When I was looking for an articling position, people would often tell me to make sure that I found a place where I “fit.” At the time, I found this advice incredibly frustrating. I thought “fit” was a criterion that only those candidates who had multiple Bay Street offers could consider. I was more concerned about factors like type of law, location, and simply whether or not I would be hired. However, as I come to the end of my articling term, I find myself giving prospective articling students the same advice.

I articled at a boutique firm practicing in . . . [more]

Discussions about access to justice typically focus attention on access through the traditional routes of courts, lawyers, law schools and pro bono or legal aid service providers. In this context, solutions tend to emphasize more effective use of online technologies or simplification of processes to bridge the gap between those who need legal services and the services they require.

But, as Julie Matthews made clear in her recent article, Educating the Early Assistance Providers, in some cases, community-based intermediaries can function effectively to provide assistance that can reduce or eliminate escalation of a legal problem to the point where . . . [more]

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has launched a new website this month. The site will be rolling out additional features in the coming months, but already has a new section for the public called “Going to Court?” which provides some basic information about the justice system. There is also a page in this section for teachers and students which provides instructional resources.

In Chief Justice Heather Forster Smith’s speech during the Opening of the Courts on Sept. 24, 2013, she focused on access to justice and the role of technology. In addition to envisioning greater e-filing in . . . [more]

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

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;

Lawyers tend to think of time in units of .1 hour.

But that is eons compared to some other time measurements.

If you are having trouble getting your head around the concept and speed of quantum computing that Simon wrote about yesterday, consider time metrics for tech we currently have.

Peter Higgs and Francois Englert recently won the Nobel Prize for physics for predicting the existence of the Higgs boson particle that explains how elementary matter attained the mass to form stars and planets. The actual existence of the Higgs boson was confirmed at the Large Hadron Collider at . . . [more]