Law Society of Saskatchewan Podcast on Open Access Legal Resources

The most recent episode of Legal Skies, the podcast produced by the Law Society of Saskatchewan, is devoted to open access to legal information:

"The Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) is on a mission to provide free legal information. The non-profit organization is a founding member of the Free Access to Law Movement and dedicated to making legal resources more accessible to lawyers and the public. Alan Kilpatrick, Reference Librarian at the Law Society, discusses the future of free legal information and open access with Sarah Sutherland, Director of Programs and Partnerships at CanLII."

Twitter Town Hall With British Columbia Provincial Court

David Bilinsky today published a post on the Slaw.ca website about a recent Provincial Court of BC’s Twitter Town Hall.

Last month,  the Provincial Court of British Columbia’s Chief Judge hosted the province’s Chief Justice as well as a former self-represented litigant for a two-hour live discussion on Twitter with people from the province, other parts of Canada and abroad.

As Bilinsky writes:

"Since the proceedings have been covered in depth [see https://www.provincialcourt.bc.ca/enews/enews-19-11-2019], I wanted to discuss what I find momentous about this event and possibly, comment on its future implications (...)"

"There is no denying that we have an access to justice issue in the courts and society, not only in BC or Canada, but world-wide. Different approaches are being tried in many locations with the best of intentions, aiming to improve access to justice (...)"

"One thing that happens when you reach out to the world. You receive information about approaches that have been developed elsewhere and then enter into a meaningful discussion as to their applicability here (...)"

"There were many suggestions and approaches outlined to address access to justice. Benchers, The Law Society, PovNet, BC’s Office of the Ombudsman, Legal Aid BC, the CBABC, the Courthouse Library, TLABC, Mediate BC, the BC Utilities Commission, the BC Law Institute, the BC Family Innovations Lab, Access to Justice BC, The Society of Notaries, lawyers, notaries, and many others joined in the wide-ranging discussions."

"Like a pebble dropped in a still pool of water, the ripples of the Twitter Town Hall have spread far and wide. Initiatives such as these help push the access to justice boulder a little higher up the hill."

Pretty cool, eh?

Canadian Law Library Review 44.4 is Here!

The most recent issue of the Canadian Law Library Review is now available.

It is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries.

It is also available on the ISSUU platform.

October 2019 Update from the Canadian Federation of Library Associations

The Canadian Federation of Library Associations (CFLA) has provided an overview of its activities since June 2019. I found it on the Librarianship.ca website.

There is information on:

• advocacy 
• activities
• updates from CFLA committees (copyright, cataloguing and metadata standards)
• outreach to other organizations
• upcoming events

Five Questions with Andrea Black, Dentons Canada

The Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) has been running a series of member profiles called Five Questions With...

The most recent interview is with Andrea Black, Research Specialist at Dentons Canada:

"What is one thing that’s surprised you about the legal information profession? (...)
I’ve probably been most surprised by how much legal and government information is not available electronically, and how much of it is not available to the public. Even as wonderful people and organizations work hard to scan that material and make it available, it’s getting harder and harder to track other items down as governments close departmental libraries, as libraries restrict their inter-library loans, and as budget cuts everywhere force us all to weed our collections of older, less-used items."

Supreme Court of Canada Judicial Biography Series: Justice Sheilah Martin

This is a follow-up to the blog post of November 13, 2019 entitled The Court.ca Series of Biographies of Supreme Court of Canada Justices.

Court.ca, the blog staffed by students of Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, has been running a series of biographies of the justices of the Supreme Court of Canada.

The latest biography is that of Justice Sheilah Martin.

13 Questions With Sophie Cayer, IM Broker, Employment and Social Development Canada

The librarianship.ca website has been running a series of librarian profiles called 13 Questions With ...

Here is the most recent one about Sophie Cayer, IM Broker, Employment and Social Development Canada:

"Career advice – what’s your top tip?
Networking is key. I can’t say how many times friends, colleagues and former colleagues have had great job opportunities by knowing the right people. My top tip to help your career is to have a solid reputation as a positive, hard-working team player."

Discussion Paper on Corporate Criminal Responsibility in Australia

The Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) has released a discussion paper on Australia’s corporate criminal responsibility:

"The ALRC seeks stakeholder submissions on 23 proposals for reform to the Commonwealth’s corporate criminal law regime, and asks 11 questions on particular areas of reform. The Discussion Paper addresses a number of aspects of corporate criminal liability, including:

• the principled division between criminal offences and civil penalty provisions;
• the method for attributing criminal liability to corporations;
• individual liability for corporate offences;
• deferred prosecution agreements;
• penalties and the sentencing process;
• illegal phoenix activity (deliberate liquidation with the intent to avoid creditors and continue operations through a new entity); and
• the implications of the transnational nature of business and extraterritorial offences."

The ALRC's final report to the government will be published in April 2020.

Supreme Court of Canada: New Library Titles

The list of new library titles added to the Supreme Court of Canada collection from November 1-15, 2019 is now available on the Court website.

It is possible to subscribe via e-mail to receive the list.

The Court.ca Series of Biographies of Supreme Court of Canada Justices

Court.ca, the blog staffed by students of Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, has been running a series of biographies of the justices of the Supreme Court of Canada.

In the intro post on August 15, 2019, Kristopher Kinsinger wrote:

"Canadians can take pride in our relatively depoliticized and merit-based judicial appointment process and in the high calibre of judges who continue to make up our final court of appeal. Yet it would also be fallacious to assume that our top jurists do not approach their work with philosophies that have been shaped by their professional and judicial experiences. The justices of the SCC are not oracles whose worldviews or decisions are above the transparencies imposed by critical evaluation; our judges are, in a word, human, and as such are not above the rigours of informed criticism."

"With this in mind, our hope is that this series will help our fellow law students, lawyers, and legal scholars to think more deeply about the judges who sit on the SCC. We believe that a more nuanced appreciation of this aspect of the SCC’s jurisprudence can only serve to bolster the confidence of Canadians in their judiciary."

The biographies in the series are:

• Chief Justice Richard Wagner
• Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella
• Justice Michael J. Moldaver 
• Justice Andromache Karakatsanis
• Justice Clément Gascon (now retired)
• Justice Russell Brown 
• Justice Suzanne Côté 
• Justice Malcolm Rowe

There are still 2 more justices to cover: Justice Sheila Martin and Justice Nicholas Kasirer.

Most Recent Issue of LawNow: Family Break-ups

The most recent issue of LawNow is available online. The magazine is published by the Centre for Public Legal Education Alberta.

The issue features a series of articles on "Family Break-ups & the Law".

There is also a special report on globbalization.

Annual Statutes of Alberta Added to CanLII

The CanLII website (Canadian Legal Information Institute) has been rapidly expanding its digital collections of Canadian legislation.

Today, it announced that it has added the annual statutes for the Province of Alberta from 1906 to today:

"This latest digitization project builds on similar initiatives on CanLII.org to increase access to important troves of legal history and decision-making. The Saskatchewan annual statutes dating to 1978 were scanned and added to CanLII last year with funding from the Saskatchewan Law Foundation. Last year we also added the New Brunswick annual statutes back to 2000 with funding from the New Brunswick Law Foundation, with more coming. These joined the Federal annual statutes to 2001 and Quebec annual statutes to 1996, which were added in 2016 with funding from CAIJ."

"Annual statutes – laws as passed by Canada’s parliamentary bodies – are an important addition to CanLII’s primary law collections. Without access to these documents, it can be difficult to navigate legislation over time."

CanLII is a portal funded by Canada’s provincial and territorial law societies to make legal information content (court judgments, tribunal decisions, statutes and regulations, commentary) available to Canadians free of charge.

Library of Parliament Background Paper on Appointment of Officers of Parliament

Canada's Library of Parliament recently published a new Background Paper on the Appointment of Officers of Parliament:

"Officers of Parliament are responsible directly to Parliament rather than to the government or a federal minister. This emphasizes their independence from the government of the day. They carry out duties assigned by statute and report to one or both chambers of Parliament."

"There are nine officers of Parliament: 1) the Auditor General of Canada; 2) the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada; 3) the Commissioner of Official Languages; 4) the Information Commissioner of Canada; 5) the Privacy Commissioner of Canada; 6) the Conflict of Interest and Ethics Commissioner; 7) the Commissioner of Lobbying of Canada; 8) the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner of Canada; and 9) the Parliamentary Budget Officer (...)"

"Federally, there is no statutory definition of what constitutes a parliamentary officer. However, the role and function of these officers are distinct from those of other positions such as the Clerk of either house, the Sergeant-at-Arms, the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel or the Parliamentary Librarian. The latter officials assist Parliament in procedural and administrative matters, whereas officers of Parliament support Parliament in its accountability and scrutiny functions, and in carrying out other tasks."

Diversity in Law Librarianship - Broadening The Pipeline

Law librarian David Whelan explores the issue of The Law Librarian Pipeline in a recent post on LexBlog:

"Diversity is a challenge for lots of reasons. Smarter people than me have already looked at, discussed, and identified tools or methods to improve the diversity of law library staff. It’s an obvious and positive goal for organizations but it’s not an easy one to solve. There are some things, though, that as a hiring manager, seem like opportunities to change."

In the post, Whelan looks at different ways to find candidates that would broaden the diversity of the candidate pool.

He identifies three strategies that could prove useful for managers who are looking for practical solutions:

"It may be some time before I’m in a position to hire again but when it comes around, I’ll be more successful at reaching a diverse candidate pool if I can:

• eliminate or make optional the degree credentials (MLS, JD, and library technician) to allow experienced candidates to apply
• identify candidate pools (through professional associations or informal references) that would not normally apply, to encourage them to do so
• communicate to our organization that every new hire requires training and acclimation to fit into the team and environment, and a more flexible approach may require, short term, a longer learning curve, but the pay off is a permanently more diverse team"

LawBytes Podcast on Crown Copyright

In his most recent LawBytes podcast, University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist looks at the issue of Crown Copyright in Canada:

"This week’s Lawbytes podcast digs into crown copyright with two guests. First, Amanda Wakaruk, a copyright librarian at the University of Alberta and one of the country’s leading advocates on the issue joins me to explain the concept of crown copyright and why she thinks it needs to be abolished. I’m then joined by my colleague Professor Jeremy DeBeer to discuss the recent Supreme Court of Canada decision on Keatley Surveying v. Teranet, which was on the first opportunities for Canada’s highest court to grapple with the scope and implications of crown copyright."

An earlier Library Boy post from September 26, 2019 on the Supreme Court of Canada Ruling on Crown Copyright provides background to the topic.

November 2019 Issue of In Session - E-Newsletter of Canadian Association of Law Libraries

The November 2019 issue of In Session is available online.

It is the monthly e-newsletter of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) and contains news from CALL committees and special interest groups, member updates and events.

Survey of Law School Faculty, Evaluation of the Law Library 2020

Primary Research Group, a New York-based publisher of research reports and surveys about law libraries, has published the Survey of Law School Faculty, Evaluation of the Law Library 2020 Edition ($158.00US):

"This 113-page study presents data from a survey of 107 law faculty and administration from more than 60 law schools in the United States and Canada about how they feel about their law school libraries (...)"

"The study presents detailed data on overall satisfaction with the law library and with many distinct facets and features of the library and library staff. Unique data sets are available on satisfaction with interlibrary loan, group study rooms, database range and availability, information technology, information literacy training, eBook collections, journal collections, and much more (...)"

"Just a few of the report’s many findings are that:

• Faculty in top ranked law schools were far less likely than those in lower ranked schools to think of themselves as highly proficient in legal information searching.
• More than 91% of professors in the sample have asked a law librarian for assistance in the past year.
• Only 6.54% of the sample had contacted a law librarian by text message in the past year.
• Faculty was more likely than management and older faculty more likely than younger faculty to view the law library as productive and efficient.
• Nearly 80% of survey respondents felt that the speed of response from librarians to faculty requests was excellent."

Earlier Library Boy posts about Primary Research Group Reports include:

• Survey of Law Library Database Licensing Practices (February 14, 2016) 
• Survey of US Law School Faculty: Evaluation of the Law Library (April 21, 2016)
• Primary Research Group Report on Bundled Journals Package Contract Negotiations Benchmarks (June 19, 2016)
• Primary Research Group Report on Benchmarks for Academic Library Use of Bibliometrics & Altmetrics (July 12, 2016)
• Primary Research Group Report on Inter-Library Loan Services for Research University Faculty (February 20, 2017)
• Primary Research Group Report on Use of Law School & Other Digital Repositories (July 13, 2017)
• Primary Research Group Report on University Faculty Use of Library Assistance in Navigating Bibliometrics & Altmetrics Tools (October 19, 2017)
• Law Library Benchmarks 2018-19 (December 13, 2017)
• Report on Higher Education Inter-Library Loan Management Benchmarks (April 23, 2018)
• Survey of Law Library Plans for the Print Materials Collection (September 9, 2019)

Supreme Court of Canada: New Library Titles

The list of new library titles added to the Supreme Court of Canada collection from October 16-31, 2019 is now available on the Court website.

It is possible to subscribe via e-mail to receive the list.