Over the past few months, there has been a flurry of activity at CanLII. It felt like new materials were being added all the time, so now that it’s back to school time (in our hearts, if not in practice!), let’s take a look at the current commentary offerings from CanLII:

Books and Articles:

So many! New books and titles are being added all the time, so check out this link to see the full list.

Reports and Research Papers:

Again, there are lots! This is another new section of CanLII, and there is a whole lot of great content now available. Check out this link for the full list of reports and research papers.

Journals:

• Alberta Law Review
• Appeal Appeal: Review of Current Law and Law Reform
• Canadian Bar Review
• Canadian Journal of Comparative and Contemporary Law
• Canadian Journal of Human Rights
• Canadian Law Library Review
• Canadian Parliamentary Review
• Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies
• LawNow Magazine
• Manitoba Law Journal
• McGill Journal of Dispute Resolution
• McGill Journal of Law and Health
• McGill Journal of Sustainable Development Law
• McGill Law Journal
• Ottawa Law Review
• University of New Brunswick Law Journal
• Western Journal of Legal Studies
• Windsor Yearbook on Access to Justice

Newsletters:

• Justice as Healing
• Long term disability in Ontario
• Siskinds Class Action Case Review

Finally, if you’re an author and wish to submit material to CanLII, check out the CanLII Authors Program.

 

I was looking for quantums in Quicklaw last week and realized a) it had been a while since I had done so, and b) I wasn’t entirely sure how to access them anymore! If you’ve never used the quantums in Quicklaw, you might be surprised to learn the scope of what these gather. In the library’s subscription to Quicklaw, you can access quantums for:

• Breach of Contract
• Child Support
• Defamation
• Dependants’ Relief
• Matrimonial Property
• Medical Neligence
• Property-Related Torts
• Sentencing
• Spousal Support
• Wrongful Dismissal
• Personal Injury

I checked online to see if Lexis had made any tutorials for using this feature, and thankfully they have! Check out the video below, and next time you need to figure out “how much,” consider popping over to the library to see what Quicklaw has for you.

We’re happy to highlight a very useful feature that has sneakily been added to WestlawNext Canada for a couple months now: related proceedings! You’re likely familiar with the usual case history chart that you can access through the “History” tab on a case, but what you may not have noticed is an extra link detailing the related proceedings.

As you can see in the screenshot below, in the left-hand bar there are the two case histories listed under Direct History, but underneath that is now a link to the Related Proceedings for the case.

 

Clicking on that link brings up a whole new document, detailing and linking to both the direct history and to any related proceedings (applications, interlocutory motions, etc.)  that are available for the case. It lists them in chronological order, as you can see below, so it can be quite helpful when dealing with complicated matters that span multiple years!

 

Related Proceedings summaries such as this have currently been added for Federal, Ontario, PEI, and New Brunswick jurisdictions. You can check the status of the other provinces at their press release here, which Thomson Reuters is updating as content is added.

WestlawNext Canada is available for use on all our library computers, or as always, feel free to get in touch with us if you need something specific!

 

Just recently we shared the announcement that CanLII had added law reviews to its databases. In another exciting development, they’ve announced that they have now added newsletters to their growing wealth of secondary materials.

From the Newsletters page of CanLII, you can now review issues of two newsletters that have been shared with CanLII:

• “Justice as Healing” – published by the Native Law Centre at the University of Saskatchewan
• Siskinds Class Actions Case Review – published by Siskinds LLP

While these topics may not intersect with your practice, I suspect CanLII is looking to grow the collection of newsletters they can offer to users. If these do add value to your practice, however, enjoy!

Yesterday’s post about CanLII now having law reviews recalls another news item from this month that you may have missed.

The Canadian Bar Association has recently made all of the past issues of the Canadian Bar Review available online and open access. To access past articles, no password, credit card, or anything else is required!

To check out the archive of the Canadian Bar Review, click here.

CanLII announced an exciting new addition to CanLII on Friday: law reviews! From their blog:

It has been a long term goal for us to have a substantial collection of legal commentary on CanLII, so we are thrilled to be able to tell you about an expansion of CanLII’s secondary sources section to include law reviews.

Law reviews are often the only place a particular topic is discussed, and they often provide insight into the law for a particular jurisdiction where no one else does that make them invaluable for research.

In addition to being able to navigate within the commentary section by law review and issue, results from law review issues will appear in your search results. If all you want to see is commentary, you can limit your search results by clicking on the “Secondary sources” tab.

We would like to thank the generous contributors of content that will help enrich CanLII as a legal research tool. Here are the law reviews that are participating in our initial launch of this project:

Alberta Law Review

Appeal: Review of Current Law and Law Reform

Canadian Bar Review (coming soon)

Canadian Journal of Comparative and Contemporary Law

Canadian Journal of Human Rights

Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies

Justice As Healing (coming soon)

McGill Journal of Dispute Resolution

McGill Journal of Law and Health

McGill Journal of Sustainable Development Law

Ottawa Law Review

University of New Brunswick Law Journal (coming soon)

Currently we have loaded them back to 2015, but more law reviews and additional years of coverage will be added over time. If you edit or publish a law journal you’d like to see on CanLII, please feel free to contact us. We’d love to hear from you! (feedback-form@canlii.org).

Check out their law review coverage from the Law Journals page on CanLII. A heads up if you use the left sidebar on CanLII – to get to all of the secondary sources, including law reviews, the new heading is “CanLIIDocs.”

Recently we’ve had to depend much more on our electronic subscriptions here at the library while renovations are ongoing, so we were delighted to see a “Reading Mode” button added to electronic texts in our WestlawNext Subscription!

This mode adds several features to enhance readability. It adds the Table of Contents for the text on the left for quick browsing, links at the top of the article to subheading anchors in the text, and it eliminates the top icon bar to avoid distraction (clicking out of Reading mode will bring it back so you can have your usual download/email options).

Best of all, when you scroll through the text new content just keeps loading! No more having to click through countless sections as you read. All in all, a much nicer experience when dealing with e-looseleafs. We definitely approve of this nice new feature!

If you were paying attention on twitter and/or were very on the ball a couple weeks ago, you may have noticed that the Department of Justice launched a new online service called the Charterpedia, and it is really great! This new resource provides summaries and note ups on every Charter section, and it is now available free of charge to everyone!

As per its own description:

This Charterpedia provides legal information about the Charter and contains information about the purpose of each section of the Charter, the analysis or test developed through case law in respect of the section, and any particular considerations related to it. Each Charterpedia entry cites relevant case law, and citations to Supreme Court of Canada decisions are hyperlinked whenever possible.

Check it out!