John is a law student with experience in libraries, having spent a year working the information desk at the Captain William Spry Public Library, a branch of Halifax Public Libraries. He is from Sackville, Nova Scotia and has already completed a medieval history degree from Dal, graduating with honours.

John started law school this past fall. “I am interested in the challenges that technology poses in law. I saw that the Sir James Dunn Law Library posted a work term, and thought it would be a great opportunity, especially with my library background. I also spent a lot of my first year in law school at the library, and I loved the environment. I love to help people find things and law is such a specialized area of knowledge that a background is law is very helpful in this library. People come in with very specific, law-related questions,” he said.

This summer he’s been working on compiling a list of changes that appear in the most recent version of the Canadian Guide to Uniform Legal Citation, a standard text all law students use when citing cases. He’s going through the book chapter by chapter and compiling the changes, and eventually he’ll be putting together a LibGuide highlighting the changes to help students navigate what’s new in the latest version of the text.

John is interested in the kinds of issues that arise when law and new technology meet, such as issues raised by autonomous vehicles (self-driving cars) and the right to be forgotten, a hot topic in Europe right now as people apply to try to have information about themselves removed from the internet. John hopes to work in a law firm in the future, but he is having a great summer at the Sir James Dunn Law Library. “This is the best summer job I’ve ever had. I love the people and the work,” he said.