The Legal Clinic of Guelph and Wellington County has just completed what appears, based on a preliminary analysis of the data, to have been a highly successful pilot project to expand legal aid services to rural Wellington County in Southwestern Ontario. The project is being funded by the Law Foundation of Ontario. The project involved using a van to provide outreach services to 12 small communities spread throughout the 2,657 square kilometers of the county, visiting each community 10 or more times on a regular schedule between May and October. The van, staffed by two outreach workers, would park . . . [more]

In my experience, lawyers hate to be wrong. And they keep track of when anyone else is. Attending a lawyer meeting, you can almost see the chalk board above each head keeping track. Power is won or lost on those points and for a moment, they become almost more important than legal knowledge, business wisdom, and marketplace reputation. So, lawyers tend to withhold opinions until they know they can defend them. And once an opinion is set, it can be hard to change it because that would be admitting that the previous opinion is no longer right (and therefore, must . . . [more]

This article is based upon my several decades of experience working with experts in electronic records management systems (ERMSs), servicing institutional clients, and drafting related national standards-see the list of articles at the end of this one. In Canada, the requirements of good e-records management and the legal consequences of its absence are still not recognized as being a distinct area, field, or division of law. It is part of a larger problem concerning the lack of knowledge by which to challenge the ability of all electronic systems and devices to produce reliable evidence. The nature and substantial vulnerability to . . . [more]

For years, Slaw commentators (including myself) have called for Canadian law societies to adopt a duty of technological competence for lawyers. On October 19, 2019, a major development occurred, which has largely gone unnoticed. The Federation of Law Societies of Canada amended its Model Code of Professional Conduct to add the following commentary to the competence rule (r. 3.1-2):

[4A] To maintain the required level of competence, a lawyer should develop an understanding of, and ability to use, technology relevant to the nature and area of the lawyer’s practice and responsibilities. A lawyer should understand the benefits and risks associated . . . [more]

Not many of my friends knew much about Niger. Most assumed I mispronounced. “You mean Nigeria?”. Those that had heard of it had wondered why I was going to a place full of jihadis, weapon smugglers, and human traffickers. They had not seen the nation’s capital Niamey’s Diori Hamani airport. It is brand new and reflects determination. The first customers were the African Union heads of state at their summit in July.

Now it served me. Liman, the protocol officer, stood behind the customs with a sign bearing my name. “Welcome to Niger!”, he smiled, and talked me through customs. . . . [more]

Imagine a library that tried to save money by relying on candles instead of electricity. Any dollars saved come at the expense of knowledge lost. Without adequate light, the contents of a library are as inaccessible as if the doors were closed.

In the world of legal information, light comes to the “library” through indices, key number systems, topic digests, abridgments, and more. Digitization, electronic access, multi-field search, hyperlinks and boolean logic add more light, but are still merely candles.

Candles are discrete tools designed to provide light only within a limited range of where the candle is placed. Compare . . . [more]

This is the fourth and final column of a series on the Ten Laws of (Legal) Project Management. This column covers the last four laws, followed by a recap of all ten.

7. The Only Constant Is Change, So Plan on It

In some ways, this law gets to the heart of project management. As General Eisenhower once said, “Plans are useless, but planning is essential.” (Different sources offer slightly different phrasings for this quotation… which I suppose is a type of change, too.)

Another project maxim suggests, “You can have it good, you can have it fast, you . . . [more]

This is the second in a series of blogs on how U.S. copyright law has, with the emergence of open access to research and scholarship in the digital era, slipped into an unconstitutional state because it can no longer be said, in the case of science, “to promote the progress of science and useful arts” (U.S. CONST. art. 1, § 8, cl.8.). Rather, the law is called upon to constrain such progress. These shortcomings apply no less trenchantly to Canada’s Copyright Act, as well as to copyright laws in most other jurisdictions. It is the U.S. Constitution’s particularly pointed wording . . . [more]

The Action Group on Access to Justice (TAG) has collaborated with Community Legal Education Ontario (CLEO) on a number of initiatives to help develop awareness and implement programs that reflect community-specific needs. Julie Mathews, the recipient of the Law Foundation of Ontario’s fellowship grant, will be presenting her research during Ontario’s Access to Justice Week with Professor David Wiseman at the uOttawa Faculty of Law who is supporting this research. Offering us a sneak peek, Julie shares her thoughts and findings on the community justice help below.

The importance of drawing a clear line between giving legal information and legal . . . [more]

The legal profession could be improved a bit. Ok, it could be improved a lot. One might say it could use more “innovation.” Yet it seems like the harder one pushes for innovation, the harder others push back.

Despite acknowledgement that the nature of legal services will take time to change it feels we continually need, as Jae Um puts it, “a call for patience (and some perspective).” After the 2008 crash people mused, is this The End of Lawyers? Many saw 2008 as a call to action, driven by fear over the long-term relevancy of lawyers. . . . [more]

On Sept. 23, 2013, the New York Times published an article with the headline, “In Supreme Court Opinions, Web Links to Nowhere,” by Adam Liptak. The article stated that a recent study had found that 49 percent of the hyperlinks cited in US Supreme Court decisions no longer worked.

The article cited the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as a potential model for other courts. That court maintained an archive of .pdf versions of all websites and documents cited in its opinions, at https://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/library/webcites/. (These are now available via PACER since Jan. 1, 2016.) The article also . . . [more]

The Story So Far

The saga of Bill C-75 and its impact on student legal clinics has staggered to an end – sort of. Unfortunately a significant access to justice issue remains. Here is a brief summary of what happened.

When Bill C-75 was introduced by the federal government in 2018, the bill raised the maximum penalty for summary conviction offences to two years. However, the bill did not amend s. 802.1, which stated that “agents” (including law students and articling students) can only appear on criminal matters in summary conviction matters where the maximum penalty is six months.

Law . . . [more]