Canada’s online legal magazine.

Archive for August, 2013

Holiday Today on Slaw

Today is that polyonymous holiday that most of Canada celebrates on the first Monday in August. See our prior posts about this if you’re interested in knowing what kind of a holiday it is (or isn’t) in various parts of the country: 2012, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007.

Regular features and posting will resume tomorrow. . . . [more]

Posted in: Administration of Slaw

SCC Decision on Amicus Compensation

The Supreme Court of Canada released the decision in Ontario v. Criminal Lawyers’ Association of Ontario last week, dealing with the compensation afforded to amicus curiae. Courts may appoint a “friend of the court,” known as amicus curiae, to assist the court where warranted, and the Attorney General is required to pay the fees for these amicus curiae.

This case involved the appeal of three non-Charter cases in Ontario where the Attorney General disputed the amicus curiae rates as determined by the court, raising constitutional issues about the relationship between the judiciary and the executive and . . . [more]

Posted in: Substantive Law: Judicial Decisions

Summaries Sunday: Maritime Law Book

Summaries of selected recent cases are provided each week to Slaw by Maritime Law Book. Every Sunday we present a precis of the latest summaries, a fuller version of which can be found on MLB-Slaw Selected Case Summaries at cases.slaw.ca.

This week's summaries concern: Indian Act & taxation / Trademark infringement & punitive damages:
Posted in: Summaries Sunday

Leadership Training for Women Lawyers: Transforming Women and the Places Where They Work

Sheryl Sandberg’s recent book “Lean In” urges women to develop greater confidence by moving past internal barriers and leveraging their strengths to move into positions of greater responsibility. This is easier said than done. How do you increase your self-confidence and capitalize on your strengths to do this? How do you overcome inner barriers or external biases if you are not even aware what they are? The answer is through leadership training.

Leadership training is one of the most under-valued and misunderstood opportunities for lawyers – especially women lawyers – to advance their careers. While lawyers regularly take courses in . . . [more]

Posted in: Practice of Law

The Friday Fillip: Tune, Toon, and . . . Bot

You get a three-fer this holiday weekend, a trio of nifty things that came into my ken this past week.

The Tune

Thanks to a blurb in the Globe and Mail, I was introduced to Moby, the musician who walks among us as Richard Melville Hall and who specializes in electronica, ambient music, downtempo, and the like (if that last can make any sense). Take a listen to his collaboration with Cold Specks, a Canadian singer living in London whose haunting alto is spot on for the song, A Case for Shame:

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/98822483″ params=”” width=” 100%” . . . [more]

Posted in: The Friday Fillip

Recent Justice Canada Research Reports on Non-Traditional Criminal Justice Approaches

The most recent issue of the Weekly Checklist of Canadian Government Publications lists a series of research reports released by Justice Canada in recent months. The Checklist is a catalogue of publications produced by Government of Canada agencies and departments that are made available for distribution to a network of Depository Libraries in Canada and abroad.

Two of the reports caught my attention because they deal with non-traditional approaches to criminal justice. A few years ago, I had helped organize a session at the annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries on these topics:

. . . [more]
Posted in: Justice Issues

Building the Perfect Firm for 2008

Last night I pulled my hamstring while making a lunging (and quite dazzling) shoestring catch for our softball team.

How is this relevant to law?

Many commentators have used the old Gretzky adage – don’t go to where the puck is, but where the puck is going to be. It applies the same to baseball. When a ball is hit, fielders mentally calculate the velocity of the ball and its trajectory, then run to where the ball will be. Same with quarterbacks in football – they throw the ball to a spot on the field where the receiver will be. . . . [more]

Posted in: Practice of Law, Practice of Law: Future of Practice, Practice of Law: Practice Management

New Deadline for Achieving Pay Equity in Quebec

January 1, 2014, is a new deadline in the application of the Pay Equity Act for Quebec organizations. This is the deadline by which many more employers with 10 or more employees will have to achieve pay equity in their business and have posted the results.
Posted in: Miscellaneous, Substantive Law, Substantive Law: Legislation

Using Data to Leverage Access to Justice

During the closing session of the Canadian Bar Association’s Envisioning Equal Justice Summit: Building Justice for Everyone, held in Vancouver in April, we were asked to come up with one idea from each table to help access to justice and to move justice reform forward. Through the lens of legal information and based on the sessions I attended Saturday, the thing I would like to discuss further is developing expertise in analyzing and explicating existing datasets and creating the structures to collect new data about the legal system to assist in evaluating the effectiveness of programs and demonstrating . . . [more]

Posted in: Legal Information

Thursday Thinkpiece: Nichols on Corporate Finance Law

Each Thursday we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form.

Corporate Finance and Canadian Law, Second Edition
Christopher C. Nicholls
Toronto: Carswell, 2013

(Footnotes converted to endnotes in this excerpt.)

Introduction

If a nineteenth century corporate solicitor could step across time and through the office doors of a 21st century law firm, he would surely be dazzled by the technological wizardry that . . . [more]

Posted in: Thursday Thinkpiece