CanLII and Lancaster House Launch e-Text on Wrongful Dismissal and Employment Law

CanLII (Canadian Legal Information Institute) and Lancaster House, a Canadian legal publisher specializing in employment law, have teamed up to launch an open access online textbook on wrongful dismissal and employment law:

"This text will explain the law on hundreds of employment-related topics, and provide commentary on leading decisions of courts and labour tribunals. An easy-to-use, searchable guide, the e-text will permit the public and legal professionals alike to efficiently navigate the thousands of cases on the CanLII website that bear upon the subject of employment law and wrongful dismissal in order to uncover leading and influential decisions."

The textbook will be integrated into CanLII as of tomorrow, May 4th, 2012.

CanLII, whose funding comes from members of Canada’s provincial and territorial law societies, makes Canadian jurisprudence and statutes available for free via the Internet. It already contains over 1 million documents across over 200 collections, including the statutes, regulations and current court rulings of all Federal, Provincial and Territorial Jurisdictions.

Earlier this year, CanLII describes its strategic priorities for 2012-2014. In its plans, CanLII described what look like initiatives such as this current project with Lancaster House:

"When it comes to accessing content on or through the CanLII site, CanLII will strive to expand its users’ access to high value legal materials. This may involve incorporating secondary sources into CanLII, but it could also occur through facilitating searches of materials hosted elsewhere as CanLII’s interests go beyond growing its own site and extend to pursuing partnerships that advance the goals of other leading legal information providers. Potential partners include not-for-proft as well as for-proft institutions with an interest in expanding the free availability of their legal materials."

"CanLII will also seek out opportunities to improve understanding. For example, working with educational and other organizations, CanLII will explore opportunities to develop specialized services such as topic compilations and open access casebooks, and other professional user-generated content."