My tip follows up on Bronwyn’s recent tip about noting up case law. Noting up legislation allows you to see how courts have interpreted a specific piece of legislation; generally the court refers to a section or sections of an act or regulation rather than the entire thing.

The fact that legislation is constantly changing does add some challenges to the noting up process. When noting up legislation, keep the following things in mind:

• Legislation changes. Legislation is constantly being amended, and a section of an act may be dramatically different after an amendment. Check that the text of

Said
I think you’ll agree that ‘said’ (as in ‘the said party’ when you’ve previously referred to that party) is a little fusty-sounding, and has no place in your jazzy client-focused blog post or article.

And even in contractual drafting, it sounds more than a little antiquated. Said is an unnecessary archaism: be done with it.

Same
More persistent is ‘same’. To use an example from a few weeks back (emphasis added):

A recent case from the ONSC clarifies the law on whether municipalities can regulate boathouses and whether the Building Code Act applies to same, finding that (i) …

Today’s tip is to double check the way you are noting up decisions. Taking a few extra minutes to cross check your results will really strengthen your research!

When we’re noting up a decision, typically we want to know if a) the decision has been appealed (i.e. history), and b) if subsequent decisions have discussed it (i.e. citing references). The most effective way to do this is to enter the decision citation into the note up field on Westlaw or LexisNexis Quicklaw. There are two nuances to this process that I want to highlight to ensure you always get the …

Commonly misused.

First, as a conjunction, which it isn’t:

The Outside Directors and Officers Liability policy held by the firm on your behalf is set to expire on July 30, 2015, however your assistance is required in advance.

Don’t do this. It’s a bad run-on sentence, and just replacing the second comma with a semi-colon doesn’t fix it.

Segue to second misuse: at the beginning of a sentence (or after a semi-colon):

 However, Gross Negligence or Wilful Misconduct does not include…

Perhaps not incorrect, but inelegant. Doesn’t that initial however somehow have a Valley Girl’s rising intonation to it? Not …

Deep links are links that take you directly to content within a website or database, rather than to the website’s home page. The advantage of deep links is that they allow you to send users directly to content of interest, rather than having to navigate through the menu system. An example of a deep link is http://www.lexisnexis.com/ca/legal/api/version1/toc?csi=386929 which takes you to a volume of Halsbury’s Laws of Canada on Quicklaw.

It is helpful to use deep links in the library catalogue as well as in online research guides. They can also be included in research reports (so that the end …

This was my grade-10 English teacher’s expression for useless verbiage. Other ways to say it: throat-clearing, filler, circumlocution, BS.

Examples (and what to say instead):

a number of   some, many
as a means of   to
as prescribed by   in, under
as to whether    if, whether
at the present time   now
by means of   by, with
concerning   about, on [and don’t misuse ‘concerning’ for ‘of concern’, ‘disturbing’, ‘troubling’]
due to the fact that   since, because
during the time that   during, while
for a/the period of   for
have an adverse effect …

I recently sat down with CanLII’s Manager of Content and Partnerships, Sarah Sutherland, to learn what’s new and to ask some common CanLII questions I get from my own users — chief among them being “Are there any decisions I should know about that aren’t on CanLII?”

There’s no one single tip here today, but in the spirit of SlawTips, this is a short read that we hope will be informative and help you work smarter!

— Bronwyn Guiton (@BronwynMaye)

Q (Bronwyn Guiton): What sorts of decisions would readers be surprised to learn aren’t actually available on …

It’s astonishing how many people have trouble with personal pronouns.

Perhaps like Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, they think it’s somehow inelegant to say me – so the heroine of that classic book says ‘A girl like I’. But (between you and me) that’s wrong: it should be ‘A girl like me’, of course.

Others, faced with the awful choice between I and me, opt for what they think is the safer ground of myself. This is less wrong (if that’s possible), but not ideal – and it leads to weird constructions like ‘Mohammed and myself …

Summer students have just started at my firm. One of the things that we emphasize in training is that if they don’t understand what they have been asked to do, they need to go back to the lawyer and clarify the question. While it may be embarrassing to have to go back and ask, it’s far better than discovering that they’ve researched the wrong thing.

This principle doesn’t just apply to students. Library staff get asked questions that need to be clarified or elaborated on. Sometimes the person asking the question knows so much about the area, they assume everyone …

Verb endings: a small but tricky point.

If you’re from the USA, the practice (noun) of law is practiced (verb) by lawyers. If you’re from the UK, the practice is practised. Here in Canada, we see both verb forms – but preferred usage (by me, anyway) is to go British.

So, is it admitted to practice or admitted to practise? Either is defensible: the first means admitted to the practice of law, the second permitted to engage in practising. Practice is better in this context, on the grounds the noun is what people probably have in mind (although …