It’s articling season in Alberta. If you’re one of the many students who didn’t land an offer this week, that’s the first thing that you have to remember. You’re one of many students who didn’t land an offer this week.

During the official recruitment period the supply of jobs will inevitably be much smaller than the demand. While firms can safely decide not to participate in the recruitment period, how many students do you know who had the courage to take that risk? As taxing as articling week is on students, it’s also onerous for firms. As such, a lot . . . [more]

The Spectator, which bills itself as “the oldest continuously published magazine in the English language,” has put online its archives, dating back to its inception in 1828. The Spectator is a relatively small-circulation, conservative-oriented publication in the United Kingdom.

This is not strictly a law-related matter, of course; but general research sources are worth noting and bookmarking for a possible future legal use when they are of this historical depth. And from a brief trial run I can say that it seems that the magazine has done the archiving very well indeed, with text items digitized and also . . . [more]

Last week Steve Matthews highlighted the newley redesigned Best Guide to Canadian Legal Research. Congratulations to Catherine Best for providing a great content to the legal community and providing it in a lovely package. I have been a gushing fan of this site for years.

Every year at the Head Start program in Edmonton, we highlight the Suggested Textbooks portion of the site. With the recent redesign, I hope that we will also discuss the portion of the site called Making Good Choices: Canadian Electronic Research Sources.

I appreciate the time an effort that Catherine has put into . . . [more]

The Online Dispute Resolution Working Group will hold its 12th annual meeting in Montreal next week on June 16-18. This conference brings together ODR scholars and practitioners from around the world. As you might imagine, among the stellar cast of speakers (Fabien Gélinas, Colin Rule, Ethan Katsh . . .) you’ll find Slaw columnists Karim Benyekhlef and Nicolas Vermeys, who have been informing our readers about ODR for some time now. And among the discussants are Slawyers John Gregory and David Bilinsky.

The full program can be downloaded here. From that document:

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on technology, research and practice.

Technology

Go for a Fresh Start With a Device Reboot
Dan Pinnington

Smartphones, tablets, laptops and computers are more reliable and stable than ever before. Most of us take this for granted and we leave our devices turned on 24/7. However, that . . .

Research

New Articling Students – Legal Reseach Methods Cafe
Shaunna Mireau

Most law firms have an orientation program for articling students. I am certain that . . . [more]

Law firms have a tendency to measure effectiveness of a marketing activity by whether “we got a file from it”. This is an inaccurate measure for several reasons, the most obvious of which is that few firms record how a file came to them.

If you’re going to invest time and resources in marketing initiatives, they should enhance at least one of the four Rs—reputation, revenue, referrals, and retention. Clients choose lawyers by their reputation, so reputation enhances revenue. Clients also choose lawyers on the recommendation of another advisor, so referrals enhance revenue and reputation enhances referrals. Clients leave lawyers . . . [more]

There is a lot of interesting talk these days about tapping in to the wisdom of the crowd. Among the most surprising examples is Crowdmed.com which was designed to find diagnoses for illnesses that have eluded physicians. It reports “astonishing” results.

There are no liability risks on the individual “medical detectives” (not required to be physicians) who submit diagnostic suggestions: they are anonymous and submissions are pooled and combined into diagnostic suggestions to be discussed with the patient’s physician.

A quick internet search did not reveal anything similar for law. Let me try drawing on the collective wisdom of SLAW . . . [more]

It now seems clear that any and all electronic communications are grist for the NSA’s mills. Only a fool would imagine that something expressed directly and plainly by phone, email, or SMS would remain private between sender and receiver. Of course, most of what we say to each other these ways is utterly trivial and inconsequential as far as the spy agencies are concerned, which doesn’t mean, of course, that we are happy or even content to have our private communications, however mundane, so casually and routinely raked through. 

Broadly speaking, there are two ways to go: we can, as . . . [more]

Every so often, a case about a lawyer removed from a matter or reprimanded for acting while in an “obvious” conflict of interest pops up in the media. These cases make all of us (or at least they should) shake our heads in dismay: Surely everybody knows how to avoid a conflict – don’t they?

LAWPRO claims experience makes it clear that lawyers don’t always accurately identify conflicts… or that sometimes they decide to be wilfully blind. Consider the following a brief primer on how to tune-up your conflict of interest avoidance systems.

There are three typical scenarios that lead . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from forty-one 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. David Doorey’s Law of Work  2. Youth and Work  3. Ontario Condo Law Blog  4. Slater Vecchio Connected  5. Wise Law Blog

David Doorey’s Law of Work
Why Do Workers Support Policies To Weaken Labour Rights?
My colleague here at the School of HRM at York, Tony Fang, found . . . [more]

In Wright v. Wright [2013] EWCA Civ 234, the English Court of Appeal suggested that it may be time to review the rule articulated nearly a decade ago in Halsey v Milton Keynes General NHS Trust [2004] EWCA Civ 576 to the effect that a court cannot order unwilling parties to participate in mediation.

The dispute in Wright involved two unrepresented businessmen who had a falling out after years of successful collaboration. The litigation had been hard-fought and protracted. The court observed that the case involved “a breakdown of trust and friendship” and observed that “mediation is the obvious . . . [more]

In October 2007 Robert Dziekanski was stuck in a Vancouver airport for 10 hours. An immigrant from Poland, Dziekanski did not speak English and started to get agitated, even throwing furniture.

The police used a taser on Dziekanski within seconds of their arrival, resulting in his death. The incident was captured on video by others in the airport, and raised questions nationwide over the use of police force. This lead to the Braidwood Inquiry, which concluded that tasers can cause death in people with heart irregularities.

The officers claimed that Dziekanski had acted violently, requiring the use of the . . . [more]