The Toronto Star recently reported that the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto may change its grading system in an attempt to reduce the stress that law students feel, specially during exam time (“Yoga, foot massage and dogs: This is law school?” by Louise Brown):

[T]he University of Toronto’s law school could become the first in Canada to scrap the often nerve-wracking letter grades of A, B, C, D and F for the kinder, gentler ratings of Honours, Pass and Fail.

I’ve got three thoughts about this, as reported.

First, the writer was wrong to scoff . . . [more]

The Federal Court released their decision in the veteran class action of Manuge v. Canada today, finding that the offset of disability benefits was a breach of Article 24(a)(iv) of the Service Income Security Insurance Plan (SISIP) Policy.

An overview of the case can be found in the December 2011 issue of The Lawyers Weekly, and McInnes Cooper, counsel for the plaintiffs have a list of key documents here. You can also see the class action website, which include a YouTube video. . . . [more]

It’s no longer new or innovative for law firms to use Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn as elements of their public web presence. Social media tools have become sufficiently standard that we can probably declare 2012 the year firms finally “buy in.” 

While early-adopter firms continue to fine-tune their offerings, what I’m really noticing these days is the critical mass of firms now playing catch-up. Lawyers who used to ask, “What’s the firm across the street doing?” are now wondering “Why aren’t we doing that?” Social media buttons are sprouting all over law firm websites, all over the web. The tipping . . . [more]

Legal eBook lending is closer than you think. There was an announcement last week from the US arm of LexisNexis about their new partnership with Overdrive. Information Today has a good overview of what this means for the industry.

The LexisNexis Digital Library offers access to LexisNexis’ growing collection of more than 1,100 ebooks through OverDrive. That means, like my public library, a subscribing law library is able to acquire Lexis ebook titles, and “lend” each of them to a patron at a time. The library sets its own checkout and renewal terms. When a patron “returns” the title, then

Last week saw the unveiling of the long-awaited Google Drive. I won’t discuss the technical details of what Google Drive delivers – others have done so in great detail – but instead focus on Google Drive’s controversial Terms of Service.

The following clause of the Google Drive Terms of Service immediately generated a firestorm of controversy:

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we

The Toronto Lawyers Association (TLA) has raised an alarm over proposed Bill 34, Security for Courts, Electricity Generating Facilities and Nuclear Facilities Act, 2012 in Ontario. If passed as it is currently worded, Bill 34 will allow courthouse security to search all persons entering the court, including lawyers. The TLA maintains this is a potential exposure to lawyer-client privileged communications:

Under the proposed legislation, sections of the Police Services Act will allow for a search without warrant any person, vehicle or property in a person’s custody seeking access to a public courthouse. These search powers would include a person’s lawyer,

Risk is an inevitable reality of law practice. The only way to eliminate risk is to stop practising law – an option most readers of this article are not yet contemplating. A more realistic option is to actively mitigate risk through structured, systematic risk management. This approach is particularly helpful at the law firm level, where risk management can sometimes be seen to be contrary to the perceived self-interest of individual lawyers in the firm. A systematic approach – that begins with a risk analysis and includes strategies to mitigate identified sources of risk – not only helps overcome this . . . [more]

In the black and white world of organized pro bono legal services, something is either pro bono or it’s not. Legal services are provided for zero compensation, or they’re not considered pro bono. This absolutist perspective is crude and fully disconnected from the simple translation of pro bono from Latin as “for the good”, but necessary to give relevance and integrity to pro bono as a functional concept. If the concept is stretched to include contingency fees or unpaid bills or reduced rates, then it ceases to have reliable meaning for lawyers and their clients. So for pro bono . . . [more]

The New Brunswick Court of Appeal has published a substantial review of the impact of using email to transfer real estate. Its decision in Druet v. Girouard 2012 NBCA 40 overturned the decision of the Court of Queen’s Bench, 2011 NB 204 (in French only on CanLII; the English text is at [2011] N.B.J. No. 260, and [2011] A.N.-B.no 260.)

In this case the parties exchanged a total of seven emails about the plaintiff Girouard’s possible purchase of the defendant Druet’s condominium apartment in Moncton. The final email was from Druet, withdrawing from the transaction. Girouard took the view . . . [more]

The secret is out, and in a big way. Large law firms can no longer promise the job security and generous compensation of previous generations.

We were outed yesterday by Margaret Wente yesterday in The Globe & Mail, the newspaper considered to have the highest circulation among the economic elite and law firm partners on Bay Street. Wente laments the demise of all professionals as the sure route to a lush lifestyle, but has a particular bone to pick with a legal career,

Think twice before you encourage your daughter to go to law or med school, especially if

Access Copyright appears to be on the verge of successfully cowing Canadian universities into paying for their own harassment, and is doing so with the full support of the AUCC. In fact, as Ariel Katz describes it, the particular steps the AUCC has taken in the matter virtually coerce individual Universities into accepting this very bad agreement, and in fact the AUCC paid for legal advice from sources inimical to the interests of their stakeholders.

If you get the feeling, as a student, a taxpayer, or an University employee with any residual sense of commitment to . . . [more]

In a landmark decision just 24 days after April 1, the Canadian Trade-marks Office has clarified the definition of “fish”. Constitutional lawyers continue to wrangle over whether this stunning policy reversal will be given retroactive effect.

Subject: Mise à jour Manuel de marchandises et services – Wares and Services Manual Update

Dans le but d’éviter toute ambiguité que ‘poisson’ est un terme spécifique et en termes ordinaires du commerce, l’entrée ‘Poissons pour l’alimentation’ dans le Manuel de marchandises et services sera remplacée par ‘Poisson’ seul, avec la note suivante: Cette entrée fait référence à la définition la plus courante de