We’re so excited that it’s Clawbie time again! Since there are so, so many superb choices to pick from and we are limited to three nominees, we decided again to stick with what we did last year: highlighting some of our favourite bloggers local to the Ottawa region. So here we go!

Ottawa Employment and Labour Law Blog
Andrew Vey & Paul Willetts (Vey Willetts LLP) / @VW_Lawyers

Andrew and Paul’s blog is so accessible, which is something we really appreciate as members of a law-adjacent profession! We love their writing style and their posts are always interesting, relevant and timely.

Some of our favourite blog posts this year:

• Secret recordings in the workplace: a review of legal and practical consequences
• Vey Willetts Launches Ottawa Severance Pay Calculator
• Employee Misconduct and Online Anonymity

Law21 Blog
Jordan Furlong / @jordan_law21

Anyone who’s read a post on Law21 can appreciate how thoughtful, insightful, and forward-thinking they are, and we are no exception. 

Some of our favourite blog posts this year:

• How to bring about change in law firms
• Legal Demand 3.0
• Law firms’ problem with women

Diversonomics Podcast (or on iTunes)
Roberto Aburto & Sarah Willis (Gowling WLG) / @robaburto

A timely and welcome addition to the ever-growing Canadian legal podcast scene, we were delighted to discover the Diversonomics series by local Gowling WLG lawyers. Roberto and Sarah launched season two this year, which continues to take on the difficult topics of diversity and inclusion in the legal profession.

Some of their notable episodes this year:

• 202 Access granted: Leveraging corporate social responsibility through legal social mobility
• 203 A seat at the table: It’s time for women to get on boards
• 206 Trans-forming the norm: Gender identity in the legal profession

This is our last week of posting on Robeside Assistance for 2017, so we wanted to kick things off with our year end review! This year has gone by in a blur, especially these last few weeks as we get the library ready for renovations in the new year. (To answer a question we’re asked a lot: Nope, we didn’t get the month of December off! We’ve been super busy organizing the book collection, furniture, and assorted belongings of the Association. It’s like packing up your house, when you’ve been living in it for 30 years!)

We expect things to be a bit hectic around here for much of the next year, but we’re delighted that we’ll still be able to blog and bring you the latest news in online research, new books, cool throwbacks, and of course, Ottawa blogs and decisions. Tomorrow, we’ll be publishing our Clawbie picks for 2017, so stay tuned for those.

Much like last year, our most-read posts are always the Ottawa decision and blog post round-ups. In case you missed them the first time around, here are some of our other most popular blog posts from 2017:

• Fighting the Good Link Rot Fight (January): In the beginning of the year, the Supreme Court released a new project to fight link rot in judicial decisions. Not sure what link rot even is? Check out that post!
• Research Tip: New CanLII Highlighting Feature (February): We know you all love CanLII, so this was a great new feature released this year.
• Judicial Decisions with Missing Graphics (May): This post stemmed from a reference question we received in the library. Bonus: it featured Mayor McCheese.
• #ThrowbackThursday: Pre-Place Bell (June): Ottawa’a favourite construction site featured in this post from June. I think we might actually be close to the front entrance being opened!
• vLex Canada now available at the CCLA Library (August): The CCLA was the first county courthouse library in the province to team up with vLex to offer take away service for this database. Check out the news release in this post.
• New on CanLII: Browne v. Dunn (October): Christmas came early for legal research fans, as the elusive Browne v. Dunn was added to CanLII.