Legal Research

LCO gears up for new year

By Patricia Hughes

The elves at the Law Commission of Ontario have been furiously pecking away at their keyboards to produce our next crop of consultation papers. John Hill has been putting the finishing touches to the Executive Summary for the pension division on marital breakdown final report (the text is in translation now), making it all shiny and bright.

Lauren Bates completed the next consultation paper for our older adults project and once translated, it will be distributed and appear on our website in the new year. We are experimenting with on-line comments for this consultation, along with the traditional submission format. By the way, we are seeking contract researchers for that project, so if you know any experts on aging issues (how to use technology as an aid for seniors?), you can let them know: (French scholars can find the call for papers on in French). Once we have it gift-wrapped, we’ll send it out.

We’re also finalizing the next stage in our family law consultation. Julie Lassonde has authored an “options paper” that sets out two options for a family law project on which we’re seeking opinions - also using on-line comments. Look for it in the new year, too.

Finally, my appeal for help for the LCO in our technology adventures brought responses and I’ll be receiving a proposal in the new year about how to use social media for our interaction with the public. I appreciate the comments on that blog and take admonitions to be cautious seriously - we need to communicate with constituencies that don’t write submissions or look at our website and whom we don’t know about, so thinking about these issues is in response to a need, but we also have to be conscious about our resources and the integrity of our website. Baby steps, baby steps!

And to all the best for the holidays.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on December 24, 2008 (boomark / email).