“Knock, knock. Has Elon killed Twitter yet?” “No? Not yet? Okay, then let’s do it!”
Every year for 16 years running, December 1st has marked the opening of nominations for the Clawbies awards: an opportunity for Canadian legal folks to reflect upon their most influential legal content and varying forms of digital discourse. But as we prepare for our 17th annual ritual, well–the world feels a bit up in the air, doesn’t it?
Is the pandemic actually over? How high can inflation go? Will geopolitical unrest settle? And of course…whether the most open of the major social platforms, Twitter, will last long enough to get us through it all.
But in spite of the uncertainty in so many aspects of life (not to mention we use Twitter as our primary vehicle for nominations!), we’re going to test the waters anyway! The Clawbies always feel like an opportunity to refocus on something real and something positive.
Each year, we ask colleagues in the Canadian legal community to share their favourite blogs, social media accounts, podcasts, newsletters and more, and every year they deliver. Every year, we delight in seeing the genuine admiration and appreciation that authors and readers have for each other. And every year, we discover new publications and are honoured to help boost their profiles, just as we add more lions of Canadian legal commentary to our Clawbies Hall of Fame.
We can’t know what the future holds or what the social media landscape will look like even a few months from now. But we can be sure of one thing: that the year will end on a high note in our little corner of the internet, with the announcement of the 2022 Clawbies winners on New Year’s Eve.
Let’s get those good Clawbies vibes going!
What’s eligible?
The Clawbies celebrate free online Canadian legal content. It’s all fair game: blogs, podcasts, videos, social accounts, legal newsletters, platform commentary, CanLII Connects, whitepapers, and beyond.
How can I participate?
While we review each publication listed at Lawblogs.ca, we also rely on the community to surface the most helpful, engaging and informative Canadian legal content through our social nomination process.
Tell us who made the world a little better with their content in 2022. Using your Twitter account (with hashtag #clawbies2022) or law blog, help us identify your best of 2022!
As usual, we’ve really only got two rules.
Rule #1: Our “humble Canadian” rule: don’t nominate your own publication or project for a Clawbie. It doesn’t work that way. The only surefire way of getting your work on our radar is to give props to other commentary authors. Follow this rule and we’ll take a look at your work too!
Rule #2: Nominate up to three digital publications or authors via blog post or tweets (using the hashtag #clawbies2022). They must be freely available at no cost. Be sure to include a brief explanation of why you think those authors deserve an award!
Nominations will be accepted until the end of day on Friday, December 16th, 2022. Then stay tuned, because this year’s winners will be announced on New Year’s Eve.
Happy nominating!
