Nothing causes trouble in legal practice quite like communication failures. As Ian Hu from LAWPRO reminded us in his Slaw post last month, communication are the number one source of malpractice claims.

Honing proactive and effective communication skills has significant positive implications for everything from delegation, to the quality of your legal work, to your marketing and business development efforts.

With this in mind, focusing on improving your communication practices at work is probably one of the best investments you can make in your career. Where to start is quite simple, with your thoughts.

I work with many lawyers on . . . [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 research and writing, practice, and technology.

Research & Writing

Get Your Pronouns Right
Neil Guthrie

It’s astonishing how many people have trouble with personal pronouns. Perhaps like Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, they think it’s somehow inelegant to say me – so the heroine of that classic book says ‘A girl like I’. But (between you and me) that’s wrong: it should be ‘A girl like me’, of course. Others, faced with the . . . [more]

We are excited to announce the recent publication, by Lexis-Nexis Canada Inc., of The Law of Limitations, Third Edition. The first two editions were written prior to the coming into force of the Limitations Act, 2002, so this new edition is the first to cover cases decided under the new Ontario regime.

Although Ontario cases receive the most coverage, the scope of the text is Canada-wide. Since publication of the second edition, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia have fundamentally reformed their limitations regimes, and this edition brings readers up-to-date on the related jurisprudence.

The third . . . [more]

Often when someone takes over a new position where they are responsible for, dare I say it, the sales funnel, one of their goals is to predict revenue. Most firms try to predict revenue, albeit with different levels of success. Some firms use a backlogs or potentials method for proposal tracking, others ask the professionals to maintain a rolling 12 month projection, and others may simply set a target hoping for the best. One thing is for sure, targeting revenue in professional services is different than for products but a level of predictability is still required.

Companies that sell widgets . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from seventy 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. Michael Spratt  2. BC Liquor Law 3. Vancouver Immigration Blog  4. Canadian Securities Law  5. FamilyLLB

Michael Spratt
An Open Letter to Chief Bordeleau

Dear Chief Charles Bordeleau, It happened again. A factually guilty man was acquitted of all charges because your police officers failed to follow even the . . . [more]

If you take a stroll pretty much anywhere in downtown Toronto these days, you’re likely to walk into one of the dozens of marijuana dispensaries that have popped up everywhere in the city. But just as quickly as they arrived, they are being shut down too.

On Thursday Toronto Police conducted a sting dubbed “Project Claudia,” with search warrants executed for 43 different locations, seizing 270 kg of products. That’s fine, these dispensaries are still illegal, and are not part of the process for distributing medically required marijuana use.

Project Claudia wasn’t just about shutting these dispensaries down. The police . . . [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.

FISCALITÉ : L’information contenue dans les demandes de mandat de perquisition était suffisante pour justifier l’autorisation de perquisitions chez Uber Canada et permettre ainsi la poursuite de l’enquête afin de déterminer si des infractions fiscales avaient été commises.

Intitulé : Uber Canada inc. c. Agence du revenu du Québec, 2016 . . . [more]

The Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench has recently held that a party who held relevant electronic records must produce them in native format, rather than in TIFF format, although producing them in native format (in this case, Excel) could take six months’ work and cost $50,000. Alberta and Canadian law were admitted to require that such production be proportional to the stakes in the dispute and not unduly burdensome, but ordering the production in this case was held to satisfy those tests.

Bard v Canadian Natural Resources, 2016 ABQB 267 (CanLII)

This despite a litigation plan that contemplated production . . . [more]

In a 2015 speech, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin implored the legal profession to “accept the idea of change”, including the reality that some tasks that have been traditionally carried out by lawyers can now be more effectively performed through technological means.

It is questionable how much the Canadian legal profession, as a general matter, has taken up the Chief Justice’s call. Developments in one promising area—mobile phone and web-based apps that aim to enhance access to justice (“A2J”)—are largely being driven by individual innovators seeing unmet legal needs and thinking outside the box for new ways to harness technology . . . [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.

Permitting Voluntary Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide: Law Reform Pathways for Common Law Jurisdictions

Jocelyn Downie, SJD, FRSC, FCAHS; Professor, Faculties of Law and Medicine, Dalhousie University
Queensland University of Technology Law Review Volume 16, Issue 1, pp 84-112

Excerpt: Introduction and Sections III-VI | Footnotes omitted. They can be found in the . . . [more]

In Quebec, to practise a profession or hold a professional title governed by the Professional Code, a person must have a permit and be a member in good standing of the professional order that governs the exercise of the profession. Quebec has 46 professional orders that supervise the practice of 54 regulated professions.

In response to recommendations in the Charbonneau Commission report on granting and management of public contracts in the construction industry, on May 11, 2016, the Quebec government tabled Bill 98, An Act to amend various legislation mainly with respect to admission to professions and the governance of . . . [more]

It’s hard to find statistics identifying how many people are currently running Windows 10. One thing we do know is that there were 14 million downloads within 24 hours of the release. Some estimates put the installed base at over 75 million devices. No matter what the right number is, it appears that Microsoft has added another hit operating system to its list. But is everything about Windows 10 a good thing? Not so fast. When Microsoft released Windows 10, it also updated its privacy policy. Should attorneys be concerned? The answer attorneys love to hate is…it depends. Perhaps if . . . [more]