: A consensus is emerging in law schools across Canada and the US that AI has no place in teaching the core curriculum, because it impedes student learning, especially in firstyear. Schools are beginning to follow the University of Chicago’s lead in banning AI in first-year core courses. Some profs are also banning laptops in classrooms — taking every precaution to shield students’ developing minds from the corrosive effects of AI. Michael Plaxton, one of the leading voices in Canada thinking through the many challenges AI poses to legal education, crystallizes the argument: “The case for law schools must be . . . [more] The post The Argument for Encouraging Student Use of AI in First-Year Law appeared first on Slaw
: This submission is part of a column swap with the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) bimonthly member magazine, AALL Spectrum . Published six times a year, AALL Spectrum is designed to further professional development and education within the legal information industry. Slaw and the AALL Spectrum board have agreed to hand-select several columns each year as part of this exchange. Maria spent three weeks searching Google for divorce forms. She reworked an old petition a relative had filed 15 years ago and later paid for updated forms online that were actually available for free elsewhere. By the time she . . . [more] The post The Invisible Law Library: Making Legal Information Visible Through Outreach appeared first on Slaw
: Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from more than 80 recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible. This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Double Aspect 2. Civil Resolution Tribunal blog 3. David Whelan 4. Know How 5. The Court Double Aspect How Power Corrupts VI In years past, I had an occasional series of posts going to address the various meanings and implications of “Lord Acton’s Dictum” — power tends . . . [more] The post Monday’s Mix appeared first on Slaw
: In almost every context, first impressions are key. I would argue that, for lawyers, communicating clear expectations during that first meeting is an essential skill. It is not a skill that comes easily. I have spoken about this topic with many lawyers over the years. There seems to be a clear divide between newly-called lawyers who have a tendency to make grand promises and seasoned lawyers who temper expectations. There is no “right” or “wrong” approach here. Everyone has to figure out their own style. My own style has been to keep expectations low…. very low. I conduct on average . . . [more] The post Managing Client Expectations appeared first on Slaw
: The beginning of another academic year has me reflecting on what more we can give students beyond the curriculum. We spend considerable time thinking about what students need to know and what they need to be able to do. We develop learning outcomes, create assignments, design simulations, evaluate learning, and provide feedback. All those things are important. However, some of the most valuable learning opportunities are not found in the curriculum at all. Sometimes, they arrive in an email. I remember an interaction with a student from several years ago. The student had sent a series of emails that were, . . . [more] The post The Learning Opportunities We Don’t Plan For appeared first on Slaw
: This paper is part of a larger, multi-year project looking at representation, efficiency and outcomes in Ontario’s provincial court [1] . As outlined in an earlier Slaw piece on this project (“Using Representation Pathways to Explore Court Data” , October 2025), several parts of this research are ongoing. The paper highlights the “representation pathways” idea, which is being explored as a methodological tool and as a way of better understanding the experience of accused persons in the provincial criminal court system. The research is being carried out using an appearance-based database from the Ontario Court of Justice (OCJ). The data . . . [more] The post It Depends on How You Ask the Question: The True Number of Unrepresented Accused in the Ontario Court of Justice appeared first on Slaw
: Your mid-sized firm invested $500,000 recruiting four to five new students last year. By year five, 91 percent are gone. Your per-person investment was roughly $100,000 to $125,000. Add salary, training, and mentorship. Then they leave. The question worth asking is whether you hired the wrong people, or whether you didn’t integrate them. The data suggests the latter. When the National Association for Law Placement Foundation surveyed departing Canadian associates, 29 percent cited work quality concerns. Sixteen percent pointed to productivity standards they felt they weren’t meeting. Thirteen percent said the advancement path was unclear. Thirteen percent mentioned fit. Another . . . [more] The post Beyond Day One: The Onboarding System Firms Still Haven’t Built appeared first on Slaw
: This column presents excerpts from a student paper, completed under the University of Toronto’s Community Research Partnership in Ethics program; the full paper will be published by the National Self-Represented Litigants Project later this year. Over the past 20 years, Alberta’s family justice system has distinguished itself from other jurisdictions by implementing mandatory forms of assistance. In 2005, the Alberta government launched mandatory meetings for SRLs in provincial court, pursuant to the Intake and Caseflow Management Regulation. [1] Building on this, and recognizing the inherent difficulties associated with an SRL’s journey through the family law system, the new Family Justice . . . [more] The post The Utility of Mandatory Assistance for Self-Represented Litigants in Alberta appeared first on Slaw
: This is the sixth article in my series on RECLAIM, a cultural operating system for law firms built on how human beings are actually wired. Having covered Respect , Equity, Clarity , Learning , and Autonomy , I turn this month to the I: Inclusion. A few years ago, I coached an associate in the real estate group of a large firm. She could have written a recruiting brochure for her team without exaggerating a word. The group did the biggest deals in the city, and they knew it. They were proud of the work, and prouder of how they . . . [more] The post RECLAIM: I Is for Inclusion appeared first on Slaw
: I recently watched a movie, and one of the characters, who was bullied, made a very poignant statement. She said: “If the person who bullied me decided not to be mean, his life would not have changed... however, my life would have been profoundly different.” It struck me, that those who are unkind, would not lose anything by being kind. In fact, many benefits are derived from showing kindness to others. However, as we all know, the person who is on the receiving end of the bullying or unkindness, is affected in ways that reverberate for years, and at times, . . . [more] The post The Wellness Lawyer: “Kindness” appeared first on Slaw
: Two columns ago, I followed the money through a law firm’s student recruitment program and found nearly $500,000 a year in lawyer time and expenses before a single billable hour was worked. Last column, I followed that same money into the delegation of actual work and found that firms were quietly losing much of it back through vague instructions, overworked memos, and write-downs nobody quite wants to talk about. This column follows that same money to where it gets spent – on the reps junior lawyers used to log before anyone trusted them with something that mattered. Those reps are . . . [more] The post The Hidden Economics of the Vanishing Apprenticeship appeared first on Slaw
: Most of the common reasons for declining mediation are well known. These include concerns that it may be premature, that additional information is required, or that the opposing party is unreasonable. Other justifications include the belief that the law is clear, the case is strong, and mediation would only increase costs. Some of these concerns are legitimate. Not every dispute is suitable for mediation, and even appropriate cases may not be ready for mediation at a particular stage. Ontario has now had mandatory mediation in parts of the province for more than twenty-five years. The program began in Toronto and . . . [more] The post Reconsidering Common Objections to Mediation appeared first on Slaw
: I watch a lot of hockey – but mostly on television. This year I attended a playoff game of the PWHL’s Ottawa Charge at the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa. It was an exciting game, but for me there was one concerning moment, when I heard thousands of people chanting, “Refs, you suck!”, after a call on the ice against the home team. As a hockey fan, I too did not like some of their calls, or non-calls, but there is a critical difference between attacking a decision and attacking the person who made the decision. Before the game started, . . . [more] The post “Refs, You Suck!”: Personal Attacks on Decision Makers appeared first on Slaw
: The troika of artificial intelligence, pricing, and talent transience has been with us for some time now. As a result, traditional pyramid-structured law firms grappling with these bet-the-business juggernauts are at an inflection point. I propose a flatter way forward. I have been writing and talking about this issue for many years, most recently as part of my ‘The Law Firm’ series: Pyramid Rollover , Private Equity Puzzle , Disappearing Act , Foundational Rebuild , and now this one, Inflection Point. My argument throughout this series is that traditional law firm pyramid structures will not hold against AI, pricing, and . . . [more] The post The Law Firm Inflection Point appeared first on Slaw
: In recent years, the number of law librarians in public sector and academic roles has declined. Most notably, the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General (MAG) has reduced the staff of its Toronto-based law library to the point that, as of sometime in 2025, it no longer has a professionally staffed law library. [2] In other words, no actual librarians work at the law library of the Ministry of the Attorney General. [3] This deprofessionalization took place quietly and gradually, with no public announcement, no discussion in the legislature, and no opportunity for public scrutiny. The MAG is not the . . . [more] The post Where Are the Law Librarians? appeared first on Slaw
: Over the past few years, I’ve delivered presentations to legal groups and member organizations focussed on “Journey Mapping”. [1] Journey Mapping is the visual representation of an individual’s journey through a process that happens over time. It is a collection of touchpoints from the beginning to the end looking at the individual’s experience, the stages in a process, the actors and emotions. It sounds like a simple concept, right? But, what is most complex is trying to explain the value of Journey Mapping in the law, because there is exceptional value, and you only have to see it to see . . . [more] The post A Victim’s Criminal Justice Journey: The Value of Visual Mapping appeared first on Slaw
: Over the past several years, artificial intelligence has moved steadily from the margins of organizational life toward the centre of ordinary operations. It now appears throughout the systems organizations rely upon and the work their people perform, frequently arriving without any deliberate decision to adopt it. For a growing number of organizations, the question is no longer whether artificial intelligence will appear in some form. It has already arrived, and that development carries real implications for boards of directors. I have spent a fair amount of my career in and around boardrooms, working on questions of corporate governance, non-profit governance, . . . [more] The post What the Minutes Show: Boards and the Governance of AI appeared first on Slaw
: Earlier this year, a motion at the Ontario Superior Court paused while everyone in the room went looking for a quotation. The factum on one side quoted a decision of the Court of Appeal, and opposing counsel could not find the quoted words anywhere in that decision. He suspected the factum had been drafted with AI. The judge called a short recess, so the party who filed it could go and find the passage. [1] The citation was correct, and anyone who looked it up would have found exactly the case named. In this instance, AI produced a fake quotation . . . [more] The post Beyond Fake Cases: The Other Ways AI Is Going Wrong in Canadian Courts appeared first on Slaw
: December 30, 2022 was a momentous day in Canada’s copyright history, although it may not have been on the radar of the majority of the Canadian public. That is the date that the term of copyright protection in Canada changed to align with that of the United States, a requirement of the Canada-US-Mexico (CUSMA) trade agreement that came into force on July 1, 2020. Previously, Canada had the shortest copyright term of the three North American countries: the life of the author plus an additional 50 years. The CUSMA agreement forced the extension of that term to life plus 70 . . . [more] The post Claiming What’s Ours: Preserving the “Public” in the Public Domain appeared first on Slaw
: Each month, we tell you which five English-language cases and French-language cases have been the most viewed* on CanLII in the previous month and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about using CanLII-published AI-generated summaries of the case or case excerpts. For this past month, the five most-consulted English-language decisions were: 1. Kerr v. Baranow , 2011 SCC 10 AI-generated summary: Facts: Two unmarried partners cohabit for about 12 years and have two children together. The female partner leaves employment to relocate and assumes most childcare and domestic labour while the male partner builds a . . . [more] The post Wednesday: What’s Hot on CanLII? – September 2026 appeared first on Slaw
: This summer our law library intern (shout out to Bailey Kaye!) is reviewing our archival casebook collection for a digitization project. Among them was a casebook for exchange students arriving at Dalhousie Law School in 1978. It outlined an introduction to the common law, as provided by the Sir James Dunn Law Library. In this casebook, the Sir James Dunn Law Library included a helpful list of general information about library etiquette. Let’s review how you were to conduct yourself in the law library of 1978, shall we? The one rule that has survived nearly word-for-word, across nearly fifty years . . . [more] The post Briefcases & Cigarettes: The Law Library of 1978 appeared first on Slaw
: A longstanding sore spot in the world of dispute resolution is the gap between education and experience. For decades now, I have encountered mediation students eager to put their learning to work only to struggle to find the opportunity to do so. For those pursuing the ADR Institute of Canada’s Qualified Mediator (Q.Med) designation in Ontario, this real-life experience criterion is often the most elusive. After all, who would select a mediator with no experience? I touched upon this question slightly in this column years ago when I questioned the value of mediators promoting their mediation counts . For aspiring . . . [more] The post You Get Out What You Put In: All Is Fair in Love and Mediation appeared first on Slaw