News > 2022 > Making legal information easily accessible for the entire HEC Montréal community

Making legal information easily accessible for the entire HEC Montréal community

An exchange of services agreement with the CAIJ

August 29, 2022

A new agreement between HEC Montréal and the Centre d’accès à l’information juridique (CAIJ), a Quebec centre facilitating access to legal information, will let all members of the School’s community benefit from the Centre’s services and the most extensive source of legal information in Quebec.

In return, the School will offer its management expertise to CAIJ members, in particular through access to academic publications and training with Executive Education HEC Montréal.

The CAIJ’s role is to support its members, i.e. the entire Quebec legal profession, in their practices and to contribute to the success of law students. More broadly, its mission is to democratize justice by improving access to legal knowledge.

 

Exchanges between libraries

HEC Montréal Library Director Bernard Bizimana was the School’s main representative in negotiating this agreement. He is delighted to be able to expand the Library’s legal resources in this way, and to help build this synergy between law and management.

One of the CAIJ co-working libraries in Montreal
One of the CAIJ co-working libraries in Montreal

“It’s the meeting of 2 worlds,” he explains. “The world of management, which has to deal with vast legal issues, and the world of law, which has huge needs in terms of management.”

Bernard Bizimana, HEC Montréal Library Director

For HEC Montréal, the agreement means that its student community, faculty and staff will have access to CAIJ content and services.

Under the agreement the CAIJ will offer research support services, including training in legal research for the School’s students. Faculty and staff members will also have access to customized training in legal research, and our librarians will receive annual training on using CAIJ tools.

The 2 partners have also agreed to enrich and design research guides in management and law, and to develop about a dozen research questions every year on topics in these fields.

 

An essential training tool

Full-time Lecturer Claude Ananou is one of the champions of this project. As an educator and having designed various business law courses for HEC Montréal, for a number of years he has noted students’ need for access to legal information.

“The law represents the rules of the game for the business world, if you like. And as a famous saying has it, ‘Ignorance of the law is no excuse.’ With this access to the CAIJ’s platforms, young people will have everything at their disposal: jurisprudence, legislation and doctrine. Our role as educators will then simply be to teach them how to find this information,” he explains.

 

Executive Education and Gestion magazine

With this exchange of services, Executive Education HEC Montréal will become the CAIJ’s exclusive partner for continuing education in management. The School’s Executive Education department and the CAIJ will hold an annual day of lectures on the theme of law and management, and several webinars will be organized on topics related to this theme.

Lastly, note that the agreement also includes potential collaboration with the Gestion magazine, such as the joint creation of content dealing with law and business. Discussions are also underway to have the journal distributed on CAIJ platforms.

Learn more about the CAIJ