The new BCCA100.ca website includes a photo gallery drawn from the Court’s archives including portraits of every Chief Justice of British Columbia, the original ground-breaking of the old courthouse building (now the Vancouver Art Gallery), and significant historical events such as Lord Denning’s visit for the opening of the current Vancouver Courts in 1979, and the first all-woman panel of the Court of Appeal.

Plans for the 2010 centennial include a one-hour documentary “Though the Heavens Fall: 100 Years of the BC Court of Appeal“, a book by author Christopher Moore, and a judicial and academic conference in April 2010 featuring professor and legal futurist Richard Susskind and keynote speaker the Right Honourable Madam Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin P.C.

For more information, please visit the Court’s centenary website here: http://www.bcca100.ca

On a personal note, I must add that this project has afforded me the unique privilege of learning more about both the inner workings of the Court of Appeal’s operations and British Columbia’s legal history. For that I am deeply grateful.

* Integrated search – a single, powerful search application that can search any or all of 10 different library sources (e.g. the library catalogue, their in-house “asked & answered” database, their unreported decisions database, etc.);
* Practice Portals- practice-specific hubs designed to provide practitioners’ with ready access to key resources, texts, legislation, leading authorities and recent news in a single environment. There are five practice portals initially (Civil litigation, Family law, Personal Injury, Wills & Estates, and Practice Management & Technology) with plans already underway to add more;
* User Accounts individual user accounts that can save preferences, order histories and searches;
* News filtering by practice area – self-explanatory; and
* A new blog, “The Stream” which will serve as a platform for Library staff to provide their insight and commentary on law and legal research developments relevant to British Columbia lawyers.

Also of key importance in my view is that CLBC’s extensive involvement in the development and operation of a separate (and excellent) legal information site geared specifically to the public – CLICKLAW – has enabled the organization to focus the new Courthouselibary.ca site squarely on the needs of practicing lawyers. While both sites are fully accessible to anyone, separating out the offerings to cater more specifically to their respective user bases can only result in better user experiences across the board.

Skunkworks is proud to have been involved in several aspects of this project although full credit goes to our friends at Habanero Consulting Group for the top-notch site build and to the Courthouse Libraries’ team for their vision both in engaging in extensive user consultation and research into what users wanted from a new library website and in their willingness to explore new approaches and priorities even where such choices represented fundamental shifts away from established library processes. It’s accepted wisdom in marketing circles that brave clients make for interesting work. For me, this has been a textbook example of exactly that.

If you are a British Columbia lawyer that wonders what really happens at focus groups, here’s your chance to find out first hand while giving back to the profession at the same time. If you are available and willing to pitch in, please (get in touch) doug (at) skunkworks (dot) ca and I’ll get you on the list!

Clearly, old age is creeping up on me because I find myself falling squarely into the camp of the traditionalists on this one. Despite the apparent popularity for the switch, I personally find it hard to believe that the types of international firms that are hiring significant numbers of Canadian lawyers have any confusion regarding an LL.B. degree. Indeed, as quoted in the Lawyers Weekly article on the topic, both Western Dean Ian Holloway, and Osgoode Dean Patrick Monahan acknowledge that the change is unlikely to have much impact on international hiring. As aptly stated by Dean Holloway, such firms “don’t just hire Canadians. They hire graduates from Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, India. These are global firms. Regardless of the degree designation, they know just what they’re getting.”

Setting aside the international marketability question, part of the impetus from the student ranks might also be explained by the fact that in some universities, such as Western, law students are deemed as undergraduates within the university community, thereby precluding them from graduate-level perks such as parking privileges. That, however, is in my view a university-specific glitch that can be easily rectified without changing the degree designation. Indeed, harking back lo those many years to my own law school days at UVIC, law students were recognized as graduate students and had access to the grad student lounge, etc.
Call me squarely behind the times on this one. I say long live the LL.B.!