As information professionals, we are specialists in finding answers. But we also love to share our methods with everyone. One way to do this is by creating guides and tutorials on how to do what to us, are simple tasks, but to others, may be a challenge. The first guide we’ve created is on how to know when there are new Manitoba decisions on CanLII.

Manitoba’s courts have been distributing their decisions for free on CanLII since the turn of the century. Currently, we distribute the decisions to the legal publishers the day we receive them. CanLII usually has them available online within 24 hours.

Our guide, created by Allyssa McFadyen, demonstrates how to set up an alert in your calendar program to remind you to check CanLII for new results, or how to set up an RSS feed to be notified when new content has been published. Once these systems are set up, it is a simple matter to stay on top of new caselaw.

We plan to publish additional guides in the future, on such topics as how to search Hansard (Manitoba edition), and how to use our catalogue. If you have suggestions for research methods you would like explained, please let us know. Check our page, Legal Ease, for new content. It happens to be RSS-ready.