The Bora Laskin Law Library is pleased to offer individualized support to help Faculty of Law scholars enhance the visibility, accuracy, and impact of their research. 

We can assist with creating and maintaining HeinOnline Author Profile Pages, ORCID records, and Google Scholar profiles. These three key platforms can improve discoverability and ensure proper attribution of your work. 

From establishing new profiles to reviewing existing ones for accuracy, our team is here to help strengthen your scholarly profile across the research landscape.

Please contact sooin.kim@utoronto.ca or alexia.loumankis@utoronto.ca for individualized assistance. 

The Guide canadien de la référence juridique en accès libre (RJAL) is now on CanLII. The RJAL is the French version of the Canadian Open Access Legal (COAL) Citation Guide.

Not a simple one-to-one translation, RJAL’s terminology and stylistic recommendations are aligned with recognized French‑language standards in Canada. It introduces a section on multilingual legal sources, reflecting the growing need to cite materials published in more than one language. Learn more in CanLII's blog post about RJAL.

Early adopters of the COAL-RJAL include: Court of Appeal of Saskatchewan, Court of King’s Bench for Saskatchewan, Provincial Court of Saskatchewan, Thompson Rivers University Law Journal, and Dalhousie Law Journal. Various Canadian law school instructors have adopted COAL-RJAL in their classrooms.

Questions about COAL-RJAL? Contact Alexia Loumankis.

Our Summer Research Assistant instructional program launches on Tuesday May 12, 2026. 

We will provide in‑person and remote legal research instruction, including vendor‑led database training sessions.

Please send your RA's names and emails to law.infoexpress@utoronto.ca. We will contact the RAs directly with the details of the summer program. Please feel free to refer new hires to us throughout the summer. 

Find Professor Simon Stern’s contribution “The Treatise and the Human Figure” in Part 3 (Identity) of New Perspectives on the Legal Treatise. 

This collection of essays edited by Femi Cadmus and Nicholas Mignanelli are based on the proceedings of the Second Yale Legal Information Symposium, which took place on March 24, 2023 at Yale Law School. Essays examine the legal treatise through the lenses of history, authorship, identity, and technological transitions.

Find New Perspectives on the Legal Treatise in our catalogue. 
 

If you recently published a new book or chapter, please email InfoEXPRESS so we can feature your work in a future library newsletter!

Earn 2 LSO Professionalism Hours while learning how to use GenAI tools responsibly in legal research!

Queen’s Law is offering a 1-day virtual course on Friday, April 17. Participants will explore real-life scenarios and learn practical strategies for using GenAI responsibly in the research process.

For the schedule and registration details, visit the GenAI in Contemporary Legal Research course page at Queen’s Law. Discounts may be requested for non-profit and educational organizations. Registration closes April 8. 

Track trade law disputes and scholarly impact rankings with recent database upgrades. Read on for more law eResource updates.

In January, HeinOnline launched their Scholarly Impact Rankings tool. 

In addition to enhancing their own visibility on HeinOnline, researchers can harness this platform to explore trends in legal scholarship. Some highlights:

• U of T users can access the complete rankings through our HeinOnline subscription
• Users can sort interactive data tables (by h-index, citation counts, and more) and download CSV data for offline analysis
• Impact rankings include authors outside of academia, including practitioners, judges, policy experts, and other contributors.

Read HeinOnline’s Scholarly Impact Rankings FAQs page or learn more about the ranking methodology. Need help putting your best digital foot forward? Email Sooin Kim and Alexia Loumankis for support with your author profiles.

Trying to keep up with the latest trade law disputes? WorldTradeLaw.net’s Trade Law Dispute Tracker lets you quickly access key primary documents, including government statements, court motions, WTO communications and more.

The latest updates appear at the top of the table, and users can filter the table by specific disputes, date, dispute type. Comprehensive coverage starts in April 2023, with earlier coverage for select disputes. RSS options are found at the bottom of the page.

Our WorldTradeLaw.net subscription also includes “Dispute Settlement Commentary”, which contain summaries and critical analyses of all new WTO Panel and Appellate Body reports.

Of interest to researchers who study American law or legal education, we now subscribe to HeinOnline’s West Academic Casebooks Archive collection. 

This collection contains all out-of-print and superseded* West Academic casebooks from the: 

• American Casebook Series
• University Casebook Series 
• Hornbook Series 
• Nutshell Series

*The collection does not include the two most recent editions of any title. 

Researchers seeking recent editions can contact InfoExpress. Thank you to everyone who participated in the trial.

Starting April 22, 2026, the Canadian Abridgment eDigests tool will be replaced by Canadian Abridgment Digests Alert integrated directly within Westlaw Canada.

To continue receiving alerts, you must create a new alert after April 22. For instructions, see the training guide: How to use alerts to stay up to date on Canadian Abridgment Digests.

View the notice from Thomson Reuters.

Happy new year! Read on for the latest law library news impacting your teaching and research. Don't forget to check our Digital Services Dispatch for legal research database training and updates.

In celebration of 75 years of the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law (now the Henry NR Jackman Faculty of Law), we’re excited to highlight Looking Forward By Looking Back: 75 Years of Modern Legal Education at the University of Toronto. In fifteen chapters, this book showcases a wealth of legal scholarship first presented at a conference in March 2025. It commemorates the faculty’s legacy and its pivotal role in shaping the future of Canadian law. 

Edited by the Faculty’s outgoing dean and incoming dean, Professor Jutta Brunnée and Professor Christopher Essert, the book brings together contributions from current law professors about the impact of our former and emeritus law professors on Canada’s legal profession and education. 

Starting from a request from Professor Essert in 2023, our Law Library team embarked on “Project Diamond” to support our faculty’s preparations for the 75th anniversary conference.

Consulting historical yearbooks and archived websites, we identified over 100 appointed full-time faculty members from the school’s inception to present day. Then our team compiled a list of each member’s published works, revealing the sheer breadth and depth of U of T’s legal scholarship. These publication lists are available to Jackman Law researchers and staff upon request by emailing InfoEXPRESS.

We are pleased to announce that Jo-Anna Hines has joined the Bora Laskin Law Library as our new User Services Generalist! 

Jo-Anna graduated from the University of West Indies, Mona (Kingston, Jamaica) with a BSc in Political Science and from Seneca Polytechnic with Paralegal and Library and Information Technician diplomas. Previously, Jo-Anna worked at Miller Thomson LLP as a file and billing administration clerk, Centennial College as a library technician, and at Osgoode Hall Law School library as law library clerk. 

Jo-Anna is excited to be joining the Bora Laskin Law Library team and will be providing both public and technical services at our library. On occasion, Jo-Anna enjoys listening to radio dramas.

With classes back in full swing, we are highlighting The Thrive Guide: Library Resources for Law Student Mental Health and Wellness. This is a curated collection available for students of books and resources designed to support their mental health and overall well‑being during law school. It brings together practical materials on time management, stress, resilience, study strategies, and more. The full guide is available on our library website, and a selection of featured titles will be on display in the library from now until January 26th. 

We welcome faculty to browse the guide and point students to it as a helpful tool during busy points in the term. There are four sections in the collection: Thrive as a Law Student, Thrive as a Lawyer, Thrive in the Workplace, and Thrive Outside of Law. Some notable books include: How to Succeed (and Stay Human) in Law School: Pathways to Happiness and High Performance in the Study and Practice of Law by Lynda Collins, and The Mindful Law Student: A Mindfulness in Law Practice Guide by Scott L. Rogers.

If you have published a book, chapter, or article recently, please let us know so we can feature it in our next issue of InfoEXPRESS Extra!

Professor Mayo Moran’s latest work published by Oxford University Press explores how institutions, governments, and communities redress historic injustices, such as colonialism, slavery, genocide, abuse, and looting. Moran’s book covers the history of reparations as well as lessons learned.

Find Making Amends for Historic Wrongs as an eBook on the Oxford University Press platform.

Recently published by Cambridge University Press as an open-access title, Professor Kent Roach's latest book addresses miscarriages of justice, wrongful convictions and innocence. In addition to comparing justice systems of England, the US, China, and India, Roach uses legal process and historical approaches in this work.

Find Justice for Some as an eBook on the Cambridge University Press platform.

Happy new year! Read on for a recap of the new General AI feature in Lexis+ and upcoming database training webinars at Jackman Law.

As of December 17, all law school users can access to General AI, a new feature added to the Protégé module in Lexis+ Canada. General AI provides in-platform access to different generative AI models, including GPT4o, OpenAI o3, GPT-5, Claude Sonnet 4.

To prepare Jackman Law instructors and researchers for Winter term, we arranged two training sessions on January 8 and 13, led by our LexisNexis trainer. Key takeaways for instructors:

• Unlike Protégé (legal AI assistant), General AI is not grounded in the LexisNexis content; it is trained and draws upon content from the open web. 
• Links to external websites supporting General AI responses are currently disabled for security reasons.
• General AI includes “citation assistant” functionality, which supplies a link for cases referenced in the output, if those cases are available in the Lexis+ Legal Research module 
• Protégé’s “Summarize a case” feature no longer displays the human-authored case summaries as a default response. To view a human-authored case summary, navigate to the case itself in the Legal Research module.
• The Vault feature contains OCR functionality to process image-based PDF documents uploaded
• The Submit Feedback link embedded in the AI interface is currently not working for General AI conversations, but errors can be reported from the main menu at the top of the screen.

For more information, see LexisNexis’ 1-page introduction to the new General AI feature and the 1-page comparison sheet explaining the General AI models available.

To request the recording links for January 8 and 13 training, faculty members and instructors can email the Digital Services Librarian. Questions and feedback about the AI features in Lexis+ Canada are also welcome!

Our library has arranged lunchtime training webinars for Jackman Law students between January 21 to February 11. We encourage instructors to remind their students to attend these sessions.

Registration links have been emailed directly to students. Law faculty and staff are also welcome to attend and can register using the links in the FOL events calendar (log-in to view the law school only events). 

Sessions will be led by the database trainers and will be recorded.

Wrap up

If you have questions or comments about our library’s e-Resources and databases, please email our Digital Services Librarian at alexandra.kwan@utoronto.ca.

Wrap up the term with our syllabus service and the latest law library news impacting your teaching and research. Don't forget to check our Digital Services Dispatch for a couple reminders and a spotlight on one of our eResources.

Don't miss the sylla-bus! Last call for syllabus service!

We are still accepting syllabi for our Winter 2026 Syllabus service. This service supports law faculty and staff in providing course readings to students while ensuring compliance with Canadian copyright law and the University of Toronto’s licensing policies.

Don’t delay! Submit your syllabus to law.infoexpress@utoronto.ca. 

7,000+ new articles and 11 new active serials have been added to the HeinOnline Law Journal Library. Some notable new themes range from cybersecurity and digital privacy to comparative legal history and international dispute resolution.

New journals include Journal of Cybersecurity, University of Chicago Business Law Review, and Governance: An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions.

See more journals in HeinOnline’s Blog post.

Through their publishing program, the Osgoode Society has produced an extensive body of scholarship preserving and promoting Canadian legal history. Check out their latest books authored by our faculty!

Legal historian Jim Phillips, the long-time Editor-in-Chief of the Osgoode Society, explores marital conflict in the 1870s through the case of Robert and Eliza Campbell. This case involved a six-year battle through Ontario courts and a petition to the Parliament of Canada.

Find I Did Not Commit Adultery as an eBook on the De Gruyter platform.

Robert J. Sharpe reflects on a distinguished career that encompasses scholarship, legal practice, and service on the judiciary. As a former president of the Osgoode Society and author of four other Osgoode Society books, this memoir highlights his lasting contributions to the field. 

Find My Life in the Law as an eBook on the De Gruyter platform.

If you have published a book, chapter, or article recently, please let us know so we can feature it in our next issue of InfoEXPRESS Extra!

Read on for end-of-year reminders, and a spotlight on one of our databases!

Hosted on the EBSCO platform, the Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective: 1908-1981 is a searchable archive index covering legal periodicals published in the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand.

For researchers interested in the evolution of their topic over time, this index includes articles’ original subject headings, reflecting the language used by legal scholars at the time of publishing. This index uniquely maps these historical subject tags to contemporary terminology, so today’s scholars can look backwards without missing articles. For example, articles tagged with the historical phrase “Master and servant” are also tagged with the current “Employer and employee”.

This searchable and browsable index is a helpful addition to legal researchers’ toolkits, covering articles published between 1908 and 1981. Broader topics include criminal law, federal law, international law, medical law and more. 

Wrap up

If you have questions or comments about our library’s e-Resources and databases, please email our Digital Services Librarian at alexandra.kwan@utoronto.ca.

Let us support your end-of-term prep with our syllabus service and the latest law library news impacting your teaching and research. Also, learn about HeinOnline's AI features, students' access to AI tools in Westlaw, Justice Laws' new look, and more in this month's Digital Services Dispatch.

Syllabus Service due December 3

The Law Library is pleased to provide copyright clearance for Winter 2025 courses through our Syllabus Service. This service supports law faculty and staff in making course readings accessible to students while ensuring compliance with Canadian copyright legislation and the University of Toronto’s licensing agreements and policies.

To participate, please email your syllabus to law.infoexpress@utoronto.ca by Wednesday, December 3, 2025. Submissions will be reviewed on a first-come, first-served basis. 

Thank you to all who have already submitted their syllabus for review.
 

International Open Access Week was October 20-26, 2025. Open Access Week offers the academic and research community a chance to explore the benefits of open access, exchange insights with peers, and promote wider participation in making open access a standard practice in scholarly communication.

As part of sharing content with a global audience, Edward Elgar Publishing offers a wide selection of open access titles, including individual law book chapters and scholarly articles.

You can browse open access law titles on the Elgar Online site. 

Published in The Supreme Court Law Review, Professor Catherine Valcke critically examines the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1981 Ron Engineering decision.

Catherine Valcke, “Is Ron Engineering Good Law in Quebec?”, (2025) 7 SCLR (3d) 75. 
Read the article on Lexis+ Canada.

If you have published a book, chapter, or article recently, please let us know so we can feature it in our next issue of InfoEXPRESS Extra!

We are piloting new lamps and desk risers in the group study rooms to create more comfortable study environments for our students. Lamps are dimmable with adjustable warm and cool temperature light options. Portable and adjustable desk risers convert study tables to a standing workspace. 

For the first round of this project, students can vote for their favourite items using the attached survey QR codes. More changes to come in the winter term!

We encourage faculty to remind students that they can also borrow our focus-aids, including earmuffs, book stands, and light-sensitivity glasses, to improve their studying experience in the library.

Don’t get snowed under by all the website changes this season! Read on for the latest updates to HeinOnline, Westlaw, and more.

HeinOnline recently launched their new AI Summaries feature, run on an in-house AI model. 

Not all articles have an AI summary just yet. If a summary is available for an article, it will appear in three places: Search results, article downloads, and reader interface.

When you run a keyword search, the AI summary will appear in the tab under each search result. In downloaded articles, AI summaries appear after the HeinOnline cover page and before the full text of the article.

Users can access the AI summary from the toolbar while reading the article within the HeinOnline database. Clicking the “sparkles” button will pull up the AI summary associated with the article, which can be copied and pasted into another document.

To see AI Summaries in action, watch HeinOnline’s 2-minute video explaining the new feature and where it appears on the platform. To learn more about HeinOnline’s AI model, visit their AI Infrastructure: Security & Trust Statement.

At this time, the AI Summaries feature cannot be turned off or hidden by default for all U of T users. We know that AI isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but HeinOnline has assured us that they are open to user feedback. If you have any questions or concerns about the new AI feature, please email alexandra.kwan@utoronto.ca.

Canadian law school faculty, staff and their students now have access to AI-Assisted Research on Westlaw Edge Canada and Search & Summarize on Practical Law Canada. AI-Assisted Research page will now appear as the default landing screen in Westlaw unless users adjust individual account settings.

In their November 14 announcement, Thomson Reuters Canada is offering on-demand product training and live training webinars to support the roll-out to law student users. 

Law faculty members who are seeking a custom training session or are experiencing difficulties with accessing new AI features can email our Digital Services Librarian with questions and concerns.

On November 5, Canada’s Department of Justice launched the new Justice Laws website interface to “enhance usability, accessibility, and consistency across government platforms”. 

Notable changes include a simplified homepage, a lighter colour scheme, and removal of the left-side menu. Overall structure and links to the legislation itself remain unchanged. For a list of changes between the old and new site, visit the Table of Concordance.

Justice Laws continues to be the official source of Canadian federal legislation.

Wrap up

If you have questions or comments about our library’s e-Resources and databases, please email our Digital Services Librarian at alexandra.kwan@utoronto.ca.

Our Law Library team welcomes you back for another term! Read on for the latest library news and updates impacting your legal scholarship and teaching.

Animal Law Exhibit

Our library is proud to host the new exhibition presented by the Museum of Human Predation: Necessary Cruelty: The Legal Technology of Domestic Predation. 

This exhibition "examines and materializes the 'Zone of Necessity,' a legal artifact used in the human predatory Age to create realms of lawlessness within the law." 

Collaborating with the Museum of Human Predation (led by M.H. Tse), the law library entrance was transformed into a site of critical engagement. The exhibition’s immersive design guides visitors through a sensory experience as they cross in and out of reflective zones within the space.

Coinciding with the September 12th launch of the Jackman Law’s Animal Law Program, the exhibition will run until November 21, 2025. 

Our team of librarians are excited to introduce a new research guide Imprimatur: Your Guide to Legal Scholarly Publishing. This new resource offers practical tools and insights to help students who are interested in engaging more deeply with the world of legal academia, writing, and publishing.

Thanks to Assistant Dean Emily Orchard for her invaluable feedback during the guide’s development.

Faculty members seeking support for short-term research projects can access a pool of law student research assistants throughout the academic year. Working closely with faculty and guided by our Research & Reference Librarian, RAs help define project scope, conduct research, and communicate results. The RAs are paid from the individual faculty member’s research funds. 

If you would like to hire a Research Assistant, please contact alexia.loumankis@utoronto.ca

See you later, Julie!

Our User Services Generalist, Julie Boon, is leaving the Bora Laskin Law Law Library as she embarks on an exciting new chapter at the U of T Libraries' Scholarly Communications and Copyright Office. Julie provided support in many different areas such as InfoEXPRESS, Syllabus Services, and collections maintenance. We all wish her the best in her new position!

Happy retirement, Gian!

At the end of August, our Chief Librarian, Gian Medves, retired after 36 years of dedicated service at Bora Laskin Law Library. 

Gian has made a lasting impact on the Faculty of Law through his visionary leadership, dedication to curriculum innovation, and development of transformative scholarly resources. Widely respected for his expertise and commitment to equity, he has been a passionate advocate for inclusion, especially in support of Indigenous communities.

Gian recently co-authored a two-part article published on CanLII titled, "Trends in Canadian Academic Law Libraries: Report on the Reinvigorating Academic Law Library Standards Survey". Part One and Part 2. 

Congratulations Gian on a distinguished career and we all wish you the best!

Welcome to our round-up of the latest e-Resources updates at the Law Library. Read on to learn about new AI-features in Westlaw Edge Canada, the refreshed U of T Library catalogue and website, and more!

Faculty users may already have received access to the AI-Assisted Research functionality of CoCounsel in Westlaw Edge Canada. We are awaiting details from Thomson Reuters about this new feature rolling out to Canadian academic users. 

In the meantime, faculty users can register for the next monthly AI-Assisted Research training hosted by Thomson Reuters on October 28 from 2-2:30PM. 

Additional Westlaw live training sessions are available through their Legal Learning Hub (sign-in required).

On the first day of the Fall term, the main U of T Library launched their new website and new library catalogue search interface. Launched in “beta” mode, the central library web team is seeking user feedback to improve the new site. If you have suggestions or comments to share, you can submit a feedback survey embedded at the top of their site or email Alexandra Kwan, Digital Services Librarian.

By the end of October 2025, the new website will become the default U of T Libraries’ landing page.

Along with the Jackman Faculty of Law school site, our Bora Laskin Law Library website got a refresh too! However, you can still find our list of faculty services and past issues of InfoEXPRESS Extra on the new site. If you have questions about our new law library website, please contact Alexandra Kwan, Digital Services Librarian.

Wrap up

If you have questions or comments about our library’s e-Resources and databases, please email our Digital Services Librarian at alexandra.kwan@utoronto.ca.