Lawyers have always needed to stay current with developments and changes in our field. The proliferation of information online has changed this responsibility, and creates new challenges as well as new opportunities.

In 1998, David Blunkett, Secretary of State for Education and Employment, stated in a green paper called The Learning Age,

We are in a new age – an age of information and global competition. Familiar certainties and old ways of doing things are disappearing. The types of jobs we do have are changed as have the industries in which we work and the skills they need.

At

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

PÉNAL (DROIT) : La directive donnée par le juge à propos du témoignage d’un témoin taré était insuffisante, compte tenu des circonstances particulières de l’affaire et de la nature de la preuve avancée par la poursuite; par conséquent, l’accusé devra subir un nouveau procès pour meurtre au second degré.

Intitulé . . . [more]

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:
Civil Rights – Administrative Law – Real Property – Statutes

British Columbia Teachers’ Federation v. British Columbia 2015 BCCA 184
Civil Rights
Summary: In 2002, the Province of British Columbia enacted legislation that voided hundreds of terms of the teachers’ collective agreement. The legislation also prohibited collective bargaining on issues of class size and . . . [more]

One Sunday each month OnPoint Legal Research provides Slaw with an extended summary of, and counsel’s commentary on, an important case from the British Columbia, Alberta, or Ontario court of appeal.

BDO Canada Limited v Dorais, 2015 ABCA 137

Areas of Law: Bankruptcy; Trustees; Prosecution by trustee

~ Trustees in bankruptcy may pursue claims on behalf of the bankrupt estate, including those brought by creditors that accrue to the benefit of all creditors, but may not pursue the claims of individual creditors that benefit them individually.~

BACKGROUND: The deceased Michel Dorais and a number of companies previously controlled by him . . . [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 13
Worthy Primo

Are you working in a firm that has gone through a merger, or been rebranded through a takeover? Have you had occasion to look on the web and try to locate the old firm by name or by its URL? In most cases if you do this, you will no longer find the websites which once displayed the proud information of the firm, its partners and its achievements.

Why has this happened? In most instances when a firm is merged or subsumed with another, or becomes part of a new network, it is thought to be bad for client relations . . . [more]

An Ontario court has compelled an employer to produce an email message between HR staff and counsel in the wrongful dismissal case of Jacobson v Atlas Copco Canada Inc. The Superior Court of Justice found the employer failed to show that the message involved seeking or giving legal advice; thus it could not be protected by solicitor-client privilege. . . . [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.

A Different Question of Open Access: Is There a Public Access Right to Academic Libraries in the United States and Canada?

Amy Kaufman, Head of William R. Lederman Law Library, Queen’s University, and co-author of the newly published Out of Practice: Exploring Legal Careers Paths in Canada

Law Library Journal, Vol. 103:3, . . . [more]

“Records management law” will be a necessary area of specialization because electronic records are as important to daily living as are motor vehicles, and are now the most frequently used kind of evidence. Electronic records management is a complex technology, which makes current legal infrastructure of statutes, guidelines, and case law that controls the use of electronic records as evidence very inadequate because it ignores these facts: (1) electronic records technology, and pre-electronic paper records technology are very different technologies—each requires its own unique legal infrastructure; (2) the many serious defects frequently found in electronic records management systems (ERMS’s), and . . . [more]

Ontario Privacy Commissioner Brian Beamish just released his first annual report.

It is an interesting read for anyone interested in access and privacy issues.

Topics include details on some noteworthy access and privacy decisions, open government, police body cameras, sharing of CPIC information with US border officials, contents of police record checks, and comments on personal health privacy.

It also contains stats on complaints and appeals. . . . [more]

Why is the idea of asking service users what they need in terms of access to justice so challenging to those working in the justice system?

This is the question that I was asking myself as I participated a recent workshop on enhancing access to justice in the area of family law, coordinated by the Manitoba Law Foundation and facilitated by John Paul Boyd.

Participants represented a range of justice system service providers and included some community voices as well. Working in small groups, we brainstormed the obstacles to access to justice and ways to provide better supports to those . . . [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. R. v. St-Cloud, 2015 SCC 27

[1] The repute of our criminal justice system rests on the deeply held belief of Canadians that the right to liberty and the presumption of innocence are fundamental values of our society that require protection. However, that repute also depends on the confidence citizens have that persons charged with serious crimes will not be able . . . [more]