This article is by Ian Hu, claims prevention and practicePRO counsel at LAWPRO.

A sole practitioner and single mom is locked in a room in her house. Her young autistic son, outside the room, has put a chair up against the door to prevent it from opening. There is a lot of yelling and screaming. She calls 911 and the police arrive. One of the constables happens to be her client – adding to her embarrassment. He talks to her through the window from outside and, eventually, the dust settles. But like any other day, she still has to go . . . [more]

I don’t usually write “how-to” posts, but I wasn’t aware of this restore feature in Windows and thought others might find it useful. Last week I accidentally saved a file and ended up replacing another file in the process. This can easily happen when you click on ‘Save’ instead of ‘Save As’ for example. In my case I was exporting a file from a software application and saving it to a directory on our network drive.

Normally the file is exported and then saved over a template or place-holder file. Usually not a problem: easy to do and maintains consistent . . . [more]

Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) have raised an issue of great concern in Sub-Saharan Africa. The most effective anti-venom used there to treat cases of snakebite, Fav-Afrique , is no longer being produced by the manufacturer, French pharmaceutical company Sanofi. The existing batches will run out in 2016. Even if another company took up production, it would be two years before replacements would be available. The company says it is no longer profitable to make the drug.

Why am I writing about this in a law blog? In a way it follows on from my previous blog which outlined my case . . . [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. Legal Sourcery  2. Michael Geist 3. Administrative Law Matters  4. Michael Spratt  5. Pierre Roy & Associes

Legal Sourcery
Finding Legislative Intent (Tip of the Week)

Erica Anderson, Research Librarian at the Ontario Legislative Library, and Susan Barker, Digital Services and Reference Librarian at the Bora Laskin Law Library, . . . [more]

Some of us recall those days of law school with nostalgia, if for nothing else the colourful stories which set precedent on key issues of law. “They lied to us,” we think as we look at the files we work on which pale in comparison.

Sometimes we’re lucky enough to encounter this colour in practice today. The colour in this case is pink, in the form of tights attached to a soon-to-be groom who was also wearing a feather boa and a lace shirt. He was even dragging an actual metal ball and chain weighing 32 pounds, affixed to his . . . [more]

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) : L’ex-maire de Boisbriand et l’ex-vice-présidente du groupe Roche sont reconnus coupables de fraude et d’abus de confiance relativement au partage organisé des principaux contrats attribués par la Ville à des firmes d’ingénierie entre 2000 et 2008

Intitulé : Directeur des poursuites criminelles et pénales du Québec c. . . . [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:
Mechanics’ Liens – Contracts – Creditors and Debtors – Aliens

Olson (Stuart) Dominion Construction Ltd. v. Structal Heavy Steel 2015 SCC 43
Mechanics’ Liens – Statutes
Summary: A general contractor (Dominion) applied for an order that the $15,570,974.53 lien bond it had filed in order to obtain removal of a builder’s lien, filed by . . . [more]

The Indian Supreme Court is to deal with a challenge to evidence of the complainant in a rape case that was taken by Skype. The complainant is Irish and is now in Ireland, and does not want to return to India for the trial.

The accused submits that the quality of the recording is not good enough to admit the evidence.

Does anything about the use of Skype in this case, or in general, make you uncomfortable?

Can there be a firm rule about the admissibility of private (or quasi-public) systems of video evidence, or should it depend on the . . . [more]

This is the last episode in the serial publication of Measuring Life, a crime novel. As ever, it is followed here by a reference to some material on the internet that might interest or amuse you.

The whole novel may be had as a PDF file for the next few weeks. Should you read the book entire, you will see that it bears the marks of a work of fiction written in weekly instalments. No “do-overs” were possible; culs-de-sac entered in week 9, had to be backed out of in week 23; many openings were drawn never entered; and . . . [more]

The idea of collaboration has been around forever. This of course means that the idea of collaboration is included in all varieties of sales pitches including document sharing, social intranets and knowledge bases, and even conferencing solutions. In professional services, they know our primary asset is the combined experience and knowledge that we can offer as a firm – it is why we have firms and not just individuals practicing. The pitch is that collaboration will make you more efficient, which will make clients and staff happier and in turn help generate revenue.

And they are right. The more efficient . . . [more]

With the federal elections coming up on October 19th, many organizations have been producing lists of priorities, demands and positions on issues relevant to them and canvassing the major political parties to respond.

The legal community is no exception.

The Canadian Bar Association (CBA) has produced an Election Engagement Kit that will “put equal access to justice on candidates’ radar and publicly call for enhanced federal leadership in this area”.

The Kit includes tips for members on how to:

• Ask questions when candidates come knocking on your door.
• Attend and raise these issues at all candidates’ meetings.
• Contribute to the

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.

Troubling Feelings: Moral Anger and Clinical Legal Education

Sarah M. Buhler, Assistant Professor, University of Saskatchewan College of Law
(2014) 37 Dalhousie Law Journal 397

Excerpt: Abstract and Sections III & IV
[Footnotes omitted. They can be found in the original via the link above]

Abstract

Many law students experience strong and . . . [more]