Substantive Law Series on Criminal Law

This webinar, aimed at legal information professionals, will provide an overview of substantive first-year law school criminal law. There are two goals: (i) to give a sense of what law school students study and learn in their first year criminal law class, and (ii) to provide practical tips on researching criminal law issues.

Questions / topics to be covered will include:
- How is criminal law taught in law school?
- More specifically, the following concepts will be discussed:

• Mens rea/ actus reus
• Indictable offences versus summary conviction offences
• Strict liability offences
• Criminal Codeoffences versus provincial offences

- Research tips for researching criminal law
- Creating your own research guides and pathfinders for researching criminal law

As part of this webinar, the instructor will "simulate" a first-year criminal law class using the Socratic method in discussion of this case. Attendees will be provided a detailed, annotated research pathfinder for criminal law. Attendees are invited to contact Ted Tjaden in advance with any particular questions or content they would like covered.

SPEAKER:

Ted Tjaden, a long-time member of CALL/ACBD and the 2010 recipient of the Denis Marshall Memorial Award for Excellence in Law Librarianship, is the national litigation precedents lawyer in Gowlings’ Toronto office. Ted works closely with the firm’s national precedents team and litigation lawyers to organize and annotate the firm’s litigation research and precedents for use by the firm’s advocacy professionals. Ted has extensive experience as a litigator and knowledge management lawyer and is called to the bar in both British Columbia and Ontario. In addition to being the author of Legal Research and Writing, 3rd ed (Toronto: Irwin Law, 2010) and The Law of Independent Legal Advice, 2nd ed (Toronto: Carswell, 2013), he is a regular speaker at conferences on issues of knowledge management, technology and the effective organization of litigation documents.