Next week, Jen and Brenda will be attending the 2016 CALL/ACBD Conference in Vancouver, BC. This is the leading professional development opportunity for legal information professionals in Canada, and is an excellent opportunity to meet and learn from other people working in firm, academic, government, and courthouse libraries across the country. It’s also where we learn about new products coming out from vendors, and notable legal developments.

Of all of the sessions coming up over three days, here are some of the topics we’re most excited for:

“Webinars: Doing it Right” – Brenda will be attending this pre-conference half-day session, which is timely and highly relevant to us here at the CCLA, since we’ve finally made the plunge into providing legal research webinars. She is very excited to get some great tips on how to make our webinars top notch.

“Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About US Legal Research But Were Afraid to Ask!: US Legal Research for Canadians” – There’s plenty we’d like to know but have been to afraid to ask, so this session is perfect! Currently, the only things Jen knows for sure about US law is that Louisiana follows a Civil Code (much like Quebec), and that you can find US decisions on Google Scholar. Ready to take lots of notes during this session!

“Research in the Real World” – This session is all about the collaborative program Research in the Real World that was conducted in Calgary, between academic, firm, and courthouse law librarians for summer students to develop practice-focused legal research skills. Sounds right up our alley!

“Computers in Legal Research” – Brenda is really excited to attend this discussion on the future of Watson-type AI in the legal world, and the extent to which computers might be capable of replacing lawyers in the future (and the inevitable Skynet uprising of course!).

Librarians love to live tweet events, so if you want to check in on the conference, look for #CALLACBD2016 on Twitter.

Since we started posting Ottawa decisions round-ups in 2010, we’ve had hundreds of visitors to our blog every month. Recently, we started compiling blog posts from legal folks in the Ottawa area, which our readers have responded enthusiastically to as well. So thank you for reading!

Through all this, we’ve never found the name “CCLA Library Blog” to be very inspiring. We decided it was time for a facelift and a new name. Robeside Assistance is a phrase we’ve been toying around with for a long time, and it finally occurred to us that it was perfect for the blog. The CCLA Library is your courthouse library, and we’re here to help you in your legal research (whether you’re gowned or not, of course!). Legal research is expensive and time consuming. Let us assist you – save time, save money, and get access to some of the best legal research products on the market. We’ll use this space to talk about legal research and products, upcoming training, tips and tricks, and of course, the popular decisions and blogs compilations.

We’ll be sticking to a more regular publishing schedule, so feel free to subscribe to the blog by email, or follow us on Twitter to catch posts as they happen. We’ll also continue to include many of our posts in the CCLA News email newsletter every Wednesday.

Thanks for reading, and we hope you enjoy the new look and name of our site!

Every year a team under The Honourable Justice Chadwick publishes a table of damage awards in personal injury actions across Ontario. We are pleased to provide this year’s copy of the compendium, updated to October 31, 2015. You can download the compendium here, or on the CCLA website’s Civil Litigation Practice Portal.

Many thanks to Justice Chadwick and Gwendolen Boyle, law student at the university of Ottawa, for compiling the updated list!

I’m sure most of you are well aware of the valuable Continuing Professional Development programs that are held by the Law Society in Toronto every year. Perhaps you’re even aware that the CCLA Library receives the materials from these programs in our collection. What is lesser known we find, is the fact that most of these papers are available online through a service called Access CLE. Access CLE provides LSUC articles since 2004, and articles that are older than 18 months are free of charge. Some of these papers include:

• The popular Annotated Document series (i.e. Annotated Shareholder Agreement, Annotated Guardianship Documents, Annotated Employment Agreements, etc.)
• Presentations on more obscure areas of law
• Case Commentaries and Analysis
• Practical Practice Management Tips
• And many more!

The unfortunate part of all of this is that the search engine for Access CLE is somewhat frustrating to use and many find it difficult to locate what they are looking for. Instead, the best way to search for articles is by using the Infolocate search engine, which integrates Access CLE into its collection. You can search as follows:

1. Head to Infolocate.ca
2. In the dropdown menu that reads “All Libraries”, scroll to the bottom and select “Access CLE”, so that your search bar looks like this: 
3. Enter search terms in the box and select search. This will search only online articles that are available for download.

If you prefer, you can also browse what is available by going to the Access CLE website. Click on your area of law under “Browse Collections”, and select which year you would like to browse.

As mentioned, the CCLA collects all of these materials in print as well, so if there is something you would like that was released in the past 18 months, we can get that for you for free. Just give us a shout!

We are always excited to welcome new students to the CCLA Library! In anticipation of the influx of new summer and articling students we have scheduled some tours for the end of May and beginning of June.

These tours are a great opportunity to meet library staff and learn about library resources, training opportunities, and legal services which may support and assist you in your practice. We also encourage any and all to sign up for the CCLA Newsletter to begin learning about news, events, and opportunities in the East Region.

Tours will be held beginning May 12 on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:30 AM, and usually take between 15 to 20 minutes. Please email library@ccla-abcc.ca or call 613-233-7386 x221 to schedule a tour.

We are always excited to welcome new students to the CCLA Library! In anticipation of the influx of new summer and articling students we have scheduled some tours for the end of May and beginning of June.

These tours are a great opportunity to meet library staff and learn about library resources, training opportunities, and legal services which may support and assist you in your practice. We also encourage any and all to sign up for the CCLA Newsletter to begin learning about news, events, and opportunities in the East Region.

Tours will be held beginning May 13 on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:30 AM, and usually take between 20 to 30 minutes. Please contact Brenda Lauritzen, the CCLA Library’s Reference Librarian, at blauritzen@ccla-abcc.ca or 613-233-7386 x222 to schedule a tour. We look forward to seeing you soon!