This column presents excerpts from a student paper, completed under the University of Toronto’s Community Research Partnership in Ethics program; the full paper will be published by the National Self-Represented Litigants Project later this year.

Over the past 20 years, Alberta’s family justice system has distinguished itself from other jurisdictions by implementing mandatory forms of assistance. In 2005, the Alberta government launched mandatory meetings for SRLs in provincial court, pursuant to the Intake and Caseflow Management Regulation.[1] Building on this, and recognizing the inherent difficulties associated with an SRL’s journey through the family law system, the new Family Justice . . . [more]

Your mid-sized firm invested $500,000 recruiting four to five new students last year. By year five, 91 percent are gone. Your per-person investment was roughly $100,000 to $125,000. Add salary, training, and mentorship. Then they leave.

The question worth asking is whether you hired the wrong people, or whether you didn’t integrate them.

The data suggests the latter. When the National Association for Law Placement Foundation surveyed departing Canadian associates, 29 percent cited work quality concerns. Sixteen percent pointed to productivity standards they felt they weren’t meeting. Thirteen percent said the advancement path was unclear. Thirteen percent mentioned fit. Another . . . [more]

Last November, I found a job posting for a part-time law librarian position. My hopes were low; I was still a Master of Information (MI) student, and I had no law library experience. Regardless, I applied. I could not believe my luck when I secured the position. To say I was elated would be an understatement. That feeling lasted about a day, then panic set in… What did I know about the law and law librarianship?

Desperate to weave an informatic safety blanket, I scoured the internet and library catalogues for information on early career law librarianship. I was desperate . . . [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 commises par un père à l’endroit de ses enfants, le juge de première instance, qui a imposé à l’accusé une peine de 90 jours d’emprisonnement à purger de manière discontinue, a commis 3 erreurs de principe; la Cour supérieure, accueillant . . . [more]

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

Bankruptcy & Insolvency: Preferential Payments
R. v. Cope, 2026 SCC 32 (41431)

Protecting Indigenous women victims doesn’t displace Gladue. . . . [more]

Is this a rabbit, or is it a duck? It’s both. (You’ll see the two animals after a few seconds if you haven’t already). Known as Jastrow’s rabbit/duck, this image has been amusing people ever since it first appeared in a German newspaper in 1892).

How much time and money should be spent trying to prove that Jastrow’s drawing is really a duck, or really a rabbit, or more one than the other? No time and no money at all.

Our civil justice system tries to search for truth, in order to bring each lawsuit to a just resolution . . . [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.

Leading in the Law with Emotional Intelligence: The Path to Becoming a Twenty-First-Century Leader. By Rob Durr & Cliff Zimmerman. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2025. 342 p. Includes index. ISBN 9781531029654 (softcover) US$49.50; ISBN 9781531029661 (eBook) US$39.60.

Reviewed by Marnie Bailey
Manager, Knowledge Services
Fasken Martineau DuMoulin LLP

Emotional intelligence, . . . [more]

Each month, we tell you which five 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 using CanLII-published AI-generated summaries of the case or case excerpts.

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

1. Kerr v. Baranow, 2011 SCC 10

AI-generated summary:

Facts: Two unmarried partners cohabit for about 12 years and have two children together. The female partner leaves employment to relocate and assumes most childcare and domestic labour while the male partner builds a . . . [more]

There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that outsourcing your cognitive processes to AI — whether by letting it do your writing or thinking or analyzing for you — is a bad idea. Partly, of course, this is because the AI might do a poor job of it, leaving you on the hook for badly reasoned arguments or banally worded text.

In the bigger picture, though, the worry is that by delegating your thought processes to a machine, your own cognitive muscles will atrophy, and you’ll be less able to apply acute reasoning when you don’t have the AI to rely . . . [more]

Mediators are often asked by parties or their counsel to send them a copy of their “standard Agreement to Mediate” for review. But is there such a document?

If by “standard” we mean some prescribed form followed by all mediators, the answer is no. Virtually every mediator has his or her own Agreement. Some are based on agreements provided in mediation training, while others are quite customized.

This article has its origin in a recent mediation. One of the three lawyers attending had clearly not read the Agreement to Mediate, although it had been sent to him weeks earlier. When . . . [more]

INTRODUCTION

The Ontario Court of Appeal’s (“CA”) recent decision in Knauff v. Ontario (Human Rights Tribunal) (“Knauff”) sought to resolve two CA panels’ disagreement about the continuing relevance of the test for leave to appeal in Sault Dock Co. Ltd. and City of Sault Ste. Marie (Ont. CA) (“Sault Dock”). (I considered the two CA decisions, West Whitby Landowners Group Inc. v. Elexicon Inc. [“West Whitby”] and Davis v. Aviva General Insurance Company [“Davis”] in my January 7, 2025 Slaw post, “Tension on the Ontario CA: Thwarting a Judicial Coup?”.) My focus . . . [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) : L’omission de la juge de première instance d’aborder le critère du consentement de l’accusé à la présence de l’arme à l’intérieur du véhicule dans lequel il était passager constitue une erreur de droit; il y a lieu d’appliquer la disposition réparatrice (art. 686 (1) b) (iii) C.Cr.). . . . [more]