Clawbies 2012: On Your Mark, Get Set, Nominate!

Just like holiday shopping, the Clawbies season kinda sneaks up on you. Like today! We’re now ready to officially open the 7th annual Canadian Law Blog Awards. Our celebration of excellence in law-related blogging and one of our favourite times of the year here at Stem Legal.

The awards honour the best of the Canadian legal blogosphere: the most thoughtful, useful, and timely law or legal industry-related blogs out there. Over the years the nomination process has evolved from a one-man show to a team effort that spans the country and beyond. We couldn’t (and wouldn’t want to) do any of this without the enthusiastic participation and support of the Canadian legal social media and blogging community.

If you’re a seasoned Clawbies participant, you know the rules of participation; it hasn’t changed from last year. If you’re new to the process, here’s the drill. There are three ways to nominate a blog:

1. Tweet your nomination via Twitter with the hashtag: #clawbies2012. We’ll be monitoring!
2. Email your favourite blog, including a couple sample posts or any other notable highlights, to Steve Matthews at steve@stemlegal.com. We’d prefer a public nomination, but still welcome participation from folks who don’t blog or tweet.
3. Write a blog post nominating up to three other Canadian law blogs you currently read, with a brief explanation of why you think those blogs were award-worthy in 2012. And for crying out loud… don’t nominate your own blog! Nominating others will put your own blog in the running. Modest Canadians would never nominate themselves, right? ;)

Our award categories will be the same as in past years, so don’t worry about suggesting new categories or categorizing your nominations. And while our focus is on Canadian blogs, we always like to highlight a couple of international blogs that deliver quality reading to Canadian legal audiences. See the Friends of the North and EuroCan Connection categories from past years for examples. So feel free to submit a US or European blog that fits that bill.

Another helpful tool for making your 2012 selections: earlier this year we annotated the blog listings over at Lawblogs.ca with past Clawbie winners. As you surf around the site, you will see the badge integration and year of each award; or you can look at the entire list of winners here. For a comprehensive list of established Canadian law blogs, please check out the lawblogs.ca directory.

Finally, I’m pleased to announce that Simon Fodden (Slaw founder, and for whom the Fodden Award for Best Canadian Law Blog is named) will again join Jordan and myself on the judging panel this year. You can keep track of all the incoming nominations at the Vancouver Law Librarian Blog over the coming weeks.

The deadline for nominations is Thursday, December 27th, and the winners of the 2012 Clawbies will be announced on New Year’s Eve.  Until then, happy nominating!