Can Lii, Can Do

Based on the premises that something is better than nothing *, news from the National Self Represented Litigants Project Website:

The NSRLP is proud to launch our latest resource for [Self Represented Litigants] SRLs, NSRLP CanLII Primer V1

The Can Lll Primer: Legal Research Principles and CanLII Navigation for Self-Represented Litigants is the result of innumerable hours of research and drafting by NSRLP Research Assistant Tamara Thomas, who worked with Julie to develop the Primer. Tamara says this about what she learned from the experience, and what motivated her to spend so much time and passion on this project. 

“The CanLII Primer aims to help SRLs develop a basic understanding of how to operate CanLII in a straightforward and effective way. CanLII is a wonderful resource because it is open to anyone to use – no fees, no commitments – but it can also be frustrating to operate. Of course, I say that coming from the privileged position of having taken classes specifically on legal research and writing in law school… 

I realized fairly quickly into this process – and I got a really good appreciation of this as a result of creating the Primer – that the legal system is one created by and dependent upon inaccessible and unintuitive language, and trying to access and understand the legal research process without properly understanding that language throws up yet another barrier to SRLs. Writing the Primer required that I completely deconstruct everything that I knew in a way that we are not taught in law school. ...

Check it out.

* A reference to my blogging (or lack thereof), not the content of the post.