Blog

From time to time, this blog will highlight initiatives, ideas, or activities coming from members, committees or special interest groups (SIGs).

Today: Adapting the SALI Taxonomy to the Canadian Legal Environment, by Michael McAlpine , Manager, Information, Research & Knowledge at Siskinds (London, Ontario)

On September 28^th, the Knowledge Management Special Interest Group of CALL met to discuss and learn about the Legal Matter Specification Standard developed by the SALI Alliance.

The SALI Alliance (Standards Advancement for the Legal Industry) is a non-profit organization open to all stakeholders in the legal community. Members include law firms, companies, legal service providers, legal industry associations and academic institutions. Founding sponsors are the Legal Marketing Association (LMA) and the Association of Legal Administrators (ALA).

Guest speaker Jim Hannigan spoke about the history of the taxonomy and the current uses of it in the legal industry. Michael McAlpine then discussed the work done by the SALI Canadian Working Group to adapt the taxonomy to the Canadian legal environment. There was a general discussion about the uses of the taxonomy and efforts to implement it in law firms.

First released in 2019, the SALI taxonomy was developed in order to provide a standard method for describing legal matters and associated documents. Version 2.0 was released at the end of 2020 and represented a significant expansion of the code set. Organizations and individuals around the globe continue to contribute to its development and growth.

The SALI taxonomy is extensible and can work in conjunction with other standards (eg, NAICS, UTBMS codes). SALI is an open, free and party neutral that can be used by law firms, vendors and others in the legal industry to ensure matters and documents are described consistently. SALI has been endorsed by several large law firms and by vendors such as Fastcase, NetDocuments and Reynen Court.

Some of the core attributes of the current standard are:

• Area of Law: Each matter can be assigned a primary and secondary area of law. Primary areas include topics such as Corporate Law, Constitutional and Human Rights, Personal and Family Law, and Food and Drug Law. Secondary areas are more specific and include topics such as Corporate Governance, Accident Benefits Law, and Labour Law.
• Service: The Services attribute is a central feature of the taxonomy. Examples of services are Transaction, Advisory, or Dispute. Services provide more detail to a matter description than just relying solely on Area of Law.
• Player Role: The Role attribute is what makes SALI party neutral. Roles include Appellant, Respondent, Acquiror or Acquiree.
  

Other attributes that can be used to describe a matter or client include Industry, Legal Entity, Location, or Trial Type.

The KM SIG will next meet on November 30^th to discuss website monitoring applications. If you would like an invitation, please contact Michael McAlpine.

From time to time, this blog will highlight initiatives, ideas, or activities coming from members, committees or special interest groups (SIGs).

Today: Scanning in Courthouse & Law Society Libraries, by Jenny Thornhill (MSc, MLIS, MSL), Law Librarian, Law Society of Newfoundland & Labrador

The pandemic has forced many libraries, my own included, to examine their service models and  be creative in order to continue to provide services despite the lockdowns and other restrictions.

The Law Society of Newfoundland and Labrador Law Library (St. John’s, NL) is no different – back in 2020, we closed our doors to in-person services to our members and the public. We continued to offer what we call our remote services (contactless pickup, research and reference in texts and databases, and text scanning, including table of content scans).

Prior to the pandemic the public were permitted to access the print resources only and on-site only, so for the duration of the pandemic they have not been permitted to access the Law Library.

As things have improved, we have opened up to allow in-person access by appointment for our members only (excluding 3 lockdowns). However, we have remained closed to the public in order to comply with government guidelines for the number of persons in indoor spaces.

We traditionally get very few members of the public who actually need to access our legal resources. We find that the majority are in need of legal advice so we refer them to the Public Legal Information Association of Newfoundland & Labrador (PLIAN).

As part of our plan for the pandemic, we knew that limiting public access would be somewhat challenging, but we identified alternatives that would be accessible to the public, such as our online resources, to which staff could direct the public.

We already had a section on our website https://lsnl.ca/law-library/links-for-self-represented-litigants/ for SLR’s that had been reviewed by lawyers and approved as appropriate for the public to get answers and aid. This tool and PLIAN have been key resources for Library staff to provide reference services to the public.

Only twice during the pandemic did we get contacted by non-members who felt they really needed to have access to the library resources on-site. 

The most recent of these was a member of the public who needed access to a specific text that only we carried in the city. This was a problem as we do not lend our resources to the public, we remain closed to on-site public access due to the current 4^th wave, and we have never provided scanning on behalf of the public (they could come in and make copies for a fee, but we did not copy on their behalf and provide it to them via email).

This situation was resolved by referring her to the Interlibrary Loans department of her local library, but it left me wondering whether other libraries offered a text scanning service via e-mail to the public either as a result of the pandemic or had traditionally offered this service.

I send out a call through the CALL-L listserv and, as I have come to find with this great group, we got a lot of prompt responses.

The chart below is a summary of the results. I found that the majority of libraries who offered a scan service to the public had already been doing so prior to the pandemic, except for Alberta Law Libraries who had allowed the public to access this service during the lockdowns, but no longer.

This helped cement my decision that we would continue to keep our scan service available to our members only.

My thanks again to everyone who responded to this and my other questions over the last year and a half.

Courthouse/Law Libraries – Scanning for the public Summary of Responses

Library Location	Do you offer a scan service from your texts?	If so, do you allow the public to access it during covid?	For the public, do you charge or is it free because of covid?
Hastings & Prince Edward Law Association	We do offer a scan service, but only to the lawyers, Crowns, Judiciary.	No	N/A
Yukon Public Law Library	yes	Yes (pre-existing service)	No charge (cost covered by LSNL)
Nova Scotia Barristers Society	We do offer a scan service, but only to membership.	No	N/A
Welland County Law Association	scan service of textbooks to our membership at no charge	No	N/A
Law Society of P.E.I. Library	Yes	Yes (pre-existing service)	No charge (before or now)
Courthouse Libraries BC	Scanning from a text though, we would consider document delivery – do for members and public	Yes (pre-existing service)	No charge – was a charged service prior to pandemic, charges will resume shortly
Alberta Law Libraries - Calgary	scan for a fee for members of the law society	Public were offered during lockdown – now required to come in and scan	Free during lockdown – now onsite access only
Frontenac Law Association	Free for members	Not open to public	N/A
Law Society of NB	Scan service for members (10%); document delivery	No	N/A
Wellington Law Library	Free for members	Not open to public	N/A
Supreme Court of Canada Law Library	Free for staff	No	N/A

          

Le français suit plus bas.

We all have a few tricks up our sleeve when it comes to performing legal research. We sometimes share them with clients. And sometimes, we like to use those tricks to hunt down seemingly impossible to find material and wow them. Because nothing is “impossible” for law librarians.

The CALL blog has started a new regular series of research tips and tricks.

Please share your favourite or coolest strategies with Michel-Adrien Sheppard to have them published on the CALL blog.

Nous avons tous nos trucs favoris quand il s'agit de faire de la recherche juridique. Parfois, nous les partageons avec nos clients. Et parfois, nous aimons les épater en utilisant ces trucs et astuces pour mettre la main sur des informations apparemment impossibles à trouver. Car rien n’est « impossible » pour des bibliothécaires de droit.

Le blogue de l'ACBD a lancé une nouvelle série sur les trucs et astuces de recherche.

SVP partagez vos stratégies les plus intéressantes ou les plus « cool » avec Michel-Adrien Sheppard afin de les faire publier sur le blogue de CALL/ACBD.

Today: Finding Legislative Concordances (by M-A Sheppard).

Legislative concordances help you compare legislation on the same subject from different jurisdictions.

For example, a concordance might indicate the Manitoba equivalent to Ontario's Family Law Act, section by section.

There are a number of sources to assist you in finding concordances.

Here are two.

Westlaw

From the Westlaw Statutes and Regulations page, there is a link to Legislative Concordances.

There, you will find concordances on a number of topics, such as family or insurance law:

Simply browse to the topic you are researching and you fill find a table listing the equivalent sections in different provincial acts. Here is the list for changing a person's name in family legislation:

Lexis Advance Quicklaw

There is a link to the Tables of Concordance on the Lexis Advance Quicklaw home page.

On the Tables of Concordance page, you will find a number of topics:

Aujourd'hui: Comment trouver des concordances législatives (par M-A Sheppard).

Les concordances législatives vous aident à comparer les lois de différents territoires ou provinces sur le même sujet.

Par exemple, une concordance en droit de la famille vous permet de trouver le texte équivalent dans la loi manitobaine des articles de la Loi sur le droit de la famille de l'Ontario (Family Law Act).

Vous avez plusieurs sources de concordances à votre disposition.

En voici deux.

Westlaw

Vous trouverez un lien aux Concordances législatives sur la page Lois et règlements de Westlaw.

Vous y trouverez de concordances sur plusieurs sujets, comme le droit de la famille ou le droit des assurances:

Parcourez la liste pour trouver un tableau où vous verrez les numéros des articles équivalents dans différentes lois provinciales. Par exemple, voici les articles pour le changement de nom d'une personne:

Lexis Advance Quicklaw

Il y a un lien aux Tableaux comparatifs sur la page d'accueil de Lexis Advance Quicklaw.

Sur la page d'accueil des Tableaux comparatifs, vous trouverez plusieurs domaines de droit:

September 30 has been a significant date in Canada since 2013, when Phyllis Webstad from the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation shared her story of attending St. Joseph’s Residential School in Williams Lake, BC, for the first time in 1973.

As a youngster, she proudly wore her shiny new orange shirt, only to have it taken from her by the school. Since then, Orange Shirt Day has been a national movement in Canada where people across the country wear orange in honour of Phyllis and other residential school survivors, so that we both recognize and raise awareness of the history and legacies of the Canadian residential school system.

This year’s Orange Shirt Day, September 30, 2021, is also the inaugural National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada.

As part of its mandate, the Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonization Committee (DIDC) of CALL/ACBD is committed to fostering awareness and acumen in respect of issues of diversity, inclusion, and decolonization within all sectors of law librarianship and related professions.

Truth and Reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples is a national movement that is not only limited to one day, but is an ongoing effort so that Indigenous Peoples and their rights are recognized, understood and respected by all.

In this spirit, the DIDC, as part of CALL/ACBD, would like to highlight a couple of upcoming opportunities available to all of us to bring together our colleagues in order to honour survivors, their families and communities, and to sadly remember those who didn’t make it home:

• On Thursday, September 30, the University of Windsor Law Library will be hosting WAAYDANAA | Now is the Time. The event will be held virtually and is free. Registration is required.
• Nadine Hoffman, in coordination with the Academic SIG and the DIDC, is planning a related event on strategies for aspects of Indigenous research to help us better understand legal research in relation to Indigenous Peoples. Stay tuned – format and details to come!

Hello.

This is reprinted from the September 2021 issue of In Session, the CALL member bulletin:

There is a great opportunity to join the Canadian Law Library Review (CLLR) editorial board as our Advertising Manager.

The CLLR is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries.

We are looking for someone to volunteer to help us solicit advertisements for upcoming issues, coordinate invoicing with our accounting department, and to answer advertiser's questions. Each year the members of the editorial board are also responsible for selecting the Feature Article Award and Student Article Award winners.

Anyone who is familiar with, or who wants to develop relationships with, the various legal publishers would be in a good position to join us.

The time commitment is approximately five hours per issue and there will be three issues per year starting in 2022. We will provide you with an orientation and training period.

If you’re interested in joining CLLR, please contact Susan Barker (Acting Editor) at susan.barker AT utoronto.ca. 

Le texte français suit.

The most recent issue of the Canadian Law Library Review (CLLR) is available online. The CLLR is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL). It is an open access publication.

You can browse the regular sections of books reviews, bibliographic notes, local and regional updates, as well as news from the UK, the US and Australia.

And be sure to check out the feature articles: 

• "COVID-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean: Experts Examining Legal Responses", Michele A. L. Villagran and Marcelo Rodríguez, p. 10:
  
  “Since March 2020, a group of librarians, professors, and legal professionals have been monitoring legal responses to COVID-19 throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Each member of the project is currently following various countries within this region. In this article, the authors will describe how the project was created and highlight the initial challenges in terms of securing and evaluating trustworthy sources of information in the middle of a pandemic. The authors will summarize the legal responses and any disinformation issues within the countries they have been monitoring: Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Bolivia, and Paraguay. Finally, the article will conclude with the authors enumerating the achievements of the group as well as future plans for the project.”
  
  
• "Anti-Black Racism Legal Resource Guide", Laura Viselli, p. 16:
  
  “The focus of this guide is to allow users to find legal materials regarding Anti-Black Racism in the Canadian context. Where possible, links to open sources are provided.”

Vous pouvez consulter les recensions de livres, la chronique bibliographique, les mises à jour locales et régionales de même que les nouvelles des États-Unis, du Royaume-Uni et de l'Australie.

Et ne manquez pas les nouveaux articles de fond:

• "COVID-19 in Latin America and the Caribbean: Experts Examining Legal Responses", Michele A. L. Villagran and Marcelo Rodríguez, p. 10:
  
  "Depuis mars 2020, un groupe de bibliothécaires, de professeurs et de professionnels du droit suit les réponses juridiques à la COVID-19 émises dans toute l'Amérique latine et les Caraïbes. Chaque membre du projet suit actuellement divers pays de cette région. Dans cet article, les auteurs décrivent comment le projet a été créé et soulignent les défis initiaux en termes de sécurisation et d'évaluation de sources d'information fiables au milieu d'une pandémie. Les auteurs résument les réponses juridiques et les problèmes de désinformation dans les pays qu'ils ont surveillés : Argentine, Chili, Uruguay, Pérou, Bolivie et Paraguay. Enfin, les auteurs concluent en énumérant les réalisations du groupe ainsi que les plans futurs du projet." [sommaire]
  
  
• "Anti-Black Racism Legal Resource Guide", Laura Viselli, p. 16:
  
  “L'objectif de ce guide est de permettre aux utilisateurs de trouver des documents juridiques concernant le racisme envers les Noirs dans le contexte canadien. Dans la mesure du possible, des liens vers des sources ouvertes sont fournis.” [sommaire]

We all have a few tricks up our sleeve when it comes to performing legal research. We sometimes share them with clients. And sometimes, we like to use those tricks to hunt down seemingly impossible to find material and wow them. Because nothing is “impossible” for law librarians.

The CALL blog has started a new regular series of research tips and tricks.

Please share your favourite or coolest strategies with Michel-Adrien Sheppard to have them published on the CALL blog.

Nous avons tous nos trucs favoris quand il s'agit de faire de la recherche juridique. Parfois, nous les partageons avec nos clients. Et parfois, nous aimons les épater en utilisant ces trucs et astuces pour mettre la main sur des informations apparemment impossibles à trouver. Car rien n’est « impossible » pour des bibliothécaires de droit.

Le blogue de l'ACBD a lancé une nouvelle série sur les trucs et astuces de recherche.

SVP partagez vos stratégies les plus intéressantes ou les plus « cool » avec Michel-Adrien Sheppard afin de les faire publier sur le blogue de CALL/ACBD.

Today: Read the Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement

Since 1986 almost all federal Canadian regulations have included a Regulatory Impact Analysis Statement (RIAS).

Why should you read the RIAS? Unlike acts, you generally will not find a discussion of new regulations in Hansard. The RIAS tells you what the rationale was for a given regulation and what it was expected to achieve. A RIAS is usually divided into five sections: issue and objectives; description and rationale; consultation; implementation, enforcement, and service standards; and contact information.

Another benefit of Regulatory Impact Analysis Statements is that they are written for a range of readers. The target readers for the RIAS are “parliamentarians, ministers, TBS officials, members of the legal community, affected parties, and interested members of the public”. As a result, the instructions for writing a RIAS emphasize the use of clear language, stating that it should “be understandable to anyone who may wish to read it.”

The RIAS can be found at the beginning of the draft regulations published in the Canada Gazette Part I and at the end of the regulations published in the Canada Gazette Part II.

York University v Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright), 2021 SCC 32, was released just this morning. CALL/ACBD participated in this appeal, intervening on the question of fair dealing, an important topic for our legal information communities. We encourage all legal information and law library workers to review the reasons for judgment or the Case in Brief. Please also stay tuned for fuller remarks from our Copyight Committee.

This case marked the second occasion CALL/ACBD’s voice was heard in an intervention in Canada's highest court, advocating for fair access to and use of legal information for our wide-ranging communities. I am gratified not only with the ruling, which confirms its prior jurisprudence on this users right, but also that the court and other leading decision-makers are hearing CALL/ACBD's voice.

I congratulate our Copyright Committee for its work on this file. I also thank our pro bono lead counsel, Robert Janes, QC, for sharing his time and expertise. Finally, I wish to take this moment to thank and congratulate Justice Rosalie Abella for her illustrious service to the court and to the legal community in Canada.

The most recent episode on Legal Skies, a podcast produced by the Law Society of Saskatchewan, is about Law Librarians and their Role in Access to Justice.

It features three prominent CALL members, Alan Kilpatrick, Shaunna Mireau and Kim Nayyer:

"We discuss the important role information professionals (i.e. law librarians) play in the justice system and how they are helping expand public access to legal information. Our guests are Alan Kilpatrick, Co-Director of Legal Resources at the Law Society of Saskatchewan, Shaunna Mireau, Past-President of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries, and Kim Nayyer, Associate Dean of the Cornell Law School and President of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries."

We all have a few tricks up our sleeve when it comes to performing legal research. We sometimes share them with clients. And sometimes, we like to use those tricks to hunt down seemingly impossible to find material and wow them. Because nothing is “impossible” for law librarians.

The CALL blog has started a new regular series of research tips and tricks.

Please share your favourite or coolest strategies with Michel-Adrien Sheppard to have them published on the CALL blog.

Nous avons tous nos trucs favoris quand il s'agit de faire de la recherche juridique. Parfois, nous les partageons avec nos clients. Et parfois, nous aimons les épater en utilisant ces trucs et astuces pour mettre la main sur des informations apparemment impossibles à trouver. Car rien n’est « impossible » pour des bibliothécaires de droit.

Le blogue de l'ACBD a lancé une nouvelle série sur les trucs et astuces de recherche.

SVP partagez vos stratégies les plus intéressantes ou les plus « cool » avec Michel-Adrien Sheppard afin de les faire publier sur le blogue de CALL/ACBD.

Today: What is a Supplement?

By Susannah Tredwell, Manager of Library Services at DLA Piper (Canada) LLP in Vancouver (originally published June 23, 2021 as a SlawTip on the Slaw.ca website):

You will notice that some citations for acts contain the abbreviation “Supp.” (short for “supplement”). An example of this would be “Competition Tribunal Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. 19 (2nd Supp.)”. But what does this mean?

The main volumes of R.S.C. 1985 contain acts that came into being before or on December 31, 1984, but R.S.C. 1985 was not brought into force until December 12, 1988. So what happened to all the legislation made between January 1, 1985 and December 11, 1988? If you guessed that they became the supplements to R.S.C. 1985 you would be correct; for example R.S.C. 1985 (1st Supp.) contains the acts that received Royal Assent in 1985 and R.S.C. 1985 (2nd Supp.) contains the acts that received Royal Assent in 1986.

The supplements to R.S.C. 1985 have different in force dates depending on which supplement they are in; the BC Courthouse Libraries has produced a helpful guide to the various in force dates.

You will also find supplements in provincial legislation, e.g. R.S.B.C. 1996 included any acts that had received Royal Assent but had not come into force as of December 31, 1996 (the cut off date for the Revised Statutes) as supplements.