Canada’s online legal magazine.

Med-Arb Revisited – Using OMAP (Opt-Out Med-Arb Process) as a Process Option

Since the publication of the ADR Institute of Canada’s Med-Arb Rules in 2020, Med-Arb has become much more widely accepted as an integrated dispute resolution process in Ontario. Despite this many counsel and parties still have a significant degree of resistance to its use. In the best-known form of med-arb, a single neutral acts as both mediator and arbitrator. The process only transitions into arbitration if the mediation fails; in that case, the med-arbitrator conducts the arbitration and issues a binding decision.

This process offers time and cost efficiencies over stand alone mediation and arbitration and guarantees an outcome, it . . . [more]

Posted in: Dispute Resolution

We Should All Be Teaching Comparative Law Now More Than Ever

If you glance at the news, it feels as if the world is on fire—both literally and figuratively. Climate change wreaks havoc across continents, pandemics challenge our healthcare systems, wars and conflicts displace millions, and the erosion of democratic principles shakes trust in institutions worldwide. At the same time, misinformation spreads faster than facts, nationalism competes with global cooperation, and the international community often seems paralyzed by political gridlock.

In this whirlwind of challenges, one thing is clear: we need legal minds who can think globally and act locally. That’s why I believe we should all be teaching Comparative Law, . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Information

Placing LEAF’s Report “What It Takes” in Context: Part 2

    PREFACE

This is the second part of a post placing LEAF’s recent report, What It Takes: Establishing a Gender-Based Violence Accountability Mechanism in Canada (“What It Takes” or “LEAF report)” on gender-based violence (GBV) in the context of historical efforts to address GBV (albeit fragmentary references) and more recent developments: the 2021 Joint Declaration for a Canada Free of Gender-Based Violence, signed by Canada, the provinces and the territories, leading to the 2022 National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence (“National Action Plan”, “NAP” or “NAPGBV”), the 2019 Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous . . . [more]

Posted in: Justice Issues

Social Justice and Public Service: Not the Same Thing

As a person who articled and practiced with a provincial government, and now teaches at a law school that defines itself in part by “the Weldon tradition of unselfish public service”, I encourage my students to consider a career of legal practice in the public service – but to do so with their eyes open. While I have written elsewhere about how government practice is different than other legal practice,[1] here I want to discuss the important but sometimes overlooked difference between the concepts of “social justice” and “public service”.

There is plenty right, and nothing wrong, with the . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Ethics

Monday’s Mix

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. National Magazine 2. Risk Management & Crisis Response 3. Reconciliation Syllabus 4. Labour Pains 5. Law of Work

National Magazine
Clearing a path for ‘exigent circumstances’

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that police were justified in impersonating a drug dealer on a phone seized during

. . . [more]
Posted in: Monday’s Mix

Summaries Sunday: SOQUIJ

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) : Les conclusions du juge de première instance concernant la violation des articles 9, 11 a), 11 c) et 11 d) de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés, en lien avec l’exécution d’un mandat d’arrestation visé, ne sont pas fondées, et il y a lieu d’annuler . . . [more]

Posted in: Summaries Sunday

People-Centered Justice Has Become the Norm in Access to Justice

People-centered approaches have quickly become the norm in access to justice. By the term norm I mean essentially the same thing as the use of the term in sociology, a widely accepted expectation or rule of behaviour – a way of doing things. People-centricity has escaped the fate of becoming either a mot du jour or a term widely accepted but deemed nothing new, greeted with the assertion; We have always done that. We just didn’t have a name for it. This escape from the ordinary lies in its roots in the legal needs literature and in a fortuitous turn . . . [more]

Posted in: Justice Issues

Wednesday: What’s Hot on CanLII? – November 2024

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. Professional Institute of the Public Service v Treasury Board, 2024 CanLII 106287 (CA LA)

[1] The Professional Institute of the Public Service (Institute) is the bargaining agent for the Commerce and Purchasing (CP) Group. Treasury Board is the employer for the Core Public Administration (CPA), which includes the CP Group and its . . . [more]

Posted in: Wednesday: What's Hot on CanLII

Factors for Consideration in the Supreme Court of Appeal: Tort of Family Violence

In 2022, Justice Mandhane introduced the tort of family violence to address the injuries committed during the course of a marriage. A year later, in 2023, the Ontario Court of Appeal overturned this new tort in the decision Ahluwalia v Ahluwalia, 2023 ONCA 476. This matter is now being appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada.

In the article “’Weaponizing’ The Tort of Family Violence? Myths, Stereotypes, Lawyers’ Ethics and Access to Justice”, Deanne Sowter and Jennifer Koshan, argue that recognizing the tort of family violence is an important step towards compensating the harms of intimate partner . . . [more]

Posted in: Case Comment, Justice Issues

Why Law Firms Can’t Help but Bill by the Hour

In law firms, lawyers are everything. They do everything: They are the owners of the firm, and they’re also its officers and directors, but they’re also its managers and supervisors, and wait, they’re its workers too, and they set all the rules and make the policies and create the culture.

The only thing lawyers don’t do in law firms is the stuff they consider beneath them, the clerical and support work. I’ve said before that these entities should really be called “lawyer firms,” because that’s what they consist of and what they’re organized around. The molecular building block of a . . . [more]

Posted in: Practice of Law

Canadian Courts and Generative AI: Broadening Our Gaze to Potential Corrosive Risks

Canadian courts are concerned about AI. They are concerned that litigants may misuse AI and attempt to introduce fake cases or deepfake evidence into court proceedings. They are also concerned about AI potentially usurping judges’ decision-making role and thereby undermining the proper administration of justice.

These concerns don’t merely exist in the ether – they have become embedded in roughly a dozen AI practice directions or notices from individual Canadian courts addressing the use of AI by litigants (see, e.g. here and here), as well as in recent AI guidance from the Canadian Judicial Council (CJC) and the Action . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Ethics

Monday’s Mix

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. Double Aspect 2. The Defence Toolkit 3. Durant Barristers Blog 4. ReconciliAction YEG 5. In All Fairness

Double Aspect
Parsing Populism On elections, petitions, and populism

Over at his indispensable blog Public Law for Everyone, Mark Elliott writes about an online petition to the UK Parliament

. . . [more]
Posted in: Monday’s Mix