Today’s Tip: Life is improved by learning, so educate yourself.

I made some foolish choices in my youth about formal education that I have come to regret.

The good news, for me and others, is that there are plenty of opportunities to educate yourself. Whether it is continuing education about a specific topic or general life-long learning, basic legal research processes, a more esoteric topic like how tribunals can provide excellence in administrative justice, or updates in an area of law you have an interest or practice in, there are opportunities available to learn things.

Take in a lunch meeting, a seminar or a conference, meet people, learn things. Give yourself an academic moment.

Today’s Tip is by 3rd year University of Alberta law student Elsa Johnson in honour of law student week at Slaw.

I am actually writing a research paper at this very moment, and I was thinking back on first year research and how overwhelming it was. I’m not sure if this is a good “tip” or not, but what really stressed me out was not so much finding material (with all the databases and programs you are almost sure to find a ton of information), it was how to know when you have done enough.

I would always think “Is this really the law? What if there is another case out there? What if there is a better article out there? How do I know I have found all the important stuff?”

After researching for a Professor last summer I figured out some pretty good indicators that you have reached the end of the road.

For cases: if I started to see the same cases cited over and over, up to the most recent SCC decisions, and cross referenced those back to the others I had found with not a lot new or recent popping up, I could be pretty sure that I had hit all the important cases.

For articles/scholarly work: again, when the trail started to get circular, and cross referencing was not turning up anything novel, I could be pretty sure I had covered off the scholarly thought in the area.

Editor’s Note: Elsa is looking forward to the Head Start Program offered by the Edmonton Law Libraries Association this June 21 and 22 in Edmonton. I am looking forward to working with Elsa at Field Law where she is joining us as an articling student for 2012-13.

Today’s Tip: wear a hat. This tip could also be, change your “hat” if you need to.

I visited he lovely city of Yellowknife today. It was brisk and breezy, but beautiful as always. As I was walking downtown with very chilly ears, it occurred to me that I hadn’t planned very well. I knew I would be walking about, I knew it would be cold, but I didn’t bring a hat.

To make (the inevitable) analogy to legal research: I failed to look in a textbook.

Wear a hat.

A tweet by Dan Bowsher @dan_bowsher caught my eye yesterday:
After 244 Years, Encyclopaedia Britannica Stops the Presses – http://pri.gg/xAKiqE

Dan has some interesting tweets about Encyclopedia Britannica, though there is another twitter conversation you might find interesting:

Richard Cook‏ @Richhjc13
@stevemjones who needs britannica when u have wiki

Steve Jones‏ @stevemjones
@Richhjc13 Yeah but I bet encyclopaedia Britannia never made mistakes with whether people are alive or dead!! #ripbritannica

Today’s Tip: Use authoritative sources.

Encyclopaedia Britannica remains.

Have you ever noticed something missing when you are searching in a service. Ever said to yourself, I have this document somewhere, why don’t they? Ever noticed a spelling error or a missing connection in a noteup record? If you were a Wikipedia editor, you would correct misinformation, right?

Today’s Tip: Be a Wikipedian, take responsibility for missing data.

By example, I sent this email to [email protected] – the “contact us” email for the Privy Council Office.

Subject: Gap in the Orders in Council Database

Hello, when reviewing recent orders in council this morning, I noticed a significant gap in data in the orders in council database located at http://pco-bcp.gc.ca/oic-ddc.asp?lang=eng&page=secretariats.

The gap is between:

________________________________________
2012-0211 2012-03-01 CIC
Act Citizenship Act
Subject CITIZENSHIP (3)
Precis Citizenship
Attachments 1-OIC / DDC

________________________________________
2012-0092 2012-02-27 PMO
Act Public Service Employment Act
Precis Appointment of BILL JONES of Ottawa, Ontario, to be Deputy Commissioner of Revenue, to hold office during pleasure for a term of five years.
Attachments 1-OIC / DDC

Please alert me when the missing orders in council are included in the database.

Kind regards,
Shaunna Mireau

All of the Canadian legal publishers I have dealt with over the years have been happy to get feedback about database corrections. If you see an error, send a friendly email to have it corrected. It will help everyone.

I invite myself to meetings all the time, practice group meetings in particular. In our law firm we use Outlook scheduling, at least we try, to reduce the number of “is everyone free for a meeting at X time” emails and phone calls.

When you are meeting with folks outside your organization, you may want to try Doodle for the same effect. Doodle will let you propose meeting times, capture the preferred availability of people you would like to attend, and then assist with scheduling.

Check it out at http://www.doodle.com/.

Hat Tip to Annette Demers who writes for Slaw along with many other tasks and talents. Doodle was also mentioned in a Slaw post by Omar as an option for motion scheduling.

Are you using Doodle?

There are two possible approaches to personal current awareness:

1. Develop excellent searching skills so that you can find what you need when you need it
2. Pick a fairly narrow specialty and read everything new about that that you can find

I often recommend the first approach to students or junior lawyers who haven’t decided their particular area of legal interest.  Most lawyers I know make a best attempt at the second approach once they find their practice niche, but then most lawyers I know work at mid-size or larger firms where they refer things outside their niche area to colleagues, usually within their organization.

For all the generalists, who like to see a little taste of every area, and who subscribe to Westlaw Canada’s LawSource, there is the Canadian Abridgment eDigests. This weekly email list offers new digests added to the Canadian Abridgment by area of law and is shareable within the scope of the license agreement.

Here is an example of the Aboriginal Law eDigest archive and the Frequently Asked Questions about the product.

What is your favourite general current awareness tool?

I wrote about the trouble I have with Acronyms yesterday at Slaw. Today’s Tip: Use an Acronym Dictionary!

I have a nice little book on my reference shelves called Acrobuster. It is a dictionary of Canadian English acronyms, initialisms and abbreviations.  It is available in these libraries. There are other print sources, but I like this one because it is Canadian.

There are also online Abbreviation or Acronym Dictionaries:

Abbreviations.com
Internet Slang Dictionary & Translator
Acronyms and Abbreviations from Businessballs.com
Acronyms search tab at The Free Dictionary

Do you have any favourite sources?

There is good leagal content that doesn’t necessarily come in the neat packages that we usually look in.  Though our commercial legal database subscriptions have linked, vetted, edited, and easily available content, legal researchers would be remiss if they didn’t look for open access journal content as well.

Regular Slaw and Slaw Tips readers will be aware of legal content on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN).  See Lyonette Louis-Jacques’ May 2011 Slaw post for indexes to this and other journal content.

The University of Windsor Law Library has a nice list of open access law journals. Worth a look if you are searching for commentary from law journals.

Today’s Tip is a simple reminder to view by “latest activity date”.

The Parliament is back in session and those Slaw Tips readers for whom monitoring legislation is a regular task will appreciate one of the features of LegisINFO. This feature is to view the new information added to the service using the Latest Activity Date filter.  Latest activity date is a Sort by feature.  The default sort is by Bill number, which is useful if you know what you are looking for, or if you want a snapshot of status for multiple bills.

Check out Sort by Latest Activity Date to see how useful this is.

Happy monitoring.

• Nicholas on Software Tools for Editing
• Jamie on Software Tools for Editing
• Steve Coughlan on ‘I Hope This E-Mail Finds You Well’
• Lyn on Womxn
• Celia Chandler on Gross Negligence

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