As a supplement to our Sunday Summary each month, Supreme Advocacy LLP in Ottawa presents Supreme One-Liners, a super-short descriptive guide to the most recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers its more comprehensive weekly electronic newsletter, Supreme Advocacy Letter, summarizing all Appeals, Oral Judgments and Leaves to Appeal granted.

Appeals

Insurance: Presumption of Death
Riddle v. ivari, 2026 SCC 9 (40986)

“Return” of a person declared dead, established on a balance of probabilities.

  . . . [more]

Most professionals review their financial portfolios regularly. They assess what’s performing, what’s stalled, and what no longer fits the strategy. They make deliberate decisions about where to invest time and capital.

Almost no one applies the same discipline to the most valuable asset in their professional life: their relationships.

The Asset You’re Not Managing

A contact base that isn’t actively maintained doesn’t stay neutral. It erodes.

The client you worked with intensively three years ago and haven’t spoken to since? They’ve moved on. The colleague who moved to an interesting company but slipped off your radar? They needed someone with . . . [more]

Several times each month, we are pleased to republish a recent book review from the Canadian Law Library Review (CLLR). CLLR is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD), and its reviews cover both practice-oriented and academic publications related to the law.

Legal Knowledge in Organizations: A Source of Strategic and Competitive Advantage. By Robert C. Bird. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2025. xxv, 261 p. Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN 9781009596671 (hardcover) $143.95; ISBN 9781009596695 (softcover) $47.95; ISBN 9781009596701 (eBook) $41.99.

Reviewed by Gillian Eguaras
Research Librarian
McMillan LLP

Legal . . . [more]

Each month, we tell you which three English-language cases and French-language cases have been the most viewed* on CanLII in the previous month and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this past month, the three most-consulted English-language decisions were:

1. Kapahi Real Estate Inc. v. Elite Real Estate Club of Toronto Inc, 2026 ONSC 1438

During my Spring Break, I decided to reread some examples of classic literature, including my favorite one of all times, Don Quixote. Since I was a kid, I have always been obsessed with the scene on windmills and the “quixotic” battle that ensues. Don Quixote’s faithful companion, Sancho Panza puts an end to it with his insightful remark: Mire vuestra merced que aquellos que allí se parecen no son gigantes, sino molinos de viento (Look, your grace, that those appearing over there are not giants, but windmills).

In legal research, and in particular our community of Foreign, Comparative and International . . . [more]

It has been clear for a long time that self-represented litigants struggle to understand the system they are often thrown into. By contrast, lawyers study for years, and have the benefit of ever-mounting daily experience, topped off with the privilege and deference associated with belonging to the legal profession. It’s no wonder then that SRLs tend to muddle blindly through the system, piecing together whatever information they can find from a host of sources, some more reliable than others. Naturally they make mistakes, and are inefficient, contributing to the existing backlog and straining the legal system. These litigants are very . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from more than 80 recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Canadian Appeals Monitor 2.Vincent Gautrais 3. Family Health Law Blog 4. PierreRoy & Associés 5. Le Blogue du CRL

Canadian Appeals Monitor
What does 2026 hold for Canada’s technology sector?

AI, digital infrastructure and tech buildouts continue to dominate not only the tech sector but . . . [more]

Michael Geist had a lawyer on his Law Bytes podcast recently to talk about how AI is radically transforming his practice. For this long-time listener of one of the best law podcasts out there, the episode with New York lawyer Zack Shapiro was among the two or three most interesting and informative episodes I think Geist has ever done.

As someone who follows developments in legal AI closely, I found Shapiro’s insights into how to make the best use of AI outstanding. This is an episode that anyone interested in where law is headed — and concerned with not being . . . [more]

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

PÉNAL (DROIT) Dans une affaire de voies de fait causant des lésions corporelles commises lors d’une bagarre à la sortie d’un bar, l’erreur de la juge de première instance est d’avoir refusé de considérer tout fait qui n’avait pas été exposé lors du plaidoyer de culpabilité et d’avoir refusé à . . . [more]

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming part of everyday professional practice in dispute resolution. As its use expands across the legal profession, questions are beginning to arise about how these tools should be used by mediators and arbitrators.

Until recently, the issue has received little attention within the ADR community itself.

At present, most mediation and arbitration codes of conduct say little or nothing about artificial intelligence.

While much of the discussion about AI in law focuses on lawyers using these tools, far less attention has been paid to their use by mediators and arbitrators. Yet as AI becomes more common . . . [more]

A few recent data points about AI and the law, along with one bracing conclusion.

1. At the end of February, American lawyer Zack Shapiro published an article on Linked titled “The Claude-Native Law Firm.” It described how his two-person firm is powered by customized “skills” that capture and encode his legal frameworks and judgment into Anthropic’s Claude AI, enabling Claude to deliver legal outputs rapidly and transferably across the firm. This interview with LawDroid’s Tom Martin relates what Shapiro is doing and why it’s potentially momentous: It suggests that properly and thoroughly instructed general-purpose Gen AI might prove