“Is it just me,” asks a regular CBA FuturesChat participant, “or is there greater discussion and interest on ABS and technology than ethics and regulation?”

It’s not just him.

Since the CBA’s Legal Futures Initiative began conducting its Tuesday night Twitter chats in October, the greatest engagement and participation came during discussions about innovating within the legal profession with new kinds of business structures, many of them made possible by technological advances.

“Ethics” seems an immutable concept, something for philosophical debate late into the evening rather than an action item – as Joshua Lenon, in-house-lawyer for Clio, said in the . . . [more]

There are things we can control (we think), and things we cannot. Most natural phenomena, big and small, fall into the latter category — which is to say damn near everything that happens. Sensibly, we avoid the dangerous much of the time and try to adapt when we can’t run away far enough. Ice age coming? Oh bother! That means up stakes, heavy coats, and a few millennia of wandering. That sort of thing. But, as a moment’s thought will confirm, our record of staying out the way of “bad” natural phenomena is, well, less than stellar. We build cities . . . [more]

Canada has a system of civil courts that would be the envy of many countries. We have a large, well- trained and dedicated legal profession. The legal aid system in Canada provides more service in civil matters than is available in many places throughout the world. Yet, with all this and all that it costs, we are not meeting the legal needs of the Canadian public. The final report of the Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters, A Roadmap for Change, tackles the difficult problem of why this is the case and lays out . . . [more]

As part of my recent tour of Australia – well, the south-eastern part any way – George Beaton invited me to speak at a few of his live and taped events. One of the many points that interested me was his modelling on Axiom. As many know, Axiom provides embedded counsel to companies needing to fill gaps in its skill sets on short term bases. It has grown rapidly and profitably over the past 10 years.

According to George, Axiom, grew its revenue at a 72% compound annual growth rate from 2002 to 2011 while at the same time, . . . [more]

In early December of 2011 and 2012, I posted top 10 lists of the most consulted cases. Two lists were published each year – one for all cases consulted and the other for consultations of cases decided in within that year. With the tradition now firmly established, I’m very pleased to present for 2013 the top 10 most consulted cases on CanLII.

As in prior years, I leave it to the readers to determine the significance of any case appearing on either list.

Top 10 most consulted cases of 2013

1. R. v. Duncan, 2013 ONCJ 160
2. Meads v. Meads,

If you like podcasts, and who doesn’t — it’s hard to beat learning something and getting to close your eyes at the same time — you might take a listen to the McGill Podcasts, and particularly those in their Law & Society category. There are about twenty or so “pure” podcasts and the same number again of earlier videos.

The subjects range widely, including, for instance, “The Syrian conflict and the International Criminal Court: Interview with Human Rights Watch’s Richard Dicker,” “Tax Avoidance, Tax Evasion, and Tax Justice with Professor Allison Christians,” “Racial Profiling . . . [more]

I am interested by recent discussions I have had with librarians at various law libraries about how they make decisions about what materials to keep, cancel, or discard. Many are looking at the holdings of other libraries and relying on them to provide access to less commonly used materials rather than maintaining them locally. This is understandable, but it is only a viable decision if the lending libraries continue to maintain their collections. Instead, this appears to be done without formal agreements among the libraries about retention of materials, consideration of whether it is within the supplying libraries’ mandates to . . . [more]

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.

Judicial “Copying” does not affect Independence or Impartiality: Supreme Court of Canada 
Emir Crowne
(July 29, 2013). Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice (Oxford), Forthcoming

(Footnotes converted to endnotes and renumbered)

. . . . The Chief Justice, in particular, must have been aware of the copyright implications[1] of her reasons . . . [more]

I just listened to an IT.Can teleconference with Barry Sookman commenting on the final anti-spam regulations. This post summarizes a few key issues that arose.

As you probably know, the CASL regulations are now final. The anti-spam portions of the act come into force on July 1 2014. This is a shorter grace period than many had expected.

Many business were waiting for these regs before figuring out how it affected them. Unfortunately the regs did not remove most of the compliance burden. Businesses need to start working towards compliance very soon.

The provisions that deal with permissions required for . . . [more]

The electronic documents part of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) generally operates on an opt-in basis. Thus, for example, s. 41:

A requirement under a provision of a federal law for a document to be in writing is satisfied by an electronic document if

(a) the federal law or the provision is listed in Schedule 2 or 3; and

(b) the regulations respecting the application of this section to the provision have been complied with.

To date, only the Federal Real Property and Federal Immovables Act and a small part of . . . [more]

The Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society is currently seeking input from lawyers on two proposed new practice standards. The draft standards, proposed by the Law Office Management Committee, relate to lawyers’ responsibilities in the areas of timekeeping and data maintenance:

TIMEKEEPING
1. A lawyer’s accounts must be fair, reasonable and lawful.

a) The assessment and reasonableness of a lawyer’s account will depend on many factors, of one which is the time and effort “required and spent”.

MAINTENANCE AND BACKUP OF ELECTRONIC DATA

Lawyers must ensure there is a system in place for the maintenance, backup, and access of all electronic data.

As I write this, annual conference season is in full swing. Lawyers, hastily arranging their speaking notes, are wondering how they got involved in the first place. Marketing departments are finding out at the last minute that the conference hosts need the firm’s logo, the lawyer needs a PowerPoint presentation, and the booth at the accompanying trade show needs staffing. Wait, what booth? Trade show? Nobody told us…. 

Yes, that’s how it usually goes down. It shouldn’t be any surprise, therefore, that both lawyers and marketers feel cynical about the value of trade shows in the marketing mix. Like . . . [more]