I was involved with managing a litigation file not too long ago. The client had a budget that required its large law firm to be tightly controlled and had asked me to assist in this regard.

Things went off the rails very quickly when the lawyer in charge became angered by the client’s desire to control how he ran the file.

“I’ve heard about you,” he said to me. “And I’ve read some of your stuff. You have a low opinion of lawyers.” It was clear that he was taking the client’s attempt to decide how the file would be . . . [more]

Canada Post has begun legal proceedings against Geolytica Inc. (carrying on business as Geocoder.ca), a small Ottawa business that offers a mix of free and commercial geocoding services. The claim is that Geolytica has infringed Canada Post’s copyright in the postal code dataset by offering it for sale. (The full statement of claim is available here, as published on the defendant’s website.) Geolytica, by way of response, asserts on its website that:

Since 2004 we have crowdsourced* the generation of the “Canadian Postal Code Geocoded Database.” When you make a query to geocoder containing for example this

. . . [more]

Slaw is proud to let you know that Mitch Kowalski has joined our already great roster of regular bloggers. Mitch is a lawyer, a writer and an entrepreneur. He is the author of Avoiding Extinction: Reimagining Law for the 21st Century just published by the American Bar Association, and holds a LL.B. and a M.A. in Political Science from the University of Western Ontario as well as a LL.M. from Osgoode Hall Law School. For much of his 20-year legal career, he practiced law with the Toronto office of Baker & McKenzie, before moving to Aylesworth LLP, which later became . . . [more]

Currently, the Canadian Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on a person’s sex and sexual orientation, among other grounds. However, the prohibited ground of sex and sexual orientation is considered by advocacy groups as inadequate to clearly inform the public at large that unreasonable discrimination on the basis of gender identity and gender expression is prohibited; hence, the creation of Bill C-279.

In part one of this article series I posed the question of whether clinical legal education can provide the solution to two difficulties facing the legal profession in Canada today. These two issues include a call from the legal profession for students that are better prepared in their academic training to take on the rigours of practice and a call from the community at large for the cost effective delivery of legal services. In part one I maintained that clinical legal education could play a valuable role in preparing students for practice by providing upper level students the opportunity to . . . [more]

We have seen a few published cases where a court will order the service of a document by way of a defendant’s social media account.

I had the occasion today to talk to a couple of lawyers who do collection work. Anecdotally at least, the actual practice seems to vary by province and location. That is not surprising considering how new the concept is, how traditionally lawyers and judges tend to think, and how rules of practice differ.

A lawyer from Alberta mentioned how they routinely obtain orders to serve documents by facebook. He commented that it is acknowledged that . . . [more]

[UPDATE (April 20, 2012): I’m happy to report that I was incorrect in assuming that the Legal Journals Index (LJI) would be discontinued along with the Current Legal Information service. The LJI will continue as part of Westlaw UK. Please see the comments from Westlaw UK below.]

Like most law librarians I’ve been a strong advocate of the use of journal indexes in research. While full-text searching on Hein, Lexis and Westlaw is the fastest and preferred way of finding journal literature, especially if you know exactly what you are looking for, I think there is still a place for . . . [more]

Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of April 1 – 10.

♨ 1. Wynn Las Vegas, LLC v. Teng 2012 ONSC 1927

[1] The Defendant Teng resides in Ontario. The Plaintiff operates a hotel and casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Teng applied for and was granted a line of credit from the casino totalling $300,000. In June and July of 2010 Teng drew on this line of credit for the full amount of $300,000 and signed two markers in the form of cheques for that amount. When Teng checked out of the Plaintiff’s hotel

. . . [more]

At a recent gathering of the profession, while bemoaning the lack of demand for legal services, the pathetic state of the economy and begrudging the increasing power of clients, one discussion centered around metrics – financial and performance-oriented measures. While we are all familiar with the usual billable hour, collections, matter profitability, and so forth, this discussion provoked me to think about some of the more unfamiliar and unorthodox, but vital metrics that I believe law firm management should be looking at. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that the late father of modern management, Peter Drucker, reminded us . . . [more]

A Globe and Mail article by Adriana Barton, reporting on a study featured in the Economist, discusses how physical looks might actually be a liability for female job-seekers. And this, despite the numerous studies that have shown that attractiveness aids in job advancement.

The researchers sent out fake resumes with a photo attached to 2,500 vacancies; those with pictures of beautiful women were less likely to get an interview. Those with pictures of handsome men were, in contrast, more likely to get an interview. These researchers came to the conclusion that this turn of events was in large part . . . [more]

My family and I are very busy riding roller coasters this week. We got on a plane very early last Friday. Due to some unfortunate loss of power to the jetway, our flight was delayed leaving Edmonton for over an hour. Of course this meant a missed connection to our second leg of the journey.

Delay is a concept that comes up in litigation. Parties argue that a delay prejudices their client or that a delay is necessary to promote fair adjudication of a matter.

I was reminded that delay can sometimes mean an unexpectedly good time in a city . . . [more]

The debate over the merits of facilitative vs. evaluative mediation never seems to end, but is it an artificial distinction in the mediation of commercial disputes?

A recent article in the Australasian Dispute Resolution Journal suggests that it is.

The author, Troy Peisley, a mediator and arbitrator with more than 20 years experience in commercial litigation and forensic accounting, argues in favour of “blended mediation”, which combines the facilitative and evaluative models and employs a “mediation matrix” to evaluate both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of the dispute.

It’s an interesting model and seems equally relevant to the realities of . . . [more]