It seems to me that if you really want to speak with your dead family members, you would be better off with a good medium than an LLM model.

[email protected], @steveamatthews.bsky.social, and I spoke about the #clawbies2025 awards and the state of open legal publishing for one of @cba-news.bsky.social's Legal Futures Fireside Chats: www.cbapd.org/details_en.a.... (the video is free for CBA members and $25 for others)

My new Slaw column "What Doesn’t Bore You Makes You a Scholar: On Picking a PhD Thesis Topic" was published today: "When starting a PhD thesis or other long piece of writing (any substantial intellectual project really), choosing the right topic is a significant part…" www.slaw.ca/2025/12/09/w...

I'm happy to be in Turin, Italy, today for the 38th Jurix Conference. I look forward to learning about what people are working on and catching up with other attendees. jurix2025.di.unito.it

Came across this observation from Joshua Walker's "On Legal AI" (2019) today in my research folders: ending war or contract disputes is not going to happen soon, but "ending X% of stupid disputes is a quest within our immediate grasp." It would have been cool if we had done this.

[email protected] has shared the video of the panel I spoke on at the ACT Conference in October. Please take a look if you are interested in some of what I've been researching.

Tonight I was told that the combo of Tamanaha on legal pluralism and wine is iconic.

Big thanks goes out to Marlene Gebauer and Greg Lambert @geeklawblog.com for helping us kickoff #clawbies2025 on their Geek in Review Podcast. Happy 20th Clawbies anniversary to my judging colleagues Sarah Sutherland @parallaxinfo.bsky.social and @jordanfurlong.com!

I'm grateful to have been invited back to judge the Clawbie Awards again for their 20th year with @steveamatthews.bsky.social and @jordanfurlong.com. Please send us your nominations using the #Clawbies2025 hashtag! Here's more information and the formal announcement: www.clawbies.ca/2025/12/20th...

Very useful & interesting couple of days at LVI2025, Law via the Internet conf www.lvi2025.org/program/ - "Shaping the Future of Legal Accessibility: Improving access to law through legal info, tech & AI” in Sydney at AustLII (Australasian Legal Information Institute www.austlii.edu.au/about.html)

I am happy to share that we have started a not-for-profit organization called @nomosanalytica.bsky.social with the goal of doing independent research to assist in supporting positive development in the Canadian legal system. We will be sharing more information in the coming months as we grow.

I am looking forward to speaking about my research in my session "Narrowing the Gaps Between Primary Law and Computational Systems Through Better Parsing of Secondary Document Elements." at the Law Via the Internet Conference next week in Sydney. Here's the full program: lvi2025.org/program/

I'm looking forward to presenting "Selective Memory: A Case Study on the Limits of Using Case Law to Understand Legal History", which will share research I have been working on with Amy Swiffen and Alec Duncan at the Law Via the Internet Conference in Sydney, next month. lvi2025.org/program/

My Slaw column "Quantitative Assessment of Access to Justice Initiatives" was published today. www.slaw.ca/2025/10/08/q...

The categories of academic collaborators and nerdy friends with overlapping niche interests seem to significantly overlap…

I'm looking forward to presenting on "Process, Purpose, and Time: Examining the Gap Between Judicial Decision Making and Legal Prediction" at the Autonomy through Cyberjustice Technologies (ACT) Conference at ‪@cyberjusticelab.bsky.social‬ on Oct 16 Registration: fcdroit.umontreal.ca/Web/MyCatalo...

Good morning! I started working on a daily art habit some months ago. Here’s yesterday’s sketch.

Ah, the traditional Monday morning ritual when I have a moment of panic about not getting enough done yet this week before 9am on Monday morning.

I'm happy to share that I joined UVic Access to Justice Centre for Excellence as a research fellow. I'm looking forward to working with so many new smart and interesting people! bcace.org

I'm looking forward to presenting on "Quantitative Assessment of Access to Justice Initiatives" at the 2025 People-Centred Justice Workshop on May 30-31 in Vancouver. There's still time to register. I hope to see you there! Here's the registration link: docs.google.com/forms/d/17DV....

"Justice is an abstract ideal whose precise content in any particular dispute is uncertain and debatable.…the law is a kind of system, a collection of principles, makeshifts fictions and expedients, none of them unchangeable, and most varying in character…" - Lord McCluskey, 1987

“If one already knows the thought that one wants to express, it is possible to assess whether text generated by AI captures it correctly. However, this hope neglects that the process of writing is not—or not usually—a mechanical one, whereby we put on paper thoughts that we already possess […]

Today it seems that the biggest impact on improving health would come from providing food security and access to stable housing. And not from trying to find genetic confounders of common diseases. - @gedankenstuecke.scholar.social.ap.brid.gy quoted in @404media.co www.404media.co/open-source-...

The creator of an open source genetic database is shutting it down & deleting all its data because he has come to believe that its existence is dangerous with “a rise in far-right and other authoritarian governments” in the United States and elsewhere. — @jasonkoebler.bsky.social in @404media.co.

The deadline for CALL/ACBD Awards and the Education Reserve Fund has been extended to April 11! The Silverstein, Laprise, and McCormack Awards are sponsored by Thomson Reuters, and each provide the winner with a monetary reward. Please review each award for full criteria: www.callacbd.ca/Awards

AustLII will host the 2025 Law Via Internet Conference lvi2025.org & meeting of the Free Access to Law Movement falm.info. Call for Papers: lvi2025.org/callforpapers/ Registration: secure.austlii.edu.au/cgi-egate/re.... We look forward to welcoming you to Sydney.

My @slawdotca.bsky.social column on the internet's drawn out, one could almost say "eternal", September and its parallels with legal scholarship was published this morning: www.slaw.ca/2025/03/28/t...

My column "The Case for Algorithmic Scepticism in Law" was published in @biall.org.uk's journal, Legal Information Management, this week. www.cambridge.org/core/journal... (If you don't have access, it is also still available on @slawdotca.bsky.social: www.slaw.ca/2022/08/23/t...)

Research suggests that the more sophisticated the AI model, the more likely it is to try to “hack” the game in an attempt to beat its opponent by overwriting the chess board to take control and delete its opponent’s pieces, etc. — @rhiannonwilliams.bsky.social writing in @technologyreview.com

An important statement from the American Bar Association. www.americanbar.org/news/abanews...

I finished my book draft 4 years ago, and I've kept my index card notes in order from that process since. I am disaggregating them today for reuse, and need a minute to mark the moment. I want to reuse the work but worry that somehow I will need the compilation in that format again.

Interpret it how you will, but I choose to understand this decision as the BC Supreme Court finding that the patriarchy is bad policy: Lam v Law Estate, 2024 BCSC 1561 (CanLII), canlii.ca/t/k6h97. (Judge decided that uneven bequests between son and daughter based on gender were inappropriate)

I’m the kind of person who has a favourite reference book, and it’s always a good morning when the new Chicago Manual edition arrives.

"…between Babbage's idea that mindless machines could calculate and our anxieties about being replaced by mechanical minds lies almost a century of calculating machines working in tandem with humans from about 1870 to 1970." from Rules, by Lorraine Daston press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

"When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems.…The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow." — www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouA... HT @matthomann.com

Happy #Lawyercat Anniversary for all who celebrate! It's been four years since the kitten appeared in my Zoom courtroom, and I released the 48 second video that made the whole world laugh. Here is the full video showing the big reveal at the end (in two parts because Blue sky). Enjoy!

Joan Didion's diary is going to be published in April (www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/771169...). This must be great news for Didion fans, while also making me feel glad that I am insufficiently famous for anyone to find my diary after I die and immediately think: "We should publish this".

A great idea Yan Plante in @lactualite.com today: (My rough translation) The provinces could avoid part of the effects of American tariffs by abolishing the barriers to trade within Canada. lactualite.com/politique/et...

My writing applications all want to make sure I know they have text generation capability, and the ways to turn it off aren't working. Which has brought me back to Cory Doctorow's advice of using a text editor for all composition 16 years later. They still don't intrude. locusmag.com/Features/200...

I am looking forward to discussing the potential applications for data science and law at a virtual event called "Emerging Connections: Finding Opportunities between Law and Data Science" on Feb 23 at 12:00pm PST hosted by @thompsonriversu.bsky.social Law School and Data Science department.

“When every lawyer wrote his points with a pen, there was no occasion for complaint [about overly long briefs]...; but, since the use of stenographers has become general, the evil has grown until it is so serious that repression is necessary.” - Stevens v. O’Neill, 62 N.E.2d 424, 425(N.Y. 1902).

Happy NYE reading version of #clawbies2024 ! Congratulations to all the winners (thread below) - full award descriptions at clawbies.ca Ty! @jordanfurlong.com @parallaxinfo.bsky.social @emmaewood.bsky.social

My column "Cheapening the Written Word" has been republished in the Jan/Feb 2025 issue of AALL Spectrum: "instead of resulting in a more efficient system, it appears this added facility has simply increased the volume of written material" aallspectrum.aallnet.org/html5/reader... (p32)

Hmm, will we soon see people saying "but *I* didn't write that email/contract/whatever, the AI wrote it! I didn't even notice that part of it!" Or is this already happening? below from @parallaxinfo.bsky.social's excellent piece, Cheapening the Written Word aallspectrum.aallnet.org/html5/reader...

Sometimes writers use “light years” as a unit of time instead of distance, and suddenly I wonder what they imagine when they do.

Don't mind me, I'm just searching online for fashion inspiration in preparation for my first day of school in several years. Happily, I was dark academia before it was cool and will not have to buy anything.

I am happy to share that I will be starting a PhD at the University of Edinburgh Law School in January focusing on legal documents including how they are created and what uses they can support. New year, new challenges!

The W+AI Summit site is live! And will have lots more info very soon 👇 womeandaisummit.com

Parallax Information's last newsletter of 2024 went out this morning with information about what we've been working on over the last months: mailchi.mp/parallaxinfo.... You can subscribe to future updates here: parallaxinformation.us13.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=....