Slaw will be quieter than usual today: it’s the August civic holiday here in most of Canada, which, as befits our particular federation, goes by various names across the land —

Alberta (Heritage Day)
British Columbia (British Columbia Day)
Manitoba (Civic Holiday)
New Brunswick (New Brunswick Day)
Northwest Territories (Civic Holiday)
Nova Scotia (Natal Day)
Nunavut (Civic Holiday)
Ontario (John Galt Day + Simcoe Day + others)
Prince Edward Island (Natal Day)
Saskatchewan (Saskatchewan Day)

[source: Wikipedia]

— or is not celebrated at all, as in Newfoundland & Labrador, Quebec, and Yukon. . . . [more]

One of the reasons I might like to practice in the United States is that I’d get to use the squiggly in my documents. Otherwise known as the section symbol or mark, § is one of my favourite typographical elements, having an elegance and symmetry that please me in a way that the mere “s.” we Canadians use to denote a section of a statute simply cannot. It is, literally, twice (as good as) our section character, being two esses, one above the other. Feel free to sprinkle your comments in Slaw with this lovely mark: easy to do: simply . . . [more]

“Eighty percent of the poor in the United States are unable to afford a lawyer or find pro bono help for their civil legal problems, according to the American Bar Association.” That sentence, from an American Lawyer article last month, is not only embarrassing. It’s also an omen.

The article in question, titled “Unmet Needs,” was part of a special series on pro bono in the United States, including the top 100 pro bono-friendly law firms and a powerful critique of big-firm pro bono by Deborah Rhode. The latter piece highlighted how pro bono at too many . . . [more]

Toronto City Council voted 21-17 this week to endorse a new contract with the 30,000 city workers who have been on strike for 39 days.

And although the garbage is being picked up, a political stink is being raised about how the situation was handled. The strikers themselves suggested throughout the strike that the public should be blaming the political leadership, with some claiming he has alienated his key supporters in the labour movement.

But the biggest emerging controversy out of the new agreement is that workers on strike actually gained sick days while on the picket line.

Although Councillor . . . [more]

We’ve blogged in the past about Hugh Lawford and the vision and tenacity that built the Queen’s Law School treaty data processing project into the foundation for one of Canada’s two commercial legal databases.

It’s an accident, of course, that QL was based in Kingston – in the same way that Dayton and Eagan were in the American systems. But that’s where the ideas were.

Kingston was of course where Hugh taught contracts, in between being Lester Pearson’s right hand man in Ottawa.

Today, the Kingston Whig-Standard reported that the remaining QL office in Kingston is to close. Rationalization . . . [more]

I’m not sure whether Mick Jones was inspired or disgusted by his experience at the British Music Experience (probably the latter). In any case, it has moved him to set up a temporary “Rock N Roll Public Library” in some kind of office building under a highway in London. This is a great example of the do-it-yourself ethic that often accompanies punk culture, and which some claim is central to it. Sounds like a great excursion for the whole family to learn about every-day self-empowerment. . . . [more]

Wrapping up a week of Guest Blogging from Heenan Blaikie lawyers across the country, we’re going to end by focusing on big changes at Heenan Blaikie’s Toronto offices.

After nineteen years at Royal Bank Plaza, the firm is moving 400 metres up Bay Street to the new Bay Adelaide Centre.

The move presents all sorts of practical and logistical challenges. Soon to join us at Bay Adelaide will be Goodmans and Faskens. They’ll be watching carefully to see how we move the Library. Physically packing and transporting an entire law library is not a trivial undertaking. Here is a . . . [more]

There I was, racking my brains late in the week (no easy thing) for a subject for this Friday Fillip. And then it came to me: jellyfish. We haven’t talked about jellyfish on Slaw, which, seeing that we’ve talked about pretty much everything else (law lords, marijuana, street racing, deserts, the BBC, Canada’s home page, and the like), was a clearly open invitation.

So let’s start big. Very very big.

That big.

Meet Noruma’s jellyfish, some of which can reach over 400 pounds in weight. As if that singular prospect weren’t enough to turn this into a fillip upside the . . . [more]

Sometimes new law is very old. According to the OED, the term plagiarism was first applied to music in the Monthly Magazine of 1797, when a composition was described as “the most flagrant plagiarism from Handel” (The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works by Lydia Goehr, OUP). Since then a pantheon of musicians have been accused of lifting melodies – from Jerome Kern (Fred Fisher Inc. v. Dillingham, 298 F. 145, 1924.), George Harrison (My Sweet Lord costs over half a million 1981 dollars to settle: Bright Tunes Music Corp. v. Harrisongs, 420 F. Supp. 177 (S.D.N.Y. 1976)), Mick Jagger (co-author . . . [more]

This week, the entertainment group at Heenan Blaikie has been commenting on various developments in the sector. But I thought it might be fun to ask how media and entertainment lawyers use the new media.

So I asked the group:

What sites are on your bookmarks, that you check daily or that you get email updates from or RSS feeds?

What are the must reads for clients? Does everyone read Variety or Hollywood Reporter? Is there an electronic equivalent?

Do you or your clients use social media? Facebook? MySpace? Linkedin? Legalonramp? Twitter? Follow any blogs? Contribute to any blogs? Or

A colleague informed me about an email notice to me regarding my preferred RSS reader Newsgator. After my gasp of dismay, I loaded the site to check my feeds and wham:

NewsGator’s Online Reader will no longer be available for consumer use as of August 31, 2009.

In conjunction with the release of our latest versions of NetNewsWire and FeedDemon which synchronize with Google Reader, NewsGator will no longer be supporting our online reader for consumer use. Paid customers who utilize the online reader or our online platform will continue to be supported.

For free versions of the latest

♫ JUST TO LET YOU KNOW
I Am Not Extinct
JUST TO LET YOU GO
This Is Not My Extinction
Hopefully It Won’t For A Long Time For Now (now)
cuz’ I am not extinct oh oh Extinction ♫

Recorded by Avril Lavigne

Albert Einstein once said: “Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them”. Accordingly, I am looking at the new court rules for British Columbia and the attempt to revamp the civil trial process with a heavy heart. Notwithstanding the effort and work that has been put into this process by many learned . . . [more]