As has been widely reported over the past two weeks, the Law Society of Ontario is considering eliminating the existing bar exams and replacing them with “a mandatory skills-based course with assessments”.

The LSO is currently seeking feedback from lawyers and the public on its proposal to replace the existing barrister and solicitor examinations with an online course involving training and instruction as well as both interim and final assessments by trained lawyers.

Ontario’s Attorney General, Doug Downey, came out strongly against reform, tweeting:

“An objective, written and rigorous test is an important part of proving new lawyers are ready

Google Street View is a great resource that can be used for a number of different purposes (e.g. travel planning).

While legal research is not really something normally associated with Street View, I’ve used it to confirm whether an address really exists and, if if it exists, what kind of address it is. For example, when it says “suite 270” in an address, is there really a suite with that number or is it the number of a PO Box? 

The ability to go back in time on Street View is also helpful. At the bottom right of the screen . . . [more]

In my last column, I moved away from regulatory analysis to explore how artificial intelligence may affect specific functions within the legal profession. In this piece, I return to the theme of risk and broaden the discussion to consider the challenges AI presents across all regulated professions.

The rapid development of generative artificial intelligence has already begun to reshape practice across a wide range of professions. For regulated professionals in Canada, including lawyers, physicians, engineers, and others governed by statutory, ethical, and fiduciary duties, these advances bring both significant promise and considerable risk. However, the legal and regulatory frameworks are . . . [more]

“Reserves do not improve with age. The longer a decision sits unwritten, the heavier it becomes.”

When the Honourable Deena Baltman (retired) offered this observation during a recent continuing professional development session for Deputy Judges, she articulated something that every judge knows but rarely voices. Her presentation, titled Managing Reserves, was pragmatic and concrete: write promptly, ideally within 48 hours; avoid over-reserving; schedule writing time ruthlessly; resist the temptation to wait for motivation, inspiration, or provocation.

Yet what has stayed with me is not just the efficiency of her techniques but the unspoken premise beneath them: that timeliness in . . . [more]

I understand the reluctance to commute. I’ve been working from home since the pandemic first hit—and I love it. Laundry gets done more often, and my cat (sometimes) appreciates the extra cuddle time.

Remote work has become the norm for many of us. Ontario courts continue to conduct remote and hybrid hearings, and legal professionals have access to excellent online research tools through LiRN-funded courthouse libraries and platforms like CanLII.

So I get why people ask whether we still need physical library space?

The answer is a resounding yes.

Library spaces remain vital, not just as repositories of knowledge, . . . [more]

The recent barrage of copyright lawsuits involving AI companies has revealed the staggering scale of copying undertaken to train large language models (LLMs). In the recently decided Bartz v. Anthropic case, for example, Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California notes that the AI firm downloaded millions of books in order to “amass a central library of ‘all the books in the world’” that it could use to develop its AI models and services.

As with the Anthropic case, the majority of these high-profile AI copyright lawsuits are being brought forward by authors . . . [more]

Artificial intelligence, pricing, and transience of the legal service sector’s workforce will cause the traditional law firm pyramid structure to rollover like an upending iceberg. The result? By 2030, global legal services will operate much differently than they do now.

Twin juggernauts – AI and Pricing – compounded by continuing transience of the legal service sector’s workforce will take a major toll on law firms unprepared for their impact. This reckoning will upend the traditional pyramid structure with the result being that by 2030, the global legal services sector will operate much differently than it does now.

The countdown clock . . . [more]

It was very encouraging to hear about the new Early Intervention Program launched by the Society for Children & Youth of BC (SCYBC). This is great news of support for the growing movement to ensure that children and youth are able to meaningfully participate in the BC family justice system. We need your help to get the word out to the legal profession, youth serving agencies, the judiciary and your personal networks.

For too long, many kids whose parents are separating have not been offered the opportunity to express their views on issues that significantly impact their lives – such . . . [more]

In my previous post, Is it All About the Prompts? Experimenting with Gen AI to Develop Public Legal Information, I experimented with the free version of ChatGPT-5 to determine if the steps in my usual process for creating public legal information content could be streamlined or eliminated altogether. These steps include:

1. Research: Research is conducted on the topic to create a draft framework. If a legal process is being described, the steps are outlined with any requirements to complete each step identified. I rely upon existing credible websites or resources that can include applicable legislation. Internal documents may

Law schools everywhere are confronting the same issue: how to use AI to help rather than hinder student learning.

In an earlier column, I speculated on ways we might help law students foster good over bad uses of AI. A paper published this summer by Dutch law professor Thibault Schrepel surveys the growing literature on experiments with AI in legal education. His overview provides a more concrete sense of what better uses of AI might entail.

These applications all have potential pitfalls, but these too can be harnessed as part of the learning process. To begin with the most . . . [more]

In pondering upon what interesting and timely topic about which to write, relating to legal information publishing, it occurred to me that what might be appreciated would be to write and repeat the word “artificial” approximately 333 times, followed by the word “intelligence”, the same number of times and finally the same again for the acronym “AI”. I wondered if readers might have found the approximately 1000-word totality of such efforts, or just the repetition of “blah”, to be as captivating as much of the other agenda-driven drivel produced on the topic, including that offered by the . . . [more]

Over thanksgiving weekend, in a Montreal hotel lobby, I spotted a cluster of matching suitcases with identical jackets draped over them, each one with “Canada” in bold letters across the back. I turned to my family and asked, “Do you think they’re part of Team Canada, travelling together, prepping for the winter Olympics?” My family wasn’t nearly as curious, but they could see the pure joy and excitement all over my face. That moment made me think about the best legal marketing teams I know, because they operate the same way. They win when they’re focused, when moving in the . . . [more]