The persecution of lawyers in Belarus is the focus of attention during the 15^th international Day of the Endangered Lawyer on 24 January 2025. This international day has been observed by lawyers around the world on the 24^th of January every year since 2010.

Each year the focus is on a country where lawyers and legal professionals are at particular risk. In 2025 the focus is on Belarus.

This year’s coalition of 31 lawyers’ organizations around the world has documented the dire situation of Belarusian lawyers and legal professionals in a 34-page report released today.

A concerted attack . . . [more]

2024 has been a tough year. I don’t know about you, but I needed to end the year with something good to cling to going into 2025. The Advent season spurred a lot of talk about hope, so I looked for things that provided a glimpse of hope for the future of access to justice in BC and beyond. We are tired and need encouragement to keep working.

The good news is that there is much to be hopeful about in the A2J space! Here are some links (Note 1) that crossed my desk in the last month showing recent . . . [more]

One of the earliest projects that was launched at the University of Victoria’s AI Risk and Regulation Lab was a mapping initiative that tracked both how artificial intelligence (AI) is regulated and litigated. To date, litigation tracking has primarily been focused on cases arising from the United States and internationally as until November 2024, there was virtually no domestic litigation to discuss. That changed recently when two lawsuits were filed in the month of November, signaling that Canada is now joining an international surge of AI-related legal disputes. In this column I will briefly review the two recently launched cases . . . [more]

Regular readers of this column (thank you) will recognize copyright reform is a common interest of mine, especially as such reform might lead to greater public access to research. Still, I only took up the copyright torch after a very loose consensus – among researchers, publishers, librarians and funders – around open access’ scientific value began to emerge. Such consensus has been called the iron law of copyright reform. Could such reform address, I dared to hope, reduce such impediments to open access as publishers dragging their heels, while holding on to subscription arrangements, even as they introduced rampant price . . . [more]

Imagine being offered a career-defining opportunity—one that could catapult your skills and confidence to the next level. Now, imagine turning it down, not because you lack potential, but because you fear falling short. This scenario is more common than you think, and the difference between seizing such opportunities and walking away often comes down to mindset. Are you operating from a fixed mindset, where abilities feel set in stone, or a growth mindset, where every challenge is a stepping stone to improvement?

Here is what this looks like in legal practice: Samantha is comfortable behind the scenes, the partners are . . . [more]

[Une version française suit]

On January 13, 2000, the Supreme Court of Canada issued its landmark decision in Arsenault-Cameron v. Prince Edward Island, 2000 SCC 1 (CanLII), [2000] 1 SCR 3, a case significant for its impact on minority language educational rights in Canada. This decision was also the Court’s first to adopt the Neutral Citation Standard for Case Law, a pivotal innovation introduced in 1999 by the Canadian Citation Committee. Neutral citations have since become a cornerstone of Canadian legal practice, providing a standardized, vendor-neutral method for referring to judicial decisions, as reported many times here . . . [more]

Justice must be fair and impartial, but also must be seen to be fair and impartial – and inclusive tribunal processes are a big contribution to the sense of fairness that all participants in a tribunal proceeding are entitled to receive. Language – and people’s perception of that language – is an important gateway to fairness (and perceptions of fairness). Karen Yin has a website that focuses on the language of equity and has also recently published a book that serves as a useful guide to the use of what she terms “conscious language”: The Conscious Style Guide: A Flexible . . . [more]

Several of my posts this year have focused on the importance of plain language for our profession. Good, clear communication is a vital component of client management as it helps us better understand our client’s needs and enable the client to make informed decisions. On the other hand, poor communication is a leading cause of professional liability claims against lawyers. Understanding who your audience is and ‘stepping into their shoes’ is a key. In my last post, Good Communications: Don’t Forget Generational Considerations, I focused on the impact of generational differences and preferences. This is only one factor when . . . [more]

Whether or not there is truth in the rumours that upstart, Harvey, has been keen to acquire the much-admired vLex, it was interesting to read the analysis by Isha Marathe, of Legaltech News, on the topic, as reported via legal market heroes, House of Butter. The HoB report concludes, “If Harvey wants to make true on the third item in its tech offerings—workflow automation; an AI assistant, and legal research—it’s going to have to find the data. The story of Harvey and vLex underscores the market barriers to a startup becoming a substantial legal research mainstay . . . [more]

Strategic and profitable growth has nothing to do with size. Instead, it has everything to do with market positioning.

[This is Part Two of a two-part series on Strategic Growth in the Legal Services Market and the foundation for the second half of my September 2024 keynote address to the Alberta Civil Trial Lawyers Association in Calgary.]

I noted in my final thoughts of Part One that evolution in the global legal services market has been upon us for well over three decades. Also, that shifts within the staid and traditional legal services industry have been accelerating more fiercely over . . . [more]

Hello my friends. Recently I went to a health food store and needed some advice about a particular product. The salesperson was very kind and was able to help me in making a decision. During our conversation, we somehow got on the topic of post pandemic mental health. She said that after Covid lockdowns were finished, most people went back to “normal”, but no one is really feeling like their pre-pandemic selves. As I pondered about what she said, I realized that in an effort to get on with our lives, we ran out the door, forgetting to put on . . . [more]

I am sharing some interesting information from the Library of Congress. On November 24^th they posted this blogpost about Native American languages on the general blog. “Two important collections of Native American heritage have been digitized and placed on the Library’s website, enabling readers and researchers to dig into histories that are not widely known. The first, featuring portions of the papers of Indian agent and ethnologist Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, focuses on the culture and literature of famed 19th-century Ojibwe poet Jane Johnston Schoolcraft (Bamewawagezhikaquay) and bicultural collaborations and literary contributions of members of her Johnston family of . . . [more]