2012 Clawbies Nominations

Tis the season: the 2012 Clawbies (Canadian Law Blog Awards) are currently in their nominations phase, and so we, as members of the Canadian law blogging community who strive to contribute our fair share to its nurturing, and in quasi-compliance with the rules, present our three nominations.  A couple of notes on our nominating process (which, to be fair, takes place entirely inside my head, so “process” might be a bit vainglorious): we try not to nominate the “pillars” of the Canadian law blogging community (so no Slaw, no Geist) and we try to avoid re-nominating people we’ve nominated in the past (see 2010 and 2011).

• Barry Sookman – Right out of the gate, I’m going to run roughshod over our first nomination guideline.  Normally I consider Barry Sookman’s blog to be a pillar of the Canadian law blogging community – particularly for those interested in IP, IT and communications law issues, it’s difficult to imagine a Canadian law blogging ecosystem which does not include Barry’s masterful blog.  An absolutely indispensable resource, Barry is generous with his insights and his work product – perhaps I’m cheating, but I confess that on more than one occasion I’ve hunted through his archives, seeking out that post he wrote or those slides he uploaded about some topic, and always finding illumination from them.  I noticed in looking at the Canadian Law Blogs directory that Barry’s blog has not yet won a Clawbie – an error which I can only attribute to inadvertent oversight.  I’m still not sure how he finds the time to post as often as he does, but his efforts surely deserve formal recognition (or at least as “formal” as the Canadian law blogging community ever gets).
• Lee Akazaki – Lee bills himself (or at least nominates his blog) as a “virtual mentor for lawyers”.  Though mentoring is generally thought of as being something targeted at or best suited for younger or more recently-called lawyers, Lee Akazaki continues to demonstrate, with his thoughtful, comprehensive posts on issues ranging from the Ontario articling “crisis” to practice tips for oral advocacy, that we all have something to learn from mentors, virtual or otherwise.
• Benjamin Oliphant (@benoliphant) – It sometimes seems that the centre of gravity in the legal blogging community is shifting (has shifted?) from blogging to Twitter – I know they’re the Canadian Law Blog Awards, but I figured that with as much content as Ben Oliphant pumps out via his Twitter feed, he’s functionally producing more than most law blogs, so I’m shoehorning him in here.  He’s always talking about stuff I don’t really understand (administrative law, human rights law, labour law, etc.) but nearly 10,000 tweets in, he remains for me a go-to source every day: snarky, informative, curious – part of the fun is trying to figure out how he manages to tweet so much while being an articling student.

To a prosperous year for all in 2013.