What is Your Favourite Law Blog? My Clawbies nominations.
This post is not about condo law. It contains my Clawbies nominations for 2018. Read on if you want to know which law blogs are my favourite ones (after Condo Adviser, naturally….).
If law blogs were somewhat of a novelty a decade ago, they have now become an inescapable part of the cyber landscape and of the practice of law. There are now some 500 Canadian law blogs identified by lawblogs.ca, an open and free law blog directory. Each of these blogs has revolutionized how law firms communicate their expertise (and brand) to the world. They have also greatly facilitated access to justice and to legal information. In a sense they have democratized the law.
Our year at Condo Adviser
Nearly 4 years ago, we at Condo Adviser embarked on the amazing law blogging adventure. This year alone, we have published some 52 posts on a wide range of condo-related topics including cannabis legalization, electric vehicle charging stations, legal cases and governance in condos. Our main focus however has continued to be on understanding and explaining Ontario’s changes to the Condo Act. This year we have also introduced interactive condo tools such as our AGM calculator; our PIC calendar, our Record Retention Chart, many surveys and a fun quiz. By far, our single most visited page is our Forms page, where you can easily access the most up-to-date mandatory provincial forms – both in fillable or printable format.
What an amazing and busy year it has been! Many thanks to our readers for another wonderful year!
Clawbies nominations
Once a year, the Stem Legal team identifies the best law blogs and rewards them with what have now become the renowned and highly coveted Clawbies.
Until December 21, readers and bloggers alike can nominate their favourite blog (either by blogging or tweeting with the hashtag #Clawbies2018). Having been honoured with two Clawbies in the past, we thought we would pay it forward this year by nominating our favourite blogs. While there are tons of great blogs out there – many from our friendly competitors, I only get to nominate three. So, here they are, in no particular order.
Lash Condo Law Blog
My first nomination must go to Denise Lash for her amazing Lash Condo Law Blog!
Denise is the reason why I blog today. She gave me the blogging bug some 8 years ago with the now defunct Condo Reporter. For the last three and a half years, Denise has been furiously blogging on Lash Condo Law, posting nearly 100 posts this year alone! With such production, it’s no wonder that she was a Clawbie Finalist last year, for her “focused, practical and solution-oriented” niche blog.
This year, Denise and her team have focused on timely topics including the legalization of cannabis, pets and emotional support animals in condos, how to work with short-term rentals, licencing of managers and, most notably, with her posts on electronic voting, as a solution and alternative to proxies.
For another amazing year of blogging, Lash Condo Law gets one of my three Clawbies nominations!
Diversonomics (podcast)
Over the last 3 years, Roberto Aburto and Sarah Willis have co-hosted the Diversonomics podcast.
As its name indicates, this podcast aims at advancing the conversation on diversity and inclusion in the legal market. In this year’s 6 episodes, Roberto and Sarah tackled mental health, unconscious bias, gender, allyship and affinity groups for law firms. Most noteworthy, this podcast is accredited by the Law Society of Ontario for Equality Diversity and Inclusion credits for lawyers/paralegals’ continuing education.
While this podcast is produced by my firm, Gowling WLG, I still dare to nominate it as I have nothing to do with it.
For their much needed and courageous conversation, Diversonomics gets my second Clawbies nomination!
Juriblogue
Juriblogue, a French Law blog out of Ontario, is well-deserving of a Clawbie as much for its concept as for its content.
Juriblogue is a unique blogging platform built on “crowd-blogging”, with about 15 bloggers from various law firms, the government and academia, all feeding it on more than a dozen legal topics. From Administrative law to Transnational Anti-corruption law, Juriblogue is the single law reference in French outside of Québec. In its first year, Juriblogue has pushed an impressive 58 posts!
Juriblogue is the result of a partnership between PratiquO (Ottawa-U’s innovative online professional development program) and the AJEFO (Association of French Speaking Jurists of Ontario).
For my francophone and francophile friends, especially in these linguistically precarious times in Ontario, for its promotion of the practice of law in French outside of Québec, Juriblogue received my third Clawbies nomination. And a very well-deserved one at that!
What’s your favourite law blog?
What about you? What is your favourite law blog? You have until December 21 to make your nominations, either by blogging about it or by tweeting about it with the hashtag #Clawbies2018.
