Slaw, a collective blog of legal writers, recently cleaned up at the 2008 Canadian Law Blog Awards (CLawBies).

Slaw contributors and Slaw itself cleaned up this year, demonstrating the enormous impact the site has on legal commentary in Canada.

Law is Cool, another site Omar contributes to, was a recipient last year of the Legal Culture Award, and came in as a runner-up this year.

Here are all the entries where Slaw won a category or was a finalist:

1) Best Canadian Law Blog (or Blogger) Award: Law21 – Anyone that says it’s impossible to break into blogging these days needed to watch Jordan Furlong this past year. Wherever you went in 2008, Jordan’s thoughts were cited and more frequently revered.  Law21 received the most nominations, both from fellow bloggers and via email. But mostly, Jordan’s blog is the 2008 winner because it became a fixture for anyone trying to think critically about legal practice.  Runner up: Slaw – Once again a bridesmaid, though I do try to make up for it below. Not that Slaw can’t win, but solo blogging is a tough gig to do well, and in 2008 it simply felt right to let Jordan bask in the spotlight.

3) Legal Culture Award - Slaw evolved in 2008, drawing in more Canadian blogging talent (see Omar & the Daves!) and producing even more quality commentary.  Despite my own involvement, this year’s nomination process (and Blawggies award) support what I’ve always known: Slaw has become a beacon for what Canadian law blogs have to offer.   Runner ups: Law is Cool, Precedent.

6) EuroCan Connection Awards – This award was envisioned to recognize some of our European law blog friends who frequently highlight and link to Canadian law blogs. In 2008, Charon QC reached out to many Canadian law bloggers, myself included. The work he did late in the year creating a Canadian Law Blog Pageflake just sealed the deal.  Runner Up: Our 2007 winner Nick Holmes became an occasional contributor to Slaw in 2008, and earns a finalist nod this year for doing so.

9) Best Legal Technology Blog – (TIE) This may seem a bit odd, but this award is a tie between Slaw and the great big gap in Canadian legal technology blogs. We web-geeks may be plentiful over at Slaw, but what Canada really needs is a few Mac Lawyers or iPhone JDs.  Or even a run of the mill (but competent & unbiased) legal technologist.  So let it be known, the gauntlet has been dropped for 2009!

Omar Ha-Redeye was interviewed for CityTv news at 6pm on Maher Arar and the use of torture by proxy by Canada.

Pace Law Library picks up on a post,

Law is Cool is out with yet another list of 10 tips. Omar Ha-Redeye shares his perspective on learning in law school and points to a post on public defender blog titled: 10 things I didn’t learn in law school. Omar shares his professor’s advice to learn “through osmosis” and shares the ten things law school didn’t teach him.

The mention was greatly appreciated, but the osmosis tip actually came from Gideon at a public defender, not a professor.

Mitch Kowalski, a UWO Law grad and writer for the Legal Post, has been covering how the economic downturn has affected the legal industry.

His entry today mentioned a meeting with Omar Ha-Redeye, where they discussed the impact of these changes.

Another old US firm bites the dust – reprise

As Julius Melnitzer recently blogged, 160 year-old Thatcher Proffitt & Wood LLP will be closing its doors on January 1, 2009. The Wall Street Journal reported that the firm was heavily focussed on work in ”mortgage-backed securities and other types of capital markets transactions,” which allowed the firm to grow to over 300 lawyers and making it one of the top 100 most profitable firms in the US. That work, as we all know, doesn’t exist any more.

“‘It has been the worst year for the legal market in many decades and maybe ever,’ Elliott Portnoy, the chairman of Sonnenschein, told WSJ.” Sonnenschein will pick up 100 of Thatcher’s lawyers in the new year.

Fellow legal blogger, Omar Ha-Redeye (SLAW), popped in for a coffee last week and we chatted about what Portnoy just noted. What most lawyers forget is that the era of the mega-law firm is a short one (perhaps no more than 40 years, if that). AND, these firms have never seen an economic crisis like this before. Large law firms in the 1930′s were comprised of perhaps no more than 5 lawyers. As a result, there is no precedent for legal behomenths to withstand huge, worldwide economic shocks and we’ve already begun to see that many will not. What makes this recession different from those since the 1930′s is that there is no country and no industry sector in which to hide. One can’t simply move to another jurisdiction that is “hot” or to another industry that is “booming”; everything is down. And, unfortunately from all that I’ve read and from all those that I have spoken to, 2009 will be another dismal year; more firms will shrink and more will die.

The silver lining? More clients will refuse to accept hourly billing and more will insist that routine legal work be out-sourced to low cost service providers, thereby revolutionizing the way law is practiced.

Omar’s write-up of the meeting can be found on Slaw and Law is Cool.

The Legal Post is up for the ABA Journal 2008 Blawg Awards.

They are the only Canadian blog in the “News” category, so you can help them win by voting now.  Slaw is also up for the ABA Awards.

Dennis Kennedy’s annual Best of Law-related Blogging Awards, also known as the “Blawggies.,” have awarded Slaw the 2008 best overall law blog award.  Here is the entry:

1. Best Overall Law-Related Blog – SLAW

You will notice a distinctly Canadian theme to the Blawggies this year. SLAW joins previous winners, Sabrina Pacifici’s BeSpacific.com, Tom Mighell’s Inter Alia, Marty Schwimmer’s The Trademark Blog,/a>, and Tom Collins’ (now-retired) More Partner Income blog. SLAW (recent post) is a group blog written by a steadily growing list of the brightest minds in Canada on the subject of law practice management. Although there were almost too many worthy candidates for this award and the choice was difficult, SLAW was always one of my favorites throughout the year. I like the steady stream of high-quality, useful posts and the fact that they have been able to maintain a group blog for an extended period of time, something that I can attest is quite difficult to do. Simon Fodden is the SLAW administrator and there is a . The stated aim is “to share knowledge, offer advice and instruction, and occasionally provoke.” And they do an excellent job.

Runner-up – Tie: Bruce MacEwen’s Adam Smith, Esq. (must-reading in these troubled economic times) and Kevin O’Keefe’s Real Lawyers Have Blogs (great coverage of lawyers using the Internet – from blogs to Web 2.0 to Twitter and beyond).

In fact, they probably are.

Because if they can listen in to lawyer-client conversations, they can listen in to anything.

Why is privilege so important anyways?

Greg Lambert of Houston, Texas has compiled The “Must Read” Blog Posts of 2008 – Compiled with the help of my Twitter mates on his site, 3 Geeks and a Law Blog.

Lord of the Rings as Property Law – Law is Cool
03/29/08
Submitted by @OmarHaRedeye
The novel The Lord of the Rings was a phenomenon. The movie trilogy based upon it has grossed over a billion dollars and won a slew of Oscars. But what’s really interesting about the work is that it is about property law.

See the review on Law is Cool.

Liberal supporters arrived at the C Lounge to hear party leader Michael Ignatieff speak about the need for unity.

Donations were collected for the Daily Bread Food Bank and L.A.M.P. Community Health Centre.

Warren Kinsella, Liberal strategist, and Omar Ha-Redeye

Martha Sperry of the Advocate’s Studio talks about the intersection of writing and law.

And not the obvious connection of writing briefs, pleadings and memos.

Sperry is talking about writing outside of the law.

Not all legal writers were born to be memoir writers…

I am of the opinion that any writing practice is good writing practice.

She mentions various writers she has encountered that write while in the law or in law school.

She continues with some very kind words,

One of my Twitter follows, law student Omar Ha-Redeye, has just published a textbook on Population Health, Communities and Health Promotion that will be used in Australian universities. Now, THAT is impressive under anyone’s definition of the word.

While I am wowed by the sheer magnitude of the task of writing a book while negotiating Torts, Constitutional Law, Evidence and Commercial Paper, I am not surprised. I believe an interest in writing necessarily precedes an interest in pursuing law.

It wasn’t an easy task, so the encouragement is definitely appreciated.