The practices of some “form-filler” companies who assisted residential school survivors with filing their claims under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) were described as “unconscionable” in a decision from the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench issued last week.

The form-filler companies were charging a contingency fee of some 15-25% of settlement amounts paid to claimants under the Agreement. The terms of the IRSSA permit lawyers to charge a maximum legal fee of 30% of a settlement, of which the federal government will pay up to 15%. Where form-fillers were used, many claimants paid fees over and above the . . . [more]

Canada’s law societies have long had a reputation for being slow, if not resistant, to change. I’ll leave it to others to argue the extent to which this has been, in the past, a fair characterization. Looking at current initiatives like the Nova Scotia’s Barristers’ Society’s Transforming Regulation consultation and the work of the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Working Group on Alternative Business structures, it is apparent that right now there is significant “big picture” thinking going on at Canadian law societies about how to innovate and modernize lawyer regulation.

It remains to be seen, of course, if . . . [more]

Lawyers may have recently found themselves giving advice to clients about the National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace. It’s not mandatory, but this new standard is beginning to receive attention as a convenient source of best practices for employers who want to create a psychologically healthy (and lawsuit-resistant) workplace.

It is one of the first of its kind in the world, and has been adopted by several high-profile organizations, including Bell Canada, Rogers, Great West Life Insurance, Manulife Financial, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), and some of Toronto’s major hospitals.

But are law firms . . . [more]

Each June, business publications offer up an array of professional etiquette do’s and don’ts. The timing seems right, given the golf tournaments, office barbeques and memos reminding us of “appropriate summer office attire”.

I’ve been thinking about the difference between good manners, etiquette and civility, after fielding a few client queries about social norms. According to Judith Martin (otherwise known as Miss Manners) and her son Nicholas Ivor Martin, manners are “the principles of courteous behaviour” and etiquette “the rules that apply to a particular situation.” Civility, according to Johns Hopkins University Professor and Author P.M. Forni, is “a . . . [more]

I attended a Stakeholder Consultation today for the Alberta Queen’s Printer. Our QP is asking questions of their wide variety of clients to learn where their investments in time and dollars are best spent. My post is not about the outcomes or input shared at that meeting but rather some observations about the excellent meeting facilitation that I observed.

According to Merriam-Webster, a facilitator is one that helps to bring about an outcome (as learning, productivity, or communication) by providing indirect or unobtrusive assistance, guidance, or supervision.

The session I attended was lead by Kim Ghostkeeper. Kim is . . . [more]

How do we understand bad things done to women by men? Through the few men who do them (#Notallmen)? Through misogyny in our culture as a whole? Through the experience of all women living with the risk that such bad things can happen (#Yesallwomen)? The ferocity of recent internet debate on this topic clouds the possibility that harm done by men to women should be understood as about all these things: the men who inflict it, the society in which it occurs and the lives of the women who live with the possibility of that threat.

In this column I . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on technology, research and practice.

Technology

Using Two Monitors Will Help Get More Work Done and Save Money
Dan Pinnington

On many occasions over the years I have written and spoken about the benefits of using two monitors in a law office setting – for both lawyers and staff.Once you try two monitors, you will never go back. Having two monitors makes the preparation of documents, particularly complicated legal documents, much easier. . . . . . . [more]

In one of our earliest blogs, we suggested that, if we want Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) to flourish, it should somehow be incorporated into the judicial process. This is not to say that private ODR mechanisms are doomed to fail, but rather that, as many unsuccessful ODR experiments have demonstrated, the incentives to take part in private ODR mechanisms are often lacking, especially with regard to consumer contracts. Other than places like eBay, where refusal to take part in the platform’s dispute resolution process results in exclusion from the community, there is no real reason for merchants to take . . . [more]

Balancing work and life is a challenge. We all wish we could take time off from work for every personal and family activity that takes place during work hours and in most provinces, human rights laws have created protection against what is referred to as “family status” discrimination. There has been much confusion over the interpretion of this language. Employees want time off and flexible schedules to spend time with their families. Employers need employees to be working at certain times and, for operational needs, often cannot accommodate every request – even if they wanted to. Conflicting decisions from different . . . [more]

Adam Dodek’s excellent post on these pages a week ago stirred up some lively comments.

The topic deserves more attention.

Everyone seems to be in agreement that there is no political appetite for more public funding for civil justice.

The solution proposed by Adam Dodek is: setting time limits for cases, limiting expert testimony and, by default, motions in writing.

Some commentators call on the judiciary as the stakeholder with the power to impose a solution. Some warn of the tendency for rationing to increase prices. Others point to the liability issues arising from leaving out marginally relevant evidence, and . . . [more]

This week I am at the SLA (Special Libraries Association) conference being held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. This morning at the Bloomberg BNA SLA Legal Division Breakfast & Business Meeting, the following awards were given:

•  The Bloomberg BNA Outstanding New Member Contribution award is presented to Christine DeLuca of Bennett Jones LLP in Toronto, ON, CA.
• The Wolters Kluwer Law & Business Innovations in Law Librarianship award is presented to Zena Applebaum of Bennett Jones LLP in Toronto, ON, CA.
• The Thomson Reuters Westlaw Award for Career Achievement award is presented to Tracy Maleeff of Duane Morris LLP in

From the start, I’ve wondered how we will navigate in a linked data environment. How will we explore an information space where every data element is linked to every other data element? How will we keep track of where we are and where we’ve been? We won’t have physical cues anymore and the navigation systems we are familiar with grew out of our interaction with those physical cues (e.g. think card catalogue to online catalogue).

I happened on a rather obscurely named blog this week called, “The SemVis Blog.” The subtitle, or catch phrase, is much more telling: . . . [more]