In 2015, Shauna Hall-Coates wrote in the Dalhousie Journal of Legal Studies,

Walk into any courtroom today, critics venture, and it will look stunningly similar to those of the past; the judge will be sitting behind the bench, the jury in its box, and the witness on the stand.1 As everyone settles into his or her place selected by centuries of ritual and status quo, the courtroom may even appear as a sanctuary from the trappings of digital technology, so doggedly pursued outside its walls.

This segregation between the courtroom and digital technology is nonetheless collapsing, as trial spectators

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.

ACTION COLLECTIVE (RECOURS COLLECTIF) : L’entente de règlement de 5,5 millions de dollars visant l’indemnisation des résidents du CHSLD privé Herron et de leurs proches pour les dommages causés par l’éclosion de COVID-19 survenue dans l’établissement au printemps 2020 est approuvée.

Intitulé : Schneider (Succession de Schneider) c. Centre d’hébergement . . . [more]

Each Friday, we share the latest job listings from Slaw Jobs, which features employment opportunities from across the country. Find out more about these positions by following the links below, or learn how you can use Slaw Jobs to gain valuable exposure for your job ads, while supporting the great Canadian legal commentary at Slaw.ca.

Current postings on Slaw Jobs:

• Operations Manager – College of Patent Agents and Trademark Agents (Full-time) | Remote/Canada
  (College of Patent and Trademark Agents of Canada)

This post is a joint submission to Slaw, contributed by the following authors: Xavier Beauchamp-Tremblay, Pierre-Paul Lemyre, Sarah Sutherland, Ivan Mokanov

The Canadian Judicial Council (CJC) recently released a report titled “Guidelines For Canadian Courts – Management of Requests for Bulk Access to Court Information by Commercial Entities”.

Over the years, several parties from different sectors have contacted CanLII or Lexum to obtain bulk access to legal decisions from Canadian courts and tribunals. We never believed we had clear permission to redistribute this content and decide who should be granted or denied bulk access to legal . . . [more]

Written by Lewis Waring, Paralegal, Student-at-Law, Editor, First Reference Inc.

In Peretta v Rand v Technology Corporation (“Perretta”), an employer repudiated an employment contract by insisting that a new term be added after the contract had already come into effect. The reason that the employer’s insistence on adding a new term resulted in the repudiation of the contract was that the new term was so important that the employer’s attempt to force the employee to agree to it showed an intention to not be bound by the original contract. . . . [more]

In March of this year, artist Mike Winklemann, AKA “Beeple”, sold a compilation of digital art for $69m through Christie’s. The artwork was comprised of 5,000 images, created daily over a 13-year period. Unless your firm is planning on investing in digital art anytime soon, why should law firms care about this sale? Because whether you are a Managing Partner or a Marketing Director, business strategy is about identifying important shifts in the marketplace BEFORE they are entirely relevant to your current business processes so you can determine if and how they might affect you and your client base in . . . [more]

Several times each month, we are pleased to republish a recent book review from the Canadian Law Library Review (CLLR). CLLR is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD), and its reviews cover both practice-oriented and academic publications related to the law.

New Technologies for Human Rights Law and Practice. Edited by Molly K. Land & Jay D. Aronson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xiv, 318 p. Includes table of contents, bibliographical references, and index. ISBN 978-1-107-17963-9 (hardcover) $126.95; ISBN 978-1-316-63141-6 (softcover) $40.95. Open access (PDF) via doi.org/10.1017/9781316838952.

Reviewed by Katarina Daniels . . . [more]

A number of Canadian jurisdictions have a “public interest override” in their Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIPP) legislation.

In Alberta, this imposes a duty on a public body to immediately disclose information that is “clearly in the public interest” despite any other provision in the Act. Section 32 FOIPP reads:

32(1) Whether or not a request for access is made, the head of a public body must, without delay, disclose to the public, to an affected group of people, to any person or to an applicant

(a) Information about a risk of significant harm to

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. Moffat v Edmonton (City) Police Service, 2021 ABCA 183 (CanLII)

[63] Newton established (at para 84) that the LERB’s mandate is “more robust” when considering the acceptability of particular police conduct or the integrity of the discipline process pursuant to its civilian oversight mandate. Of course, this is not technically a standard of review issue allowing for different degrees of reasonableness, . . . [more]

Things are getting almost back to normal after the attack on the Capitol building on January 6^th. The barricades were slowly coming down, but then a subsequent incident happened when a car crashed into a barrier killing one of the Capitol police officers. There is still some lingering sense of apprehension about what might happen next. The Biden administration is now trying to reverse all the damage done by the previous administration, by issuing executive orders and introducing legislation.

When I moved to the District of Columbia in 2003, I did not realize the full impact of the . . . [more]

What’s the modern equivalent of a “broken record?” How about a GIF or TikTok on loop? Either way, I plead guilty. 

My particular hobby horse (the one I perform on the broken record and video loop) for much of the past decade has been bulk or unbundled access to legal information.

On Slaw alone, I’ve touched or ranted on the topic close to a dozen times. Here are a few of the longer pieces directly on point:

2020 – Lowering the Primary Barrier to Legal Innovation – Access to Good Data

2018 – CanLII’s Future as a Canadian Primary Law . . . [more]