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Author: osaseweka
Published on: 10-04-15
We are happy to announce that the Alberta Legal Information Society (ALIS) is a recipient of a project grant from the Alberta Law Foundation (ALF) for a second consecutive year. The funding will allow us to consolidate our ongoing website development and complete the curation of content to help Albertans address their legal information needs.  During the past year the ALIS team has worked with more than fifty organizations and individual stakeholders who are directly or indirectly involved in the provision of legal information to Albertans to develop the website (Legalave.ca) to address family law. Legalave.ca will be available to the public in the fall of 2015 and it will contain information about Family Law. Other areas of law will be added as the website grows.  We thank the Alberta... read more
Author: osaseweka
Published on: 26-02-15
We’ve been working with our web developer and various organizations across the province to ensure our upcoming legal information website—LegalAve—meets the technical needs of Albertans and has quality family law information.  On February 4, 2015, we held a small event to demonstrate the website to organizations with whom we’ve been collaborating. We were pleased to share our progress so far with the people who have been involved by helping us review content, suggesting legal resources to link to, offering subject matter expert referral and giving general feedback. The event was an opportunity to look at a version of the final product together and have insightful conversations about how to make the website better for Albertans. LegalAve is scheduled to become available to the public in... read more
Author: osaseweka
Published on: 19-02-15
We’re proud to announce the name of our Public Legal Education and Information (PLEI) website! Once completed, the website will help Albertans find the correct information to resolve their legal concerns by connecting them to existing legal resources in the province.  Working collaboratively with existing PLEI providers in the province, our partners and other stakeholders, family law was identified as the first area of law to work on followed by other areas of law. The name: LegalAveGoing through the province’s legal system can be complex for anyone, something we kept in mind when we started thinking of what to call the website. There is an overwhelming amount of information on the internet and you can’t always tell if the information is up-to-date, applicable, or correct. The name—LegalAve—is fitting for the simple fact that the website is intended to show Albertans the way to the... read more
Author: osaseweka
Published on: 06-11-14
We’re getting closer to launching our PLEI (Public Legal Education and Information) website—an interactive legal resource for Albertans! During this first phase of the project, the ALIS PLEI website will focus on information about family law—and gradually grow to include information on other areas of law. This initial focus on family law is based on the feedback we received during our consultation with PLEI service providers in Alberta as well as other frontline community organizations that do similar work. There is much excitement about the project and groups we’ve talked to have already started to identify areas they’d like us to address next. We’ve been working diligently behind the scene to meet each deadline and milestone so that we can move this project from an idea that was once talked about in meetings and boardrooms to a useful tool Albertans can have at their fingertips. What... read more
Author: katymoore
Published on: 15-10-14
On September 22, three ALIS staff members attended the Parkland Regional Library Conference in Lacombe. Over fifty member libraries were represented, and our team was pleased to be there to connect and chat with this important group of information providers who interact with the public on a daily basis. The majority of librarians who attended came from small rural libraries across central Alberta where sometimes the only source of legal information is the community library. These librarians often work alone and may not have any experience searching for legal information, and of course they cannot interpret their findings for their patrons since that would constitute as providing legal advice. These factors put a lot of pressure on librarians to find accurate, reliable, relevant resources for Albertans. I spoke with one such librarian who worked at a law library before taking her current... read more
Author: vincentchu
Published on: 09-10-14

ALIS attended the Public Legal Education Association of Canada (PLEAC) Conference in Fredericton, New Brunswick on September 18 and 19. Conference organizers, the Public Legal Education and Information Service of New Brunswick (PLEIS-NB) planned an extremely informative conference. The conference theme was “Making a Difference – The Impact of Law Information on Access to Justice”.

 

The keynote address was delivered by Justice Thomas Cromwell, Chair of the Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters. Justice Cromwell made attendees pause and reflect on the changes that had occurred throughout Canada since the Action Committee released its report in October 2013. 

 

Presentations were made by various organizations including our hosts (... read more

Author: osaseweka
Published on: 01-10-14

Hard to believe that ALIS participated in its second PLEAC (Public Legal Education Association of Canada) National Conference less than two weeks ago. It seems like yesterday that we wrote to tell you about the exciting and inspirational messages from the last PLEAC conference held fresh on the heels of the release of the Access to Civil and Family Justice: A Roadmap for Change report.

This year’s event was held in Fredericton, New Brunswick from September 18 to 19.

Justice Thomas Cromwell (the chair of the Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters) delivered the keynote address, which focused on the committee’s work since it released the report in October 2013.

Conference attendees who may have been skeptical about the progress made... read more

Author: osaseweka
Published on: 25-09-14
We formed our team and moved into our office in July 2014. We are located in downtown Edmonton in the Sun Life Building. Being able to focus together and share ideas in one central location helps us achieve our goal, which is to provide Albertans a website that uses a step-by-step approach to guide them to existing legal information they need to address their legal concerns. The website will focus on family law information during this first phase of the project. ALIS’s board and staff take this opportunity to thank Alberta Justice and Solicitor General, Law Libraries for providing us space and office equipment during the planning phase which helps us successfully complete our planning process. During that time, Marsha (then Project Manager and now our Manager... read more
Author: osaseweka
Published on: 16-09-14
The Alberta Legal Information Society was established two years ago with a primary objective to work in collaboration with other legal  information and service providers.  As soon as we staffed our office, we really began to put things into motion by working with different organizations across the province. We started a consultation group, made up specifically of front line workers such as social workers, lawyers, family court counsellors, clerks and other advocates who can best speak to the needs of everyday Albertans requiring legal information about family law.  Working side by side with these legal content and service experts will allow us to consolidate and enhance existing legal information resources, avoid duplication, and develop a website that not only meets the needs of Albertans seeking legal information, but also those of the organizations that help them on a daily basis. ... read more
Author: ALIS
Published on: 12-02-14

In recent months the unbundling of legal services has resounded more and more with practitioners and the public alike. It has been suggested that this could be a partial solution to the problem of access to justice.

What is unbundling you may ask? Unbundling, sometimes also referred to as limited-scope services,a la carte legal services, discrete task representation or disaggregated legal services involves a lawyer breaking down the tasks in a legal matter and providing services to a client only for a specific part of the client’s needs. The client accepts responsibility for doing the work necessary for the remaining aspects of their legal matter.

New developments in technology are making it easier for more people to both offer and use unbundled legal services. Most of the technologies used to offer these services operate on software as a service with data hosted by a... read more

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