RSS FeedIn Memorandum: Wendy Babcock (1979-2011)
Law students like to think the have it rough. But some of us have it rougher than others, especially those of us that took the less traveled road to law school.
This evening The Star announced that Wendy Babcock was found dead yesterday in her home. Wendy would have entered her third year of law school at Osgoode Hall this Fall. She gained notoriety given her background as a homeless teenage prostitute (she would say “sex worker”) before entering law school.
Third-year students expressed frustration today after Toronto area articling position offers closed when many were still waiting for a job. Wendy recently asked me whether she should consider changing her name for law firm applications, because she was apprehensive about what law firms would think about her background. The Eye Weekly once did a piece on her entitled, “All that she can’t leave behind,” and I responded that her experiences were what made her special.
Knowing the advocacy work that I’ve been involved in she also questioned my career path, asking me why I wasn’t practicing human rights law.
Wendy will live on in memories, and through the social media footprint she’s left behind (her “memoranda”). Coincidentally, I just viewed this TED video earlier today:
Here are some of the sites you can find out more about Wendy:
Wendy Babcock - a site created post-mortem by her friends
And finally, here is her last note posted on Facebook, giving us some insight into a controversial subject currently being deliberated by the Supreme Court of Canada in Bedford v. Canada:
Law is Cool wins Blawg Review of the Year
Blawg Review is an international peer-reviewed blog carnival, presenting various recent blog posts with a legal connection, traveling to different legal blogs every week. I had the pleasure of hosting Blawg Review 249 on Slaw, and Blawg Review 278 here on Law is Cool.
In Blawg Review 300, the editor at Blawg Review looked at the posts for 2010 and took various submissions from the online legal community for the Blawg Review of the Year. Last night the announcement was made that Blawg Review 278 was the winner.
This is great exposure for the site and the Canadian legal community, so let’s hope we have more Canadians hosting future Blawg Reviews in the coming year.
2010 CLawBies
The 2010 Canadian Law Blog Awards are out!
Law is Cool was a finalist for the Legal Culture Award. In the past, we won the Legal Culture Award in 2009 and 2007, and were finalists in 2008. This year we also scored a shout out in the Friends of the North Award for hosting the Blog Review in August.
Thanks to everyone who nominated us, and to all the contributors and readers who have helped build this site. Congrats as well to all this year’s winners. Here’s to 2011, another year of community!
Law is Cool Podcast Featured in National Newspaper
The Law is Cool podcast, which has run on this site for over three years, was featured this week in The Lawyers Weeekly, one of Canada’s main legal publications.
The article interviews Omar Ha-Redeye, the site’s founder and podcast host for much of this period. It also mentions Devin Johnston, who ran the podcasts for some of this time as well.
So do you want to get coast-to-coast media coverage in publications that every partner in every law firm reads? Looks like you might have a chance:
“Since we’ve [Ha-Redeye and Devin Johnston, who also worked on podcasts for the legal blog Law Is Cool] started articling we haven’t had any podcasts at all, because we simply don’t have the time to do it,” Ha-Redeye says. “We need a new law student to take over the show.”
Drop us a line if you’re interested.
Vote for Law is Cool
Law is Cool has made the finals for Canada’s Best Law Blog.
You can cast your vote in support here.
The Lawyers Weekly Profiles Law is Cool Founder
The Lawyers Weekly, Canada’s first print news publication for legal professionals, has profiled Omar Ha-Redeye, founder of this site.
You can read the profile by Christopher Guly on the website here,
Ha-Redeye established the Western Law Review Association, a group dedicated to publishing a student-run law review at UWO, and was active in various groups on campus, including as president of the Black Law Students’ Association, Health Law Club and Mature Students Club.
But his activities are best known in cyberspace.
Even before being called to the Ontario Bar, Ha-Redeye has made an impression on the profession with his blogs and postings on legal issues.
He runs his own website (www.omarha-redeye.com), as well as a blog and podcast on Canadian law schools (www.lawiscool.com) and regularly contributes to the legal weblog, www.Slaw.ca.
Now, he’s on the path to practising law.
This site is currently transitioning to a whole new line of administrators, and we expect equally great and exciting things from them in the years to come.
2010 Student Blawger of the Year
In light of our recent collaboration with The Court, we’ve decided to pick someone from outside the Law is Cool community this year for our annual recognition of the Student Blawger of the Year.
This year’s award goes to Ahsan Mirza, Senior Contributing Editor (2009-10), at theCourt.ca
Ahsan Mirza recently completed his J.D. from Osgoode Hall Law School (2010). He is the recipient of the Osgoode Student Honours Award, the F.W. Minkler Prize for Integrity and Scholarship, and the Osgoode Hall Law Journal Prize.
During his final year, he was a Senior Contributing Editor at www.theCourt.ca where he wrote on a number of relevant legal issues and developments in the form of general commentary and more specific SCC case comments.
Besides working for theCourt.ca, Ahsan was also Managing Editor at the Osgoode Hall Law Journal which became one of Canada’s only Open Access Law Journals under his leadership. Ahsan was also the founding President of the Muslim Law Students Association. He revived this student club which had extinguished several years earlier to create a social network for muslim law students and to bridge any gaps between muslims and non-muslims at Osgoode. Notably, he co-wrote an article in the Toronto Star with his counterpart at the Jewish Law Students Association, advocating cooperation and dialogue as opposed to the chest-thumping and fist-pumping common at YorkU during Israel Apartheid Week.
Prior to law school, Ahsan studied Political Science and Economics at Carleton University in Ottawa. He was awarded the Senate Medal for Academic Achievement and the Millennium Excellence Award for Leadership. Ahsan is the co-founder of the International Policy Forum.
Ahsan is currently articling at the Toronto offices of McMillan LLP.
Law is Cool Podcaster Wins I.H. Asper Award
Devin Johnston, who has directed the podcasts for this site for over a year now, was awarded the I.H. Asper Award for Outstanding Extracurricular Contribution in Broadcasting & Journalism.
The award is presented by the University of Manitoba Students’ Union (UMSU), Local 103 of the Canadian Federation of Students, to students who,
have made an outstanding extracurricular contribution to the quality of student life and has exhibited special leadership in undergraduate activities in journalism or broadcasting.
Devin was also presented with the 2009 Student Blogger of the Year Award on this site. As Devin is graduating from Robson Hall this year, we’re always looking for new law students to take his responsibilities, and the operation of the rest of the site.
Articling Positions are Cool Too
It’s no secret that the economic crisis has affected the legal industry by reducing the number of entry-level positions in the field. And although Canada is still positioned better than the U.S., there are many people here being affected by this as well.
The graduating class of 2010 is particularly affected given the less number of articling positions available. Unlike some jurisdictions outside of Canada, where students can be licensed and practice as a lawyer straight out of law school, an articling position remains a prerequisite for admission to the bar.
We’re setting up a page on this site to list some articling positions available, to help students and potential employers find themselves. We’re going to try to offer this project free of charge, as a service to our primary readership, law students and members of the legal community.
We encourage law firms, sole practitioners, and career service officers to contact us to help us populate this page and keep it current. Because it’s all fine and dandy to go to law school for three years and pay enormous amounts of tuition, but it would be pretty cool to get called to the bar as well.
Exam Time Slow-Down
It’s that time of year again, so the frequency of posts will slow for the next couple weeks.
Bear with us if it take some time for your comments to get approved as well.
Billing By The Hour
There has been a great deal of discussion among legal commentators about the failure of hourly billing for legal services and the need for alternatives. The most recent article I’ve seen is in the CBA’s Jan/Feb issue of National. Although I’m a law student and have never billed a single hour as a lawyer, I have worked for more than a decade as an entrepreneur and I wonder … what are the alternatives, really, but masked versions of hourly billing? Given the limited amount of hours available to work in any day/week/year/lifetime, billing by the job MUST reflect the time that the task requires.
Flat fee services must have caps on the input of resources to succeed as business models and, as a result, will tend to put a floor rather than a ceiling on the cost of any given service. At best, a flat fee will reflect the average amount of time required to perform a service. Innovators can find ways of doing things more quickly through economies of scale, computer processing, outsourcing and so forth, but price reductions that service providers choose to pass on to the clients can be built into an hourly billing model just as easily as any alternative. Innovations might put pressure on hourly rates through competition, but this has nothing to do with the method of billing.
Frankly, I fail to see how alternatives to billing by the hour will change the cost of legal services. The real pressures on cost come from the the well-known forces of the marketplace … the rest is just packaging. And if clients are becoming more sophisticated, will they really be impressed by a fancy one-size-fits-all (unless you want more) gift bag?
The real issue is value. Lawyers that provide it will gain clients and those that do not will lose clients. Those who insist on talking about how the billing is done, please explain (and be nice about it): What am I missing?
Law is Cool wins a 2009 CLawBie
The Canadian Law Blog Awards, or CLawBies, highlight great blogs by the Canadian legal industry.
This site has been fortunate enough to receive recognition from the awards in 2008 and 2007.
Once again, Law is Cool has made a strong showing in the awards. Thanks to everyone, and we do mean everyone, who helped make this possible.
3) Legal Culture Award – Law is Cool – Two of the fastest rising stars in Canadian legal blogging just happen to be law students. Lawrence Gridin and Omar Ha-Redeye lead an impressive group of contributors at Law is Cool, and are seeding the queue with more law student bloggers for the future. Bravo! Culture doesn’t happen without a little sweat equity. Runner ups: Precedent, Dynamic Lawyers Parody Videos
As always, we’re still looking for more 1Ls to join the team to keep moving the site forward in future years.
