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» Go to news main2025 Hearsay Cover Story: From IP to AI
This story originally appeared in theĚý2025 edition ofĚýHearsay, the Schulich School of Law’s annual alumni magazine.Ěý
The relationship between law and technology is dynamic and constantly evolving. In an increasingly technology-driven landscape, it is important to honour the foundational principles of law while embracing new tools and perspectives to ensure its continued relevance and effectiveness.
The Schulich School of Law is proud to offer one of the strongest law and technology programs in the country with a stellar roster of talent seeking to understand legal, policy, and ethical challenges, while training students to think critically about issues at the intersection of law, technology, and society.
The Law & Technology Institute
The Law & Technology Institute (LATI) at the Schulich School of Law was founded in the early 2000s by Professor Emeritus Michael Deturbide, KC (LLB '89, LLM '97) and former faculty member Dr. Teresa Scassa, at a time when the Internet was still emerging as a transformative force in society.
The Institute’s mission is to promote legal research, education and leadership in technology law and policy, primarily from a Canadian perspective. Over the last two decades, LATI has sought to enhance public awareness and understanding of the concerns posed by existing and emerging technologies, while informing and guiding Canadian public policy, and encouraging interdisciplinary problem solving, teaching, and research.
Professor Lucie Guibault, who serves as the Institute’s associate director, joined the faculty at the Schulich School of Law in 2017, bringing a background in copyright law and intellectual property (IP) law. She has seen many changes in this emerging space since coming to the law school.
“The rapid pace of technological change demands that we constantly assess how it impacts our lives and whether the law offers an adequate response,” says Guibault. “With the arrival of new colleagues, the expertise within LATI has grown, making it the prime teaching and research environment to study issues like online harms, the protection of artificial intelligence generated works and inventions, the Right to Repair, the use of AI in the democratic process, and many more hot topics arising from, and around, law and technology.”
The Institute is also home to the country’s leading law and technology journal— (CJLT). Co-edited by Guibault and Schulich Law Professor Maria Dugas (JD '15, LLM '18), the Journal provides coverage of legal issues relating to law and technology from both Canadian and international perspectives. In the near future, Schulich Law students will have an opportunity to contribute to the CJLT through the Law and Technology Legal Writing & Editorial Assistantship Course which will be taught by Guibault.
Another project led by longstanding LATI members is the ’s (CAN-TECH) quarterly newsletter. Professor Robert Currie, KC (LLB '98) and (LLB '99) serve as the English editors of CAN-TECH, a national forum for Canadian law and technology practitioners to discuss issues related to e-commerce and IP.
An important part of the research conducted at LATI concerns the protection of IP, since knowledge is a key motor of technological development and socio-economic change. Unfortunately, Indigenous knowledge has often gone unprotected by lawmakers and, as a result, has been subject to appropriation by third parties.
With financial support from the HÂţ» 2025 Next Wave Fund and in the spirit of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action, the Institute will be organizing a workshop on the protection of Indigenous IP. It is vital that active steps be taken towards the articulation, recognition, rebuilding, and revitalization of Indigenous intellectual property laws. The protection of Indigenous IP falls within LATI’s mission of legal development and awareness, and builds on its commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Assistant Professor Suzie Dunn, who is currently the acting director of LATI, joined the Schulich School of Law in 2021. Her research centers on the intersections of equality, technology, and the law. She is also a research partner on a SSHRC-funded project on young people’s experiences with sexual violence online called DIY Digital Safety.
Dunn is excited by the law school’s recent infusion of talent in law and technology. “In the last few years, our team has been growing,” she shares. “It’s exciting to build on the Institute’s legacy at a time when there are increasingly rapid changes in technological development and new regulation to address it. Our new faculty have come with fresh ideas leading to expanded course offerings and an enhanced student experience.”
Michael Karanicolas (LLB '11), associate professor and the James S. Palmer Chair in Public Policy and Law, joined the faculty this past January. He will teach the Information Policy Lab course, offered for the first time at Schulich Law this academic year, giving students an opportunity to engage directly on emerging public policy questions related to the intersection of law and technology.
“Law and technology is fundamentally about how we handle disruption,” says Karanicolas, whose research revolves around the application of human rights standards in an online context. “So, it’s a natural area to gravitate to from a public policy perspective, since it pulls in many of the thorniest regulatory challenges that Canada currently faces, including how to govern emerging technologies like artificial intelligence or quantum computers, and how to deal with the impacts that these technologies are having on everything from the practice of law to the administrative state.”
Enhancing the Learning Experience
The Schulich School of Law offers JD students the opportunity to earn a Law and Technology Certificate as part of their studies.
Introduced in 2019, and created by Guibault, the specialization includes a diverse array of courses in the areas of IP and law and technology, as well as an opportunity for students to learn hands-on skills through the . More than 65 students have earned the certificate since its inception.
The law school continues to expand its offerings in law and technology and has added five new courses to the curriculum since 2017. One of these new courses, Technological Competence and Innovation in Lawyering, will address the essential role of technological competence in modern legal practice, equipping law students with critical skills for an increasingly digital and automated legal landscape. It will be taught by Assistant Professor Anthony Rosborough (JD '15). In 2023, he was jointly appointed to Law and Computer Science at HÂţ», bringing interdisciplinary excellence to both faculties.
This past year the law school also welcomed two Lisson Experts-in-Residence, Jon Legorburu and Carla Swansburg (LLB '93), who each taught an upper-year intensive course. Legorburu’s course focused on the rise of cyber-crime and internet manipulation, while Swansburg’s focused on technology in practice.
“I was excited to help students learn how technology can impact the way law is practiced and to provide some hands-on experience in how emerging tools can create efficiencies and reduce the cost and time it can take to solve clients’ legal problems,” says Swansburg, CEO of ClearyX, a fully remote, tech-forward firm focused on developing strategies for new and innovative models of legal service delivery. “I hope the course equipped students with a framework for how to think about weaving technology into their work in a productive, ethical way.”
Dunn says that having one of the strongest law and technology programs in the country prepares students to thrive in this growing field. “It’s been a pleasure to watch the success of our law and tech students who have become leaders in areas ranging from video game law to AI policy development.”
Former student (JD '24), spent a semester at the initio Technology & Innovation Law Clinic in the fall of 2023, went on to article with the Clinic and was recently hired as their first junior staff lawyer. He says that his student experience at initio was a defining moment in shaping the direction of his legal career.
The Clinic, led by Director Alayna Kolodziechuk (LLB '12), provides legal services to early-stage start-ups and community organizations that otherwise could not afford a lawyer. Its offerings are unique among law clinics across the country. It is guided by a dual-purpose mission: to contribute to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Atlantic Canada and to educate and inspire students.
“One of the most valuable lessons from my time at initio was the importance of using legal and critical thinking skills to examine emerging technologies with an analytical lens,” says Bourgeois. “That mindset became especially important as the legal community began grappling with the rapid development of artificial intelligence.”
Bourgeois served as a committee member on the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society’s technology sub-group and contributed to their recently released AI Guide for Legal Practices in Nova Scotia.
“It is clear that AI is no longer coming—it is already here,” he says. “Lawyers and law students should approach these tools with both curiosity and caution. As AI continues to evolve, we should remain informed, ask critical questions and adapt our practices as needed.”
Interdisciplinary Collaboration
Beyond the law school, the Law & Technology Institute is committed to building connections across faculties, institutions and in community.
In the fall of 2024, Dunn introduced Tech Toks at the Schulich School of Law—a multi-disciplinary and inter-faculty speaker series on a variety of topics in the law and technology space, ranging from career paths for women in IP to challenges with regulating online pornography to pharmaceuticals and the law.
“We wanted to use the series as a tool to bring people from various disciplines and the larger Halifax community together to have conversations about today’s modern technology issues,” says Dunn. “The possibilities for cross-sectoral collaboration have opened a lot of doors for innovative research and engagement.”
Rosborough led a Tech Tok session in May titled “Think Globally, Repair Locally” to discuss the barriers in repairing modern technological devices as well as local repair options. His current research project called Unlocking Healthcare investigates the technical and legal barriers to the independent repair and servicing of software-dependent medical devices in Canadian hospitals.
“To me, the most pressing issues in technology and law stem from the decline in human agency over the systems and devices that shape our lives. I am concerned about our evolving thinking about the role of law and computation and the growing belief in the inevitability narrative. This is the belief that technology, especially AI, will inevitably replace all that is human with advanced computational statistics.”
Rosborough believes that the Right to Repair movement shows a path to a more empowered society and competitive economy that diffuses technical knowledge and pushes back against centralized tech power structures.
“Ultimately, the Right to Repair is about reclaiming human agency. It’s an issue that spans multiple dimensions of law that are often treated in isolation, including consumer protection, intellectual property, competition law, and product design. Greater access to repair can open up economic opportunities, support ecological sustainability, and reduce costs for individuals, businesses, and governments,” says Rosborough. “Technological advance is dizzying not only because of its pace, but also due to our lack of ability to shape its development. Wider access to repair gives us some control and direction over the trajectory of innovation and the values it embodies.”
This past April, LATI lent its expertise to WeRobot 2025, the premier international conference on AI and robotics innovation and regulation, hosted by the University of Windsor. Dunn served on the planning committee and presented a “Law 101” workshop. The Institute and the CJLT also partnered with WeRobot to publish a special multi-disciplinary and international edition featuring papers from the conference that will be available this fall.
In November, the Schulich School of Law will host the inaugural Canadian Technology Law Conference: Democracy and the Information Society, led by Karanicolas. The keynote will be delivered by the Honourable Sean Fraser (LLB '09), Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, and will include additional panels featuring leading experts from Canada and the United States.
“As a scholar whose primary focus revolves around democracy and human rights, these issues are particularly salient in the context of rising authoritarianism around the world, a trend which has been largely fueled and accelerated by technological disruption of our information environment,” says Karanicolas. “I see the question of how Canadian democracy, and democracies around the world, survive the current wave of innovation as one of the most important challenges of our era.”
He is also leading a new initiative called the Canadian Law and Technology Network, connecting more than 80 legal scholars from across the country by providing a forum for discussion about pressing issues in the law and technology space, as well as offering opportunities for collaboration.
Looking to the Future
As technology continues to rapidly evolve, the Schulich School of Law’s ability to respond and adapt is critical. Whether it is through the steadfast work of the Law & Technology Institute, expanded course offerings to enhance the learning experience, or the recruitment of experts in the field of law and technology, the law school is committed to preparing future legal professionals for the challenges and opportunities presented by the digital age.
The intersection of law and technology calls for collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches to ensure justice and fairness in today’s world.
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