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.

PROFESSIONS : L’avocat en cause et son cabinet ne peuvent représenter les appelants dans le contexte d’une poursuite en dommages-intérêts pour faillite frauduleuse dans laquelle l’intégrité du syndic est sérieusement attaquée puisque l’avocat représentait la mandataire de ce dernier dans les procédures entourant la faillite en question et que les . . . [more]

It has been a long term goal for us to have a substantial collection of legal commentary on CanLII, so we are thrilled to be able to tell you about an expansion of CanLII’s secondary sources section to include law reviews.

Law reviews are often the only place a particular topic is discussed, and they often provide insight into the law for a particular jurisdiction where no one else does that make them invaluable for research.

In addition to being able to navigate within the commentary section by law review and issue, results from law review issues will appear in . . . [more]

Last year, the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family (CRILF) and the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice (CFCJ) sent out a survey to family lawyers in Canada to get a sense of legal professionals’ preferences around dispute resolution methods and the costs associated with these various avenues. 166 lawyers completed the online survey, the results of which are presented in a newly released report: An Evaluation of the Cost of Family Law Disputes: Measuring the Cost Implication of Various Dispute Resolution Methods.

This research is a sub-project of the CFCJ’s larger, multi-year Cost of Justice project, which . . . [more]

Starting tomorrow, the Supreme Court of Canada will publish Cases in Brief on the Court website, and on its Facebook and Twitter accounts. These are short, plain-language summaries of Supreme Court decisions.

The first such Case in Brief will be made available tomorrow at noon in the case of Carson v. The Queen.

In a statement released today to Court staff, Chief Justice Richard Wagner writes:

“We’re doing this because we want to be more transparent and accessible to Canadians—but we’re also doing it because we must. The reality is that there are fewer journalists covering the Court than

The 2017 Ontario Accessibility Compliance and Enforcement Report is now available online and outlines the activities undertaken by the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario in 2017 to oversee compliance with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act and its accessibility standards.

The report explains the results of the December 31st compliance reporting obligations of obligated organizations, and the various audits and inspections conducted by the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario in 2017. Overall, the report clearly indicates that there is a lot of enforcement work still needing to be done for Ontario to reach the goal of becoming an accessible province . . . [more]

[Note: this is but a short summary of the full text posted on the SSRN, February 2, 2018, (pdf.)-Ken Chasse.]

Canada’s federal government will be looking to gain political points and praise in the next federal election, for its “Budget 2017” declaration last March, as to creating Innovation Canada. Its purpose, among others, is to promote and support business innovation, including educating organizations in regard to recognizing what is intellectual property (IP), and preserving, governing, and otherwise dealing with it as valuable property, e.g., teaching that databanks and information can be IP, essential . . . [more]

On behalf of everyone at Slaw, I’d like to extend a warm congratulations to our colleague Dan Pinnington on his appointment as President and CEO of LAWPRO.

Dan has written with us here at Slaw for nearly a decade. His commentary has covered an enormous range of topics related to law practice management, legal technology, fraud and claims prevention (to name a few). But most of all, Dan is a communicator — speaker, blogger, book author, teacher, magazine editor, and conference chair. While I’m sure there will be a learning curve in the days ahead, Dan has spent an entire . . . [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. Ferreira v. St. Mary’s General Hospital, 2018 ONCA 247

[30] Ms. Masgras fundamentally misunderstands the principles enunciated in that case. That decision does not support Ms. Masgras’ proposition that a lawyer is entitled to take whatever steps s/he wishes in furtherance of what the lawyer thinks is the client’s “cause”. What Ms. Masgras appears not to understand is the fundamental principle . . . [more]

In the past I have vowed not to make resolutions that just get broken. At the end of last year I polled my Facebook friends to see what they suggested. The best idea came from my Canadian cousin Blaine. “Just have more fun in 2018.” Another suggestion I found online was to ask questions instead of making direct statements. My question was “how can I bring more joy into my life and the lives of others? “

So while I’m reaching out to my Facebook friends and family, I want to include you SLAW readers. One of the pleasant and . . . [more]

My new year’s resolution was to make more time to read for pleasure, principally to ensure I was switching off from work in the evenings and to get away from constantly looking at screens. It’s been a qualified success. I’ve just finished Michael Crichton’s “The Lost World”, which has got me thinking about dinosaurs and their extinction. Inevitably, though, I end up relating those thoughts back to work and law firm innovation for this column.

Operating under a business model that was originally designed for the horse an cart age, law firms are popularly misconstrued as “dinosaurs”, in the sense . . . [more]