There was a minor kerfuffle a few months ago over a new course offering at UBC Law. LAW 481C.002 – Access to Justice and the Future of the Legal Profession drew its three listed faculty members from the Vancouver office of an old-guard national law firm with ample apparent concern for the future of the legal profession, but little discernible track record of proactivity, innovation or anxiety around the access to justice issue. Most notably, the course faculty included a former BC Attorney General who had orchestrated a 40 percent cut in legal aid funding a decade prior, and who . . . [more]

I’m a bit of a sports nut. I love watching all types of sports on TV. And I get ridiculous when I go see any sport live. Roller derby is the bomb! The only sport I just don’t get is cricket. Maybe one day. Anyway, when I found out that the International Association of Law Libraries (IALL) was meeting in Toronto, I just had to go. It’s the home of the Hockey Hall of Fame!

The Hockey Hall of Fame was all I had imagined and more. There’s a shrine to Wayne Gretzky, uniforms from players for all over the . . . [more]

The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled today that the Hungarian government’s decision to lower the mandatory age of retirement for judges, prosecutors and notaries from the age of 70 to 62 constituted discrimination on the grounds of age (read the decision here). 

While recognizing that legitimate social policy objectives can justify a derogation from the prohibition of discriminating on the grounds of age, in this case, the objectives of this measure invoked by the Hungarian government – the need to standardize the age-limits for retirement for public sector employees and to establish a balanced age . . . [more]

Yesterday I visited the 2nd year Reference and Research class at Grant MacEwan University’s Library and Information Technology Program. I was the wrap up guest lecturer for the legal information component of their course. It was fun being surrounded by enthusiastic learners who are preparing to embark on a career in my chosen field.

One of the things we discussed was how things have changed for library technicians engaged in legal information management since I graduated from Grant MacEwan’s program (ack) 20 years ago. The changes are substantial and when you consider some of them:

• The Internet
• Courts and

The open court principle has repeatedly been confirmed by the Supreme Court as a “hallmark of a democratic society” (Vancouver Sun, [2004] 2 S.C.R. 332, at para. 23), most recently in A.B. v. Bragg Communications Inc., 2012 SCC 46. However, the exclusion of witnesses from a hearing is a routine exception to this principle. In this column I will explore some of the history of the exclusion of witness order, its purpose, the exceptions and consequences of a breach. The larger question that I will address is whether we can sustain an exclusionary rule in an age . . . [more]

Last week the Divisional Court upheld a trial decision in which the purchasers of a home were awarded $25,000 in damages from the seller.

The purchasers entered into an agreement of purchase and sale with the vendor and, smartly, made the deal conditional on the purchasers receiving a Seller Property Information Statement (“SPIS”).

The SPIS is a standard form document that was drafted by the Ontario Real Estate Association. The SPIS will contain information relating to defects, renovations and other pertinent property information based on the seller’s knowledge and experience. You can find a copy of the SPIS here.

Sellers . . . [more]

For the thirteenth year in a row, Altman Weil, Inc. has surveyed Chief Legal Officers or CLOs on the issues of importance on the management and operation of their corporate law departments. These surveys capture current thinking of Chief Legal Officers and give lawyers in private practice a good indication of what corporate clients are think about and want from firms that do work for them.

Survey Findings

Corporate law departments report that they are re-negotiating outside counsel fees, shifting work to lower-priced law firms, increasing in-house capacity, opting for alternative service providers and using new technology — all to . . . [more]

Adam Smith, Esq. is on a roll. Or at least, Bruce MacEwen, author of the Adam Smith, Esq. blog is. His blog posts, “Growth is Dead” have been an on-going series looking at the changes to “BigLaw” since the economic problems of 2008.

Revenues of firms have significantly dropped since that time. One pressure is coming from clients with respect to pricing. From Part 1 of the blog:

Simply put, clients are pushing back as never before. Among other things, they are:

• serious, for the first time, about alternative fee arrangements, caps and blended rates, rate freezes, and so on

Earlier this year, we had a violent 24-minute derecho in Virginia – and lots of law firms went down. Lawyers, when their technology bellies up, panic. Immediately after the derecho, law firms started asking us about moving to the cloud.

John and I were long-time cloud curmudgeons. Not until we carefully considered the words of law practice management advisor Jim Calloway did we begin to change our minds. Jim said, in his Oklahoma drawl, “I’m kinda thinking that cloud providers offer better security than the average solo or small firm lawyer for client data.”

Sadly, that is true. Most smaller . . . [more]

The online world has been greatly affected by the rise of social media, whose principal characteristic is interactivity among the users of a particular service or communication channel. The possibility of not just one-to-many but also many-to-one and many-to-many communications have put focus on ‘the crowd’ – a potentially almost infinite number of Internet users who may participate in a conversation in a number of roles.

This has led to the emergence of the term ‘crowdsourcing‘, meaning an express solicitation of Internet users generally to contribute to solving a problem. No doubt the popularity of the term has . . . [more]

There’s a smug feeling in our profession. A sense of entitlement and accomplishment, and inevitably for some, an assumption of superiority.

It’s true, most lawyers have undergone extensive education and training, often in high-stress environments, and presumably have developed some technical skills as it relates to their practice. But despite all of this, a lawyer simply may not be as intelligent as their local barista.

I will pause here for a minute to define intelligence as proposed by Howard Gardner, along various modalities often overlooked in legal practice:

1. Spatial
2. Linguistic
3. Logical-mathematical
4. Bodily-kinesthetic
5. Musical
6. Interpersonal
7. Intrapersonal
8. Naturalistic

Arguably some of these . . . [more]

When jurisdictions enact new legislation governing limitation periods for causes of action, the legislation will deal with the transition between the old regime and the new. Transition provisions are needed because incidents alleged to create causes of action may have occurred while the old legislation was in force but the action was not commenced until after the new legislation took effect.

Duchesne v. St-Denis, 2012 ONCA 699 is such a case.

It is an important case for Ontario lawyers on the interpretation of Ontario’s the Limitations Act, 2002, particular where the injured person was under the age . . . [more]