Legal Research for Better Advocacy: A Practical Guideto Effective CanLII Research for Paralegals

By: Martin Felsky, PhD, JDFor: The Paralegal Society of OntarioPlace: Lamplighter Inn, London OntarioDate: Saturday, February 23, 2013

OUTLINE

Why do legal research?

When is legal research required?

Citing case law appropriately

Legal research as advocacy

Research is an advocacy tool with respect to your own clients

Research is an advocacy tool with respect to your opponents

Research is an advocacy tool with respect to the judge

How to find support for legal principles

Using CanLII to discover judicial interpretation of statutes and regulations

Legal Research for Better Advocacy: A Practical Guide to Effective CanLII Research for Paralegalsby Martin Felsky, PhD, JD February 23, 2013

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How to adopt an effective approach to legal research

Recommended online research workflow

Improving your CanLII skills

CanLII Search Query Syntax

Query Syntax

Query Processing

Operators

Useful free resources

About Martin Felsky, PhD, JD

About Harrington LLP

About CanLII

Key survey results

Future Plans

“The immediate facts of the client’s case may be few or many, butalmost invariably the mass of law which bears on the question isstaggering in its quantity.”1

For paralegals representing clients in Small Claims Court, and to a certainextent those advocating in other Courts and administrative tribunals, the issueof legal research is challenging for many reasons. Have you ever askedyourself these questions?

1. How do I estimate and incorporate sufficient time for legal researchwhen offering a flat fee?

2. How do I charge for legal research, and when do I perform it, whenoffering unbundling services?

3. How do I explain to my client that just because I am a paralegal doesn’t

1 Louis Kelso, Does the Law Need a Technological Revolution? 18 Rocky Mntn Law Rev. 388 (1945-46).

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mean I know the law?4. If I have to learn the law specifically for a case - is that billable or just

part of my CPD?5. How do I get clients to understand and accept that legal research is more

complicated and time-consuming than a Google search?6. “Legal research” was a module in my paralegal education program but it

only lasted a couple of weeks and I’m not very confident in my skills.7. Just how much legal research is required or justified in Small Claims

Court anyway? Do my opponents care? Do the Deputy Judges?

Why do legal research?

Legal advocacy is the subtle art of persuasion within a rigid framework of lawand equity. Legal research is one of the most powerful tools of persuasion inthe hands of a skilled litigator.

Clients arrive as a bundle of facts and emotions. Over time, your job is to teaseout the relevant issues. Clients don’t always know what is relevant; they onlyknow what is painful. “He lied to me!” That may be misleading, but is itfraudulent misrepresentation? Your job as a paralegal is to sort out the legalissues. In order to do that, you need to understand the facts, research the law,and apply the right law to the material facts. Your theory of the case, uponwhich all your advocacy will be based, depends on your accurateunderstanding of the applicable legal principles and precedents.

When is legal research required?

Theoretically, binding legal authority should be supplied as a basis for everypoint of law relied upon in the pleadings. In practice, and especially in SmallClaims Court, disputes often turn on the facts, and the routine legal issues -breach of contract and negligence - do not need to be bolstered with referenceto statutes or cases.

But the routine nature of many cases, the fact that many parties areself-represented, and the informal approach taken by some deputy judges, can

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sometimes lull paralegals into a false sense that Small Claims Court trials aredebates and contests of cross-examination. Everyone knows that with themonetary jurisdiction increased to $25,000, Small Claims Court is seeing a risein complex cases; cases that involve areas of law with which most legalprofessionals might be unfamiliar. For example, in my own practice I’ve hadsome interesting questions:

● A client loans a prized family heirloom worth $15,000 to a friend andforgets about it for 15 years, then asks for it back. The friend claims hesold it ten years ago. The client doesn’t believe the friend. What is thecause of action? If the heirloom was not sold, does the Small Claims Courthave jurisdiction to make an order returning it? If the heirloom was sold,can the client recover its value? Does the Limitations Act apply, and if sowhen did the clock start ticking?

● A husband and wife are shareholders in a business. They split up andthe wife’s family lawyer requests access to the financial records of thebusiness under family law disclosure legislation. The husband refuses.The family lawyer recommends a change of tactics. Can we use theBusiness Corporations Act to force disclosure of the records in SmallClaims Court? If not, is there a Common Law cause of action available?

Without an appropriate research strategy for these types of cases, severalnegative outcomes might arise, including:

● You might incorrectly advise a potential client on her chances ofwinning, thereby convincing her to advance a weak claim or torelinquish a strong position;

● You might lose a winnable case;● You might be in breach of the Paralegal Rules of Conduct (Legal

Research is listed in Rule 3.01(4)(c)(i) as a competency skill.2

Citing case law appropriately

Recently, two senior partners of a major New York law firm were dressed down

2 http://www.lsuc.on.ca/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=2147489369.

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by a court for failing to cite a case that was directly on point - and harmful totheir client. Instead, they cited older cases that were more helpful. According tothe court, the tactic “of pretending that potentially dispositive authority againsta litigant’s contention does not exist is as unprofessional as it is pointless.” The3

proper approach is to cite a case that is against you if it is binding on the courtand use your legal reasoning skills to distinguish it.

Legal research as advocacy

Legal research is primarily concerned with establishing the applicable legalprinciples in any case. Paralegals should make sure that your arguments aregrounded in legal principle and consistent with precedent. But legal researchcan be a lot more valuable to advocate, especially in circumstances such asthose faced by paralegals in Small Claims Court, namely, lack of sufficient timeand funding to perform thorough research just for the purpose of learning thelaw.

I like to use legal research in Small Claims Court cases for three purposes inaddition to understanding and learning the law for myself and for our ownteam and for framing our legal arguments and determining our theory of thecase and drafting your pleadings. Legal research is a form of advocacy if donewell. Our paralegals at Harrington LLP use legal research as an element ofnegotiation and as a means of persuasion for our own clients, for ouropponents, and for the judge.

Research is an advocacy tool with respect to your own clients

With respect to our own clients, legal research can add an element ofpersuasion when we are trying to advise their client on the best possible courseof action for example I’m sure many of you have been in a situation of trying toexplain the benefits of settling as opposed proceeding to trial. There are manyadvantages to settling, in fact the court system is designed to encouragesettlement. However many clients have an emotional attachment to their case,feel they are entitled to their day in court, and have an unreasonable idea as tothe strength of their case and in particular the weakness of dishonesty of their

3 Hill v. Norfolk & Western Ry., 814 F.2d 1192, 1198 (7th Cir. 1987).

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opponents.

I recently had a case in which my client wished to plead to fraud against anengineer. I advise my client that while he had grounds for suing the engineerfor breach of contract and negligence, alleging fraud would be difficult toprove and risky for my client in terms of the potential for costs to be awarded ifthe case has not been made out. No matter how many times I tried to explainthis to my client, he insisted that I had fraud to the grounds for our claim. Icould have simply told my client that I refused to do so and terminate theretainer. But that is not only bad for business, it really leaves the client out inthe cold. So instead I did some research and found a recent Ontario SmallClaims Court case where an individual had claimed fraud against a lawyerwhose invoice he felt was incorrect. He felt he had been deliberatelyovercharged. In fact the judge found that the lawyer had made an error. Inthat case, the judge slammed the plaintiff for alleging fraud, denied theplaintiffs claim and assess huge costs against the plaintiff in accordance withthe common law. I simply gave a copy of this case to our client, at which pointhe decided to withdraw his fraud claim.

Research is an advocacy tool with respect to your opponents

I already spoke about the case in which lawyers on the other side werepressing a technical legal argument about the doctrine of real estate "merger".By presenting to them a legal principle that could be applied in our favor, theyrealized that winning at trial would not be simple. Similar approaches haveworked in cases where our opponents have been represented by paralegalsand in which we have included copies of cases showing that the legal groundsfor the opponent’s claim or defence are somewhat weak. In the result, theopposing paralegal must either do his or her own research to counter ourarguments or else make our arguments for us by discussing the case with his orher own client. I believe that this work on our part has led to early settlementsas well.

When parties are self-represented other considerations may apply. Trying to“intimidate” a lay person with legal arguments is not ethical. But that doesn’tmean that legal research is irrelevant or inappropriate. It just means that the

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way research is presented and argued needs to be tempered with the realitythat your opponent, who has no legal training, is at a real disadvantage.Parenthetically, this raises interesting and controversial issues about theadvantages and disadvantages of CanLII making case law and statutesavailable to the public.4

Research is an advocacy tool with respect to the judge

Finally, judges in Small Claims Court, since it is in the judicial hierarchy thelowest civil court, are bound to follow Superior Court precedents and are alsoreluctant to depart from other Small Claims Court cases even if not bound bythem. The authority of a Superior Court (or even better, a Court of Appeal) casein Small Claims Court must not be underestimated. Even if the judge in SmallClaims Court feels very strongly that on the facts a particular party should win,if there is a case directly on point going the other way, it would be very difficultfor the judge to decide in any other way.

How to find support for legal principles

The second type of online research is the search for a legal principle. This typeof research should often be commenced by using a textbook or a reputablearticle on the topic. But in the absence of such a resource, a search throughCourt of Appeal and Supreme Court of Canada cases for statements of principlecan be very helpful as a starting point for gaining an understanding of howyou will consider framing your case.

For example, at our firm we recently had a client who signed an agreement topurchase and sale to buy a condominium. On the listing for the condominium,it stated that Hydro was included in the monthly condo fee. our client’s realestate lawyer inappropriate searches and the deal closed. when our clientfound out that Hydro was not included she sued the seller and his real estateagent. The real estate agent retained a law firm which claimed that a certaindoctrine in real estate law prevented us from going behind the signed transferof property to any terms and conditions that had been agreed upon prior toclosing. In other words, once a real estate deal has closed, it’s done.

4 See http://www.slaw.ca/2012/11/15/canlawpedia-crowd-sourcing-and-the-law/.

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Without the luxury of having many hours in many dollars to do research, andwithout having a real estate legal textbook close at hand, I resorted to searchesin the Supreme Court of Canada and Ontario courts of appeal databases, andcompared four or five statements of the law to determine that the doctrine of"merger" is subject to interpretation depending on the intention of the partiesat the time the agreement was signed. That’s the only leverage I needed toargue with the other side that their case was not so airtight as they hadthought. In the end the case settled favorably for both parties.

Using CanLII to discover judicial interpretation of statutes and

regulations

The third category of research that is useful to paralegals and that is very easyto performing CanLII is the interpretation of statutes and regulations,including the Small Claims Court rules. and any number of situations, you maybe aware of the application of certain provisions of statutes or regulations, forexample the consumer protection act, the landlord-tenant act and manyothers. I have seen cases in which paralegals have simply provided judges withcopies of the statutory provisions or even the rules themselves, without anyreference or thought to the interpretation of those sections by cases.

This type of error was brought home to me many years ago when I was aresearch lawyer at McCarthys. One of our lawyers and relied on a section ofwhat was then the landlord and tenant act. That’s section obviously appearedin black-and-white in the middle of the printed version of the statute. Howeverin a recent Court of Appeal case that section had been declaredunconstitutional. Had the lawyer gone ahead and relied on that section incourt he would have been extremely embarrassed to be told by the judge thathe was relying on a section that had been declared unconstitutional and wastherefore of no effect whatsoever. As a research lawyer, it was my job to makesure that that kind of mistake was never made. This is also useful when citingthe rules.

I’m sure those of you who practice in Small Claims Court have a copy of the

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rules with annotations based on cases that interpret the rules. I alwaysrecommend scanning through the case law when relying on a section for twosimple reasons: first of all if you were to ask a judge to make a decision basedon a particular section that had been interpreted narrowly but you wereasking the judge to interpreted wrongly the judge would probably be veryreluctant and properly so. On the other hand, a rule that appears to be againstyou might have been interpreted quite favorably any case and so when relyingon that section you should be able to interpret it through the lens of the caseauthority.

How to adopt an effective approach to legal research

There are several ways in which legal research can be done, for differentpurposes. I have categorized these in for different ways. First is the factresearch. This is the kind of research that most inexperienced lawyers andparalegals try to perform. There’s nothing wrong with it but I generallyrecommend against doing it as the first or only method. It should also be usedin specific circumstances. For example, fact research tells the other side thatthere is a case on point. in case may not be determinative of the issue; it maynot be the leading case; but it gives you some comfort that other parties havetaken this issue to the courts and how it gives you an indication of how theissues have been framed given the particular facts that are similar to yours.

For example, your client had to find alternate accommodation during abotched renovation. Has an Ontario court awarded damages to cover the costof moving, storage, and rental accommodation? even if you have a strongunderstanding that this headed damages is appropriate, even if you had beentold by a colleague that they have succeeded in the past in claiming andrecovering these types of damages, it adds a layer of comfort to know that thereis a reported case available on CanLII to which you can refer. Again I stressthat this type of factual research is not complete and is generally not to be usedin the initial phases of a claim except for your own guidance. Finally, factualresearch can be limited to cases decided by the Ontario Small Claims Court.This can also be helpful to gain an understanding and a precedent in terms ofthe court’s jurisdiction and willingness to address a particular fact situation.

Legal Research for Better Advocacy: A Practical Guide to Effective CanLII Research for Paralegalsby Martin Felsky, PhD, JD February 23, 2013

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The last category of research is the ability to find the most cited texts andarticles. Most of us do not have the luxury of having a large law libraryaccessible to us. I understand the paralegals are not allowed to use the CountyLaw Association libraries and so is not always easy to browse through thenecessary textbooks and other secondary materials that are usually the mostprofitable way to start any research project. Although it’s not really asubstitute for a law library of secondary materials, it is interesting and fruitfulto consider how the best and most pithy statements of law from learnedauthors are quoted in cases. What this allows you to do is to find the statementsof black letter law as cited by courts, without actually having to cite the caseitself is a precedent. Once again, I remind you that this method of doingresearch is not intended to be a substitute for thorough research but is reallymeant to act as an open window into a potentially complicated and confusingforests of ideas, as quoted by Kelso.

Recommended online research workflow

1. Frame your legal issue(s)2. Determine your target database(s)3. Check the database scope5

4. Formulate proper keywords with variants5. Use correct query syntax - see below6. Sort and review results7. Refine and improve8. Capture results and reuse them

Improving your CanLII skills

1. See the Help menu for Search athttp://www.canlii.org/en/info/search.html

2. Subscribe to the CanLII YouTube Channel for instructional videos:http://www.youtube.com/user/CanLIIdotORG

3. Use the Advanced Search page:

5 See the CanLII Scope of Databases page here: http://www.canlii.org/en/databases.html.

Legal Research for Better Advocacy: A Practical Guide to Effective CanLII Research for Paralegalsby Martin Felsky, PhD, JD February 23, 2013

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CanLII Search Query Syntax

(From http://www.canlii.org/en/info/search.html#syntax)

Query SyntaxThe query syntax in search template fields 1 and 2 makes simple queries efficient but alsoallows experienced users to create very precise queries using various operators.

Query ProcessingYour query is processed in a flexible manner in order to provide you with all relevant results.Queries without operators – By default, the search engine processes a space between termsas a logical AND. A query typed without operators will thus return documents that match all thequery terms. Moreover, the search engine considers that if a query contains no operators, itsadjacent terms might form a phrase, i.e., a meaningful sequence of words; documents thatcontain such possible phrases will generally be ranked higher in the search results.Language – The query is launched only in the search index that corresponds to the site'sinterface language. You should therefore use the search template that corresponds to thelanguage of the document you are seeking. Only unilingual documents are indexed in bothlanguages and can be found with both French and English templates.Exclusion of common words – The syntax ignores many common words, such as definitearticles and prepositions, except when such words are placed within quotes, for example, whena phrase is queried.Stem search and accentuated letters – When you perform a full text search in field 1, the

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search engine not only returns the query terms but also their usual variations (e.g. sentence,sentences, sentenced). The search engine is also insensitive to diacritical marks (accents, cedillaand diaeresis), so typing protégé yields the same results as protege. Warning: using anasterisk (*) in a term (wildcard search) deactivates this function to the extent that it will onlysearch variations that match the condition indicated by the wildcard operator; the search willalso become sensitive to accentuated letters.You can deactivate this feature by placing your terms within parentheses, preceded by theEXACT operator, for example:EXACT(sentenced).Upper/Lower case – The syntax is case insensitive, that is to say, you can type searched termsin upper or lower case without having any effect on the results. However, the words AND, OR,NOT, ET, OU, NON and EXACT typed in all-upper case are treated as operators.Special characters – A character other than a letter, digit or white space, e.g., a dash orapostrophe, is considered a generic character, that is to say, the place it occupies in a term willbe considered replaceable by any character. If such a character connects two words, the wordswill be treated as a phrase. For instance, typing seat-belt will allow you to find seat belt as wellas seat-belt. However, when a special character is used but does not connect two words, it issimply ignored, for example: $500 is treated as 500.Punctuation in citations – The syntax is not sensitive to punctuation often found in legalcitation acronyms and other abbreviations. This means that you can type such abbreviationswith or without punctuation, and the search results will not be affected. For instance, typing[2005] 2 S.C.R. 669 is equivalent to typing 2005 2 SCR 669, and 163 OAC 33 is equivalent to163O.A.C. 33. The dot is however recognized when used in a sequence of digits, for example, in47.2.Parentheses – When they do not contain operators, parentheses are considered to be genericcharacters. For instance, typing 3.4(2)(b) also searches for 3.4(2)b and similar variations. If theycontain an operator, parentheses are interpreted as modifying the default order of priority ofoperators.Invalid query – When a combination of operators does not form a valid query, an errormessage is displayed. The query will nevertheless be launched with the terms that were typed,but all operators will be ignored. For example, the query section /s 3.4(2)b) is considered aninvalid query because the final parenthesis does not correspond to an opening parenthesis, butthe query will be launched as if it were section AND "3.4 2 b".

OperatorsThe following characters and operators allow you to change the default processing of queries.Wildcard search (*) – When uncertain of the wording of a term or when it might vary, you canuse an asterisk (*) as a wildcard character in order to replace zero, one or more characters. Forinstance, constitution* will return documents containing constitution, constitutional,constitutionality or constitutionally. Similarly, O'Ne* will return documents containing O'Neal,O'Neil or O'Neill.In order to limit the complexity of requests, the asterisk should be used in a sequence ofcaracters which represents at most 1024 different words present in CanLII's index. This is whyquery terms such as ab* will cause a syntax error; there are too many words beginning with ab.Please also note that using the asterisk in a word deactivates stem search for this word.Phrase search ("") – To search for a phrase, you can group words by typing them betweenquotes, for example: "duty of care". To search for a phrase with exact words – and avoid

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retrieving variations of the words contained in the phrase – use the EXACT operator:EXACT("duty of care").Boolean search (AND, OR, NOT) – To perform a search that combines or excludes terms, usethe AND, OR and NOT operators, in capital letters, between your query terms (or ET, OU andNON – the operators work in both languages), for example: warranty AND sale OR buy NOT car.

Proximity search (/p, /s, /n) – You can use proximity operators between your search terms inorder to find documents containing at least one occurrence of terms that appear in the sameparagraph (/p) or sentence (/s), or within n terms from one another (/n). For instance,the query contract /3 onerous will return documents matching at least one occurrence of theterm contract separated by three words or less from onerous. Note that proximity operatorscannot be used validly with the NOT operator, for example: adoption /s NOT statute.Priority of operators – Your query is read in a predetermined order of priority that goes asfollows:1. Words containing the wildcard character (*);2. Phrases placed between quotes ("");3. Operators placed between parentheses;4. The EXACT operator;5. Boolean and proximity operators, in the following order: OR, /n, /s, /p, NOT and AND.Parentheses allow you to change the order of priority of operators. For instance, the querycontract /s sale OR seller is read as: find all documents containing either sale or seller, and thenreturn only documents that also contain at least one appearance of the term contract in thesame sentence as the word sale or the word seller. In contrast, the query (contract /s sale) ORseller is interpreted as: retrieve all documents that contain the words contract and sale in thesame sentence and also return all documents that contain the word seller.

Useful free resources

1. Best Guide to Canadian Legal Research - http://legalresearch.org/2. Legal Research and Writing: Ted Tjaden -http://www.legalresearchandwriting.ca/3. UPDATE: Researching Canadian Law, by Ted Tjaden -http://www.nyulawglobal.org/globalex/Canada1.htm4. LSUC Legal Research Guides -http://rc.lsuc.on.ca/library/research_guides.htm5. CanLII (English) - http://www.canlii.org/en/6. Free legal research for other countries around the world -http://www.canlii.org/en/international.html7. Jurist Canada Legal Research Guides -http://jurist.law.utoronto.ca/guides.htm

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About Martin Felsky, PhD, JD

Although Martin’s current practice is currently restricted to the law ofinformation governance and electronic discovery, he has an extensivebackground in the field of legal research. In the University of Toronto lawschool he was hired by one of his professors as a research assistant, and aftergraduating he worked for the Canadian Law Information Council as Directorof Computers and Law, and then as Director of Technology and Legal Research,where he edited several publications on computer-assisted legal research or“CALR” as it was then known. He spent many years teaching judges andlawyers all about CALR, and in the mid-80s he co-founded and chaired theLegal Research Network, a national organization of lawyers and law librarianswho specialized in legal research.

His next job was as a research lawyer at the firm now known as McCarthyTétrault, where from 1988 through 1995 he performed extensive legal researchon client matters and was also responsible for developing the firm’s in-houselegal research and knowledge management applications.

For the last two years, Martin has been working closely with paralegals andlawyers at Harrington LLP where he has been legal researcher and adviser onSmall Claims Court and landlord tenant matters.

In 2010 Martin was appointed to the Board of CanLII, and in 2012 wasappointed Chair.

For Martin’s full résumé see http://www.felsky.com/resume.html, and for a listof Martin’s publications and presentations, seehttp://www.felsky.com/publications.html.

About Harrington LLP

Harrington LLP is a partnership between a lawyer (Martin Felsky) and aparalegal (Wendy Harrington). The firm operates entirely in the cloud; ourpractice management, financial and document management systems are allaccessed on secure hosted platforms that allow for a maximum of mobility,

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efficiency and scalability. We work with lawyer and paralegal associates andcan provide services for Chinese-speaking clients.

The paralegal side of our practice focuses on civil litigation and advocacyincluding Small Claims Court, Landlord Tenant and other tribunals. As a lawfirm, we handle appeals from Small Claims Court as well. Every case is assessedby a research lawyer.

The lawyer side of the practice is restricted to matters involving informationgovernance such as electronic discovery litigation, mediation and education,privacy, litigation preparedness, and information security.

For more information about Harrington LLP please visithttp://www.harringtonllp.com.

About CanLII

Everyone knows that online legal research has had a huge impact over at leastthe last 30 years. In Canada, Quicklaw was a pioneer of online legal researchlong before the World Wide Web was invented. Quicklaw, established as QLSystems in 1973, became part of LexisNexis in 2002, and eCarswell, launched in6

1998, is now Westlaw Canada. Both of these web-based online research7

services provided access to statutes, regulations and case law, in addition toencyclopedias, digests headnotes and a variety of academic materials to helpusers perform legal research across the broadest range of resources. Even so,these systems have not yet replaced the traditional law library, mostly becauseof the lack of textbooks.

While the value of commercial legal databases to practitioners has beenenormous, there are reasons to doubt the long-term viability of fee-basedservices aimed specifically at lawyers, in particular with respect to primarylaw. This is true for several reasons. First of all, courts started to issue theirjudgments in electronic form directly to the public, making access much more

6 See http://www.lexisnexis.ca/en-ca/products/quicklaw-full-service.page7 See http://www.westlawcanada.com/westlaw-products/lawsource/

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open and easier than it ever was. Prior to the development of court websites, itwas very difficult for the public to get their hands on any particular judgment.Hence one of the very valuable roles of the commercial publishers was tosystematically obtain copies of judgments from the courts. With courts acrossthe country now self-publishing, they have to pay more attention to editorialissues, whereas in the past they relied on the commercial publishers to correctmistakes, insert cross-references and deal with formatting issues.

Finally, services such as Google and its predecessors facilitated increased publicawareness of the availability of government and public documentation, andcreated a demand for access to the law on line. More than 10 years ago, thelegal profession through representatives of the provincial and territorial lawsocieties, acting through the Federation of Law Societies, established CanLIIwith a mandate of providing the legal community and the public with freeaccess to law.

This coincided with a worldwide free access to law movement and the rise oflegal information institutes starting in the United States, Australia, GreatBritain and now encompassing many countries around the world.8

Last year CanLII commissioned a national client needs study. The objectives ofthe study were to assess CanLII’s success in meeting client needs and to see howCanLII could be improved. The study was conducted between March and July2012.

There were two aspects to the survey’s methodology. First, executive interviewswith key stakeholders were held, and second an online survey of more than4,000 professional users was made. From the perspective of the executivestakeholders, the assessment of CanLII concluded that it is worth theinvestment, easy to use, and is the first choice for legal research. Potentialimprovements could include better search capabilities, less lag time in

8 See Montreal Declaration on Free Access to Law, 2002-2007 athttp://www.canlii.org/en/info/mtldeclaration.html. A list of members of the Free Access to LawMovement is found at http://www.falm.info/,

Legal Research for Better Advocacy: A Practical Guide to Effective CanLII Research for Paralegalsby Martin Felsky, PhD, JD February 23, 2013

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uploading new case law and legislation, and the addition of other value-addedfeatures. The principle of public access to legal resources was reaffirmed, andit was felt that CanLII should evolve to offer a broader one-stop shoppingexperience for legal research.

CanLII is funded through levies that are applied to the licensing fees of lawyersand Quebec notaries in their respective law societies. Currently paralegals inOntario do not contribute to the cost of CanLII.

Key survey results

1. About two thirds of survey participants frequently conduct their ownlegal research

2. Almost 9 in 10 participants have used CanLII and CanLII ranks above allother sources of frequency of use

3. CanLII is the first stop for case law research across all law societies,because it is easiest to use most convenient to access and free

4. 99% of CanLII users are either somewhat or very satisfied with theservice

Future Plans

In 2011, CanLII received nearly seven million site visits and delivered over 81million page views to users, with one million documents across more than 200databases. Our strategic priorities are to:

1. Secure a permanent role as the foremost source of free law in Canada2. Continually enrich content to meet needs of public and professional

users3. Deliver easy to use professional grade tools and a compelling site

experience4. Continuously promote and defend free access to law

For more information about CanLII please visithttp://www.canlii.org/en/info/about.html.

Legal Research for Better Advocacy: A Practical Guide to Effective CanLII Research for Paralegalsby Martin Felsky, PhD, JD February 23, 2013

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