The Great Library

Law on the Big Screen

This being the end of COVID-19 week 10, we thought it might be a good time to update our blog post of a few years ago on great legal movies. If your pandemic entertainment has so far consisted of bingeing Netflix series or scrolling through memes, maybe it’s time to settle in and watch a good legal drama, comedy or documentary.

Here are some “best legal movie” lists to help you remember all the classic courtroom dramas and discover a host of entertaining and thought-provoking new legal films:

The 25 Greatest Legal Movies: Expanding the Boundaries (American Bar Association, 2018)

Top legal-themed films selected by a panel of experts (lawyers, law professors and a judge). Each selection has a brief synopsis and a bonus bit of trivia about the film. See also the ABA’s 25 More Great Movies: Honorable Mentions (2018).

All-Time List of Best Legal Films (LawyerFriend.com, 2020)

The best lawyer movies in chronological order, from 2019 back to the 1930’s.

Law-Related Movies (Ted Tjaden, updated January 2020)

Almost 200 law-related movies organized by title, subject and genre.

Best Legal Movies of All Time (Oklahoma Legal Group, 2014)

Top 10 list accompanied by an infographic showing Academy Award data and Rotten Tomatoes rating for each film.

Happy viewing!

*The picture used for this post, “12 Angry Men” by mdmdeals, is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0*

Online Only, Please!

A great legal research tool for finding secondary materials like texts, loose-leafs, websites and CPD papers just got better. Introducing the “Electronic Only” tab on InfoLocate! Thanks to the Great Library’s Technical Services team, researchers can now choose to filter search results from the library’s catalogue to retrieve only those resources accessible online.

While previously InfoLocate allowed users to limit search results to only online resources (including books, loose-leafs and websites), or only Law Society CLE articles available on AccessCLE, we’ve never been able to combine these results to retrieve ALL online search results… until now. This new tab is an incredibly handy tool for all those working from home without access to the physical collection of their law library.

The “Electronic Only” tab can be found on the InfoLocate results page immediately above the search bar:

Happy Birthday, Baldwin

Happy Birthday to Robert Baldwin, drafter of The Baldwin Act!

An Act to provide, by one general law, for the erection of Municipal Corporations, and the establishment of Regulations of Police, in and for the several Counties, Cities, Towns, Townships and Villages in Upper-Canada, also referred to as the Municipal Corporations Act, 1849, a.k.a. the Baldwin Act, was Ontario’s first municipal statute. It was named after Robert Baldwin (1804-1858), who was co-premier and Attorney General at the time and at various other times lawyer and Law Society of Ontario Treasurer. The act was passed in 1849, came into force on January 1, 1850, and was described in The Municipal Manual, 11^th ed, as “the Magna Charta of municipal government in Canada” (p 8).

The citation for the act is 12 Vict c 81, and it’s available electronically in the Great Library; if you need a copy, just ask.