Things I Learned at the Vancouver Courthouse Library

I recently spent three days shadowing at the Vancouver Courthouse Library. This was very different from my recent stint at VPL's Business & Science Division which was an exchange - meaning that I was actually replacing somebody, so I did have to sit at the information desk. At the Courthouse Library I was just "shadowing" various people because there was no chance that I could replace anybody there, and as it turns out, they don't let anyone on the info desk until they've had at least 4 weeks of training! That in itself says a lot about working in the Courthouse Library. It was a great experience and I'm happy to share what I learned during my short time there:

The Courthouse Library is sort of a combination of a special and a public library. It is actually a non-profit organization funded by the Law Society of BC and the Law Foundation. It feels most like a small academic library, with a very specialized collection.

Courthouse Library users tend to be lawyers - lawyers, for example, who might be in court sessions that day, or lawyers who may not work for large firms with their own libraries/librarians. Library staff also help out law school graduates who must take the Professional Legal Training Course in order to be admitted to the bar. One of the assignments deals with legal research and students usually need help with this because their main focus in law school is on substantive law and legal analysis rather than legal research. Other users are judges, masters, judges' clerks, legal assistants and notaries. The Courthouse Library is also mandated to help the public, and they are always happy to help out fellow librarians, of course!

Their collection is more of a practical "working collection" than a research collection. They have some legal journals, but for academic legal research and theory, the UBC Law Library would be a better place. In addition to current materials, their collection is strong in terms of BC, Canadian and UK historical case law and statutes.

The reference staff have scheduled shifts on the reference desk and the telephone lines. There is only one person on the desk, plus someone as a backup. There are two reference phone lines, so you should never have trouble getting through. There is also a phone line designated for photocopying requests (they do A LOT of photocopying - cases, statutes, articles, pages from textbooks). They also get email questions, and I was interested to learn that their email questions from the public are quite similar to the kind of questions we get here at the West Van Library (e.g., questions about wills, residential tenancy, etc.) and the courthouse staff often begin with the same print and/or web resources we use here to answer these sorts of questions.

R. v. Morgentaler (1988), 37 C.C.C. (3d) 449 (S.C.C.)
Do you panic when you see something like this?! I did, until a nice person at the Courthouse Library showed me that it is not that scary. Let me do the same for you. First of all, you need to know this is a case citation. Lawyers seem to be always looking for cases to help their case, so you will see these citations sprinkled throughout all sorts of legal material. If a lawyer wants to see this actual case, the citation will help them locate it (I suppose that is the definition of "citation", duh).

Now, here is how you decipher this citation. "R. v. Morgentaler" are the names of the people involved in this case. "R" refers to "Regina", referring to the Crown and indicating it's a criminal case. "1988" refers to the year that the case was decided (but isn't necessarily the year that the case was heard in court). "37" is the volume number. "C.C.C." is the abbreviation of the law reporter where you can find this case (law reporters publish selected court decisions, aka, cases). There are many law reporters and if you don't know what the abbreviation stands for, you can look it up in something called Raistrick's Index to Legal Citations and Abbreviations. You can also try using the Cardiff Index to Legal Abbreviations, which is handily available online.. If you look up C.C.C., you will see that it stands for "Canadian Criminal Cases". "3d" is the law reporter's series number, and "449" is the page number. "S.C.C." refers to the court level in which this case was tried. I'm assuming it stands for Supreme Court of Canada.

So, put it all together, and you will find this case in volume 37 of the Third Series of Canadian Criminal Cases, beginning on page 449, and it is a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada. Easy, right?

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), our library doesn't and will never carry such law reporters, so while we may be able to decipher the citation now, we still won't be able to find the actual case. Unless it happens to be in…

CanLII!CanLII (http://www.canlii.org/) is a fabulous resource that provides free access to Canadian full-text court decisions (i.e., cases) available on the web. It covers both provincial and federal courts from about the 1990s and onwards. If we take the above example, you can search for "R. v. Morgentaler" as the case name and you will actually find the full text of this case! So if you have a name of a Canadian case and it's relatively recent, it may very well be in CanLII. In fact, the Courthouse librarians use CanLII all the time, even though they have fee-based databases that they can use instead. Many of their databases charge by the amount of time they are on them, so they often check CanLII first, if they think they might find the case there.

Now, it's not common that someone comes walking into our library with a case citation and asks us to find the case, but CanLII is also useful for finding cases on a specific subject. For example, I've had someone ask for examples of cases involving ICBC. You could then search "ICBC" in the BC database in CanLII. You will then get all the cases in the database naming ICBC (though not necessarily all the cases that ICBC has been a party to) , plus, really useful subject terms you could try using (e.g. "accident", "damages", "uninsured motorist", "rehabilitation"). A hint: it's also a good idea to also try different versions of the name: eg. "Insurance Corporation of B.C.", "Insurance Corporation of British Columbia", the acronym with and without periods.

Or, someone could come in saying that they slipped and fell in a store and were wondering what the chances were for getting a settlement from the store. You could do a full text search for "slip and injury and store" and get examples of cases with people in similar situations. Again, the subject terms that are offered on CanLII are really helpful. For this search, important terms that come up are "wet", "banana peel", "debris", "sweep", "ice", etc. These could give you ideas to help narrow your search. Keep in mind that many such cases may settle out of court and only judgments are on CanLII (settlements are generally unavailable).

As great as CanLII is, did you know that not all cases are posted? The lower courts only post selected decisions and the higher courts post more of their decisions, but not all. The Courthouse Library website has an Unreported Decisions Index, but the cases here are ones that the librarians had to scrounge around and find, so it is not complete in the slightest. Even commercial case law databases and print report series don't contain all the cases that go through the court system. To find a case that does not seem to be available anywhere, the patron will have to go the Courthouse Registry where the case took place and ask to see the file for a fee.

Did you also know that transcripts of trials are not available on the internet? The decisions I've been talking about are the end result of a court case, the judge's decision (sometimes called the "reasons for decision" or judgment). Actual transcripts (the word for word account of everything that was said in court) must be ordered from the court reporter (who owns the transcripts!) and are expensive.

If you haven't figured it out by now, learning the lingo of law is half the battle. For example, a large part of the Courthouse Library collection consists of "practice manuals" or "practice materials" on different areas of the law. It took me a while to figure out that when they say practice, they mean procedures. So these practice manuals are filled with the nitty gritty procedures and rules lawyers need to follow to do something. (I wish I could phrase this better, but I was only there for three days!). Other interesting words:

Precedent - to me, this always meant decisions that are used as examples to make the same decision in other similar cases. It does mean this, but it also means forms as well. So if you see the phrase "forms and precedents", it kind of means "forms and forms". Yeah, it's clear as mud to me too.
Quantum - this is Latin for amount. This word is handy if you are searching for cases where you're wondering how much money someone has been awarded. Or you could use damages, which is the amount awarded by the court for the injury.

Be sure and check out the Courthouse Library website. You could learn a lot just by poking around in the website (of course, who has time to do this?). But there are lots of goodies to be found. I especially like their Resource Guides by subject. Here you'll find guides on topics such as family law, personal injury, residential tenancy, small claims, and wills & estates. Each guide contains legislation pertaining to the topic, as well as a list of electronic and internet resources, and a list of books and articles. It's a useful starting point if your mind is blank.

They have also created some handy video tutorials on topics such as researching legislature and how to use O'Brien's Encyclopedia of Forms!

The librarians at the Courthouse Library take the difference between legal information and legal advice/interpretation VERY seriously. For a simple example, if a patron asks them what something means, that patron will most likely be guided to a law dictionary, rather than given a verbal definition (just as we would typically do for a question about proper spelling).

I got the sense that the Courthouse Library is very willing to help the public, but this does not mean that they will do all the work for them. They will gladly assist the patron in locating useful resources (often beginning with some of the same tools we do, such as Self-Counsel titles and web sources like ELL and LawLink), but the work of interpretation is up to the patron. One benefit of the Courthouse Library staff's experience and training is that they can much more quickly judge and advise when a patron needs to consult a lawyer.

Do not hesitate to call the Courthouse Library if you have any questions, or if you just feel unsure about something. They are happy to spend time helping you to help the patron in front of you using the resources you have at hand, and, when the patron needs more than you can provide, they will gladly accept referrals.

Emily Wong is a Reference Librarian at the West Vancouver Memorial Library.

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