At the heart of this project is Étienne Trépanier, a lawyer and Filmmaker-in-Residence who is also a visual advocate. Although he normally works as a legal advisor with Justice Canada, Trépanier is also an experienced documentarian who, over the past year, has been working with his alma mater to create engaging, bilingual audiovisual content to democratize legal knowledge, a goal that has long been dear to him.
His enthusiasm for this avant-garde approach prompted Civil Law Section Dean Marie-Eve Sylvestre to form an unprecedented partnership with the Department of Justice to take legal knowledge out of isolation and to bring it to life on the screen.
“This project brings well-deserved visibility to the engaging, innovative, and often interdisciplinary, research that is done at the University’s Faculty of Law and to the exceptional expertise of legal professionals working at Canada’s Department of Justice,” said the dean at the project launch.
“The University of Ottawa has been visionary, and truly at the forefront, in creating the Jurivision platform,” added Deputy Minister of Justice and Deputy Attorney General of Canada Nathalie Drouin. “This new platform will expand the ways we can learn about justice. It offers a more interactive and engaging way to share knowledge within our legal and justice communities, and perhaps even more broadly. We will now be able to hear legal professionals telling their stories in their own words.”
From Gutenberg to YouTube
How society consumes information, and social expectations, are changing. Unless they reinvent how they disseminate their content, public institutions see web users relying on information that barely scratches the surface of complex issues, and even spreading disinformation.
So, where to start to broadcast such knowledge-based research? “At its heart, the idea is to occupy algorithmic spaces,” explains Étienne Trépanier, who uses his background in documentary filmmaking and vignettes to engage the public. “Many of the things we consume are presented to us through algorithms. If knowledge-based audiovisual productions are not presented, other information will be communicated in its place.”
By adding descriptive text to the videos, he ensures that his videos will pop up in search engine results. Once on Jurivision, web users will find the video, the publications on which the video is based, related legislation, and other web-based resources for those who wish to delve deeper into the issue.
An interdisciplinary project with a human face
The platform could not have been created were it not for the phenomenal work of a team that includes the vice-deans of research Margarida Garcia and Jennifer Quaid, associate dean of research Cintia Quiroga, communications strategist Andrew Kuntze, digital communications officer Patrick Walton and administrative assistant Natalie Carter. Thanks to this multidisciplinary group, the architect of the project rallied the legal community to the idea of translating their research and experiences into images.
Together, the team established the foundation for four main categories of videos: JuriExperience describes the experiences of legal professionals; JuriKnowledge highlights the content of academic publications; JuriMetho reveals all the steps in the research process; and JuriDocs explores specific topics in depth.
The testimonials included in these formats not only provide very relevant content, but also shine a light on the people behind the profession, putting a human face on the public service, legal academia, and the judiciary. They illustrate what it means to have a career in law and transmit the enthusiasm that animates this community of practice and of research.
“Legal scholars and lawyers are generally passionate about their subjects, and so these interviews are real gems,” said Trépanier.
This platform, which calls on viewers to experience research through personal stories, delighted the partners who participated in the venture.
“We are entering a new era of legal knowledge mobilization where, from a position of curiosity, creativity, and humility, we are discovering the benefits of listening to different voices to deepen our understanding of the social issues of our time,” said Margarida Garcia.
A necessary shift
Created in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the platform hosts some video posts that deal with the turbulent events that our society has endured over the past several months. These videos, such as Priority rights in occupational health and safety in pandemic times , Food systems – legal concepts and challenges and The powers of federal and provincial governments in a pandemic, were used in a Faculty of Law course on COVID-19 over the summer of 2020.
“COVID-19 has shown the extent to which public authorities need probative data and research to guide them in taking effective, useful, and positive decisions that benefit the entire society, be it regarding health, education, or the well-being of the population,” said Cintia Quiroga, who sees Jurivision as an excellent way to transmit this knowledge to decision-making bodies.
And in her opinion, the University community is ready for this shift. “It is normal that as researchers change their methods of conducting research, they should also feel the need to share it differently. It’s almost a natural evolution. Given that today’s research is more inclusive and democratic, we want to use tools that are more inclusive and democratic, and accessible to the general public.”
Looking to the future
With the launch behind them, the Jurivision team is now diving into its long list of current and future projects. In the next few months, the team will launch the platform’s visual courses, which will include training videos aimed at the legal community but whose condensed versions will also be available for viewing by the general public.
It will also include a series called “The Dean’s Talks”, whose first edition is already online: an interview with Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, the Right Honourable Richard Wagner, to discuss his thoughts on accessibility to justice. A collaborative project with the Revue générale de droit is also in the works.
What’s clear is that an audiovisual shift is certainly underway at the University of Ottawa’s Faculty of Law. And the Jurivision team is calling on the research community to contact them to start the cameras rolling.
“In law, we have a tendency to think in a very linear way: paper, writing. However, this tends to keep legal information tucked away in isolation. It is high time that legal professionals explore other avenues and learn how to read and write with images,” says Étienne Trépanier.
