♫ And I could change the world
I could be the sunlight in your universe…♫

Lyrics and music by Tommy Sims, Gordon Kennedy and Wayne Kirkpatrick, recorded by Eric Clapton.

The University of Victoria has been asking law students about the technology that they use for the last 12 years. The latest survey, released in September this year, makes for interesting reading. They had a 90+% response rate, which is astounding in and of itself and indicates the depth of the information revealed in their survey.

Their Executive Summary is a nice recap of their results: . . . [more]

Yesterday I had the pleasure of addressing the annual gathering of the Federation of Law Reform Agencies of Canada on the topic of using social media in the context of legal research. I have shared the presentation using slideshare for those who are interested. Patricia Hughes, Director of the Law Commission of Ontario shared some tweets via #FOLRAC as well.

Simon posted last year about QR Codes on lawyers’ business cards. Building on that, I put a QR Code on presentation title slides. The code links to my social media channels so that people who have questions about my . . . [more]

Supreme Court of Canada Nominee

The Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, announced today the name of the government’s nominee for the Supreme Court of Canada, the Honourable Richard Wagner of the Cour d’appel du Québec.

He’s a 55 year old construction law litigator from Montréal who has been on the Cour supérieure du Québec since 2004, and on the cour d’appel since Febuary 2011.

The nominee has agreed to answer questions from an ad hoc parliamentary committee on Thursday.

For Slaw readers two items on his résumé stand out: he was one of . . . [more]

Slaw carried a post during the summer about jurisprudential solitudes – a gap in knowledge between Quebec’s civil code-based and predominantly French-language legal resources and those in common-law, English-speaking Canada. I find that the barrier tends to run in one direction not both, in that there is more information about the Rest of Canada in Quebec legal circles than vice versa.

In any event, here is a very brief note of three recent decisions of Quebec courts (thanks to a publication by Nicolas Vermeys and Patrick Gingras for Éditions Yvon Blais.) Are there any similar decisions in other Canadian (or . . . [more]

Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of September 23 – 30.

♨ 1. Meads v. Meads 2012 ABQB 571

[1] This Court has developed a new awareness and understanding of a category of vexatious litigant. As we shall see, while there is often a lack of homogeneity, and some individuals or groups have no name or special identity, they (by their own admission or by descriptions given by others) often fall into the following descriptions: Detaxers; Freemen or Freemen-on-the-Land; Sovereign Men or Sovereign Citizens; Church of the Ecumenical Redemption International (CERI); Moorish Law; and

Last week, the National Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters, chaired by Justice Tom Cromwell, released for public consultation two of four reports from its working groups. The work of the Action Committee is guided by a vision of Canadian society where:

• Justice services are accessible, responsive and citizen focused;
• Services are integrated across justice, health, social and education sector;
• The justice system supports the health, economic and social well-being of all participants;
• The public is active and engaged with, understands and has confidence in the justice system and has the knowledge and attitudes needed

It is a dark time for hockey fans in in North America. The entire season is being threatened by a lockout, imposed by the NHL over their inability to negotiate a new collective agreement with the NHL Players Association (NHLPA). In an effort to stop the lockout, the NHLPA has resorted to some creative legal tactics. Indeed, a few weeks ago, the NHLPA filed for an injunction before the Quebec Labour Relations Board (LRB), arguing that the lockout was a violation of the Quebec Labour Code. Essentially, their argument was that since the NHLPA was not a “certified” union . . . [more]

In today’s difficult economic environment, it’s not unusual for lawyers to find themselves dealing with requests for representation from clients of limited means, or clients who want to keep their legal fees at a minimum. The economic issues these types of requests raise is but one consideration: Access to justice – which has become a prominent issue in Ontario lately – also figures in the equation.

Instead of turning away clients with limited budgets, lawyers often consider ways of providing limited scope or non-traditional legal services. From a malpractice exposure perspective, lawyers should appreciate that providing limited services can create . . . [more]

Last night was the kick-off of the 2012 annual International Association of Libraries meeting at the Law Society of Upper Canada in Toronto. About 120 prominent law librarians from around the world–primarily from academic, legislative and court house libraries–have arrived in Toronto and are enjoying the first day of programming.

The theme of this year’s program is “Canada: The Cultural Mosaic and International Law.” So far we have been welcomed by Ms. Deborah Deller, Clerk of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Dean Lorne Sossin of Osgoode Hall Law School, and The Right Honourable Beverley McLachlin, Chief Justice of Canada (via . . . [more]

As I’m sure most of you will know by now, an Alberta judge has caught the world’s eye with a hefty (176 page) decision that, among other things, produced a taxonomy of vexatious litigants who adhere to one cause or another or to a set of supposedly effective trial practices. (See, for example, the stories in the Globe and Mail or the Edmonton Journal.) Meads v. Meads 2012 ABQB 571 can be found on CanLII, of course; and the main object of this post is to point you to this location, so that you can read the judgment, or . . . [more]

Law in fiction is a perennial favourite topic of mine. Usually I am drawn to how law and lawyers are treated in fiction. What drew my attention this time was a gem on advocacy in the pages of a novel.

Zadie Smith’s newest novel NW is about four characters that grew up in North West London. One of them is a black woman named Keisha Blake. Against the odds she breaks into law and becomes a successful barrister. En route she drops the name Keisha and takes up Natalie. When she is offered a much sought after prestigious job, she . . . [more]

The release of the iPhone 5 has seen hundreds of reviews flood the web. The consensus? The iPhone 5 is amazing. It is both thinner and lighter than the iPhone 4S, all while delivering a larger, more vivid screen coupled with an even better 8MP camera. The bad? Apple Maps is the most half-baked piece of software Apple has released since MobileMe.

For lawyers on the go, the iPhone 5 offers a compelling new feature that most reviews mention only in passing: LTE support. LTE (Long Term Evolution) is a new wireless data standard, and offers speeds in excess . . . [more]