Please don’t miss my exciting lightning talk at the CALL/ACBD 2021 Conference:
Confessions of a New Law Library Director
Monday May 31st, 12:45 – 1:45 PM CST
What’s a new law library director to do?
Many of us entering this profession have little management experience. Member Alan Kilpatrick became Co-Director of the Law Society of Saskatchewan Legal Resources department in 2020. He will speak candidly about his experiences as a new manager, highlighting the top tips and practical lessons he has learned along the way. We are all being asked to do more with less and many CALL/ACBD members may be asked to step outside of the box and into a management role at some point.
Are you a new professional, curious about management, or new to management? Then this must-see session is for you! The tips and lessons learned will be tailored to newer and midlevel professionals.
Register for the CALL/ACBD 2021 Conference here.
By Alan Kilpatrick
Are you attending the virtual CBA Mid-Winter Meeting 2021 this week? The Law Society’s Legal Resources team is hosting a virtual exhibitor booth this year. What can we do for you? Please stop by our booth “virtually” to connect with us over video and text chat!
This is a great opportunity to connect with members of your Legal Resources team and learn about the latest online resources you can access through the Members’ Resource Section. We can make sure you’re ready for the next generation of legal research tools.
Our innovative information services and resources advance the Law Society’s Strategic Plan, support you and your competency, and increase access to legal information for all throughout the province.
It’s no secret that you have access to the best collection of online and print resources available to members of any law society in the country. Regardless of your practice location, firm size, or resource cost, rest assured you have access has access to the resources they need, on-demand, to practice law competently.
Contact us by email, chat, or phone with your legal information questions. As your legal information navigators, we can find whatever you’re looking for. If it takes longer than five minutes to find, ask us!
Watch our booth’s Welcome Video here:
By Alan Kilpatrick
I’m running for Vice-President 2 of CALL/ACBD. I’m passionate about this association and its members.
We’re all innovators. Our competitive skillset and robust knowledge of the creation, use, and sale of legal information ideally positions us to partner with the legal community and increase legal information access. As VP2, I’ll broaden CALL/ACBD’s reach and visibility to a wider group, increasing our opportunities to connect with the broader legal and legal-information communities, better communicating our capabilities and skills. Let’s embrace change and reimagine what we can be. We have the knowledge and the skills to make a difference.
My diverse experience building relationships with clients and collaborating with stakeholders in law, academic, and government libraries makes me the ideal VP2 candidate to support you, liaise with our partners, and chart a successful course for CALL/ACBD. As association Social Media Coordinator over the past six years, I’ve worked closely with many of you, our committees, SIGs, and conference planning groups, learning about the many vibrant activities of our association, the passion of our membership, and the value of our profession. I’m grateful for the numerous opportunities to serve the association, including as a member of the Executive Board for the past two years. I want to give back as VP2 and continue the important work being done on the Board.
This coming February remember, vote #KilpatrickForVP2! Follow my campaign at LibraryCanuck.com/election. Reach out to me at alan.kilpatrick@lawsociety.sk.ca or @Alan_Kilpat. I want to hear from you about your thoughts on CALL/ACBD. Thank you.
Watch a video version of my message here:
By Alan Kilpatrick
The Law Society’s searchable legal databases (Bills, Cases, Conduct Review, Ethics Ruling, and Sentencing Digests) were officially relaunched on a modern, mobile-friendly, and cloud-based database platform on Friday, November 20th, concluding a year-long Legal Resources project.
Forty More Years of Innovation
For the past forty years, Saskatchewan legal practitioners, the judiciary, and members of the public have relied on the free, timely, and reliable access to legal information provided by our innovative tools and databases. Migrating our valuable and unique data to this modernized database platform will ensure that all Saskatchewanians can continue to enjoy access to the Saskatchewan legal information they need for decades to come.
The relaunch is a demonstrable indicator of our commitment to legal information access for all Saskatchewanians. It represents our ongoing investment in our membership, Saskatchewan’s justice system, and legal information access for all in this province. CanLII, Canada’s open-access national law database, took note of the relaunch on Twitter:
Congratulations to the @LawSocietySask for 40 years of providing access to legal info tools Saskatchewanians need, and for the launch of your new database platform!https://t.co/kKOjz0nQ31 pic.twitter.com/eXPYdKGCzf
— CanLII (@CanLII) November 25, 2020
Earlier this week, we presented (Re)Launching Your Saskatchewan Legal Databases (CPD 287), a free webinar eligible for one CPD hour. Were you one of the almost 150 members who attended the webinar, described by one attendee as, “…one of the best CPDs ever”?
Fortunately, you can still watch and register for your free CPD!
Don’t miss out on your chance to learn the insider tips and tricks you’ll need to get the most out of our databases!
By Alan Kilpatrick
Presents under the tree, frost in the air, chestnuts roasting over a fire, and … Canadian law blogs?
That’s right! With the holiday season right around the corner, it’s that time of year where we nominate our favourite Canadian legal content for the Canadian Law Blog Awards (Clawbies). The 2020 Clawbies mark the fifteenth anniversary of the award.
Voting is easy. Write a blog or social media post nominating your favourite Canadian legal content. Tweet the post using the official hashtag #Clawbies2020. The Clawbie team reviews the nominees and announce the winners on New Year’s Eve.
Any freely accessible Canadian legal content can be nominated for a Clawbie: blogs, videos, podcasts, social media, etc.
On that note, here are my 2020 Clawbie nominations:
• CanLII’s Commentary Collection
Canada’s leading proponent of free access to law and open legal publishing, CanLII’s commentary collection grew by leaps and bounds in 2020. The list of commentary is extensive: the British Columbia Civil Litigation Manual, the Canadian Journal of Family Law, and more!
• Great LEXpectations
Great LEXpectations, the wonderfully named Manitoba Law Library blog, has been active in the Canadian legal blogosphere since 2017. Maintaining an active blog can be hard work! We have to hand it to the Manitoba Law Library team, your collection of research tips, resources, and legal news is great!
• Great Library Twitter Account
The Great Library leads the way with its engaging, effective, and entertaining Twitter account. The Great Library staff craft a variety of helpful weekly posts: Legal research tips on #TipsTuesday, search tips on #WednesdayWisdom, and the always delightful #FunFactFriday.
By Alan Kilpatrick
I am very excited to announce that today we are officially relaunching our searchable in-house Saskatchewan legal databases on a modern, mobile-friendly, cloud-based platform:
• Law Society of Saskatchewan Conduct Review Database
• Law Society of Saskatchewan Ethics Rulings Database
• Saskatchewan Bills database
• Saskatchewan Cases database
• Saskatchewan Court of Appeal Sentencing Digest
Saskatchewan legal practitioners, the judiciary, and members of the public can rely on the free, timely, and reliable access to legal information these databases provide.
Forty Years of Legal & Technical Innovation
Developed by your pioneering Law Society Library staff through the 1980s and 1990s, these databases represent Saskatchewan’s very first instances of legal and technical innovation. Our law library staff saw that Saskatchewan, as a small province, was not being well served by Canada’s commercial legal publishers and that there was a significant delay before our case law became available in commercial sources.
What did they do?
They boldly decided to go ahead and solve the problem themselves by stepping into the role of legal content creator, publisher, and database developer, creating databases to ensure Saskatchewan practitioners and residents could find, access, and use the law they needed. Through their forward-thinking innovation, they created the first online internet case law database created by a law society in Canada. Legal innovation is not new. Law libraries have been doing it for decades.
Why Did We Relaunch the Databases?
Over the past year, your Law Society Legal Resources team has led a major project to migrate these databases and their corresponding datasets to the new platform.
Our existing platform was out of date and we felt it was the right time to migrate our data. We remain firmly committed to providing legal information resources in the latest formats available. Legal information enhancements are not static. They are constantly evolving. We are constantly upgrading and advancing the resources practitioners and the public have access to.
These databases remain incredibly popular throughout the province, with Saskatchewan Cases receiving over 4000 hits a month alone. Why are they so popular? They are extremely powerful tools. Consider adding them to your practice and legal information toolkit.
Finally, the over forty years’ worth of structured data and content contained within these databases represents a valuable commodity for the Law Society, its members, and the citizenry of this province.
Need a Free CPD Credit Before the End of the Year?
Don’t miss (Re)Launching Your Saskatchewan Legal Databases. Our free webinar, open to members, non-members, and the public, qualifies for 1 free CPD Hour and is being held on Tuesday, November 24th from 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM CST. Throughout this webinar, we’ll introduce you to the “relaunched” Saskatchewan legal databases and offer a variety of tips and tricks to enable you to maximize their potential. Register here!
My special thanks to Christine Muldoon, Paul Westgate, Ken Fox, Melanie Hodges Neufeld and the rest of the Legal Resources crew for all the hard work they put into this project over the past year.
By Alan Kilpatrick
You know and love our in-house Saskatchewan legal databases: Cases, Sentencing Digest, Bills, Conduct Review, and Ethics Rulings. Since we launched them in the early 1990s, they’ve been a steadfast and reliable part of your practice toolkit.
Well, as Bob Dylan once said, “the times they are a-changin’.” Over the past year, your Legal Resources team has coordinated a major project to migrate these databases to an innovative cloud-based platform hosted by Lucidea. We’re excited to announce the updated databases are ready for launch this month.
We’re taking a big step towards the future of modern and robust legal information resources and we want you to be ready for this revolution in Saskatchewan legal resources.
Join your bearded librarian super duo, Ken Fox and Alan Kilpatrick, to learn about the new databases in (Re)Launching Your Saskatchewan Legal Databases CPD 287:
• Cases database
• Court of Appeal Sentencing Digest database
• Bills database
• Conduct Review database
• Ethics Ruling database
Throughout the webinar, we’ll offer a variety of tips to enable you to maximize the database’s potential.
Need a free CPD credit before the end of the year? CPD 287 qualifies for 1 free CPD Hour. Register here!
By Alan Kilpatrick
Starting Monday, August 31st, it’s going to be even easier to connect with us for information and research assistance. We’re launching our brand-new live chat feature!
Just head to the Legal Resources page and enter your question in the chatbox on the bottom right of the screen.
And that’s it! Either Ken Fox or I, your bearded law librarian duo, will respond promptly!
Chat with us Monday to Friday from 9:00am – 4:00pm. Outside these hours, you’ll see a small icon on the bottom right of the screen. Click on it and your question will be emailed to us!
As your legal information navigators, we can find whatever you are looking for. If it takes longer than five minutes to find, just chat with us!
It’s all part of our commitment to support your information and resource needs and add value to your work through innovation. We’re using technology to push the limits of how we support you.
You can continue to contact us by email or phone at:
1-877-989-4999 or 306-569-8020
Don’t expect us to be keeping it down or shushing you in the library stacks anymore, you’ll find us chatting up a storm!
By Alan Kilpatrick
Earlier this year, Thomson Reuters announced that the popular online version of O’Brien’s Encyclopedia of Forms was moving to the Westlaw Next (WLN) platform. Incorporating O’Brien’s content directly into WLN’s powerful platform offers enhanced searchability, usability, and integration for practitioners, researchers, and law librarians alike. You can check out the increased functionality you’re gaining through this “change of address” with this helpful chart.
Over the past month, your Legal Resources staff have been hard at work negotiating with Thomson Reuters to add the O’Brien’s content to the Law Society’s province wide WLN subscription. We’re excited to let you know that you can now access O’Brien’s Encyclopedia of Forms directly from the WLN homepage, simply by selecting the WLN link in the Members’ Resource Section.
WLN, remotely accessible to all Saskatchewan members through the Members’ Resource Section, is already home to a multiple of practitioner focused resources such as the Canadian Encyclopedic Digest, Canadian Abridgement, Source Products, and more. Starting today, it going to be even easier for you to access the great forms and precedents that make up O’Brien’s Encyclopedia of Forms.
It’s all part of our commitment to support you, maximize your access to resources, and aggressively innovate the future of your Law Society Library. We’ll continue to add value to your legal work during this uncertain time. Never fear, we’ve got your back.
Learn more about this change by watching this brief YouTube video, O’Brien’s Encyclopedia of Forms on WestlawNext Canada (11:51), prepared by Thomson Reuters:
Get in touch with us if you have any questions about the new platform. As your legal information navigators, we can find whatever you are looking for. Remember, if it takes longer than five minutes to find, ask us!
By Alan Kilpatrick
This talk was recently presented at the 2020 Canadian Association of Law Libraries Virtual Conference. You can watch the recording here:
Legal information professionals can play a crucial role in helping the public locate, access, and connect with reliable sources of legal information. Our competitive set of skills, our intimate knowledge of the creation, curation, and use of legal information, and our relationships and networks place us in a great position to facilitate public access to legal information.
Since January 2019, Ken Fox and I, Reference Librarians with the Law Society of Saskatchewan, have attended the main branches of the Saskatoon Public Library (SPL) and the Regina Public Library (RPL), respectively, as embedded Law Librarians, one afternoon and evening a month. We provide on-site legal information assistance: guiding patrons towards online and print sources, highlighting resources for further learning, teaching basic research skills, and, when necessary, suggesting referrals to organizations that provide legal advice. I am here to talk about our experiences and to update you on what we have learned.
Over the past five years, the Law Society of Saskatchewan has explored the role libraries and information professionals can play in improving legal information access through a variety of initiatives, such as Saskatchewan’s Access to Legal Information project. Like many courthouse libraries, we are open to the public, encourage the public to visit or contact us, and provide public visitors with information assistance. However, we have long strived to establish a more direct connection with members of the public searching for legal information. While brainstorming among our team, we realized that the public library could be an ideal place to better connect with the public. The public library, after all, is a place those with information needs visit seeking information and resources.
We already had robust relationships with RPL and SPL through Saskatchewan’s Access to Legal Information project. We approached the heads of programming at both library systems to pitch our On-site Law Librarian idea. We found them eagerly receptive, open to the suggestion, and actively searching for new program ideas. The Law Librarian On-site initiative was born!
Arriving for a session, a member of the front desk staff assists us in setting up a table and signage near the library entrance, visible to patrons entering and exiting. We bring a laptop as well as public legal information pamphlets along with us. We work with marketing staff at each library system to advertise upcoming sessions in the library program guide, social media, and website.
While facilitating public access to legal information, I see myself as a guide who can help provide those seeking information about the law with a good starting point that supports their burgeoning legal journey. Legal information access is a building block of access to justice. It enables people to learn about the law, identify legal options, and may prompt them to seek further legal assistance.
Many do ask us for legal advice, if we are lawyers, and for lawyer referrals. Here are the guidelines we have developed for our public legal information services. We are careful to indicate we are not lawyers and cannot provide legal advice. This does not diminish the value of what we do. Non-lawyers and legal librarians alike have a powerful role to play in the legal ecosystem.
Each session is four hours. On average, we assist six people per session. Some members of the public visit the library specifically to speak to us. Most seem to stumble upon us, then sit down to ask a question. Scheduling one session in the afternoon and another in the evening every month allows us to connect with different segments of public library patrons. Our evening sessions commonly coincide with a legal advice clinic held by Pro Bono Law Saskatchewan at the public library, leading to a higher number of Law Librarian on Site enquiries.
A typical interaction can take any where from five minutes to two hours. It is not uncommon to spend an hour or two demonstrating legislative and case law searching. For longer enquiries, we encourage the public to follow up with us and to come and visit us in the courthouse.
The most common areas of law asked about are criminal, family, residential/tenancy, small claims, and wills/estates law. Frequently, we are approached by those curious about what we offer, patrons who mistake us for public library staff, and by those who just want someone to chat with. Most often, we refer the public to Saskatchewan’s public legal information site, the Saskatchewan Court’s site, the Law Society’s site, and CanLII.
How successful is the program? We are still evaluating its success, though the service appears reasonably popular with a good stream of enquiries. Since mid-March, the initiative has been on hold due to Covid-19. We are currently working with RPL and SPL to resume the program virtually. We are looking forward to eventually resuming Law Librarian On-site as an in-person program in the future.
I encourage you to explore the potential of offering a similar service in your own communities’ public library. Please reach out to me if you have any questions. I am happy to help you set up your own Law Librarian On-site initiative. Let us be bold and actively reimagine what legal information professionals can do. We have the skills and knowledge to make a difference.
Thank you.
LibraryCanuck 