Surfing through the blog entries from my Decanal colleagues over the last number of months, it is clear that coping with the pandemic and adapting legal education to remote delivery has loomed large for all of us. We know it has affected our students, our colleagues and our staff and it is tempting to wish for a return to “normal” as we understood it pre-pandemic. On the other hand, there is emerging a debate about what the post-pandemic university should look like, with early commentators suggesting that there is now ‘a unique opportunity to reimagine our universities as more inclusive, . . . [more]

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 practice, research, writing and technology.

Research & Writing

Continuing Comma Calamities
Neil Guthrie

It’s disheartening to see how frequently people mess up with commas. This kind of thing is all too common: Partner, Alfredo Garcia will be speaking about … Remove that comma! … . . . [more]

“We are not all in the same boat. We are all in the same storm. Some of us are on super-yachts. Some have just the one oar.” -Damian Barr

Without question, the pandemic has altered the way lawyers practice law. There is increased efficiency in the operation of the courts and both judges and lawyers have skillfully adapted to incredible changes that would have seemed impossible to imagine let alone implement eighteen months ago. The expanded use of technology increased access to justice for many. Emergency orders offered the ability to execute various types of documents safely and remotely. Some . . . [more]

Isolation in one’s home and glued to an electronic device, it was inevitable that people would be come more activist online. A growing trend has been where public backlash online, also known as cancelling or calling out, is used to block someone from having a platform or career.

The debate around the utility of cancel culture weaves between delicate balances of expression rights and bullying concerns. While the practice started in progressive circles, it has more recently been weaponized by right-wing groups as well.

What people may not have anticipated is that the attempts to “cancel” someone could actually be . . . [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) : Un professeur universitaire ayant plaidé coupable sous des accusations relatives à des actions indécentes commises dans un endroit public à l’encontre de jeunes écolières se voit imposer une condamnation avec sursis assortie de conditions ainsi qu’une obligation d’enregistrement au Registre national des délinquants sexuels.

Intitulé : R. . . . [more]

Owners of copyright in movies struggle with large numbers of infringements in which unauthorized copies of their works are uploaded to peer to peer file sharing services such as BitTorrent.^[1]

The Federal Court of Appeal has noted that a solution to mass-copyright infringement is for a single creator to pursue a large number of infringers.^[2]

Despite the limitations of the Copyright Act for individual non-commercial infringements^[3] and the limitations under current copyright law on authorization, the Federal Court of Appeal was prepared to allow a reverse class-action to proceed in which a plaintiff claims numerous parties conducted . . . [more]

Each Friday, we share the latest job listings from Slaw Jobs, which features employment opportunities from across the country. Find out more about these positions by following the links below, or learn how you can use Slaw Jobs to gain valuable exposure for your job ads, while supporting the great Canadian legal commentary at Slaw.ca.

Current postings on Slaw Jobs:

• Corporate Tax Lawyer (Full-time) | Vancouver, BC
  (Thorsteinssons LLP)
• Articling Student 2022-2023 (Full-time) | Abbotsford, BC
  (Waterstone Law Group)
• Legal Assistant/Paralegal–Real Estate (Full-time) | Abbotsford, BC
  (Waterstone Law Group)
• Senior Conveyancer (Full-time) | Chilliwack, BC
  (Waterstone Law Group)
• Corporate Services

In over 30 years of working with law firms on improving productivity and profitability, I’ve seen countless marketplace surveys on the incredible value of client feedback mechanisms. In many instances it’s been labelled as one of the fastest and most effective ways to boost firm revenue. So, you’d think that law firms would be all over this business practice as a standard operating procedure. But…not so much. Two decades ago, law firm management expert Jim Durham conducted a survey of 100 MPs to see how many of their firms had client feedback programs. Around 20% of them did (or were . . . [more]

[Jeff Rose-Martland is a writer and SRL from St. John’s, Newfoundland, and member of NSRLP’s Advisory Board.]

Envision a self-represented litigant. Did you get a picture of someone in court, poorly dressed, who doesn’t know what they are doing? I see that, and I am an SRL. The more-accurate mental image of a person at their dining table struggling with legal documents until the wee hours rarely comes to mind. Possibly because it’s draining to even consider, let alone do. In point of fact, a courtroom may not even be involved; there are a variety of circumstances that will turn . . . [more]

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

For this last week:

1. Canadian Thermo Windows Inc. v. Seangio, 2021 ONSC 6555

[74] The whole point of s. 137.1 is to prevent a plaintiff from inflicting substantial costs on defendants in order to chill their participation in expressions on matter of public interest. Without the stay under s. 137.1 (5), the full panoply of expensive procedural steps under the Rules of Civil Procedure would . . . [more]

Information on social media platforms can be an incredible source to keep track of rapidly evolving situations throughout the world. Particularly, when national governments control and manipulate all sources of information, social media can truly become the only unbiased and trustworthy source, especially for those of us following a situation from the outside. As a law librarian, I must also warn of the pitfalls of not properly vetting and evaluating both the source and information found on social media platforms. Making sure that the information you read and the sources you follow on social media are both reliable and legitimate . . . [more]