My Slaw column "Quantitative Assessment of Access to Justice Initiatives" was published today.
www.slaw.ca/2025/10/08/q...

The categories of academic collaborators and nerdy friends with overlapping niche interests seem to significantly overlap…

I often think that our phones have become like towels: they can be used for so many things, and if I make it around the universe with this small, easily lost rectangle, people will think: "That hoopy Sarah Sutherland is a frood who really knows where her phone is!"

I'm looking forward to presenting on "Process, Purpose, and Time: Examining the Gap Between Judicial Decision Making and Legal Prediction" at the Autonomy through Cyberjustice Technologies (ACT) Conference at ‪@cyberjusticelab.bsky.social‬ on Oct 16
Registration: fcdroit.umontreal.ca/Web/MyCatalo...

Good morning!
I started working on a daily art habit some months ago. Here’s yesterday’s sketch.

Ah, the traditional Monday morning ritual when I have a moment of panic about not getting enough done yet this week before 9am on Monday morning.

I'm happy to share that I joined UVic Access to Justice Centre for Excellence as a research fellow.
I'm looking forward to working with so many new smart and interesting people!
bcace.org

Is getting back to Twitter circa 2014 an option? I miss it.

I'm looking forward to presenting on "Quantitative Assessment of Access to Justice Initiatives" at the 2025 People-Centred Justice Workshop on May 30-31 in Vancouver. There's still time to register. I hope to see you there!
Here's the registration link: docs.google.com/forms/d/17DV....

"Justice is an abstract ideal whose precise content in any particular dispute is uncertain and debatable.…the law is a kind of system, a collection of principles, makeshifts fictions and expedients, none of them unchangeable, and most varying in character…" - Lord McCluskey, 1987

I like the fishy wall decorations!

“If one already knows the thought that one wants to express, it is possible to assess whether text generated by AI captures it correctly. However, this hope neglects that the process of writing is not—or not usually—a mechanical one, whereby we put on paper thoughts that we already possess […]

Today it seems that the biggest impact on improving health would come from providing food security and access to stable housing. And not from trying to find genetic confounders of common diseases. - @gedankenstuecke.scholar.social.ap.brid.gy quoted in @404media.co
www.404media.co/open-source-...

The creator of an open source genetic database is shutting it down & deleting all its data because he has come to believe that its existence is dangerous with “a rise in far-right and other authoritarian governments” in the United States and elsewhere. — @jasonkoebler.bsky.social in @404media.co.

The deadline for CALL/ACBD Awards and the Education Reserve Fund has been extended to April 11!

The Silverstein, Laprise, and McCormack Awards are sponsored by Thomson Reuters, and each provide the winner with a monetary reward. Please review each award for full criteria: www.callacbd.ca/Awards

AustLII will host the 2025 Law Via Internet Conference lvi2025.org & meeting of the Free Access to Law Movement falm.info. Call for Papers: lvi2025.org/callforpapers/ Registration: secure.austlii.edu.au/cgi-egate/re.... We look forward to welcoming you to Sydney.

My @slawdotca.bsky.social column on the internet's drawn out, one could almost say "eternal", September and its parallels with legal scholarship was published this morning:
www.slaw.ca/2025/03/28/t...

My column "The Case for Algorithmic Scepticism in Law" was published in @biall.org.uk's journal, Legal Information Management, this week. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
(If you don't have access, it is also still available on @slawdotca.bsky.social: www.slaw.ca/2022/08/23/t...)

Research suggests that the more sophisticated the AI model, the more likely it is to try to “hack” the game in an attempt to beat its opponent by overwriting the chess board to take control and delete its opponent’s pieces, etc. — @rhiannonwilliams.bsky.social writing in @technologyreview.com

An important statement from the American Bar Association. www.americanbar.org/news/abanews...

I finished my book draft 4 years ago, and I've kept my index card notes in order from that process since. I am disaggregating them today for reuse, and need a minute to mark the moment. I want to reuse the work but worry that somehow I will need the compilation in that format again.

Interpret it how you will, but I choose to understand this decision as the BC Supreme Court finding that the patriarchy is bad policy: Lam v Law Estate, 2024 BCSC 1561 (CanLII), canlii.ca/t/k6h97.
(Judge decided that uneven bequests between son and daughter based on gender were inappropriate)

I’m the kind of person who has a favourite reference book, and it’s always a good morning when the new Chicago Manual edition arrives.

"…between Babbage's idea that mindless machines could calculate and our anxieties about being replaced by mechanical minds lies almost a century of calculating machines working in tandem with humans from about 1870 to 1970." from Rules, by Lorraine Daston
press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...