by Heidi J. T. Exner
The Moot Times has been a prominent voice in the corridors of Murray Fraser Hall for about 13 years now (so one could say we are law students who have a lot of “issues” – I crack me up). Last year we broke continuance of publishing when we made the tough choice to suspend print publication. No one was on campus and few lawyers were in offices, so it was the right thing to do. There is a silver lining to this pause, though: it provided an opportunity for a long-overdue revamp of our ‘zine.
This issue of the Moot Times is an exciting one, as it marks quite a few firsts for us. For starters, we are unveiling our brand new logo. You might also notice that our layout is a bit more polished than it was before. I am self-taught with Adobe’s InDesign and a little rusty, but I think this is a sufficient start for our fresh new layout and presentation. This issue also lacks law firm adverts that are traditionally part-and-parcel to sponsorship, although we do have wonderful new friends at Copy Repro (conveniently located near the Calgary Courthouse). I have also re-envisioned our relationships with sponsors and law firms, and will be connecting with them over the fall months to bring a new way to do business to the table. It’s time we brought more professionalism to the way this publication interacts with the legal community!
“The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.”
Mark Twain
As we are starting anew, we did our best to include something for everyone in this issue (who couldn’t use an “Offshore Account” or two!). It is important to me personally that we all do what we can to create a sense of community amongst one another right now, because when September comes around the majority of UCalgary Law students will not have actually met one another in person. It is critical for us to make an effort to get to know our peers on campus now more than ever, and the best way that I know how to do this is to pass the microphone to as many people with ties to UCalgary as possible. Our student body has been up to some pretty cool stuff.
This past year has been tough for many of us, but it has also shown us that we are more resilient, resourceful, and capable than many of us may have otherwise realised. There is power in this, and I hope we can all see it. I hope we can harness this power and come together and use it for the collective good. I am not just talking about law students and the legal community, but the human race in general. During the pandemic I think we all experienced a period of growth. For example, I have a tendency to put too much on my plate, and last October and November this caught up with me. It took near-burnout for me to start listening to myself and the advice of those who are close to me, but when I started listening, something interesting happened: I also started to put myself in others’ shoes. This caused me to look at my environment in a different way. Seeing the world through others’ eyes is something I had never been very good at doing before, but it has taught me more than any other experience, travel, or study ever did. It taught me that life is not a zero sum game, because one “win” does not always create an equal “loss” for another. Sometimes, a win for one is a win for all. This is something I always knew, but did not fully understand.
But enough about me. The point is that I am willing to bet we can all say we learned something important in the last year that made us stronger or better in some way. Imagine how much of a superpower it would be to combine all of our growth and use it to help one another. Kind of a cool thought.
The Moot Times is not exactly hard-hitting journalism, though it does contain some excellent analysis of legal news and events. It’s meant to be a platform for us to share our thoughts, entertain ourselves (and hopefully one or two others), and get to know our peers. It is meant to foster community, and that is exactly what this issue is intended to represent.
- Cheers!
Comments