Legal Research

How Social Media got me into the Supreme Court of Canada

By Omar Ha-Redeye

Earlier today the Supreme Court of Canada heard the appeal of the Ont. C.A. decision in Fraser v. Ontario. My law school homework made its way into the oral submissions, and social media made it happen.

Selwyn Pieters, a Toronto lawyer and advocate, posted on his Facebook status line that he was prepping for an SCC hearing.  Selwyn had seen me moot earlier this year in Halifax, and we have stayed in touch since.

Minutes later  my RSS feed showed a factum that Fathima Cader posted on Law is Cool, and I noticed Selwyn?s name on it.  After confirming with him that the hearing was for the same case, I shared with him for fun  a fake decision that I had drafted on Fraser for my Labour Law midterm.  I had just uploaded it on JDSupra right before reading his status line.  Although most of the ?decision? was intended to be somewhat humorous, it did cover the major points of the appeal.

Coincidentally my professor in the course, John Craig of Heenan Blaikie, was also counsel in the case on the other side.  Selwyn got back to me and mentioned there was a couple points he liked, and he was going to include it in his submissions.

I still want to go back to the SCC one day and hopefully argue my points in person.  But for a 3L still in law school, that was still pretty cool.

Anyone else need more proof of the potential for collaboration via social media?

Selwyn Pieters (Front, Right) at the SCC as intervenor for P4MW

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on December 17, 2009 (boomark / email).