CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute, has just added a new book to its commentary collection, Decoding the court : legal data insights from the Supreme Court of Canada:

"This edited collection combines state-of-the-art legal data analytics with in-depth doctrinal analysis to study the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC), Canada’s top court. A data analytics perspective adds new dimensions to the study of courts and their case law. It renders legal analysis scalable, making it possible to investigate thousands of judicial decisions, adding new breadth and depth. It also enables researchers to combine doctrinal questions about how the law evolves with institutional questions about how courts operate, shedding new light on how law works in practice. By applying a range of methods to study the content of SCC decisions, this work bridges the gap between qualitative and quantitative research. Demonstrating how new analytical perspectives can generate new insights about the Supreme Court, an institution which is closely studied by scholars both within and outside Canada, the book will be essential reading for legal scholars and political scientists, particularly those working in public law and in empirical legal studies."

It is edited by 3 University of Ottawa legal scholars, Wolfgang Alschner, Vanessa MacDonnell and Carissima Mathen.

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.

In recent years, it has been rapidly expanding its offerings of legal commentary, including law reviews, reports, newsletters, e-books and thousands of case commentaries.

posted by Michel-Adrien at 8:43 pm 0 comments

CanLII Survey on AI-Generated Case Summaries

CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute that provides free access to Canadian caselaw, legislation and commentary, has been offering case summaries generated by artificial intelligence over the past year.

It is now running a survey to find out how those summaries are being received by CanLII users:

"The primary survey will take approximately 7 minutes to complete and is being conducted in English. It is open to all users of CanLII who are at least 18 years of age. The survey targets users across all jurisdictions in Canada and is designed to gather insights from both the legal community and the general public. There is also a secondary survey which will involve in-depth, 45 minute-long video interviews with 16 selected participants who will receive monetary compensation for their contribution."

"The survey was launched on October 1st, 2024, and will be open until November 15th, 2024."

CanLII's Commitment to Honouring Truth and Reconciliation Day

Today is Canada’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a day to mark the legacy of the country's Indian residential schools where multiple generations of Indigenous children were subjected to forms of physical and psychological violence to assimilate them.

CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute, has a number of initiatives to share information about Indigenous legal issues and promote Indiegenous voices:

"As part of this commitment, we have recently published the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) on CanLII. The TRC report, a landmark document, sheds light on the systemic abuses Indigenous peoples suffered in Canada’s residential school system. It also provides a clear call to action for individuals, institutions, and governments across Canada to work toward reconciliation. By making this report widely available on our platform, we hope to contribute to the ongoing education and awareness necessary to foster meaningful change."

"We are also working on a project to expand our collection of Aboriginal law through our recent acquisition of the Canadian Native Law Cases (CNLC). Published by the University of Saskatchewan’s Indigenous Law Centre, the CNLC encompasses a large number of court decisions involving Indigenous peoples issued between 1763 and 1978. This project is a significant step in ensuring that the history of Indigenous peoples’ interactions with the Canadian legal system is better documented, more comprehensive, and freely available to all on CanLII."

CanLII Publishes Second Edition of Bankruptcy and Insolvency Law Open Access Textbook

CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute, has published the second edition of the open access textbook Bankruptcy and Insolvency Law in Canada: Cases, Materials, and Problems.

"The first edition of this text, co-edited by Stephanie Ben-Ishai and Thomas Telfer, was published in 2019 by Irwin Law. This new edition is particularly noteworthy as it is the first open access text on Canadian bankruptcy and insolvency law, making it freely available to practitioners, students, and anyone interested in understanding the complexities of this area of law. The editors have meticulously updated the content to reflect the latest legal developments, providing readers with comprehensive coverage of the subject through carefully selected cases, thought-provoking commentaries, and the inclusion of post-reading questions to assess comprehension of the material."

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.

In recent years, it has been rapidly expanding its offerings of legal commentary, including law reviews, reports, newsletters and thousands of case commentaries. 

Update to CanLII Ebook on Tort Law

CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute, has published an updated version of its free-book Tort Law: Cases and Commentaries.

According to a post on the CanLII blog:

"Originally published on CanLII in September 2021, Tort Law: Cases and Commentaries is an open access casebook designed for use in Canadian common law torts courses."

 "A summary of the changes to this latest version of the casebook are as follows:

• Major content restructure and addition of over 1,000 reflection questions on the readings;
• New chapter on the various torts related to dishonesty and abuse of position;
• Addition of important recent case law from around the common law world, addressing:
• Intentional and dignitary torts (...)
• Negligence (...)
• Private and public nuisance (...)
• Business torts (...)
• Vicarious liability and strict liability (...)
• Defences of lawful authority and illegality (...)
• No-fault compensation systems (...)"

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.

In recent years, it has been rapidly expanding its offerings of legal commentary, including law reviews, reports, newsletters and thousands of case commentaries.

Open Access Legal Citation Guide Published by CanLII

CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute, has published the free Canadian Open Access Legal Citation Guide:

"The COAL Citation Guide originated with two primary drivers: the belief that we could create a citation guide that will better meet the needs of Canadian legal writers and researchers and the goal of creating a citation guide that will be accessible to everyone, via an open access publishing model (...) "

"This guide will help academics, legal professionals, and others cite legal documents and other sources of information. Please refer to the general rules, information on footnotes and in-text references, and other sections or subsections of this guide, as relevant."

The guide is a collective effort involving many authors, including quite a few law librarians who are members of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries.

CanLII Expands AI Summarization Projects

CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute, has been offering case summaries generated through artificial intelligence for some time, starting with decisions from Saskatchewan. 

According to a recent blog post, CanLII will expand AI-created summaries to all Alberta, Manitoba, and Prince Edward Island: 

"In total, these projects will involve the summarization of 4,000 cases and 1,100 statutes and regulations from PEI, 28,000 cases and 3,000 statutes and regulations from Manitoba, and 120,000 cases and 3,000 statutes and regulations from Alberta. Furthermore, as part of a special project extension, the next three years’ worth of new Manitoba primary law documents will also be summarized."

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, and commentary) available to Canadians free of charge.

 

CanLII Resources for National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

September 30th marks Truth and Reconciliation Day, an occasion to reflect on the painful legacy of residential schools.

From the 19th century until very recently, in total, about 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children were removed from their communities and forced to attend remote boarding schools run by Christian congregations under government contract. Countless children were abused physically or sexually.

The assumption behind the system was that Indigenous Canadian cultures were unable to adapt to modern industrial society. The schools were intended to aggressively assimilate the children and Christianize them. Children were frequently punished for speaking their ancestral tongues and their culture was denied.

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its findings after its years-long investigation into the many abuses against Indigenous children at the schools.

CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute, has been adding Indigenous-related resources to its collection of freely available legal commentary.

To mark Truth and Reconciliation Day, it has listed a selection of materials readers may find useful.

Update on Artificial Intelligence Applications in CanLII

In the most recent update about its activities and projects, CanLII summarizes some of its AI-related initiatives.

CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute,  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.

Among the new developments:

• AI-generated subject classification of decisions on CanLII has been expanded from Saskatchewan and Ontario to all Canadian jurisdictions, except for Quebec
• The CanLII Citation Network is a recently completed project utilizing artificial intelligence/machine learning and designed to refine  the search engine. CanLII explains that the algorithm is much better at returning highly authoritative documents for broad conceptual queries
• CatLII is an AI-based program designed to generate summaries for cases on CanLII

CanLII Publishes New Open Access E-Book on Canadian and Indigenous Perspectives on Criminal Law

The Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) has published a new open access e-book entitled Canadian Law, Indigenous Laws & Critical Perspectives:

"This is the first Canadian open access criminal law casebook, incorporating a wide range of traditional and audio/visual materials such as podcasts and documentary films. It is also notable for being the first to present Indigenous laws alongside Canadian criminal law. Cree law is featured throughout and the editors hope to include more Indigenous laws in future editions."

"Considered by many to be an emerging core competency for lawyers and other legal professionals, a trauma-informed approach is taken in this eBook. This is reflected in the selection of materials, use of content notes, inclusion of mental health and counselling resources, and substantive materials on trauma-informed lawyering, cultural humility, vicarious trauma, and resilience."

"Critical perspectives are also included on topics such as criminal law as colonial violence, anti-Black racism, intersectionality, social determinants of justice, victims of crime, wrongful convictions, policing, restorative justice, incarceration and prison abolition, and the criminalization of people who use substances and/or experience homelessness, poverty and mental health issues."

 The publication is the latest in a series of collective open access books by CanLII.

Overview Article About Open Access & Legal Scholarship in the Last Decade

There is a new article at Slaw.ca on open access legal research by Hannah Steeves:

"In 2011, the TALL Quarterly published a brief article authored by John Bolan, Public Services Librarian at the Bora Laskin Law Library (University of Toronto). The article addressed the burgeoning open access movement for scholarly literature generally, with a focus on the lack and lag of open access literature within the discipline of law and potential areas of growth in the field. Bolan wrote, 'As befits the field of law, there are, however, exceptions to the exceptions that are worth noting.' With more than 10 years since Bolan’s article was published, this post reviews the exceptions highlighted as potential areas of growth and summarises developments of open access legal literature in the Canadian context over the past decade."

Those areas include:

• the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII)
• repositories of law-related articles such as SSRN and bepress
• the rise of interdisciplinary legal scholarship
• access to justice initiatives

Steeves is an Instruction & Reference Librarian at the Sir James Dunn Law Library, Dalhousie University (Halifax, Nova Scotia).

CanLII Publishes New Open Access Criminal Law E-Book

The Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) has published a new open access e-book about Criminal Law.

From the introduction:

"We hope that this ebook will be an invaluable resource to lawyers, legal professionals, the courts, law students, academics, librarians, legal non-profits, and all those who need access to information about criminal law for generations to come."

"The CanLII Criminal Law Ebook is written by a team of 67 writers who include leading litigators and experts in criminal law. This project would not have been possible if it were not their time, energy, and expertise."

"This first edition consists of 10 parts broken down into 88 chapters, each focusing on different areas of criminal law: Detention and Arrest, Search and Seizure, Statements, Information and Indictments, Bail, Disclosure, Trial Procedure, Defences, Sentencing, and Appeals. Each chapter contains references and links to relevant cases and content."

"This resource is a collaborative and continuous work in progress. We aim to keep it updated on a biennial basis."

The publication is the latest in a series of collective open access books by CanLII:

• The Canadian Constitutional Law Open Access Casebook
• Civil Procedure and Practice in Ontario
• The CanLII Manual to British Columbia Civil Litigation

 

List of Fastcase 50 Legal Innovators for 2022

Fastcase, an American-based provider of electronic versions of U.S. primary law (cases, statutes, regulations, court rules, and constitutions), has unveiled its list of Fastcase 50 winners for the year 2022:

Created in 2011, each year the Fastcase 50 award honors a diverse group of lawyers, legal technologists, policymakers, judges, law librarians, bar association executives, and people from all walks of life. In many cases, honorees are well known, but in many others, the award recognizes people who have made important, but unheralded contributions.

“ 'When we look back at the pandemic era, we will see it as a great reset in our attitudes and assumptions about legal services,” said Fastcase CEO Ed Walters. “Even if they have had to spend more time on Zoom this year than they had planned, the 2022 class of honorees is making profound changes for the next generation of law. We celebrate these impactful advocates and inspiring innovators who are shaping the future under incredibly challenging circumstances'.”

There are a number of law librarians in the list as well as Sarah Sutherland, President and CEO of the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII).

Here is what Fastcase published about her:

Michael Mills, one of the Fastcase 50 in 2012, wrote in 2015 on LinkedIn about how the winners of the previous 5 years had begun to form an ecosystem of innovation:

“They champion transparency—in lawyer/client relations, in government data, policy, and practice, in judicial proceedings, and in legal education. They advocate for access—to the law itself, and to justice. They build structures, systems, and tools for access, quality, economy, and efficiency.”

“They also collaborate. A tour of the five classes found time and again 50’s who are working together across organizations and projects, who influence and inspire one another.” [my emphasis]

Using his company as an example, Mills writes that “from any one person among the Fastcase 250, there are lines linking in many directions to many others.”

That statement is truer than ever.

Using CanLII's Subject Classification Terms

 Susannah Trewell, Manager of Library Services at DLA Piper (Canada) LLP in Vancouver, posted a research tip on SlawTips.ca today about how to Use CanLII's Subject Classification Terms to Narrow Your Search Results.

As she explains, when searching in CanLII's collection of case law for Ontario and Saskatchewan, it is possible to click on the All subjects dropdown menu and then select a topic:

CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute,  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.

Legal Skies Podcast Episode on New AI Classification System

The most recent episode on Legal Skies, a podcast produced by the Law Society of Saskatchewan, is about the use of artificial intelligence to classify legal information:

"In the latest episode of Legal Skies, we speak to guests Alan Kilpatrick, Co-Director of Legal Resources at the Law Society of Saskatchewan, and Sarah Sutherland, Director of Programs and Projects at CanLII, about artificial intelligence (AI) and legal information."

"Alan and Sarah discuss a recent project where forty years’ worth of Law Society case law subject headings were used to train CanLII’s ground-breaking AI machine learning algorithm. As a result of this training, the self-learning algorithm is now capable of independently generating subject classification headings for Saskatchewan case law. This exciting project has major ramifications for access to justice and legal innovation right across Canada."

Note: as of October 12, 2021 Sarah Sutherland is President and CEO of CanLII.

CanLII Adds More Law Books

CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute, has recently added new textbooks to its commentary collection.

It has added entirely new or updated materials on:

• Civil Procedure and Practice in Ontario
• Domestic Violence and Access to Justice: A Mapping of Relevant Laws, Policies and Justice System Components Across Canada
• Tort Law: Cases and Commentaries

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.

In recent years, it has been rapidly expanding its offerings of legal commentary, including law reviews, reports, newsletters and thousands of case commentaries.

Annotated Accessible Canada Act Made Available on CanLII

The Annotated Accessible Canada Act created by the Faculty of Law at the University of Windsor had been added to the ever growing collection of legal commentary available on the website of the Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII).

As the authors explain:

"This is a reprinted and annotated version of the Accessible Canada Act put together by the Law Disability & Social Change Project for educational and informational purposes only. The information provided in this document does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice."

"While we have provided examples of possible litigation throughout this annotated statute, the examples are based on our opinions only. The Accessible Canada Act (ACA) has been in effect only since 2019 and it is necessary to wait for it to be interpreted and applied in order to have actual cases from which to draw guiding legal principles."

"More generally, the views expressed in this publication are those of the authors, and, in particular, do not represent the views or the positions of the Department of Justice Canada, or those of the Government of Canada."

CanLII Adds Law School Course Readings to Its Commentary Collection

CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute, has started adding law school course readings to its commentary collection.

The first ever class materials added to the site are for An Introduction to Civil Procedure: Readings, by University of Windsor Faculty of Law Professor Noel Semple. The materials include decisions, legislation, articles, and lecture videos.

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.

In recent years, it has been expanding its offerings of legal commentary, including law reviews, reports, newsletters and thousands of case commentaries.

CanLII Publishes Instructional Materials from CALL Members

The Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) has published a series of instructional materials produced by members of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL). They show how to use the CanLII website for legal research.

There are materials on:

• How to Browse Legislation
• How to Limit Search Results Using Filters
• How to Browse Commentary
• How to Search Commentary
• Using Commentary

As this CanLII blog posts explains:

"This time last year, the CanLII team asked Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL) members to produce instructional materials to assist users on how to use CanLII."

"We were pleased to learn that there was immediate interest from CALL members when a call for volunteers was announced. Since then, a motivated working group was formed and we have received content in the form of visual aids and handouts."

CanLII: 2019 in Review

CanLII, the Canadian Legal Information Institute, has published a blog post reviewing the very busy year it had in 2019.

The CanLII website makes Canadian legal information (caselaw, legislation and commentary) available free of charge via the Internet and is a founding member of the Free Access to Law Movement.

In 2019, CanLII:

• partnered with many journals, law firms, law centres and other organizations to expand its offerings of legal commentary
• launched the CanLII  Authors Program
• continued its historical scanning projects of older cases
• added many tribunal decision collections
• and much more