Windsor Law was well-represented at the 2020 Clawbies: Canadian Law Blog Awards, which held a presentation ceremony on New Year’s Eve. In total, three Windsor Law affiliated initiatives received awards: the National Self-Represented Litigants Project (NSRLP), the Legal Listening Podcast, and the Legal Writers Collective.
The National Self-Represented Litigants Project, led by law professor Julie Macfarlane, took home the big prize in Canadian legal commentary: the Fodden Award, named in memory of Simon Fodden, an Osgoode Hall law professor who started the online legal magazine SLAW. Since its inception in 2013, the NSRLP has won several Clawbies for specific streams of content including its blog, podcast, and self-help resources, in recognition of the organization’s effort in amplifying the stories and voices of stakeholders involved in the Canadian self-represented litigant phenomenon—from litigants to A2J groups to judges to lawyers.
The Legal Listening podcast, founded by law alums Zachary Battiston '20 and Karly Lyons '20, secured a spot among the Top Five Best Podcasts this year. Legal Listening features recordings of seminal Canadian legal decisions in an easy listening audio format. According to the Clawbies website, the podcast garnered nominations praising its spirit of collaboration, access to justice efforts and “staggering rate” of production. “Founders Zach and Karly and their many guest readers make the law more accessible, convenient and interesting, while providing a space for the broader legal community and students to participate!” said a citation.
The Legal Writers Collective, founded by law student Jacqueline Eboh, was awarded a spot among the Top Three Best Student Projects. The collective is a diverse group of law students committed to sharing their understanding of the law in an accessible way. Several Windsor Law students volunteer as writers, editors, and translators to create short and sweet legal summaries of criminal law cases with the hopes of making the law more understandable and accessible for everyone.
“We launched this initiative because we have recognized that a lot of access to justice issues is because of the mystification of the law,” says Eboh. “The law is hard to understand and interpret, and we wanted to help our communities by making it a little easier by demystifying the law.”