I’ve long thought that community non-profits play a major role in increasing access to justice — and can play an even more significant role under the right circumstances. In this post, I consider this view in light of a 2020 report on measures to advance the contribution of community-based organizations and an October 28, 2021 Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters event, “Advancing Community-Based Access to Justice”, involving representatives from four Canadian community-based organizations. . . . [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 practice, research, writing and technology.

Research & Writing

Some Thoughts on Punctuation
Neil Guthrie

If you find you use a lot of semi-colons, there’s a good chance your sentences are too long. Break things into smaller units, especially for readers using a small screen. … . . . [more]

Samantha has a presentation coming up and wishes she felt more confident. She worries about getting asked questions and not knowing the answers. She is all too aware of how little she knows about the topic.

Tom is heading into a meeting with senior counsel, who has asked him to report on his progress and feels nervous and self-doubting.

In law, it can seem as though confidence is a professional requirement. There is an expectation that you will have the answers. It can also seem like everyone around you feels confident, and you are the odd one out.

Here’s what . . . [more]

Before the pandemic, many lawyers may have longed for more flexible time, and the ability to work more from home.

The past year and a half may have challenged those professed goals, especially for those who have other responsibilities or distractions in the home. Working from home does not necessarily mean more personal time, and it does not necessarily mean that there will be less work.

As lawyers slowly make their way back to the office, they’re also revisiting the perpetual struggle to find enough time for self-care and care of others. One of the ideas that has started to . . . [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) : Le tribunal conclut que le cumul des agissements de la poursuite et de l’Unité permanente anticorruption dans le cadre du procès de l’ex-maire de Terrebonne Jean-Marc Robitaille a porté atteinte à la probité du système judiciaire de façon si outrageante que seul l’arrêt des procédures permet de . . . [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:

• Litigation Legal Assistant (Full-time) | Chilliwack, BC
  (Waterstone Law Group)
• Junior/Intermediate Solicitor (Full-time) | Vancouver, BC
  (Owen Bird Law Corporation)
• Corporate Tax Lawyer (Full-time) | Vancouver, BC
  (Thorsteinssons LLP)
• Senior Conveyancer (Full-time) | Chilliwack, BC
  (Waterstone Law Group)
• Corporate Services

Soquij and Slaw continue the vision of Jules Deschênes

Legal Separatism in Canada

In 1979 I was introduced by Simon Chester to Jules Deschênes, Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Quebec, who wished to discuss the role that English language legal publishers such as Carswell could play in addressing what he called “legal separatism in Canada”.

His thesis was that “Quebec has shown the willingness and the ability to contribute to the building of […] a national scheme of federal law, but the legal community of the rest of Canada has, by and large, closed itself off and away . . . [more]

Written by Daniel Standing LL.B., Editor, First Reference Inc.

Ontario has recently been a hotbed of decisions considering the validity of termination clauses in employment contracts. At issue in Lamontagne v J.L. Richards & Associates Limited, 2021 ONSC 2133 (CanLII) was whether a termination clause ousted the employee’s entitlement to common law reasonable notice of termination. If it was sufficiently clear, the employer would win. If it was ambiguous, then the employee would have access to the more generous common law entitlement of reasonable notice. Read on to find out how the court decided the issue.

Background

Annick Lamontagne was . . . [more]

Each semester my students must meet with me to discuss their research, and each semester I put a great deal of thought into how to arrange these meetings. I love the individual attention I can give each student in these meetings, and yet, scheduling these meetings always feels like a nightmare. Sometimes I think I have not properly explained the parameters of our scheduling system, but more often it is their lack of attention to detail that leads to my students showing up late, scheduling meetings when they are already scheduled to be in other classes, or otherwise failing to . . . [more]

“Our administrative law is a never-ending construction site where one crew builds structures and then a later crew tears them down to build anew, seemingly without an overall plan.”

Justice David Stratas, “The Canadian Law of Judicial Review: A Plea for Doctrinal Coherence and Consistency”

“The “Quest”, shall we say, for a unified theory of Administrative Law is a constant yearning or aspiration but such a theory, in my view, is probably unattainable, in large measure because there occurs, all along, these repeated shifts in values, and these cognitive or epistemic shifts, in what we consider just or

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. Northern Regional Health Authority v. Horrocks, 2021 SCC 42

[1] Labour relations legislation across Canada requires every collective agreement to include a clause providing for the final settlement of all differences concerning the interpretation, application or alleged violation of the agreement, by arbitration or otherwise. The precedents of this Court have maintained that the jurisdiction conferred upon the decision‑maker appointed thereunder . . . [more]