On occasion, lawyers have engaged in activities that have made them front-page news, subject to embarrassment and possibly lawsuits or discipline complaints. Not only can this kind of attention be bad for a lawyer’s reputation, it can also damage or even destroy client relationships.

That’s reason enough to be aware of and avoid activities that could lead to these types of outcomes. But there is another – equally if not more compelling – reason to avoid them: In some instances, it may be the law firm, not LAWPRO (or your own malpractice carrier if you are outside Ontario), that foots . . . [more]

Lawyers and law firms have a complex relationship with journalism and public relations, I’d say: control, reputation, social positioning — power, if you will — all these can intersect in interesting ways for this trio of influence- and word-mongers. The recent brouhaha in Britain over the News of the World and Murdoch’s News Corp. phone hacking mess illustrates some of the less happy aspects of this interaction. Normally, we here at Slaw would be more focused on the legalities; but I think it’s enlightening, for a change, to look at this scandal from the public relations point of view, and . . . [more]

As lawyers know, between the lengthy process and the various complexities that are inevitable within the traditional legal system, many people become discouraged with their attempts to obtain justice. As others have suggested, alternative dispute resolution mechanisms, specifically mediation, may offer the needed solution to for this lack of efficient access to justice. Rather than aiming to replace the established system, however, these mechanisms work in parallel with it.

Many non-governmental organisations here and abroad have realized the overwhelming inefficiency of the existing traditional legal system in the countries in which they are based. This is the reason many projects . . . [more]

This week Michele Henry at the Toronto Star revealed the existence of an estimated $1.3 billion car insurance scam operating in the Toronto region,

Doctors, chiropractors and physiotherapists are unwitting dupes in what some insurers claim is a $1.3-billion scam. Fraudsters steal their credentials to make fake invoices appear legitimate. The victims of the scam are drivers across the province, who annually see their rates hiked to pay for fraudulent claims.

Insurance investigators claim more than 300 clinics loosely connected in fraudulent rings are working this system…

Tow truck drivers or paralegals direct accident victims — drivers and passengers —

Justia.com is now providing free daily and weekly opinion summaries for the US Supreme Court, all US federal courts of appeal, and state supreme courts. As well, free weekly opinion summaries are available for nearly sixty areas of practice. These, it would seem, are delivered by email; there doesn’t seem to be an RSS feature. If you’re curious, you can look at a sample daily email for the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals or a sample weekly summary for the practice area of environmental law.

Needless to say, this is a powerfully impressive service and a considerable contribution . . . [more]

There’s a new Columbia research study that looks at our ever growing reliance on search engines for memory recall. Not a ton of surprises here. Yes, we’ve become more reliant, especially for certain types of information. We’re also becoming better at remembering the successful search strategies that led us to obtaining certain facts. In some cases, our memory of the search strategy is better than our recall of the trivia itself.

Oh, and three cheers for Columbia for including an embed code within their video player! So I can show you this:

. . . [more]

In a bit of tragic irony last week, I finished my post on some of Canada’s constitutional documents and hit the publish button and left Slaw to discover that Dalhousie, and indeed, Canada had suffered a terrible loss with the passing of Professor Peter Aucoin. I’m sure that many Slaw readers are familiar with the name as he was one of, if not the, preeminent scholar on Canadian government and public service; he was a key figure in many Royal Commissions and published books and journal articles of high quality, too numerous to mention here. His scholarship and contributions . . . [more]

Every so often I’m struck by how impressive the crow is. This strutting, raucous, scavenger — a “murder” en masse — exhibits the sort of behaviour that should give us pause whenever we’re feeling smug about our perch atop the smartness pole. Not that this corvid, cousin to jays and magpies, is about to solve Fermat’s theorem, perfect the hydrogen bomb, or do anything so humanly intelligent. But the bird can solve problems, recognize faces, teach others (or learn from others), and outsmart human beings from time to time.

For example, a few years back Chatham, Ontario, was beleaguered by . . . [more]

This is a post in a series to appear occasionally, setting out some articles that contributors at Slaw are reading and that you might find interesting. These tend to be longer than blog posts and shorter than books, just right for that stolen half hour on the weekend. It’s also likely that most of them won’t be about law — just right for etc.

Please let us have your recommendations for what we and our readers might like. . . . [more]

After the 2010 earthquake destroyed Haiti’s law libraries, the Law Library Microform Consortium (LLMC), a non-profit cooperative of libraries, spearheaded the Haiti Legal Patrimony Project. 13 U.K., U.S., and German libraries contributed unique materials from their collections to help rebuild a collection of Haitian law online via the LLMC Digital database. Many of the 700+ titles on the master list (initially compiled from Law Library of Congress and Columbia University Law Library bibliographic data) have been digitized. The online collection comprises constitutions, statutes, codes, periodicals, and legal treatises. The Haiti Project is one of many digital law library initiatives. . . . [more]

on account of prosecutorial misconduct at trial. The prosecuting lawyers put “evidence” in front the jury that the judge had ruled inadmissible. When caught out, they suggested the jury be told to disregard that evidence. The trial judge was not impressed. (http://tsn.ca/mlb/story/?id=371713)

There is to be a Sept 2 hearing to decide if there will be a new trial.

Canadian judges are somtimes equally unforgiving where prosecutorial misconduct is involved which results in the jury hearing inadmissible evidence – see R v. Kusk, 1999 ABCA 49 – even where Charter issues are not mentioned. . . . [more]

As those of you who’ve hopped in your bumper car on the brand new Google Plus ride will know, Google is working to bring many or most of its offerings onto one fairground. Plus, or + as Prince might have it, is a step in that direction, integrating Buzz, chat, Picassa, YouTube, News (aka Sparks), and the new microblogging platform, with presumably more to come. Perhaps as a way of getting us to think of all things Google as a unity, they’ve released a nonce device, called What do you love?. And interestingly, the front end is the simplest . . . [more]