Current Awareness

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?