Keynote Title: “Regulating AI in Canada: Bill C-27 and the AI and Data Act”

Presented by: Teresa Scassa 

With Bill C-27 referred to Committee, more focused attention will soon be on the proposed AI and Data Act. This presentation will examine the AI and Data Act and will compare it with emerging approaches to AI regulation in in other jurisdictions.

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Session Title: “Advocating for Yourself and Your Law Library”

Presented by: Kim Nayyer, Sabrina Sondhi and Eve Leung

In law libraries, innovators are often leaders, but they don't need to be in formal leadership roles or positions to innovate or to build on their innovations to advocate for recognition, support, or resources. All librarians and library staff should cultivate advocacy skills to ensure that their own opportunities for innovation, professional growth, and institutional stability can be secure and progress. Increasingly, law library staff must be mindful of external pressures their administrators face, whether managing partners, deans, or university librarians. Such pressures include flat or reduced budgets; client development and client satisfaction pressures; competing demands for donor support; and rankings and reputation priorities. All or any of these pressures can have direct or indirect impacts on library resources and priorities. In this program, panelists will share examples and techniques of innovative advocacy that they have used, in a range of law library settings. Their examples will illustrate the myriad ways library staff can look at their resources, teams, and innovative activities through the lens of higher-level decision-makers and funders. The panelists will help participants to learn how to develop and implement strategies and techniques to be able to build a case to demonstrate how their work merits attention, investment, and reward. Examples will include innovations and exercises of leadership in private law firm libraries or information teams, government or court libraries, and academic law libraries in both law school-administered and university-library administered settings.

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Session Title: “Planning for a Healthy, Happy Retirement”

Presented by: Wendy Reynolds and Louise Hamel

Retirement is one of the most highly sought-after phases of life, and yet it is also one of the least understood. According to the Homes Rahe Scale which lists life’s 43 most stressful life events, retirement is ranked number 10 (reference: https://paindoctor.com/top-10-stressful-life-events-holmesrahe-stress-scale/, accessed January 19, 2023). One of the biggest reasons why people find retirement stressful is because they haven’t planned for the non-financial aspects of retirement. It is important that anyone thinking about retirement also prepare for the mental, social, physical and spiritual aspects of life after work.

Session Title: "ChatGPT Applications in Legal”

Presented by: Colin Lachance, Mark Doble, Brenda Lauritzen and Shaunna Mireau 

ChatGPT is being used in a variety of ways to enhance or extend legal information searches. Some of these ways are ethical and transparent and some are questionable. Law Librarians should be aware of the various uses of this latest iteration of legal AI. This panel will speak on their ChatGPT applications and experiences.

Session Title: “Land Acknowledgements: A Workshop on How to Create a Respectful Statement"

Presented by: Jaimie Kechego, Vicki Leung and Lyonette Louis-Jacques

Understanding and committing to the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is an important function of all leaders. Learning the history of land acknowledgements is an important step in the path to reconciliation to help deepen our knowledge of other calls to action and can help to move reconciliation forward. Members will be able to take their first step to draft their own land acknowledgements that is both thoughtful and aligned to their organization's role in the reconciliation process.

Session Title: “How we Adjusted Our Reference Services in Response to COVID-19"

Presented by: Fiona Chiu and Clare Asquith Finegan 

Despite the significant challenges of COVID-19, Courthouse Libraries BC used the opportunity to reexamine and reassign our workflow and leverage the collective skills and knowledge of staff from across the province. This work aligned with the foundation of our strategic plan, which is to continuously improve our business processes to support our work. The design and implementation of our remote reference services was led by librarians on the frontlines, who then trained colleagues on the process. They analyzed our existing work flow, and the detailed results gave us a good understanding of the work we do. This allowed us to enable a much wider pool of our staff to build skills by answering more complex questions, which they did not previously have the opportunity to do. As a result, we increased our capacity to provide higher levels of service for our clients without having to make any staff cuts during the pandemic. And, we accomplished this without investing in extra technology or incurring costs.

Session Title: “Finding a Way: Collaboratively Forging Paths to More Inclusive Descriptive Practices”

Presented by: Laura Daniels and Jacqueline Magagnosc

Improving inclusiveness and representation and furthering decolonization in library catalogs has become a priority for many libraries. Librarians from a broad spectrum of library types are working to enhance the descriptive metadata used in our catalogs and discovery systems, but large, controlled vocabularies and complex systems make this a daunting effort. Conversations amongst metadata practitioners across Cornell University Library units led to the formation in 2021 of the Inclusive Descriptive Practice Task Force (IDPTF), a group dedicated to examining metadata practices and identifying methods to acknowledge the subjective nature of cataloging and archival descriptive practices. This session will give an overview of the formation, structure, and some outputs of the subgroups in this task force, including examples of unexpected challenges and some successes thus far. Attendees will be able to build on our experience and methodology as they embark on efforts to develop inclusive, decolonizing descriptive practices at their institutions.

Session Title: “Visualping- Our Top 2022 #lifehack"

Presented by: Tania Djerrahian and Katarina Daniels

Discover how the library/KM and business development teams at Davies have implemented Visualping to enhance their services. The library/KM team will explain how they use Visualping to improve efficiencies in their current awareness services, to support their digitization initiatives, and for their KM practice pages. The BD team will explain how they have used it to create business development opportunities. Use cases for other types of libraries will also be suggested.

Session Title: “Legal Research Instruction in an Academic Setting- Best Practices/Methods for Teaching Success”

Presented by: James Bachmann and Matthew Renaud

This presentation will highlight methods used for the successful delivery of legal research instruction in an academic setting. In doing so, this presentation hopes to inform law librarians about the skills students are being prepared with upon graduation and will present ideas for legal research instruction that can also be employed in non-academic settings. Both speakers currently serve as instructors for the Advanced Legal Research course at their respective academic institutions (University of British Columbia’s Allard School of Law and University of Manitoba) and have extensive experience teaching legal research and critical thinking. The methods highlighted in this presentation are based on their experiences delivering legal research instruction via both online and in-person methods.

Session Title: “What’s Law Got to do With It? Developing and Supporting Collections and Research in Legal Studies, Not Law"

Presented by: Julie Lavigne and Yolanda Koscielski

In 1967, Carleton University became the first Canadian university to offer an undergraduate program in law that was not connected with a professional law school, later adding programs at both the Master’s and PhD level. Many other similar programs have since followed in Canada, focusing on the role law plays in Canadian society, culture, politics, and economics, rather than the traditional vocational approach which remains the mainstay of the professional schools. For librarians supporting these kinds of “law-adjacent” programs, while many of the research needs of students and faculty are similar to those at professional schools, others are quite different. Interdisciplinarity is rapidly gaining importance in legal training, and much of the important, ground-breaking legal research these days is not being done by traditional law researchers at all. The study of law is no longer confined to the halls of professional schools, and many law librarians are having to broaden their knowledge and skills to include other subjects and resources, while research methodology has moved beyond the purely doctrinal approach to methods more based in social sciences research.

Session Title: “How to Lead Through the Storm Without Losing Your Humanity”

Presented by: Eileen Lewis

The last three years have seen our workplaces (and lives) go through unprecedented change. Business and social norms have been upended, and the final impact of this change is still unknown. Early data is indicating that time has had a tremendous impact on managers and leaders, who regularly engage in invisible emotional labour. In addition to this global disruptor, the Legislative Library also experienced its own local upheaval in the form of two retirements at the senior leadership level, the implementation of a new core technology solution, a reorganization, and plans for a full decampment out of our historic building on the horizon. All of this has been the backdrop against which I moved into a new role as Director, seeking to lead the library's team forward in spite of the many challenges they were facing. Within the hardships also lay opportunities. This session aims to share lessons learned and best practices in managing change, managing people, and, sometimes, managing to laugh.

Session Title: “Amplifying Legal Information and Assistance Access Through Collaboration & Partnership: SALI in 2023"

Presented by: Alan Kilpatrick

The Saskatchewan Access to Legal Information (SALI) project is a collaborative and grassroots partnership among justice stakeholders and libraries working to amplify legal information and assistance access in the province with community partners who are providing legal information. Project partners include Create Justice, Law Society of Saskatchewan, Public Legal Education Association of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan Ministry of Justice, Saskatchewan public libraries, and the University of Saskatchewan. Don’t miss this must-see session to learn more about SALI, our efforts to improve legal information access, and our new direction for 2023. Throughout 2021, SALI pursued an “organizational refresh” by offering a free virtual conference series and asking for audience feedback and ideas about future projects and directions. Nearly 300 attendees, a mix of community organizations, lawyers, and library staff engaged with us throughout the year and provided feedback. In 2022, SALI began moving forward with a robust new plan based on the feedback we received: Launching a quarterly newsletter to connect more effectively with community partners and better amplify Saskatchewan legal information. Creating a trio of complementary, robust resources designed to assist legal information providers in Saskatchewan in connecting members of the public with information about the law, legal advice/assistance, and community supports. Developing a curated collection development aid for Saskatchewan libraries, of any type, wishing to strengthen and add resources to their legal collections. Pursuing a new web presence for SALI.

Lightning Talk Title: “Découvrez le seul site au monde de la common law en français” 

Presented by: Mme Michèle LeBlanc

Jurisource.ca is the only website in the world to offer thousands of free legal and terminological resources in French for professionals working in common law provinces and territories. This presentation will allow you to discover a virtual library that lists thousands of legal resources relating to the practice of law and terminology, including legal templates, case summaries, translated court decisions, lexicons, linguistic resources, and more ! This project is fully funded by Justice Canada, with the goal of increasing the capacity of the legal system and its stakeholders to provide justice-related services in both official languages. We offer 3 different possible formats for the 7-minute flash conference: (1) remote presentation (Zoom or Teams) by Me Alexanne Stewart (2) pre-recorded video presented by Ms. Michèle LeBlanc in person (3) PowerPoint presentation by Ms. Michèle LeBlanc herself. Additionally, we can provide an English translation of our presentation for English-speaking participants.

Lightning Talk Title:  "On-Demand RA Service"

Presented by: Alexia Loumankis 

I manage an on-demand RA service for law professors. I hire 2-3 RAs who are on call for short research projects that professors send me during the school year. I act as a liaison between the professors and RAs and help the RAs if they have questions. Projects including everything for checking citations to tracing legislation. Not all professors require a full-time RA and this fills the need. The RAs are paid out of the professor's research funds. I'll talk about the process and my experiences in managing the program, which would be easily adaptable at other libraries.

Lightning Talk Title: "AI-Generated Content as Unorthodox “Secondary Sources”: Towards the Recognition and Integration of Advanced Legal Technologies in Legal Research Instruction”

Presented by: Dominique Garingan

This talk explores constructive strategies for introducing and integrating the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) with advanced legal research (ALR) instruction. The talk focuses on mapping certain characteristics of AI-generated content to core characteristics exhibited by both traditional secondary sources encountered in the ALR curriculum and human-generated content within the legal contexts. It proposes the consideration of AI-generated content as a sui generis form of secondary source and discusses the advantages and limitations of applying modified critical evaluation criteria to the use of these new technologies in legal research. 

Lightning Talk Title: “What is the "gold standard"? Developing a Best Practices for Reference Writing Guide”

Presented by: Erica Smith and Bryony Livingston

The Legislative Library has long prided itself for providing our clients with the “gold standard” of research responses. However, while providing high-quality work, the meaning of “gold standard” was not clearly defined. Writing styles, as well as the look and feel of responses varied depending on the staff member providing the response. In early 2022, the Best practices guide for Reference Services writing was created to outline a standard for client responses. The guide along with accessible response templates creates a recognizable standard both Library staff and clients.

Lightning Talk Title: "Researching reference transactions"

Presented by: Nicholas Lobraico

This session is a brief presentation of a practicum project completed in the last semester of my MISt degree (January - April 2023), under the supervision of Katarina Daniels at the Montreal branch of the Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP library. The presentation will provide an overview of the project, some of the major challenges faced, insights gained, and considerations for future projects of this type. The session will be of particular interest to legal librarians looking to develop new practicum offerings for students in MLIS programs across the country.

Lightning Talk Title: “Indexing Large Scale Digitization Projects”

Presented by: Sandra Craig and Amy Tang

Recently the Ontario Legislative Library has been involved in two large-scale digitization projects. In 2021, we digitized 77 boxes of Ontario government press releases ranging in date from 1962 to 2005. In 2022, we digitized 35 boxes of Estimates Briefing Books from 1967 to 2019. Scanning the files was straightforward and fast. A challenge was how to provide effective access to these key documents. In consultation with users and based on a model we use for our digital serials, a solution was found.

Lightning Talk Title: "7 Leadership Skills in 7 Minutes"

Presented by: Zena Applebaum

Learn about one skill a minute in this fast and effective Leadership training session. A mix of hard skills, and softer intangible ones, learn what skills every librarian should master to thrive in today’s competitive business environment.

Session Title: “Are You Using Career Management?

Presented by: Kim Clarke 

Employees and employers alike should be utilizing career management techniques in their practice. Active career management assists individuals to plan a meaningful, satisfying career path. Employers whose managers implement career management practices with their direct reports also benefit from the process as their staff members are more engaged and successful, which supports staff retention. In this session, the presenter will discuss the need for career management at the various career stages (early, mid, and late), the roles managers can play in their staff members’ career development, and steps employees can take in their own career management.

Session Title: "What is Wikidata and Why You Should Do Data Entry for the Greater Good"

Presented by: Mita Williams

Wikidata began in 2012 as a project that extracted data points from Wikipedia Infoboxes. It has since grown into a separate database of millions of items on subjects across a vast range of knowledge domains including law. Wikibase, the software underlying Wikidata, provides a platform that makes these facts available as open, structured data and accessible through the SPARQL query language. Wikidata's SPARQL_query_service allows for very different possibilities compared to traditional keyword searching. With SPARQL you can ask for a list of cities with a population over 100,000 led by a female mayor, a list of the most famous children of librarians, or a list of musicians who have died at the age of 27. This presentation will be an introduction to Wikidata and will suggest some of what might be possible if the law library community decide to contribute structured legal data for all to use and build upon.

Keynote Title: “The Legal Singularity: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Law Radically Better”

Presented by: Benjamin Alarie and Abdi Aidid

ChatGPT has raised awareness of AI in law. We argue that legal prediction using AI has the potential to radically transform the law, our legal institutions, and our societies for the better. In the forthcoming book, The Legal Singularity, Professors Aidid and Alarie discuss the law's current shortcomings and explore how legal prediction can address them. They describe a future state of functionally complete law, where the law is much more complex and yet dramatically clearer and fairer. This must-read book explores how AI-driven legal changes may lead to the legal singularity. The Legal Singularity will inform the way you think about the future of law in the presence of advanced artificial intelligence.