It’s been a minute since we covered the wide range of international materials we have here in the library, so let’s do a round-up!

International materials are often fairly expensive to subscribe to. A firm that doesn’t do a lot of work requiring materials from outside Canada will likely not subscribe to any international services. Fortunately, the CCLA has your back! If you need non-Canadian case law, we’re definitely here to help and provide a very cost-effective solution to your research needs.

Note the following:

• Most of these resources only contain case law and legislation. We don’t have many secondary sources available. International treatises are very expensive to acquire, so if you need something from a text, get in touch and we’ll find another library who does have a copy of the item and can make a scan or lend.
• Any of the paid resources below are for use in-library only. Unfortunately, legal publishers aren’t keen to provide off-site access to their databases. The exception to this is …
• For HeinOnline: This resource has some very old English case law in it, a fantastic collection of Canadian legislation, and a lot of legal journals. The Law Society is able to provide remote access to this database for all licensees in Ontario. To get your own password, please contact the Law Society’s library.

United Kingdom

By far, the UK is the most sought-after foreign jurisdiction. We have UK case law available in several services, as well as some old print materials still on the shelf.

• Lexis Advance Quicklaw
• JustisOne
• ICLR.3
• Hein Online
• BAILII – Use from Home or Office!

Australia & New Zealand 

Australia and New Zealand have been coming up more and more frequently. Fortunately, we have you covered!

• Lexis Advance Quicklaw
• JustisOne
• AustLII – Use from Home or Office!

United States of America

American case law and legislation can be a bit tricky to figure out, but we’re covered for that, too.

• Lexis Advance Quicklaw
• LII – Use from Home or Office!
• Google Scholar – Use from Home or Office!

Other Free Resources

• Free Access to the Law member websites – Here is a list of sites that are basically like CanLII, but from other countries. Be warned: CanLII is easily the best of the bunch, so temper your expectations for other countries.
• GlobaLex – Great guides to the law from a huge number of countries.

Finally, if none of these services have what you need, don’t fear! We work with other libraries who have different subscriptions, and we’re always happy to ask around if you need something.

Last week, CanLII delivered some great news from their development team. I’ll let you tell them about it themselves at this blog post, but the two major new features are:

1. Decision highlights and paragraph-level note-ups: Check out how a specific paragraph of a decision has been cited in subsequent cases.

2. Decision intensity indicators: A little blue jalapeno icon will now show you, from your search results list when do you do a note-up, how extensively a case has been discussed. Here’s a look at our spicy little friend:

And in action:

 

Again, check out CanLII’s blog post for full information on how these features work, and more importantly, get in there on CanLII and try them out for yourself!

Keen observers and users of CanLII may have noticed that things look a little different lately. Last month, the CanLII team wrote about new design changes that were made on the website to help with clarity and consistency. Check out their blog post (linked above) for all the details.

For my money, I think the biggest change that you may want to familiarize yourself with is where to find additional information on decision and legislation pages. You can see on the example below, for a judicial decision, that links (or tabs) to the case history, decisions cited, subsequent case citations, and links to material on CanLII Connects are now available just below the name of the case (or legislation). Previously, these links were tucked in a bit further below.

 

 

 

If you’ve been doing any on-site research here at the courthouse recently, you may have noticed some extra additions to our WestlawNext portal! We’ve recently added Employment Source, Estates & Trusts Source, and Labour Source to our online subscriptions, and we’re happy to continue to provide access to Law Source, Family Source, and Criminal Source.

Our new (and old) subscriptions can be accessed through the sidebar when first logging in:

Highlights from these new subscriptions include electronic access to:

Employment Source

• Canadian Employment Law by Ball
• Employee Obligations in Canada by D’Andrea
• Illness and Disability in the Workplace by D’Andrea
• The Law of Dismissal in Canada, Third Edition by Levitt
• The Employment Bulletin (Editor: Mark Fletcher)
• Wrongful Dismissal Quantum Service

Estates & Trusts Source

• Estates and Trusts Fillable Forms
• Estate Planning Precedents by Histrop
• Estate Litigation by Schnurr
• Ontario Estate Administration Manual by Armstrong
• WeirFoulds Estates & Trusts Newsletter

Labour Source

• Canadian Labour Arbitration by Brown & Beatty (Jen can finally live without my incessant nagging to get an electronic version of this!)
• Canadian Labour Law by Adams
• Collective Bargaining and Agreement by Corry

As you can see there is a ton of great content in here, so have a look when you have the chance! You must be on-site at the CCLA Library to access these materials through our subscription. We will also be scheduling a WestlawNext training session (in our new training room!) in the near future, so stay tuned for more information on that.

As always, any questions, don’t hesitate to drop us a line.

 

If you’re a fan of Lexis Advance Quicklaw for your research, you’ll want to take note of this new feature!

 

When you’re on the Quicklaw homescreen, take note of the new tab under “Explore Content” which directs you to “Practice Area.” By clicking on that tab, you’ll pull up a brand new list of practice areas.

 

This list of 10 practice areas (Construction, Criminal, Employment, Family Immigration, Insurance, Labour, Real Estate, Securities, and Wills, Estates, and Trusts) will lead you to a page that allows you to either browse resources in these areas, or perform a search exclusively in materials related to that practice.

 

In the above example, you can see the “Criminal Law” practice area. Searching in the box at the top will just search Criminal primary law (legislation and decisions), criminal law secondary materials (such as textbooks or the Halsbury’s), and criminal drafting materials.

This is a great new feature that allows you to narrow your research down very quickly and easily. We hope you find it useful on your next research task!