The Missing Link?
February 11th, 2012 § Leave a Comment
For many members of the general public seeking to understand the law, Wikipedia is the first and perhaps only stop.
I wrote a post (available on Slaw) that describes an experiment in contextual linking that resulted in dramatic shifts in traffic from Wikipedia to CanLII.
The lesson for me was that simple linking / referencing of existing law-themed Wikipedia content to high-quality, explanatory sources could successfully bring visitors closer to their objective of finding reliable legal information.
I’ve received a lot of positive feedback on the concept as well as several requests for suggestions of which Wikipedia articles might benefit from contextual links to credible, third-party material.
I will leave it to those interested in building links to make the connections, but to assist you, I am pleased to provide the following list of links to some of the Wikipedia articles that drove traffic to CanLII in January of 2012. Perhaps a glance at this list will provide the inspiration you seek.
Be sure to learn about and abide by Wikipedia standards for incorporating external links and remember, the goal is not about using Wikipedia to promote a third party, rather it is to provide reference points for those seeking deeper understanding of the legal questions that brought them to Wikipedia in the first place.
Happy linking!
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Have you read 2011′s top cases?
December 22nd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
[first published at http://www.slaw.ca/2011/12/22/have-you-read-2011s-top-cases/ ]
Subjective top ten lists are great for starting arguments given the improbability of any two people sharing precisely the same worldview. It’s a little tougher to engender heated debate over objectively measured top ten lists, but not impossible. After all, we can still dispute methodology and relevance! I invite Slaw readers to infer meaning and to offer analysis of the results.
So with that, I’m pleased to present for 2011 the top 10 most consulted cases on CanLII.
- Bruni v. Bruni, 2010 ONSC 6568
- Indalex Limited (Re), 2011 ONCA 265
- Dunsmuir v. New Brunswick, 2008 SCC 9
- Bedford v. Canada, 2010 ONSC 4264
- R. v. Grant, 2009 SCC 32
- Kerr v. Baranow, 2011 SCC 10
- R. v. Oakes, 1986 CanLII 46 (SCC), [1986] 1 SCR 103
- R. v. Stinchcombe, 1991 CanLII 45 (SCC), [1991] 3 SCR 326
- Baker v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 1999 CanLII 699 (SCC), [1999] 2 SCR 817
- Reference re Secession of Quebec, 1998 CanLII 793 (SCC), [1998] 2 SCR 217
Bruni rated 18,641 views and the Secession Reference came in at 5,105.
To get a sense of scale, compare these numbers with the 1000th most consulted case– which still attracted nearly 500 views.
Graphically, the results of the top 1000 most consulted cases present as a “long tail” (or for the mathematically inclined, as an asymptote).
(Click on image to enlarge)
Among cases actually decided in 2011, the top 10 looks like this:
- Indalex Limited (Re), 2011 ONCA 265
- Kerr v. Baranow, 2011 SCC 10
- JM (Re), 2011 CanLII 7955 (ON CCB)
- Century 21 Canada Limited Partnership v. Rogers Communications Inc., 2011 BCSC 1196
- United Food and Commercial Workers’ International Union, Local 1518 v. British Columbia (Labour Relations Board), 2011 BCSC 455
- Voltage Pictures LLC c. Untel, 2011 CF 1024
- Ontario (Attorney General) v. Fraser, 2011 SCC 20
- R. v. J.A., 2011 SCC 28
- Ontario Korean Businessmen’s Assoc. v. Seung Jin Oh, 2011 ONSC 6991
- Withler v. Canada (Attorney General), 2011 SCC 12
Indalex amassed a remarkable 17,433 views and Withler a respectable 2,825.
The graphical representation of the top 1000 among cases decided in 2011 is indistinguishable from the above chart (save for the Bruni peak). The honour of 1000thmost consulted case falls to Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation v. Alberta (Minister of Energy), 2011 ABCA 29 with 341 views.
Background and miscellanea:
- CanLII’s operations have been continuously funded by Canada’s provincial and territorial law societies (and by extension, Canada’s lawyers and notaries) since 2000 to allow legal professionals and the public to access primary legal information at no direct cost.
- CanLII’s database contains over 1 million documents and is on track to a record year of receiving nearly 7 million visits and delivering over 80 million page views
- While most documents on CanLII are decisions of courts and tribunals, page views of legislation and regulation outstrip page views of cases by a sizeable margin. For example, monthly Criminal Code page views exceed 20,000 andmonthly views of the Code civil du Québec exceed 15,000.
- CanLII is widely used by the legal profession (over 95% of lawyers responding to our fall mini-survey reported at least weekly use), but as a freely available tool its non-lawyer users are legion. Monthly unique visitors are routinely over 200,000. Consequently, the results might be considered a barometer of public interest, as well and possibly more so, than as one of legal significance.
- A “view” or “consultation” of a document is measured as the interaction of an individual with the case URL. Mere appearance of a case in a list of search results will not constitute a view, but opening it to inspect it will. Similarly, where a user subscribes to RSS feeds and a case appears in the list, the case view does not take place until it is opened.
- Results above aggregate views for a given decision across formats (PDF or HTML) and across French and English.
- No French language case cracked the overall top 10, but one, Voltage, ranked among decisions issued in 2011. Originally issued in French, and subsequently released in English as well, French language views alone would have placed this case at number 7
- Standings measured as of December 20th. If it turns out that thousands of Canadians spend the holidays reviewing the December 22nd SCC decision on the Securities Reference, I will gladly update the list accordingly so that historians might have an accurate record of the case law that most concerned Canadians in 2011.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! (on the terms and conditions below)
December 19th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
[reprint from http://www.flickr.com/photos/wildphotons/332316541]
From us (hereinafter “the wishor”) to you (hereinafter called “the wishee”): Please accept without obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, politically correct, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the northern winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all… and a financially successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2012 but with due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures or sects, and having regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform or dietary preference of the wishee.
By accepting this greeting you acknowledge and agree to the following terms and conditions:
* This greeting is subject to further clarification or withdrawal.
* This greeting is freely transferable provided that no alteration shall be made to the original greeting and that the proprietary rights of the wishor are acknowledged.
* This greeting implies no promise by the wishor to actually implement any of the wishes.
* This greeting may not be enforceable in certain jurisdictions and/or the restrictions herein may not be binding upon certain wishees in certain jurisdictions and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wishor.
* This greeting is warranted to perform as reasonably may be expected within the usual application of good tidings, for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first.
* The wishor warrants this greeting only for the limited replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wishor. Any references in this greeting to “the Lord,” “Father Christmas,” “Our Savior,” or any other festive figures, whether actual or fictitious, dead or alive, shall not imply any endorsement by or from them in respect of this greeting, and all proprietary rights in any referenced third party names and images are hereby acknowledged.
CC BY-NC 2.0 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wildphotons/332316541/)
Six degrees of Kevin Bacon – or how to link the actor to any court decision
November 29th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Check out Wikipedia’s article on the party game of connecting any 2 actors (one of which is typically Kevin Bacon) to each other through no more than six pairings. The game has many variations, so why not one for Canadian law?
Without typing a word and using less than six clicks of CanLII’s new search accelerator, can we connect Kevin Bacon to, for example, CCH Canadian Ltd. v. Law Society of Upper Canada, the 2004 Supreme Court of Canada decision on fair dealing in copyright material?
Yes. Yes we can.
Click 1. Highlight the words “Kevin Bacon” from the Wikipedia page to reveal the accelerator option of launching the CanLII search of the highlighted terms.
Click 2. The first click opened up a new tab with a case involving a different Kevin Bacon. Now, highlight and click the words “was responsible” from the snippet of the decision text included in the results from the first click. Why choose “was responsible”? No reason other than it seems like a good phrase that will link with a lot of other case results. Kind of like using Morgan Freeman, Ben Stiller or someone who is in a LOT of movies when playing the regular Kevin Bacon game.
Click 3. Ok, things get a little trickier here with 17 350 results. We need to sift but to win the game we also need to economize our clicks. One option is to not count clicks that narrow the results - such as by clicking “none” under “legislation” and under “boards and tribunals” in order to limit the results to court cases, and then to select only ”CA” under jusrisdiction and “appeal” under “Courts” to further narrow the decisions to Federal and SCC appeals. Sure, you could get the result faster, but it’s not in keeping with the spirit of the game unless these clicks count.
While I could use my third click to sort the results according to “most cited” or “decision date” in the hopes that those decisions carrying greater judicial weight or the most recent top 25 showing on the page are more likely to provide useful jump off points to my destination, I refrain. But I’m in luck! I scan down to number 14 on the list and see the word “dealing” – that’s pretty close to “fair dealing” so I will make this my third click!!
Click 4. O.k., I now have 193 654 results but I am undaunted!!! Why? Because I smell victory! Scrolling down the list of results there it is. Right between Snow White at #16 and Sidoti at #18:
So with a triumphant 4th click, I reach my destination with 2 clicks to spare.
So let it be known based on the evidence before you that Kevin Bacon can indeed be linked to any Canadian court case in six clicks or less!
What GI Joe Taught Me About Access to Justice
November 22nd, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Back in the 80’s – well before the availability of such innovative distractions and time wasters as the internet, Netflix, DisneyXD or PVRs – the late afternoon viewing options for pre-teen couch-potatoes were pretty sparse. Worse still, most of what was available often tried to impart important life lessons to impressionable young minds. Anyone remember the ABC After School Specials?
Some of those lessons must have stuck, because I can no longer hear someone say “now I know” (or some such) without reflexively adding the GI Joe inspired response: “and knowing is half the battle!”
So it goes with access to justice and attempts to understand the law in times of need. … [read the rest at Slaw.ca]
Lessons for laggards from learned legions’ laudable law linking
August 29th, 2011 § 1 Comment
Through their “likes”, “shares” and “tweets”, the actions of our “friends”, “links” and “tweeps” regularly guide us to new stories, music, restaurants and countless other destinations. It turns out these actions also give us a better understanding the legal framework that governs us. It also turns out, that Twitter users are seemingly more effective at bringing law to the people than the mass media (more on that later).
You link, I click
You’ve probably seen this (or maybe you’ve done it). Someone you are following includes a link in their post to a court case or piece of legislation in order to back up a point made or a comment offered. While it may be a stretch to suggest that all followers are then better informed and more engaged citizens as a result of reading a primary legal source, it’s certainly no stretch to say because of social media that the possibility of broader understanding of the law exists like never before. These laudable law links come from a learned legion – largely lawyers and other legal professionals.
Links can be to court, government, commercial or other websites, but given the data at my fingertips, I will focus this article on links to CanLII.
Using one of the many available third party apps that skim the Twitter fire hose, I spent a little time gauging the frequency with which Twitter users link to CanLII cases in their tweets. I then dug in to the site analytics to see the volume of page views generated by a click through from a Twitter link. In July 2011, the ratio of page views to Twitter links was greater than 2 to 1. That’s not to suggest that every Twitter link resulted in 2 people clicking through to read the court case or statute as experiences vary depending on the subject matter of the tweet (i.e., newsworthy vs. esoteric) and the size and engagement of the Twitterer’s follower base.
I’m not sure what passes for an average number of clicks on tweets with links, but it strikes me that the appetite for legal information must be pretty high to sustain a two to one ratio. Sure this may not be a LOLcat level of click through traffic, but impressive nonetheless. These numbers are especially interesting in light of the annual growth CanLII is seeing in page views originating from Twitter links:
The actual numbers are CanLII proprietary (sorry!), but I will put them in perspective in discussing the linking laggards.
More words, less links?
After giving up 15-20 characters to provide a law link, and a few more for their handle, hat tips or RTs, Twitter users still manage to put their link in context with the 100 or so characters that remain. In contrast, the major news websites will publish a 700-1000 word column that addresses or references a legal issue and will often not link to a source of primary law (whether court, government or other).
Each of the following sites drives traffic to CanLII cases, statutes and regulations, but none to the level driven by Twitter links:
One of these sites drives appreciably more traffic to CanLII (about 3x the average of the others), but the resulting page views are still well below those driven by the twittering masses.
As there is no equivalent to the Twitter fire hose that would allow us to measure the actual number of links to CanLII documents placed on these sites, we are unable to determine whether the lower traffic is a function of fewer click throughs or fewer links – but given the substantial readership of each and the activity levels of their own comment pages, I am inclined to assume there are simply fewer links.
Learning law
Should it matter that the news sites do not consistently link to primary legal materials even when salient to the context of their articles? I suppose not. After all they are under no obligation to facilitate public legal education. But it vexes me a little that such an easy opportunity to make legal information more accessible is not taken up with more gusto, particularly since the Twitter experience demonstrates a public appetite to access source material.
The paucity of legal links in major media websites is actually a little surprising given the common presence of contextual information that generally accompanies online news items. Pick any story on any Canadian news media website and you will find hyperlinks. Whether embedded within the text or appearing alongside the column, the author or editor provides the reader with links to related material to further their understanding of the story and the context in which it plays out. The reader, I humbly suggest, would also appreciate the chance to better understand the legal issues in a given article if presented links to court cases and other primary legal information.
Finally, if any more proof were needed to support the theory of a public interest in learning law through links found on popular networks or websites, consider this factoid: CanLII page views generated by links from over 1000 Wikipedia articles are over six times greater than those coming from Twitter.
Now that legions have led, will the laggards learn the lesson?
Why we read case law
August 16th, 2011 § 1 Comment
I suggest there are three main reasons why legal professionals and the general public alike read case law, and I offer 2011’s three most read CanLII cases in support of my suggestion.
When it comes to judicial decisions, the legal profession measures influence by how many times a case has been cited by other courts. By that measure, the influence of Dunsmuir v. New Brunswick, 2008 SCC 9, is incontrovertible. It has been cited by over 4400 other cases contained within CanLII’s case collections – the most of any case. Over the first 7 months of 2011, CanLII users accessed Dunsmuir 5237 times, making it the third most consulted case of the year to date.
What about cases that are widely read and debated but rarely if ever cited by other courts? The second most consulted case was accessed 5249 times during the same period, but has thus far only been cited twice by other courts. The case, Bedford v. Canada, 2010 ONSC 4264, which is now working its way through the appeal process, found Criminal Code provisions addressing facets of prostitution to be in conflict with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The high level of interest has a lot to do with its anticipated impact on the legal and public landscape.
Sometimes cases gain notoriety for elements having nothing to do with establishing precedent or influencing public policy. Such is the situation surrounding 2011’s most accessed case. This case has an astonishing consultation total of 16 898 (actually, 26 728, if we include December 2010, which we might as well in light of the fact the decision was only published on November 29, 2010). If the consultations were spread evenly from publication to the end of July, the case would have been continuously and repeatedly accessed every 13 minutes for 8 months – with no breaks for evenings, week-ends, or holidays.
What made Bruni v. Bruni, 2010 ONSC 6568, such a popular read? Quite simply, style and storytelling, the appropriateness of which (in general) was the subject of a recent Toronto Star article on judicial writing.
These three cases are typical of the primary reasons why we read case law: 1) to know and reference the law when seeking to advance our interest; 2) to understand and participate in public policy debates; and 3) because case law can be an unparalleled source of entertainment. There’s a reason, after all, that lawyers and legal matters figure so prominently in literature, pop culture and the arts in general.
