The CanLII Manual to BC Civil Litigation is CanLII’s first project to develop a legal text from scratch internally. With the help of many amazing collaborators, we managed to reach our goal of providing comprehensive, accurate, and credible expert insights on the rules of court and leveling the playing field for anyone using legal information across the province of BC.
Since the publication of The CanLII Manual to BC Civil Litigation last December, it has received a positive reception. Less than a month later, it was recognized in the “Best Innovative Projects” category for the 2020 Clawbies Awards. On the Clawbies website they note:
“This huge project, which harnessed the power of dozens of volunteer writers, editors and contributors, produced the first-ever open access manual of civil litigation for BC. The publication contains extensive annotated court rules, topical pathfinders and a guide to civil procedure. The manual meets a need for user-friendly legal information and demonstrates the willingness of professionals to share their time and knowledge. (Disclosure: Stem Legal was a consultant on this project.)”
Last month at the Canadian Association of Law Libraries / Association canadienne des bibliotheques de droit (CALL/ACBD) conference, it was awarded the CALL/ACBD Hugh Lawford Award for Excellence in Legal Publishing, an award that acknowledges work that is done by publishers to provide the legal profession with high quality materials for use in understanding and researching the law.
In an announcement on Slaw.ca from the President of CALL/ACBD, Shaunna Mireau writes:
“The CanLII Manual to British Columbia Civil Litigation is easy to navigate and is fully integrated with the CanLII database. It is an important contribution to the BC legal information landscape, as well as to the access to justice and open access movements.”
Being recognized by these prestigious awards validates the message we want to send to the world: open resources are a credible and quality option for legal texts. This recognition establishes new models for engagement within the legal field that involve open and collaborative practices and is a testament to the hard work everyone put into making this happen during difficult times.
In addition to this, our web stats also tell a positive story. Since it was published in early December 2020, the BC Manual has been in the top 5 of our most accessed commentary resources on CanLII.org. For a jurisdiction specific resource on CanLII, this is an impressive statistic.
The next edition of the BC Manual is currently in the works thanks to the help of new and returning contributors. We hope it will continue to be used by the BC legal community for many years to come.
This project has already encouraged new publishing endeavours by inspiring the development of an equivalent project in Ontario led by Noel Semple, a law professor at the University of Windsor. This open publishing model will also be used for more CanLII publications, including upcoming resources on criminal law.
CanLII.org is an incredible source for legal material and we are only just beginning to use it to its full potential for the development of more projects like the BC Manual.
If you are interested in helping us build more accessible content for the benefit of the profession (and beyond!), please get in touch!
