their influence behind this drive. If you have not received a letter, and wish to contribute, don’t be shy!

The Royal York’s ballroom is enormous, and offers us an opportunity to invite an even larger number of exhibitors than before. Remind your sales reps from companies other than our usual friends to come join us – if you find their product or service worthwhile, chances are very good that they have a broader audience in the law library world. Come meet us. Small companies may be interested in advertising with us through the program or by providing us with an insert for the conference bag. Sooin Kim (sooin.kim@utoronto.ca) and John Bolan (john.bolan@utoronto.ca) are the contacts for information on sponsorship, exhibits and advertising opportunities.

Additional information on the conference and our Planning Committee is available at http://www.callacbd.ca/en/content/2012-conference

We look forward to seeing you soon!

Wendy Reynolds,

CPC Chair, CALL/ACBD 2012

As rated by Roger Skalbeck of the Georgetown University Law Center, on behalf of the ABA in their annual effort. The 200 law school websites evaluated ranged from a low of 25% to a high of 98.5%. Given the very elementary standards against which they were compared, it is surprising that any really could fare very low at all. This summary of the evaluation criteria should give you an idea:

The LegalTech 2012 Conference last week was a bit overwhelming for me as a first-time attendee.

As a knowledge management (KM) lawyer / law librarian, my continuing legal education opportunities tend to focus more on conferences related to KM or law libraries, such as the upcoming annual conference of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries / L'Association canadienne des bibliothèques de droit held in Toronto in May.

However, I think it was worthwhile attending LegalTech, although I might not need to attend every year. The main difference for me was the large number of technology vendors exhibiting or presenting their technology.

There were several themes I saw from the conference, including e-discovery and predictive coding, enterprise search, the use of iPads in legal practice (including mobile device management), and working in the cloud. Of these themes, e-discovery seemed to dominate.

Because my technology interests are currently not focused on e-discovery, I found many of the seminar sessions to be less relevant for me. That said, the keynote sessions were interesting and I enjoyed the session called iLove for the iPad: Tips, Tricks & Apps. From that session, I realized I am likely under-utilizing GoodReader for iPad, which – in addition to reading PDF files – also allows you to manage and transfer your files. A number of other PDF apps were mentioned, including PDF PROvider for iPad (which allows you to create PDF files) and PDF Expert (which lets you easily use PDF forms and signatures). The speakers also recommended the Atomic Web Browser as an alternative to the native iPad web browser since you have an option to have this web browser "mimic" your web browser of choice. I also likely taking notes in iWriter, mentioned by the speakers, since it has keyboard "arrows" allowing you to more accurately move the cursor on the screen). The other app I will likely explore is SoundNote, which records the speaker's voice and synchs up the recording with notes you are writing on the iPad. There is of course also the two high-end apps for lawyers, being TrialPad for iPad (which allows trial lawyers to easily use their iPad to present visual evidence to the court) and TranscriptPad for iPad (which allows you to easily review, tag, and annotate examination for discovery transcripts).

Ultimately, however, I found that perhaps the most useful thing to do was to meet with vendors and find out about their technology.

The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the appeal in Clements (Litigation Guardian of) v. Clements, 2011 BCCA 581, reversing 2009 BCSC 112; leave to appeal granted 2011 CanLII 36004 (SCC) on February 17, 2012. The Supreme Court’s summary of the issues in the appeal suggests that that all the Court was asked to do is clarify the meaning of the Resurfice material contribution test for proof of the causation requirements in causes of action in negligence and, then, determine the correct result in Clements based on that test. See http://www.scc-csc.gc.ca/case-dossier/cms-sgd/sum-som-eng.aspx?cas=34100.

That is an accurate enough summary of what was in Ms. Clements (the appellant’s) leave to appeal factum. It is not an accurate summary of what is in her factum. The appellant (Ms. Clements) has explicitly asked the Court to decide if the causation issue ought to have been decided in her favour on the bases of the but-for test, in particular the “robust, pragmatic, common sense” approach mandated by Snell v. Farell [1990] 2 S.C.R. 311, 1990 CanLII 70. The parties’ factums are available on the Supreme Court’s web site. See http://www.scc-csc.gc.ca/case-dossier/cms-sgd/fac-mem-eng.aspx?cas=34100. That is not a problem because the Supreme Court’s mandate, having granted leave, is to make the decision that ought to have been made by the lower court from which the appeal comes; or order a new trial if that is the proper decision (if the decision appealed from was “against the weight of the evidence); or remand the appeal or any part of the appeal to the court appealed from for additional consideration in accordance with the direction of the Court: the Supreme Court of Canada Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. S-26, ss. 44-46.1.

The Supreme Court panel in Clements could have three judges who were appointed to the Court after Resurfice was decided. It will if the panel is the full 9 member court. It will have at least 1 new judge if the panel is composed of seven judges. Justices Cromwell, Moldaver and Karakatanis are the new appointments. Justices Bastarache, Binnie and Charron have retired. Only Justice Cromwell has expressed a judicial opinion on the meaning of Resurfice in reported reasons for judgment. Only Chief Justice McLachlin and Justice LeBel J. remain from the panel that decided Walker Estate v. York Finch Hospital, [2001] 1 S.C.R. 647, 2001 SCC 23. Only McLachlin C.J. remains from the panels that decided Snell and Athey v. Leonati, [1996] 3 S.C. R. 458, 1996 CanLII 183.

A colleague’s comment about the granting of leave in Clements was “here we go”. My immediate reaction was to add “again”. I hope I am wrong.

According to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Section 15 (1)):

Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

Of course, and unfortunately, this is not always the case in practice. Many people continue to deny others equal treatment, intentionally and not. Law Times offers a recent example of alleged systemic discrimination; the case Law Society of Upper Canada v. Selwyn Milan McSween raises the question of whether racism hinders black lawyers’ participation in big law firms in Ontario. I am sure this problem is not exclusive to big law firms or Ontario.

Selwyn McSween is a black lawyer found guilty of professional misconduct for “completely abdicating his professional responsibility” to an allegedly unscrupulous law clerk, in the opinion to the Law Society of Upper Canada. However, dissenting appeal panellist Clayton Ruby stated:

We cannot close our eyes to the disproportionate number of black lawyers whom we find before us faced with very grave professional misconduct allegations. …

The legal profession has made no concerted effort to rid itself of the racism inherent in the practice. The effects of racial inequality are real, not imagined, and we do the public no favour by refusing to acknowledge them.

Ruby suggests that the reason black lawyers face increase disciplinary charges is that minority groups have fewer and less meaningful articling opportunities to gain experience compared to “non-racialized” lawyers, law students and others in the profession.

The Law Times article refers briefly to a 1999 report on Racial Equality in the Canadian Legal Profession by the Canadian Bar Association, and I was curious.

I have updated my Legal Research and Writing website with a new page on resources for teaching legal research and writing.

Included on the page are links to:

• online training video tutorials,

• legal research and writing journals, newsletters and selected articles,

• legal research and writing associations and blogs, and

• general teaching resources for teaching legal research and writing.

I suspect my page may not be complete, so if I have missed something, I welcome comments and suggestions for other resources.

The start of the winter term means a happy return to the University of Toronto Faculty of Information where I am again part of the team that teaches the perennially oversubscribed Legal Literature and Librarianship class. This year I am co-teaching with two of my colleagues Susan Barker and John Bolan and we will once again feature a guest lecture from Ted Tjaden who taught this course from 1998-2004. (Ted has blogged about his impressions of the class here , here and here).

It might strike some of my non-librarian colleagues odd or quaint that such a course continues to exist. Legal Literature and Librarianship is one of a handful of masters-level courses at Canadian library and information schools that teach future librarians about the literature and tools of legal research as well as the practice of law librarianship. While students in this class obviously do not learn about legal writing and analysis, they do learn a lot about research and the literature. By the end of the course their ability to find just about anything and quickly identify the best secondary sources on any topic, coupled with their ability to advise others on research strategy, impresses me every year.

With it becoming ever easier for any novice legal researcher to muddle through and find something relevant, we continue to need people who can identify the best sources and know how and when to use them. In fact, given how easy it is to find just something there is less incentive to learn the tools and sources well enough to find everything when required. Getting new librarians on the road to becoming this kind of expert is exactly why classes like Legal Literature and Librarianship continue to exist.

Like Darryl Mountain in today's Slaw.ca column, I have been thinking about law school lately. Or rather, I have been reminded about past thoughts on this topic. Whether law school should be changed or not is a current hot topic in the U.S. In addition to the New York Times article that Darryl points to, The National Law Journal has also just published the article What is Law School For, Anyway? by Karen Sloan about law schools not keeping up with what is needed in the profession.

One thing I believe the U.S. law school system has gotten right, however, has been allowing for parttime studies leading up to a law degree. It has allowed law degrees to be more available to students of a wider range of backgrounds, and allowed some to obtain the law degree to support work and previous education for other purposes besides practising or teaching the law.

It has long irked me that Canadian law schools are full-time study only (somebody please correct me if I am wrong). In the U.S., because law school is available on a parttime basis, roughly half of law librarians have both a law and a librarian degree (this is a guesstimate on my part, based on past discussions). In Canada the number is much smaller. I would be surprised if we could find more than 20 people across the country with both degrees.

Typically those with dual degrees have completed the law degree first, and then looked for alternatives to practice, thereafter seeking out library school. There are a few who have taken the dual degree in a program for that purpose. I am aware of dual degree programs at Dalhousie University and the University of Toronto; again, I would be interested if there are other dual degree programs in Canada. Even more rare, the odd librarian has gone back to school for law. But typically those people go into practice.

For a Canadian law librarian who would like to pursue legal studies, it means stopping work for 3 years, not only paying for law school but also potentially giving up an income for those years. It is not something that most would be willing to do. As a result, we have few with dual degrees.

Demand for law librarians in Canada, however, rises over time. Many law schools across the country, for example, require the dual degree for their library reference and management staff. Those with dual degrees are also desirable in some law firms for research lawyer and knowledge management positions. Supply is not up to the demand, so as a result those from outside Canada are found to fill the positions. This in itself is not a problem for individual positions, but what happens when we get to the point where most senior positions at our Canadian law school libraries are not staffed by Canadians? How does that affect service, instruction for law students, and the general philosophy of law school libraries?

Yes, you are correct if you pick this up as a personal rant. I have long felt that, had law school been available on a parttime basis in Canada as it is for my colleagues in the U.S., I would have gradually worked toward and completed a law degree to supplement my three other university degrees. I completed my library degree on a parttime basis while working fulltime in a law firm library. Starting a law degree 18 years ago would have been of great interest to me. I think about how different my career would have been. But there is no way I could have afforded to put my work life aside to complete a law degree fulltime.

If there is demand for the dual degrees, why is no one in the Canadian system doing anything to facilitate this? Why do law school libraries not hire those with library degrees who are willing to pursue a law degree while working? Is there another option?

Teaching and learning are pretty constant activities for legal professionals. Some of the learning — most, perhaps — takes place when you're alone, and the teaching when you're with one other person; and at the other end of the scale, a lot is now managed by professional societies, responsible for providing CPD to large groups. But there are also times when a course of instruction is needed for a group that falls somewhere in between the very small and the very large. It's with that middle-sized, ad hoc occasion that Coursekit might be helpful.

Post-secondary education makes fairly consistent use of online courseware nowadays, the two main products being Blackboard and Moodle, both quite sophisticated, not to say complex. Now Coursekit provides a third choice: it's open access software that's beautifully straightforward (and quite visually attractive), offering anyone who wishes to build a course the ability to do the essential online elements with ease — and have the data hosted on the Coursekit site, again for free. You'll find modules for online student discussion, sharing resources, calendaring, grading. and so forth.

As you might imagine with a courseware site, there's ample explanation of the software, the obligatory FAQ, and the opportunity to play with a demo version.

Even if you don't need to mount courses or formal lessons, you may find that this product can lend itself to becoming a decent, free collaborative tool for that project or problem-solving task.

Given my moot history in law school it's no surprise that I've been approached repeatedly by a number of different international moots now that I'm a lawyer. But I've never seen anything like this before.

A non-profit environmental law organization, West Coast Environmental Law (WCEL), is hosting the first-ever moot court held entirely on Twitter. Participants from different Canadian law schools will make their submissions in 140 characters or less. The intent of the exercise is to bring environmental law issues to a broader audience.

Yes, I've always dreamed about being a tweeting judge, and it seems that dream might come true.

The case will be a simulated fact pattern mirroring the West Moberly First Nations, obviously focusing on environmental law. Winners will receive a cash prize, their name on a plaque, and of course an incredible amount of exposure on Twitter.

You can follow WCEL on Twitter here, and the hash tag for the event, scheduled for February 2012, is #twtmoot. This will certainly be worth watching this exercise in pedagogue, social media, activism and engagement .

I'll have more information related to sponsorship and participation on my personal site here.

Last month the Federation of Law Societies of Canada released a long-awaited Report on Conflicts of Interest prepared by its Standing Committee on the Model Code. This was the third attempt by the Federation with previous reports prepared by a Special Advisory Committee on Conflicts of Interest in June 2010 and in February 2011. The Federation settled the conflicts issue except for the thorny conundrum of current client conflicts. A copy of the almost-finished Model Code is available here. If this report is adopted by the Federation's National Council it will mark the completion of the Model Code (which was substantially completed in March 2011). More on specific issue of conflicts of interest to follow below.

The Federation's Model Code has been adopted by the Law Society of Alberta (effective November 1, 2011), the Law Society of Manitoba (January 1, 2011) and the Nova Scotia Barristers Society (effective January 1, 2012). Other provinces are expected to follow in 2012. Each province may retain local variances but the vast majority of the provisions will become uniform across Canada. In an age of national and international mobility, this makes eminent sense for lawyers, law firms, regulators and clients.

The controversy over conflicts of interest dates to the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in R. v. Neil, 2002 SCC 70 where Justice Binnie established "a bright line rule" providing "that a lawyer may not represent one client whose interests are directly adverse to the immediate interests of another current client — even if the two mandates are unrelated — unless both clients consent after receiving full disclosure (and preferably independent legal advice), and the lawyer reasonably believes that he or she is able to represent each client without adversely affecting the other." (para. 29). This sentence has caused great consternation in the legal profession and led the CBA to create a Task Force on Conflicts of Interest which produced a 284 page report in 2008 which includes an excellent Toolkit for lawyers and law firms on how to deal with avoiding conflicts.

The members of the CBA Task Force parted company with Justice Binnie over the necessity and the advisability of "the bright line rule" and recommended against its adoption in the CBA Code. The CBA Code was amended and took a different, more lenient approach to conflicts of interest between current clients. The Federation did not accept the CBA approach and hence the three reports by it on the issue. If you are interested in more details of what I describe as a decade long "battle over conflicts of interest in Canada" you can read my upcoming article here.

Looming right around the corner is that magical time of year, we all get more busy, tensions rise and people run around in oddly coloured clothing…. of course I'm talking about Law School Exam Time. Personally, I do not think that CERN needs to go on trying to break the speed of light because this semester seems to have already done so, which brings us to exam time. Back in September I posted, what I hoped were, a few nuggets about being in law school. What follows are a few more with regards to preparing for and executing exam writing. I did not address this post to the 2Ls and 3Ls because I figure that they have already figured out what works for them and what does not but this advice is not just for 1Ls

I'm keeping many of the same headings from the September post because most of that advice relates to the exam writing advice:

Obviously, you can't do much about this if you haven't gone all semester, but hopefully you did, and took decent notes. If you missed a couple find a classmate who hopefully takes good notes and ply them with baked goods in the hopes that they will share. Use your class notes to help with preparing your own CANS (below).

Again, hopefully you have done this. If not you have about a week to get caught up. If you are very far behind, skimming is a fine art that you have hopefully already nurtured as a skill set through the first 3 months of law school. Remember, first and last sentence of a paragraph. You probably don't have a lot of time to do this right now, but the Science of Word Recognition is quite interesting.

I'm going to try and not revisit what I wrote before, so all I will say is make sure that whatever CANs you use are liberally sprinkled with content that has been generated by you.

The hysteria mentioned previously reaches its zenith right about…….now. Do not succumb to it, which I acknowledge is sometimes harder than it sounds. If you need to avoid the law school whilst studying then find another good study spot. Don't let whatever the talk is, get to you, and don't engage in or even try to listen to the
conversations that take place immediately preceding or post exam.

To quote, "…is the decrease in the marginal (per-unit) output of a production process as the amount of a single factor of production is increased, while the amounts of all other factors of production stay constant." In exam writing terms this means to get the amount of rest you need in order to be alert and have a properly functioning mind while writing. If you need 8 hours of sleep to feel refreshed, the value you might gain from studying until 3am is offset by the sluggishness brought on by only getting 5 hours of sleep. Or quite simply, at a certain point it no longer pays to keep on studying, get some sleep and focus on what you know, the return you get on studying until 3am is going to be greatly diminished.

The enemy of studying; but to be honest, your mind needs to have short breaks every so often. Around here there is usually a dominant procrastination theme for an exam period, recent ones have included: Mafia Wars, Assassins or placing themed post-it notes on a world map. I'm always interested to see what the exam period will bring.

Good Luck to all who are writing, I'll see you on the other side!

A recent working paper by Mark K. Osbeck of the University of Michigan Law School, proposes a framework for understanding, and teaching, good legal writing.

Available via SSRN, What is "Good Legal Writing" and Why Does it Matter?, the paper provides an overview of the major reports and other documents that have called for increased attention in US law schools to practical "lawyering" skills, starting with the MacCrate Report of 1992. It then provides a conceptual framework for defining good legal writing, and a detailed discussion of its various elements:

[The paper] argues that legal readers judge a document to be well-written if the writing helps them make the decisions they need to make in the course of their professional duties. The article then provides an analysis of the fundamental qualities that enable legal writing to do this, concluding that there are three such qualities: clarity, conciseness, and the ability to appropriately engage the reader. The article explains why each of these qualities is essential to good legal writing, and it examines the tools good writers use to make their writing clear, concise, and engaging. Lastly, the article examines what it is that distinguishes the very best writing in the field, arguing that great legal writing is not just writing that is especially clear, concise, and engaging, but is instead writing characterized by a separate quality, elegance, that is aesthetic in nature. (abstract, p.2)

I like the emphasis on meeting the purposes of the readers of the document, because, though it may be a somewhat narrow, even idealized, view of the purposes of legal writing, it is at least a starting place that recognizes the connection between legal writing and legal reading. The development of expert legal writing and legal reading skills go hand in hand, as the writer summarizes:

[Writers] become proficient at writing primarily by reading the works of good writers and by practicing their own writing. Focusing students on the fundamental goals of legal writing (i.e., clarity, conciseness, and engagement) while at the same time exposing them to examples of excellent writing allows students to analyze for themselves the tools masters of the craft employ to achieve these fundamental goals.(p. 66)

I was alerted to this article by subscribing to SSRN's Law & Rhetoric eJournal, available to subscribers.

On Wednesday the Canadian Association of Law Libraries will be presenting a webinar with Michel Gamache, Director of Documentation Services, Heenan Blaikie in Montreal. Michel will be explaining how to get started with Yahoo Pipes for working with RSS feeds to customize information for practice groups. Even if you do not work in a law firm, this webinar will help you get started taking your use of RSS feeds to the next level. I myself dabble in the use of Pipes and am looking forward to learning more.

The webinar takes place this Wednesday, November 16, 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. ET. Cost is $45.40 for members and $67.80 for non-members (tax included). For more information and to register, visit the CALL/ACBD website: http://www.callacbd.ca/en/content/webinars.

Here is the full description:

Yahoo Pipes: Slicing and Dicing RSS Feeds for Legal Practice Groups
SPEAKER: Michel Gamache

Yahoo! Pipes has been around since 2007, yet it doesn't seem to have caught the eye of many librarians. However, this is a valuable and simple tool that can be used in the context of web monitoring and information delivery.

This webinar will help you understand what Yahoo! Pipes is all about. You will learn how to create, aggregate, filter and customize feeds. You will also learn how to create widgets so that the contents you manipulate can be made available on intranets.

Michel Gamache has been Director of Documentation Services at Heenan Blaikie since 1999. Previously, he was Library Manager at another law firm in Montreal.

Michel holds a MLIS degree and a Certificate in Industrial Relations both from Université de Montréal, as well as a Bachelor degree in Business Management from Université du Québec à Montréal.

I have been remiss at mentioning the free online conference Library 2.0 that started today at 9:30 am ET and continues around the clock through to the end of tomorrow. This page has a schedule of sessions listed according to your time zone. For a quick look at the schedule, check out the Eastern Standard Time schedule – sessions typically run for a 1/2 hour.

There is still time to sign up! Register for the Library 2.0 site. All sessions will be run using the Blackboard Collaborate platform. Session rooms have a bandwidth-related limit of 700 attendees. Word via Twitter is that there are approximately 6,000 registrants. There are a number of concurrent sessions, and of course most people will not be watching the full 24 hours. There are over 150 sessions in all. All will be recorded.

The hash tag #lib2011 is being used on sites such as Twitter.

I hope you will at least stop by for one or two sessions!

We have been quick to use the word “crisis” to describe the state of articling in Ontario. Maybe too quick. Certainly the rather abrupt rise in the rate of “unplaced lawyer candidates” – students unable to find articling positions – from 5.8% in 2008 to 12.1% in 2011 is an eye-popper and potentially a game changer. But a crisis, as the Globe and Mail reports today? Maybe.

Those that work in the legal trenches have known for years that another crisis exists – the access to justice crisis – now well documented by the Ontario Civil Legal Needs Project in its 2010 report Listening to Ontarians.

The Law Society of Upper Canada’s creation of an Articling Task Force presents an opportunity to shine attention and hopefully address ‘the other crisis’ of access to justice. At least this is the thought of a group of us at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law, Common Law Section. The Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa is hosting a series of lectures and workshops on the Legal Profession and Access to Justice. The series is a joint initiative of the Social Justice Caucus and the Professionalism Initiative, funded in part through the support of the Law Foundation of Ontario.

Today's Globe and Mail features an articling discussing what is being called a "crisis" in articling positions,

Some blame law firms, accusing them of reducing their hiring in the face of economic uncertainty. But according to Law Society statistics, there has also been a steady increase in the number of law graduates, as law schools have increased their enrolments. The number of law students successfully landing articling jobs has increased each year since 2007, but it has not kept pace with demand.

The article features interviews with Meagan Williams, a colleague of mine from UWO Law (and occasional law blogger), Tom Conway, head of the Law Society task force on articling, Dean Lorne Sossin of Osgoode Hall, Deborah Glatter of Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP, and Chris Axworthy, the new Dean of the Thompson Rivers law school.

You can see my previous piece on articling here.

We need to create an Ontario Legal Corps composed of lawyers and articling students to address the access to justice crisis in this province and we need to do it now. An Ontario Legal Corps will also go a long way to addressing the current deficit in available articling positions.

The articling crisis in Ontario is a supply-side program. It deals with the issue of the scarcity of supply of articling positions. As many judges and now the Governor General have reminded us, we have an Access to Justice crisis which is a demand side problem. The demand for legal services far outstrips the available supply as the Ontario Civil Legal Needs Project revealed.

Why not come up with solutions that attempt to match the two problems?

Clayton Ruby recently mooted the creative suggestion of paying a legal aid “articling student bonus” for legal aid work done by articling students. This is a great idea except that the prospect of any significant infusion of legal aid dollars coming from either level of government in the near future is remote. We need to keep working on governments but that is a long term strategy. In the short term, government is simply not the answer.

If we are to address the twin crises of articling and access to justice we must do so on our own. And it is in our collective interest as a profession to do so because as the Governor General warned us in August, if we fail to meet our obligations under the social contract “Society will change the social contract, and redefine professionalism for us. Regulation and change will be forced upon us—quite possibly in forms which diminish or remove our self-regulatory privilege.”

An Ontario Legal Corps – modeled along President John F. Kennedy’s Peace Corps - would provide legal services by lawyers and articling students to underserviced communities across Ontario. The idea of articling students providing legal services may be new to Ontario but it has recently been accepted by the Law Society of British Columbia.

It seems that lawyers in Ontario support articling in their rhetoric but not in their actions. In 2008, the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Licensing and Accreditation Task Force reported that that lawyers overwhelmingly wanted to retain articling. It also reported that there were only 1171 approved articling principals out of approximately 31,000 lawyers in private practice, government and corporate practice and other employment available to serve as articling principals. That is less than a 4% participation rate. The rest of the profession – including myself – is freeloading on the work of that 4% who are shouldering the burden of training the next generation of lawyers. If we believe in the need for practical training for new lawyers, we should all share in this responsibility.

Thus, out of necessity, the funding for an Ontario Legal Corps would come mostly from us, from lawyers. Under this proposal, each lawyer in Ontario would pay a $200 Access to Justice levy. With 40,000 lawyers, this will create 200 fully-funded Access to Justice Articling positions paying annual salaries of $40,000. In short, my idea is 200 articling positions for $200 per lawyer in Ontario. Or simply “200 for 200”. I think this is a fair price to pay to promote access to justice, train the next generation of lawyers and protect self-regulation.

The University of Ottawa proposed a similar idea in its submissions to the LSUC’s 2008 Licensing and Accreditation Taskforce as one of its nine suggestions that it made to that Task Force. It proposed instituting a “lawyer levy” that the LSUC would impose on the 30,000 lawyers who do not employ articling students in any given year contributed $100 each year, the LSUC could provide two hundred articling subsidies in the amount of $15,000 in any given year. Subsidies could be focused on both geographical and cultural areas that are currently underrepresented by lawyers. That suggestion was not given serious consideration at the time. It should be now.

But that 2008 proposal did not go far enough. The access to justice crisis worsens and we are back looking at articling only three years later because we need bold solutions. An Ontario Legal Corps is worth considering.

Dear Prospective Law School Student:

So you want to go to law school?

In making your decision, I encourage you to closely examine your reasons for wanting to embark on this path and make sure you have considered the pros and cons of doing so. Law school is now quite expensive and involves 4 years of your life (3 years of law school plus typically 1 year of articling). As such, you should not make the decision lightly.

Many of the 10 tips that follow may give the impression that I am against you entering law school. That is not the case. However, I think you should be aware of some of the negative aspects of pursuing this option so that you are not surprised or disappointed later on in your career.

1) Examine your reasons:

Why do you want to go to law school? You need to examine your reasons and read as much as possible about law school and the legal profession.

If you are going to law school because you are not otherwise certain of what other educational or career path to take, this is not a good reason.

Likewise, if you are going to law school because you think you will make money, this is also not a good reason.

The Law Foundation of Ontario is helping to coordinate articling positions in the Public Interest community, in conjunction with Pro Bono Students Canada (PBSC). From the LFO's information page:

The Law Foundation of Ontario (LFO) is pleased to announce that it is now accepting applications from prospective host organizations for its groundbreaking Public Interest Articling Fellowship Program for the 2013-14 articling period.

The Public Interest Articling Fellowship was conceived to meet both a significant need for legal assistance within the public interest community and to allow law students to gain valuable experience in public interest law. The program expands opportunities for articling in public interest organizations in Ontario by targeting groups that do not have access to funds to pay for an articling position. Pro Bono Students Canada (PBSC), with its extensive experience in working with public interest organizations and law students across the province, will continue to administer the program.

The LFO is inviting applications from prospective host organizations for up to six 2013-14 Articling Fellowships. The Fellowship covers the articling student's salary, along with the LSUC Licensing Process Fee and Licensing Application Fee. A stipend may also be paid, if necessary, to the selected organizations for out-of-pocket expenses (such as furnishing an office or purchasing a computer) that are required to host an articling student.

To be eligible, the host organization must:

• Be Ontario-based
• Be a not-for-profit or registered charity
• Have an on-site Articling Principal
• Not have access to funds to hire an articling student

The deadline to apply as a host is October 24, 2011, 5:00 p.m. For information on applying, please see the LFO webpage.

Hat tip: @CanLawMag (Canadian Lawyer Magazine)

Ontario has the unique position of having more applicants for articling positions than available positions. A panel at the Second Annual Conference Association for Canadian Clinical Legal Education discussed the future of articling in Ontario on September 24, 2011 at Osgoode Hall Law School.

Tom Conway of the Law Society of Upper Canada Task Force on Articling shared some of his personal views on the subject. He indicated there were 1,700 people who registered for articling in 2010-2011, and the situation is expected to get worse with UofO expanding its common law section, and the new law schools recently launched. The University of Montreal has also applied to expand their common law program, which may result in even further increases of law students.

The vast majority of articling positions are in the Toronto area (55%), and the majority of those positions are with large firms. Most practitioners in the province though are sole practitioners or in firms with less than 5 lawyers. For most articling students in the province the articling experience is a big firm Toronto experience. In 2008, the LSUC recommendations were overwhelming in favour of retaining articling as part of the licensing process, and focused on increasing the number of articling positions. They streamlined the process for articling principals, provided an articling registry, and conducted an articling survey. But despite all of this, not a single additional articling position was created.

André Bacchus, Director of Professional Development, Heenan Blaikie LLP, noted that a number of small practitioners are dying to have an articling student, but the applicants are reluctant to relocate to remote or rural locations where these practices are located.

Kim Brooks, Dean, Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, indicated that market conditions are poor in society, generally. Interpreting articling data should be done with careful consideration of the unemployment rates outside of law, and that many individuals without articling positions will still have meaningful contributions to society in other capacities with their legal education.

Lorne Sossin, Dean, Osgoode Hall Law School, stated that the law society has no ability to actually determine the type of training that occurs during articling. The wide variety of types of articling positions defies the ability to qualitatively assess whether articling is actually achieving its goals. There are real skills that are required for practice, which may or not be obtained through articling.

The Association for Chinese Canadian Lawyers in Ontario (ACCLO) hosted a CLE session on September 17, 2011, on "Tips and Tricks from the Trade," featuring Sean Zhang of Blakes, Jeffrey Lem of Davies, Roslyn Tsao of Epstein Cole LLP, and Madam Justice W. Low of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.

Notes from the sessions follow.

At least according to this poll, conducted by private US research firm Harris Interactive. The poll includes some interesting numbers on the current (general) geographical distribution of e-readers, plans of consumers to purchase e-readers, and some broad numbers on the effects of e-readers on reading habits.

This report does not state how many people were polled, does not reveal standard measures of significance, and notes that the respondents were selected from "among those who have agreed to participate in Harris Interactive surveys" so your mileage may vary. Still, the results don't seem unexpected to me.

The mixed results on the reported effects of e-readers on quantity of reading is borne out by other studies, most recently in Woody et al. (2010) but also in many other studies. The deep engagement with the text that is the gold standard of reading does not typically happen yet online. A great introduction to this area of study is free online in UNB librarian Barry Cull's "Reading revolutions: Online digital text and implications for reading in academe" 16 (6) First Monday (30 May 2011) .

In legal education, there are a couple articles that grapple with the issues of teaching critical engagement with the print and online text, both by the same authors D.M. Curtis and J.R. Karp: 41 Willamette L. Rev. 293, and 30 Hamline L. Rev. 247. There is also an interesting book that purports to teach higher-level reading skills to law students, and which strikes me as a very useful text: R.A. McKinney Reading Like a Lawyer: Time Saving Strategies for Reading Law Like an Expert, (Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2005).

Once again Rich McCue has published the results of his annual survey of incoming law students at the University of Victoria. His executive summary of the results is as follows:

• 84% of incoming law students own “Smart Phones” that can browse the internet (up dramatically from 50% last year), with 42% of the total being iPhones, 13% Android and 27% Blackberry’s.
• 19% of students own tablet devices or ebook readers.
• 98% of students own laptops, and 16% own both a laptop and a desktop computer.
• 50% of student laptops are Mac’s, up from 44% last year.
• The average laptop price stayed basically the same as last year at $1,186, which is down from $1400 in 2007, and from $2,100 in 2004.
• The students’ average typing speed was was 60 wpm.
• 72% of all students bring their laptops to school almost every day.
• 55% of students use Gmail as their primary email account (up from 49% last year), 9% use UVic email and 22% Hotmail.
• 60% of students identified MS Word as their favorite tool for collaborative document editing (down from 67%). 30% favor Google Docs (up from 27%) and 2% OpenOffice.
• 58% of students report backing up their primary computer on a regular basis. 60% of those backing up do so to an external hard drive and 25% to a cloud storage solution.
• 97% of students use Facebook (up from 91%) and 92% (up from 80%) would like to see law school events and activities published on Facebook as well as through the online faculty calendar.

None of this surprises me, except perhaps the number of students using Google Docs, which is higher than I would have supposed. And while I'm glad to see that most students are backing up their computers, I wonder if I believe them. That 50% of their laptops are Macs suggests that law firms had better get ready — readier than they are, certainly — to accommodate Apple's operating system.

It would be great to see other law schools imitating Rich in this and generating some data as to what the profession might expect as regards technological devices and expectations.