The Stream

Upcoming Training Sessions for the New Rules

Kristina Oldenburg — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 14:43:00 GMT

The new Supreme Court Civil and Family Rules are coming into effect soon—need to know more about how the new rules will affect your practice? Here are training opportunities of interest to BC lawyers and legal support staff.

CPD hours, if any, vary. Please contact course providers for details about scheduling, content, and locations.

Civil Rules for Lawyers
CBA BC New Civil Rules
• Surrey, March 31 (Live)
• Richmond, May 3 (Live)

CLE BC New Civil Rules two-day course (for lawyers & legal support staff)
• Vancouver, April 26-27 (Live); also live webcast
• Victoria, May 13-14 (Live)
• Kelowna, May 20-21(Live)
• Prince George, June 3-4 (Live)
• Nanaimo, Penticton, June 15-16 (Video Repeat)
• Kamloops, Vernon, Duncan, Kelowna, Trail, Surrey, June 17-18 (Video Repeat)
• Dawson Creek, June 18-19 (Video Repeat)
• Cranbrook, Victoria, June 24-25 (Video Repeat)
• Courtenay, Prince George, June 25-26 (Video Repeat)

CLE BC New Supreme Court Civil Rules Noon Webcast (for lawyers & legal support staff)
• Webcast, March 30 (Live on web)

Dye & Durham Civil Rules Webinar
• Web, March 31

Law Courts Center New Civil Rules course series
• Vancouver & Richmond, Various dates March-June (Live-register for all or part of a series)

Trial Lawyers Association of BC The New BC Supreme Court Rules
• Kelowna, June 4 (Live)

Family Rules for Lawyers
CBA BC New Family Rules
• Kelowna, April 9 (Live)
• Nanaimo, April 21 (Live)

CLE BC Family Law: The New Supreme Court Rules (for lawyers & legal support staff)
• Vancouver, April 16 (Live); Also live webcast.
• Kelowna, April 19 (Live)
• Victoria, April 22 (Live)
• Terrace, May 15 (Video Repeat)
• Dawson Creek, Duncan, Kelowna, Surrey, and Vernon, May 28 (Video Repeat)
• Nanaimo, Penticton, June 8 (Video Repeat)
• Kamloops, June 10 (Video Repeat)
• Courtenay, Cranbrook, Prince George, Victoria, June 11 (Video Repeat)
• Trail, June 25 (Video Repeat)

Civil Rules for Legal Support Staff
CLE BC New Civil Rules 2010 for Legal Support Staff
• Vancouver, May 7 (Live); also live webcast

Family Rules for Legal Support Staff
CLE BC Family Law: The New Supreme Court Rules for Legal Support Staff
• Vancouver, May 12 (Live); also live webcast
• Surrey, Trail, June 25 (Video Repeat)
• Nanaimo, Penticton, July 13 (Video Repeat)
• Kamloops, Vernon, July 15 (Video Repeat)
• Dawson Creek, Duncan, Kelowna, Courtenay, Cranbrook, Prince George, Victoria, July 16 (Video Repeat)

Resources at BC Courthouse Libraries

We have the Civil Rules Transition Guide, by the Continuing Legal Education Society of British Columbia on order for all branches.

Check availability at your courthouse library.

We also purchase conference materials from CLE BC and TLABC that are available after their courses.

Web Resources
There is a table of concordance between the current and new Supreme Court Civil Rules, and links to more information on the Ministry of Attorney General’s website.

There’s also a concordance and links to more information for the new Family Rules.

If there’s something I’ve missed, please let us know.

Old US Reporters & Other International Materials in LLMC

Kristina Oldenburg — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 12:29:03 GMT

“I’m looking for Northrop v. Germania Fire Ins. Co. 4 N.W. 350 (1880).”

If you want an older US decision, try searching our online catalogue. We may have it through LLMC, an electronic resource available for in-library use.

LLMC contains a range of older US and international resources, with a random assortment of statutes, cases, and commentary, including words & phrases judicially considered.

Finding a Case in LLMC Using a Citation
Search the name of the reporter in our library catalogue. In this example, you can see the Northwestern Reporter for 1879-1942 is available both electronically and in microform. LLMC saves you having to retrieve the case from microform which can be, well…tricky. More importantly, it widens access—only Vancouver has this reporter in microform.

If you’re in a courthouse library with LLMC, click the Access available in Courthouse Libraries link:

A new window should open. Click the title associated with the volume you need. In this example, I'm looking for volume 4.

The first page of that volume should open. Use the page range information on the left to select the first page of the case you need (or select the range, if you know it).
Click Show Pages.

The page you've entered should open (this may take a moment).

Use the arrows (bottom left) to move between pages.

Printing Tip

If you want to print more than one page at a time, use the Page Range option to select the whole case.

In this example, the case is only two pages: 350-351.

Then use the printer icon at the top left of the LLMC document, not the Internet Explorer print option.

Email

Use the Save icon and then save to My Documents. Open your webmail and attach the file.

Save to your own USB

Use the Save icon and then navigate to My Computer.

Your USB will show up as something like E$ on 'Client' (E:). Save file.

Note: You must connect your USB to the computer before you log in and begin searching.

If you have any questions about using this or other materials, please contact the Vancouver Courthouse Library.

Point-in-Time for BC Acts and Regulations

Kristina Oldenburg — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 12:31:00 GMT

Need to see what a BC statute or regulation used to look like? QP LegalEze includes consolidations of BC legislation back to 1991, and regulations back to 2003.

CanLII has current BC legislation, but the point-in-time only goes back to 2009. Meanwhile, QuickLaw/LexisNexis includes repealed BC statutes since 1997, and point-in-time from 2000 onward.

QP LegalEze is an electronic product available to use, free of charge, at most BC Courthouse Libraries. Only the bound print versions of the statutes (check availability) are official.

Finding a Consolidation

Click the QP LegalEze icon to open the program.

Click the Agree button (bottom centre of page).

Scroll down and click the date you want. For example, I’d like to see what the Bee Act said in March 2003 about beekeepers entering property, so I’ll click the last consolidation date before that.

Click the + sign next to the consolidation number (top left of page):

It'll open a list of statutes, organized alphabetically. Click the + sign for the suitable letter of the alphabet, then the act's title. The act should open.

Tip: If clicking the title won't open the act, that means there's other content, like a table of changes. In that case, click the plus sign next to the title, and then choose the material that you want to view.

Searching within a Consolidation

Click the Search tab at the top of the page:

Choose the act(s) you want to search by checking the box to the left of its title. Enter search terms and click Search.

Tip: Select the Advanced search tab so QP LegalEze finds different forms of your search words (e.g. enters and entering in addition to enter). You can also select "Find synonyms."

My search terms are highlighted in blue in the results.

Clicking a blue highlighted term will show it within the context of the act. Note that my search terms enter and property are still highlighted.

Updating

The consolidation is for February 13, 2003, but my bees escaped in March 2003. To check for changes, I turn to the Table of Legislative Changes at the end of a 2004 volume of the Statutes of British Columbia. It doesn't show any in-force changes between the date of the QP LegalEze consolidation and my date of interest.

Printing Tips

Use the Print Preview button on the top right instead of the browser's printer option.

If you'd like to print a page showing the consolidation date and that information isn't on the act itself, click the consolidation number.

This should produce a page with the consolidation date (only works for 1997-Feb 2006 consolidations).

If you'd like help updating a BC statute in the print version, please call or visit the Vancouver Courthouse Library.

Online Point-in-Time Searches for Federal Legislation

Kristina Oldenburg — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:08:00 GMT

Haven’t researched federal legislation for a while? It may be easier than you remember, particularly if you use some electronic resources that are now available for free online.

For Canadian statutes, you can find fairly current versions, and older versions back to 2003, through CanLII and the Department of Justice. CanLII even has a neat feature displaying side-by side comparisons of two versions of the same act.

Comparing Versions in CanLII
Search the title of an act through CanLII. Click the link under the act’s title (for a really long act, like the Criminal Code, it may take a few moments to load):

This shows you the most current version. Note the “last updated” statement.
Click the box to the left of the two versions you want to see, and click compare.

Scroll down to the section you want. The top of each column shows the dates for that version. Since there was no Section 27.1 of the Criminal Code in 2003, only a red line is visible. In the recent version, the newer section is highlighted in green with historical information underneath.

Department of Justice
Federal legislation back to 2003 is also available on the Department of Justice website. Click Advanced - Point-in-Time (vertical bar along the left of your screen).

Search for a statute by title or chapter number, and select a date that you’d like to see. Click Search.

Click the title to see your statute:

The paid subscription service LexisNexis/Quicklaw has a similar feature, which includes point-in-time legislation back to 1999 for most federal acts, and 1988 for criminal statutes.

For older print materials, phone or visit the Vancouver Courthouse Library or a regional Courthouse Library (check availability).

Courthouse Libraries and the Olympics

Mandy Ostick — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:08:27 GMT

Courthouse libraries are open as usual for the duration of the Olympic games. Some of our staff at the Vancouver Courthouse Library have made adjustments to our hours to deal with transportation challenges during the Olympics but impact on our services will be minimal. Festivities at Robson Square adjacent to the courthouse are already in full swing - and when the zip line opens people will be lining up on the bridge over Smithe St between the court buildings.

Hours for the Vancouver Courthouse Library:
From February 12 to February 28 the library is open Monday to Friday, 8:30 am - 4:30 pm. Phone and email service are available as usual during these hours.

Photocopy and books orders:
Please expect delays if sending or receiving library materials by post as mail service to the courthouse will be operating on a reduced schedule. This applies to all BC courthouses during the Olympics, not just Vancouver.

To the best of our knowledge there will be no changes to after hours access to the Vancouver Courthouse Library for members of the legal community and no changes to access to the underground parking lot. The Nelson Street entrance to the courthouse and the Great Hall will be closed throughout the games - please use the Smithe Street entrance.

We'll be in close contact with building security during the Olympics and will let you know if any additional access restrictions to the library are introduced.

The English Reports: A Comparison of HeinOnline and CommonLII

Drew Jackson — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:14:53 GMT

"I've got this weird citation and don't know where to look: 'The Prince George, 3 Hagg. 376'"

One of my favorite moments on the reference desk is when someone asks for help finding a case from the English Reports. An amazing feat of legal publishing, the English Reports reproduce over 100,000 early English cases from the years 1220 to 1873, many of which continue to be cited in Canadian cases.

We're lucky in the Vancouver courthouse library, as we have three options for clients: the print English Reports, HeinOnline, and CommonLII (the Commonwealth Legal Information Institute). In the last two years, both HeinOnline and CommonLII have added the full reprint of the English Reports to their mix of databases. Now that those sources have had some time to establish themselves (and for us to use them), I thought a comparison might be helpful.

Source	Coverage	Strengths	Weaknesses
HeinOnline	full reprint of English reports (all 176 volumes)	more search features (e.g., highlighted keywords) PDFs of reports are crisper, more readable on screen more printing options	need a subscription (although in our resource and regional library locations, the library subscribes to HeinOnline for free use on all public computers)
CommonLII	full reprint of English reports (all 176 volumes)	free fast surprisingly versatile in its search options	PDFs of reports tend to be slightly washed out, harder to read on screen

To test out the two sources, I ran three types of searches on each:

Where I have the name of the case only: "I'm looking for Saunders v. Vautier"
Where I have the citation only: "I have a citation I don't recognize: 8 Co. Rep. 132a"
Where I have a keyword or two but not much else: "I know there’s an old English case that had a great quote about the defence of fair comment in a defamation case, something about the comments being in a fair spirit"

Coverage

Both HeinOnline and CommonLII feature all 176 volumes of the English Reports. The full text of all 124,000 plus cases can be searched on both sources. No difference there.

Search Experience

Both HeinOnline and CommonLII handled the case name search brilliantly. Each has a fairly easy way to specifically search by case name (HeinOnline's is a little better, but both sources can do this). The Saunders case was the first result for each.

For the citation search, both sources struggled. I thought HeinOnline would have an edge, as they have a dropdown option that allows a citation search. In fact, they have two dropdown options: one for an English Reports citation, and another for a "nominative citation" (the original report citation, such as our example "8 Co. Rep. 132a"). But neither citation option turned up our result in the first 25 results. Nor did a keyword search. A phrase search turned up 0 results. CommonLII didn't fare much better. Finally, I thought the "a" in the page number might be messing things up. Sure enough, pulling out the "a" from the citation, CommonLII returned the case, Turnor's Case, as the first result. The same strategy on HeinOnline returned the case as the 12th result. So far, still more or less a draw.

It was with the keyword search where I thought HeinOnline might really dominate. I decided on a proximity search:

fair /10 spirit and "fair comment"

This approach worked well on both sources. In fact, I was totally impressed with CommonLII, where the quote I was looking for was in the first result, Hedley v. Barlow (1865), 176 ER 541. A nice win for proximity searching. On HeinOnline, the case was sixth in the result list. One feature on HeinOnline that really shines with this kind of search is that in their results list, you can view the matching text pages, showing the search terms highlighted.

Features

Speaking of features, HeinOnline does have an edge there. HeinOnline delivers really solid relevancy results. Their PDFs of the original reports are crisp, very readable on screen, and print out great.

That said, CommonLII totally held its own in this quick comparison. Searches are fast, it supports both simple searching and more complex types of searches, and you can slice and dice search results in many ways. CommonLII is a great option for finding cases from the English Reports, particularly given that it's free and accessible anywhere.

2010 - Year of the Video

Mandy Ostick — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 11:03:10 GMT

In a Vancouver Law Librarian Blog post highlighting Gowlings' 2010 Trendwatch Report, which uses video to present 5 of the 6 legal trend items, Steve Matthews comments "I can't help but think this is going to be a big year for video."

I can't help but agree! For example, just last week Slaw featured several posts that discuss online delivery of multimedia content to the legal community including:

Non-Print Guides to Legal Research

The LCO and e-Learning

E-Learning Changing the Face of Law

A comment by Daniel Poulin pointing out that the Supreme Court case Canada (Prime Minister) v. Khadr, 2010 SCC 3 includes a link to video content in paragraph 7.

Courthouse Libraries BC has recently introduced two new videos of potential interest to the legal community. These are "How To" videos that demonstrate how to use the new Clicklaw HelpMap and how (and why) to set up an account on the Courthouse Libraries BC website.

Here's our video demonstrating the top 5 things you can do on the Clicklaw HelpMap (on , embedded below):

And here's our video demo on how to create an account on our website in 90 seconds or less plus the 3 main benefits of creating a website account (on , embedded below - also available in larger format on our website):

We're increasingly convinced that video can be a very effective format for online instruction and have more video content in the works for 2010. If you have any feedback on our new videos, please let us know.

Gordon Turriff on Self-Governance of the Legal Profession

Mandy Ostick — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 10:33:00 GMT

The Law Society of BC has provided us with an audio file of Self-Governance as a Necessary Condition of Constitutionally Mandated Lawyer Independence in British Columbia, a speech by Gordon Turriff, QC.

Mr Turriff gave this speech on September 17, 2009 at the Conference of Regulatory Officers, Perth, Australia, during his year as President of the Law Society.

To listen to the speech, download the MP3
(Right click the link - Save Link or Target As...). 12.6 MB (1 hr 10 min)

The text of the speech is also available on the Law Society website (PDF, 28 pages).

Website Update: Go Ahead, Hide the Banners

Mandy Ostick — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 13:52:30 GMT

On Friday January 15 we added a new release to our new website. As well as making improvements to search results sorting, display of records, and website account creation, the two most visible changes we've introduced on the website are:

You can customize the homepage to a greater degree. If you prefer a homepage with minimal graphics or prefer to see Search and Frequent Requests closer to the top of the homepage, now you can click Hide to permanently hide the banner (whenever you use the same computer). If you click Hide while logged into your website account, your preference is remembered wherever you log in.

We've added RSS feed images to help you find the RSS feeds on our homepage and each of our Practice Portals. We encourage you to subscribe to:

Our team blog The Stream for discussion of legal research and library news
New & Notable for updates on proclamations, Supreme Court of Canada cases, judicial appointments, new books in our libraries, court rules amendments and more
As we post to New & Notable quite frequently, if you prefer you can subscribe to only New & Notable posts pertaining to Civil Litigation, Family Law, Personal Injury, Wills & Estates, or Practice Management & Technology.

Please continue to let us know what you would like to see on the Courthouse Libraries BC website in 2010.

On the Knowledge Network: 100 Years of the BC Court of Appeal

Denise Caldwell — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 15:56:58 GMT

Though the Heavens Fall: 100 Years of the BC Court of Appeal is an hour long documentary that highlights the history of the BC Court of Appeal and its place in the fabric of British Columbia. Archival imagery, newspaper articles and captivating charcoal-styled animations share the stage with interview footage of lawyers and justices who tell the story of the landmark cases heard by the court in the last 100 years and how they are a reflection of the society of day. Pivotal cases are discussed in a manner that highlights the importance of the appeals process in interpreting and administering the law.

One of the earliest, and most famous, cases featured in the documentary is that of the Komagata Maru, the ship carrying Sikh, Muslim, and Hindu immigrants who were denied permission to land in Vancouver in 1914. Other cases cover topics such as rape and whether a woman's past can be considered when determining sexual consent; logging on Meares Island in 1984 and the associated issues of land claims, treaties, and minority rights; and more recently same-sex marriage. In each example the documentary explores how the Court of Appeals is called upon to search for errors or miscarriages of justice in various court cases. Each example also reminds us of the fallibility of human nature, and that judges are indeed human.

Though the Heavens Fall: 100 Years of the BC Court of Appeal is a co-production of the Knowledge Network and the Justice Education Society. It will air on the Knowledge Network throughout 2010. It will also be available through the Justice Education Society for use by schools or for public viewing. A companion Teacher's Guide will be distributed along with the DVD in 2010 to all Law 12 teachers for use in the classroom.

Clips can be viewed through the Knowledge Network.

The show will next air on Wednesday January 13 at 11:00 pm.

New Resource for the Public: Clicklaw HelpMap

Brenda Rose — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:27:30 GMT

"I can't afford a lawyer and I'm not eligible for legal aid; where else can I find legal help?"

Over the last few years, we've seen a steady rise at the library in reference questions from members of the public. In addition to pointing the way to information resources, one of the ways we try to help is to refer the public (where appropriate) to other agencies in the community that provide assistance. Making good referrals can be challenging: service levels change, locations or hours change, new agencies come on stream. Wouldn't it be great, we've often thought, if all this information was in one easily accessible place?

Now it is! This month we launched the Clicklaw HelpMap.

Clicklaw is a public-oriented website that features legal information and education. With the new HelpMap section, we've added services that provide law-related assistance. Integrated with Google Maps, the HelpMap assists the public in finding those who can provide free or low-cost assistance with legal problems in their community in BC. The HelpMap includes:

pro bono clinics, community legal clinics, and legal aid offices
courthouse libraries
court registries and key government services
Native Courtworkers and organizations with community legal advocates
victim services programs and dozens of other law-related helping services

Clicklaw has been developed in collaboration with over two dozen agencies that provide legal information, education & help to the public in BC. Courthouse Libraries BC has led the project, as part of our mission to improve access to legal information for the public as well as the legal community. We're continuing to add services and resources to the website. We invite you to check out the HelpMap, and let us know that you think.

Homepage Links: Announcing Our New List

Mandy Ostick — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 16:57:37 GMT

In response to many requests, we've reintroduced a list of selected websites of interest to the legal community to our website's homepage.

We're really pleased with the response when we asked for your suggested key websites for our homepage links list - thanks to our users for your interest. Feedback indicated that on the whole you would like to continue to see the links that were featured on Courthouse Libraries BC's homepage prior to our website relaunch. The new addition to our list is the Legal Services Society. This link was suggested as a convenience for lawyers who do online billing.

Our new Quick Links are:

We also heard about the areas of our own website that you think could use a higher profile such as links, BC proclamations, and the library catalogue. Your feedback will help us target areas of our website to work on as we prepare for our first 2010 update. In the meantime, we're planning a pre-Christmas release that, among other improvements, will speed up the load time of the website and introduce a website customization option for those who prefer limited use of graphics.

Search Engines for Law Firm Content: A Comparison

Drew Jackson — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:51:06 GMT

Ted Tjaden reported on Slaw this week that he updated his Custom Google Search of Canadian Law Firms, and plans to compare it to another search engine that crawls the sites of law firms, Fee Fie Foe Firm Canada. To help get the conversation started, here’s a brief comparison of these two search tools and a third that also allows an aggregated search over selected Canadian law firm websites, Lexology.

Search engine	Coverage	Strengths	Weaknesses
Custom Google Search of Canadian Law Firm Websites	51 large Canadian law firm websites	no ads clean results listing	coverage limited to larger firms
Fee Fie Foe Firm Canada	over 1500 Canadian law firm websites	broadest coverage, including small firms, specialized blogs, etc. can filter by time period	Google ads
Lexology	approx 25 mostly large Canadian law firms	highly relevant results feature-rich: customized RSS feeds, sharing tools	have to register/login coverage limited to larger firms

To test out the three tools, I ran three searches on each. I looked for articles discussing:

the 2008 Supreme Court of Canada decision in Keays v. Honda Canada Inc., which clarified the nature of damages that can be awarded on the termination of employment
the new British Columbia civil rules of court, scheduled to come into force in July 2010
the Apology Act, which came into force in Ontario in April 2009, following the lead of several other provinces, including British Columbia in 2006

Coverage

Both Custom Google Search of Canadian Law Firms and Fee Fie Foe Firm Canada are powered by Google Custom Search, which allows a user to search over multiple websites handpicked by the site owner. The results listings offer a Google-like experience, although they can be customized somewhat. Lexology, meanwhile, aggregates law firm publications in a central repository.

Fee Fie Foe Firm Canada offers the widest coverage by a large margin. It crawls over 1500 Canadian law firm websites, compared to 51 for Custom Google Search of Canadian Law Firms. Lexology aggregates publications from approximately 25 Canadian law firms. This difference in coverage was noticeable in all three searches. Looking for analysis of the new court rules coming next year in BC, among the top results on Fee Fie Foe Firm Canada were several posts on the new rules on the ICBC Law Blog from Victoria lawyer Erik Magraken. This blog isn’t covered by the other two search tools. Like an increasing number of blogs, it has a separate URL from the main firm site. As more and more law firms offer specialized blogs to focus on specific topics and practice areas, an increasing amount of valuable content is being published away from the main firm website.

Search Experience

Fee Fie Foe Firm’s major weakness is the Google ads, three sets of them no less, one above the search results, another in the right column, and a banner ad at the bottom of the search results. The other two search tools are ad free, and offer cleaner search screens. The need to develop a revenue stream is completely understandable, but there’s a lot of screen real estate given over to the ads on Fee Fie Foe Firm.

In terms of returning relevant result sets, all three tools performed well. For the search for analysis of the SCC decision in Keays v. Honda Canada, all three search engines returned in the top five results such quality papers as this one, this one and this one. Lexicology had a slight edge, with consistently relevant results in the top five, although I suspect that had as much to do with its more carefully handpicked collection of articles than with its search tool’s relevancy formula.

Features

On features, Lexicology is certainly the strongest. You can filter searches by country, by topic, or by firm. Lexicology also offers a number of slick additional features, including the ability to build customized RSS feeds, to use sharing tools, and to link to related articles. In addition to its relatively limited coverage of Canadian firms, Lexicology’s main weakness is that you need to register to search at all (although registration is free).

As Canadian law firms publish more and more content to the web, tools that help us find this content will become more valuable. It's great to see specialized search tools like these ones show real promise.

Wikipedia in Court Cases

Drew Jackson — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:56:28 GMT

It's interesting that the same month in which Wikipedia is reported to be in serious decline, an article highlights that in the US, the number of court opinions relying on or pointing readers to Wikipedia is exploding. In their article "Wikipedia in Court: When and How Citing Wikipedia and Other Consensus Websites is Appropriate", Jason Miller and Hannah Murray note that "Wikipedia" had 504 cites in the federal and state cases database on Lexis as of late 2009.

In Canada, courts haven't cited Wikipedia that frequently, but it is happening more and more. Canadian courts have cited Wikipedia to define such terms as "hedge", "trust", "shock jock" and "Thiru" (used as a password in a credit card fraud case). At least a couple of Canadian courts have been dismissive of Wikipedia as a source: "I am aware of the checkered reliability of this encyclopedia" (de Montigny J. in Moiseev v. Canada); "the use of information from the Wikipedia Web site is highly questionable" (Martineau J. in Fi v. Canada). But from what I could find, the only court to consider the reliability of Wikipedia at any length has been the trial court in a Quebec case, R. v. Cianfagna. Finding that a Wikipedia entry for "rubbing alcohol" was reliable, the judge considered that there had been many authors of the article, that there was little controversy evident from the history and discussion pages, and that the article was referenced. An appeal was allowed on other grounds, with the appeal court not commenting directly on the trial judge's citing of Wikipedia.

So the question remains: when is citing Wikipedia in court decisions appropriate? Miller and Murray offer a helpful framework in their article. They propose that Wikipedia can be cited when it is appropriate to cite the wisdom of the crowd:

"The wisdom of the crowd is an appropriate and valuable reference when consensus itself is at issue, the information is generally known, or the content is easily verifiable."

The authors go on to give examples of how this principle applies to US cases that have cited Wikipedia. Good examples of where Wikipedia was cited include where the colloquial meaning of a phrase is at issue ("car accident"), to define a party's likely meaning of common industry words used in an email ("fabs"), or what the average consumer would believe a contract term meant ("business days"). The authors offer that citing Wikipedia is inappropriate where the information is of a technical nature such that it would only be reliable if the editor possessed specialized expertise, or where the editors/contributors are likely to be inflamed about an issue.

This framework appears to be a good one for making the best use of Wikipedia in legal research.

Homepage Links: Suggestions Are Open

Mandy Ostick — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:52:03 GMT

Since the launch of our new website we've received a lot of helpful feedback. We're listening and are working on implementing a lot of your great ideas in the near future. One thing is clear, a lot of you miss our homepage links list. We are happy to bring the links list back to meet what continues to be a strong need – but would like to introduce a slight twist. Instead of us choosing the links that we think you might like, we would like the homepage links list to be created by our users, for our users. Let us know which websites should be on the list. CanLII? Courts of British Columbia? Supreme Court Rules? BC Laws? Other sites we might not have considered?

Please send us feedback or comment on our blog to tell us your top 5 websites for the BC legal community. We'll use your suggestions to craft a new homepage links list. The new links list will be up in a week or two. We'll also share the suggested websites here on the Stream in case you're looking for ideas for add to your own favourites.