Did you wear a pink shirt today? Today (February 25) is Pink Shirt Day in Canada, a day devoted to promoting collective action against bullying in our schools, communities and online. The origins of the day, as described by the Globe and Mail, are as follows:

The tradition of wearing pink shirts emerged in September, 2007, after a Nova Scotia high-school student was targeted with homophobic insults for wearing a pink shirt to school. Two Grade 12 students, Travis Price and David Shepherd, organized their schoolmates to wear pink in solidarity.

My favourite #PinkShirtDay tweet was from Manitoba’s Minister . . . [more]

Have you ever wanted to cease and desist from all social media communication? I have. And I did. Here’s what happened…

…well, actually, nothing happened. Despite dire warnings from bloggers proclaiming the “10 online activities you must do every day to build a valuable personal brand”, nothing bad actually happened. In fact, my business grew.

The benefits of a social media sabbatical

1. Rest. Being somewhat introverted, I can only handle so much social activity online or off. By the end of December, I felt beleaguered by the pressure to maintain a constant social media presence.

2. Regained control over my

Then let’s make the effort to find them and vote for them.

It’s election season at law societies across Canada

In the coming months, Quebec, Nova Scotia and Ontario lawyers will elect the governors of their respective law societies and some change is inevitable. In Ontario, 17 of 40 incumbents are not running so the prospect of substantial change is very real. But whether it is a change of make-up or merely a change of bodies could depend entirely on the efforts voting lawyers put into learning about the candidates.

Quebec has a very long election season – opening . . . [more]

Film nerds can get all their Oscar-related facts from a series of databases supplied by the Margaret Herrick Library, the research library of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Among the library’s many goodies are:

• the Academy Awards Database which contains the record of past Academy Award winners and nominees
• the Academy Awards Acceptance Speech Database with more than 1,400 transcripts of onstage acceptance speeches
• the Digital Collections with more than 5000 items, including correspondence, photographs, early release fliers, full issues of rare periodicals, sheet music, lobby cards and movie star ephemera

Enjoy tonight’s Awards show. Go . . . [more]

Today is National Flag Day, and the 50th anniversary of the official adoption of the current Canadian flag.

National Flag Day was first instituted in 1996 by Jean Chrétien. On Flag Day in 2007, Peggy Nash attempted unsuccessfully to make it a federal statutory holiday.

Although dealing with the flag itself, and not the celebration of the flag, Parliament passed the National Flag of Canada Act in 2012. The initial version of the Bill included criminal penalties for mistreating the flag, until opposition in the House resulted in amendments stating that Canadians should simply being “encouraged” to display it. . . . [more]

As President of the Toronto Lawyers Association and a criminal defense lawyer practicing for over 22 years I was outraged to read not merely about the arrest of Laura Liscio, but about the manner in which the arrest was conducted. Any individual accused of a criminal offense is shrouded with the presumption of innocence. Miss Liscio, a practicing lawyer, was arrested in the court house and handcuffed while in robes. Further exasperating this public show was Miss Liscio being paraded through the halls of the court house, out the front doors and eventually off to the police station. Police have . . . [more]

For 13 years I practiced in a small community in northern Ontario, and one of the things you do in such a practice is a fair bit of estate work. One of things I quickly learned was that what appeared to be sweetness and light prior to the death of a family member is something entirely different after the death of that family member. With one sibling named executor, other siblings started to question and attack that particular sibling. Siblings that were beneficiaries started arguing with each other and in many occasions it was a very unhappy experience for everyone . . . [more]

CanLII’s Board of directors announced yesterday, February 9th, that Colin Lachance is to step down from his position of President and CEO of CanLII. On this occasion, Lexum wishes to acknowledge Colin’s important contribution to the development of Free Access to Law in Canada.

Colin Lachance has held the title of President and CEO of CanLII for four years. Under his leadership, CanLII became stronger and confirmed its status as a leading source for Canadian legal research. Colin is also the driving force behind CanLII*Connects – a legal commentary website which complements and enriches CanLII. He also led the . . . [more]

Mastery of vocabulary is a skill lawyers hone. But if the perfect choice of words is elusive—or if you have a more serious agenda—there’s always the dark art of “neology”.

I’m a bit of a word nut. As a youngster I was obsessed with the 1971 compact edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. It had the full 13-volumes condensed into two impossibly dense books with pages so thin and print so fine it required dexterity and a magnifying glass to read. “Prestidigitation” and “myopia” are words you can find in that micronized lexicon, but also skills you will need . . . [more]

Information overload! There are just too many posts, tweets and articles flying around in the Twitterverse and elsewhere on social media and the Web. None of us can even pretend keep up. And while there is a lot of spam, self-promotional crap and other junk out there, there are some real gems that get lost in the sheer volume of content thrown at us on a daily basis. The trick is finding the content that is really interesting or helpful to you in a practical way. Patience is required, hashtags and a bit of luck can help, and identifying good . . . [more]

January 19-23 is the CFIB’s (Canadian Federation of Independent Business) 6th annual Red Tape Awareness Week.

During the week the CFIB will make several announcements, starting off by announcing the winner of its annual Paperweight Award, citing the most egregious example of government red tape on small businesses. My guess is that CASL will win that.

My personal view is that government does a better job of talking about reducing red tape than actually accomplishing it. . . . [more]

As is apparent from the OTLA, and the many comments on my previous post, the upcoming Bencher elections in Ontario finally have an issue that has grabbed the attention of lawyers across the province: Alternative Business Structures.

While this issue may drive better voter participation in the April election, it has also greatly divided the profession in this province.

One can already see the huge generational rift among lawyers; those at the twilight of their careers fighting to retain a 19^th Century business model, while younger lawyers want to move the profession into the 21^st Century so as . . . [more]