Sarah A. Sutherland

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.

BC ACE

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

The principle anyone (who isn't a slave) being held against their will has the right to some kind of process before a judge is so ancient the Code of Hammurabi takes it for granted. It's probably literally prehistoric, a practice predating written history. It is the deepest root of what law is.

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 […]

Open Source Genetic Database Shuts Down to Protect Users From 'Authoritarian Governments' "The risk/benefit calculus of providing free & open access to individual genetic data in 2025 is very different compared to 14 years ago."

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-...

Open Source Genetic Database Shuts Down to Protect Users From 'Authoritarian Governments' "The risk/benefit calculus of providing free & open access to individual genetic data in 2025 is very different compared to 14 years ago."

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.

The Opportunities Hidden in Law's Eternal September - Slaw I was recently speaking with someone about the Internet’s “Eternal September”, which is the concept that starting in 1993/1994 so many new users started using the internet that it could never settle i...

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...)

AI reasoning models can cheat to win chess games These newer models appear more likely to indulge in rule-bending behaviors than previous generations—and there’s no way to stop them.

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.

Rules A panoramic history of rules in the Western world

"…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...

"When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems.…The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow." — www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouA... HT @matthomann.com

Every…single…time…

Happy #Lawyercat Anniversary for all who celebrate! It's been four years since the kitten appeared in my Zoom courtroom, and I released the 48 second video that made the whole world laugh. Here is the full video showing the big reveal at the end (in two parts because Blue sky). Enjoy!

Notes to John by Joan Didion: 9780593803677 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books An extraordinary work from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Blue Nights In November 1999, Joan Didion began seeing a psychiatrist because, as she wrote to a friend, her family had had “...

Joan Didion's diary is going to be published in April (www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/771169...). This must be great news for Didion fans, while also making me feel glad that I am insufficiently famous for anyone to find my diary after I die and immediately think: "We should publish this".

Et le commerce intérieur, lui ? Les provinces pourraient atténuer une partie des effets des tarifs américains en… abolissant les barrières au commerce intérieur canadien. En voici la démonstration.

A great idea Yan Plante in @lactualite.com today:
(My rough translation) The provinces could avoid part of the effects of American tariffs by abolishing the barriers to trade within Canada.
lactualite.com/politique/et...

My writing applications all want to make sure I know they have text generation capability, and the ways to turn it off aren't working. Which has brought me back to Cory Doctorow's advice of using a text editor for all composition 16 years later. They still don't intrude. locusmag.com/Features/200...

I am looking forward to discussing the potential applications for data science and law at a virtual event called "Emerging Connections: Finding Opportunities between Law and Data Science" on Feb 23 at 12:00pm PST hosted by @thompsonriversu.bsky.social Law School and Data Science department.

“When every lawyer wrote his points with a pen, there was no occasion for complaint [about overly long briefs]...; but, since the use of stenographers has become general, the evil has grown until it is so serious that repression is necessary.”
- Stevens v. O’Neill, 62 N.E.2d 424, 425(N.Y. 1902).

Happy NYE reading version of #clawbies2024 ! Congratulations to all the winners (thread below) - full award descriptions at clawbies.ca Ty! @jordanfurlong.com @parallaxinfo.bsky.social @emmaewood.bsky.social