The Provincial Court of BC is collaborating with ‘Legal Listening’ to bring you our most popular eNews articles as podcasts! Starting March 2, 2021, a different eNews article will be posted on LegalListening.com and all major podcast sites every Tuesday for several weeks. You’ll also find the podcasts on the new “Podcasts & Videos” page of the Provincial Court website.
This new project pairs two award-winning access to justice initiatives.
Legal Listening
LegalListening.com features volunteers reading Canadian judges’ reasons for decision and other legal information aloud in an “easy listening” audio format. It’s one of those brilliant ideas that make you think, “Why didn’t anyone think of this before?”
Founders Karly Lyons and Zach Battiston, classmates at the University of Windsor Faculty of Law in Ontario, were inspired by a desire to provide legal information in an accessible format. With the help of audio engineer Anthony Radomile, they decided to develop a free online audio catalog of important Canadian legal decisions and commentary to help the public, law students, legal practitioners, and anyone who finds traditional casebooks or websites difficult to access. The expressive readings offered by volunteers provides more enjoyable listening than text-to-speech technology.
The non-profit Legal Listening project won a 2020 Clawbie (Canadian Law Blogs Awards) in the Best Podcasts category. The Clawbies judges said:
“The pod garnered a ton of nominations praising their spirit of collaboration, access to justice efforts and “staggering rate” of production. Founders Zach & Karly and their many guest readers make the law more accessible, convenient and interesting while “providing a space for the broader legal community and students to participate!”
Legal Listening welcomes volunteer readers who can record virtually any judgment they wish or other forms of legal information from collaborating providers. See their Guest Readers’ FAQ page to learn more.
eNews
The BC Provincial Court has been publishing eNews, a series of plain language articles about the Court’s work, judges’ activities, and a variety of topics related to the justice system, since late 2014. Readership has grown steadily - in 2020 eNews had 111,537 page views. It received a 2019 Clawbie in the Best Blogs and Commentary category, with the award judges saying:
“You might expect communication from a court to be stuffy and dry, but the British Columbia Provincial Court’s eNews blog takes a surprisingly accessible, conversational tone. From justice hackathons to court rules changes, to new publications and judge news, court happenings and opportunities for feedback, we’d love to see more courts across the country take a page from the BCPC’s blogging book.”
Now the Court is expanding eNews to another format, working with Legal Listening to create downloadable podcasts of articles selected from those that received the most page views in the last year.
Podcasts
Both Legal Listening and eNews share the goal of increasing access to justice by providing legal and justice system information to the public. This collaboration broadens the eNews audience to people who need, prefer, or find it more convenient to get information by listening rather than reading. It also broadens Legal Listening’s content to include plain language information that’s more digestible than some judgments and legal commentary.
eNews podcasts can be downloaded at:
• Provincial Court Podcasts & Videos web page
• Provincial Court YouTube channel
• Legal Listening website
• all major podcast websites (Breaker, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Radio Public, Spotify, Apple Podcasts & Stitcher)
New podcasts will be posted weekly on Tuesdays for several weeks.
Provincial Court Chief Judge Melissa Gillespie said, “The Provincial Court of BC strives to provide an accessible, fair, efficient, and innovative system of justice for the benefit of the public. We see recording and producing audio content for our eNews articles as an important way to help litigants and improve access to justice. We welcome the collaboration with Legal Listening that enables us to do this.”
Legal Listening co-founder Karly Lyons said, “We are excited by the BC Provincial Court’s plain language communications and thrilled to record and produce audio content for the Court’s eNews articles!”
What comes next?
Watch for announcements of eNews podcast postings at @BCProvCourt and @LegalListening on Twitter.
Tweet us your suggestions for eNews articles that should be recorded using #BCPCCollab.
Or volunteer as a Legal Listening guest reader – a great opportunity for journalism and communications students to practice voice skills and for people interested in law to add BC content to the Legal Listening catalogue!
