After lawyers’ profiles, some of the most frequently visited parts of law firm websites are the Frequently Asked Questions section and Case Studies. Which two website sections are the most difficult to get lawyers to contribute? FAQs and Case Studies.

It shouldn’t be difficult to figure out why FAQs and Case Studies are so popular. When we have a question nowadays, we don’t go to an encyclopedia, we hit the Search button on our electronic device of choice and enter a search term. If your website comes up in a client’s search for the meaning of some arcane term 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. De Cruz Lee v. Lee, 2015 ONSC 2012

[29] Self-represented litigants whose aim it is to protract court proceedings to force the other side to expend significant resources on legal costs due to scurrilous allegations that are without any evidentiary foundation and are entirely irrelevant to the issue before the Court will meet the hammer of a cost’s award. In our . . . [more]

Waaaay back in 2013 there was an Alberta Bill passed that consolidated the Notaries Public Act and the Commissioners for Oaths Act. These two pieces of legislation are in place to make the rules for notarizing and commissioning documents clear and to provide a way to deal with any problems that crop up, among other things. The Notaries and Commissioners Act SA 2013, N-5.5 will come into force on April 30, 2015.

All notaries in Alberta are also commissioners, so combining the legislation makes sense.

The new legislation does contain some changes for commissioners:

Old legislation: commissioners appointments (if . . . [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.

Research

Law Reform Publications for Research
Shaunna Mireau

Yesterday at Slaw, I posted about the Alberta Law Reform Institute Final Report 106 Assisted Reproduction After Death: Parentage and Implications. Today’s Tip is a reminder to look to law commission reports when researching items that touch on public policy. As Michel-Adrien Sheppard wrote in a 2013 Slaw post, these reports have hidden treasures…

Practice

The Working Stay-Cation
Garry Wise

I shoulda . . . [more]

Tom Davenport is, among other things, a distinguished professor at Babson College, a research fellow at the MIT Center for Digital Business, and director of research at the International Institute for Analytics. He is recognized as one of the pioneers in the field of knowledge management (KM). In 2000 he co-authored, along with Larry Prusack, one of the early books in the field of KM, Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know. He is acknowledged as one of the most trusted consultants and the third leading business-strategy analyst (just behind Peter Drucker and Tom Friedman) by Optimize Magazine . . . [more]

A panel of three Divisional Court Judges have affirmed that when a homeowner sells their home, they lose their standing to maintain a Tarion warranty claim under the Ontario New Home Warranties Plan Act (the “Act”).

Ms. Blair took possession of her new condominium townhome in February, 2010. Thereafter she made a complaint to Tarion about insufficient heating in the home. Ultimately, Tarion ordered that duct modification work was required in all nine townhouse units in the complex.

Ms. Blair installed a gas fireplace in her home without Tarion’s approval (to address the heating issue) and claimed compensation for the . . . [more]

Merciless epithets are just one reason to watch last night’s episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver — the primary being his face-to-face interview with Edward Snowden. “Uncumberbatchable” was the six syllable term Oliver coined in his warm-up act to describe the uncharming Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is apparently so bereft of likeability that not even the gifted character actor Benedict Cumberbatch can (by Oliver’s review) imbue his character with any grace. But the searing candescence of Oliver’s satire—and his Assange put-down is certainly putting the Twittersphere in stitches—is just an invitation to treat. The . . . [more]

When you shop for a contractor for a home renovation, you are often reminded about the need to ensure your contractor has third party liability insurance and workers’ compensation insurance – just in case.

Do you ask that same question when you shop for a lawyer outside of Canada? Do you remember to ask if the foreign lawyer carries professional liability insurance? And do you know what his/her coverage is? Imagine this. A 40-year-old client’s husband dies in a plane crash in the United States, the result of alleged negligence by air traffic controllers who fail to identify a storm . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from sixty recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. The Court 2. Administrative Law Matters 3. Legal Feeds 4. Western Canada Business Litigation Blog 5. Lee Akazaki

The Court
A Prosecution “Littered With Errors”: Drugs and Guns in R v Shia

In R v Shia, 2015 ONCA 190 [Shia], the Court of Appeal for Ontario considered an appeal . . . [more]

Having been a criminal defence lawyer for over fifteen years, there’s no better professional feeling than the teary-eyed embrace of a client after hearing a “not guilty” verdict. As wonderful as it is to bask in the glow of a job well done, feelings of elation tend to fade quickly followed closely by some variant of the question, “now who is going to pay for the hell I just went through?”

Clients who pose that question often have in mind a particular witness or complainant who was the driving force behind the prosecution. Inevitably, disappointment follows after the client is . . . [more]

Alternative Business Structures (ABS) is all the debate right now in Ontario, with a current discussion paper released by the law society. Over 40 responses were received from various organizations and stakeholders. The interim report presented to convocation in February included a wide range of views on ABS, from strongly for it to staunchly opposed.

The incentives for adopting ABS appears to primarily be for the purposes of attracting capital and promoting access to justice. The report references an alternative to plain ABS called ABS+, to focus specifically on how this capital could be harnessed to address those . . . [more]

For the next while the Friday Fillip will be a chapter in a serialized crime novel, interrupted occasionally by a reference you might like to follow up. Both this chapter of the book and the whole story up to this point can be had as PDF files.

You may also subscribe to have chapters delivered to you by email.

MEASURING LIFE
 
Chapter 5
Hard Feelings