Written by Christina Catenacci, BA, LLB, LLM, PhD, Content Editor, First Reference Inc.

In February 2024, the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador certified a privacy class action. The representative plaintiffs, on behalf of 260 individuals (first 240 individuals, and second 20 individuals), alleged that their privacy was violated when an employee of the defendant employer (a health authority) accessed the private information of these individuals that was outside the scope of their employment. The employer became aware of the first and second alleged breaches in 2020 and 2021, respectively. The main claim against the employer was that there . . . [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.

Public Health Crisis Management and Criminal Liability of Governments: A Comparative Study of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Edited by Michael Bohlander, Gerhard Kemp & Mark Webster. New York: Bloomsbury, 2023. xii, 368 p. Includes preface, list of contributors, abbreviations, and index. ISBN 9781509946310 (hardcover) $180.95; ISBN 9781509946327 (ePUB) $162.85; ISBN 9781509946334 . . . [more]

People’s Law School recently launched a ChatGPT-4 powered Chatbot to respond to questions posed by visitors to PLS’s website. The Chatbot is named Beagle+ and it has a very cute icon.

This PLS post describes the Chatbot and provides some examples of questions and responses. I was particularly intrigued with the assertion that it provides “helpful and empathetic” responses to peoples’ legal questions. I’m skeptical about AI’s ability to communicate effective empathy. But I was surprised to read the final example in the post:

Beagle+: Before you go, I just want to remind you to take care of

There are a lot of ways to characterize any event, and a good lawyer can use language to describe a situation and also advocate for their client. I learned from experienced colleagues who were teaching students this skill. The example my colleagues used was drawn from a tragic event nearby: a police shooting of a person who had not yet harmed others but who was behaving erratically and had brandished a weapon.

My colleagues used two documents from the case. The first was written by a pro-police advocate who described the scene and the confusion and fear felt by the . . . [more]

Family Dispute Resolution: Process and Practice, just published by Oxford University Press, is THE book that family dispute resolution (FDR) practitioners and educators have been waiting for.

Edited by Peter Salem and Kelly Browe Olson, this book delivers the goods like no other— all 600+ pages of it.[1] It is an essential guide for experienced practitioners in particular—lawyers or mental health professionals with dispute resolution training or experience. The book will remind them why they were drawn to this work in the first place and rejuvenate their practices in unexpected ways.

Though heavily US-focused, there are three strong . . . [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) : La juge de première instance n’a pas erré en condamnant l’accusée, une fraudeuse qui avait usurpé l’identité d’une autre personne, à une peine de 18 mois d’emprisonnement; l’accusée ne convainc pas la Cour que les accrocs procéduraux liés aux déclarations des victimes lui ont causé un préjudice . . . [more]

Legal service is a business. Run it that way.

Many law firms are successful by accident.

Anyone who knows anything about traditional law firm structures knows they are perilously fragile. It doesn’t take much to bring them down.

Up until this latest debacle—the 2024 collapse of Minden Gross—Canada’s highest-profile law firm failures were Heenan Blaikie in 2014, Goodman and Carr in 2007, and Holden Day Wilson in 1996.

Canadian law firms are not alone in this plight. For example—and this is only a small sampling—lawyer exits and merger failure brought down U.S.-based Stroock & Stroock & Lavan at the end . . . [more]

Everyone is the poet of their memories. … But like the best poems, they’re also never really finished because they gain new meaning as time reveals them in different lights.

Richard Hell

The resolution of disputes does not always depend on the memories of parties or witnesses, but when credibility is at issue the memories of actions can be a critical part of resolving disputes. The more we learn about how memories are formed, and more importantly, how they are retained, the more we should have real concerns about the ability of decision-makers to assess credibility of testimony of events . . . [more]