If you’re a lawyer, you probably grew up in socio-economically advantaged circumstances. I submit this to you not as a value judgment or accusation, but as a pretty well-established fact.

In 2011, UCLA Law School Professor Richard Sander published a paper titled “Class in American Legal Education,” which included the finding that “the vast majority of American law students come from relatively elite backgrounds; this is especially true at the most prestigious law schools, where only five percent of all students come from families whose SES is in the bottom half of the national distribution.” The New York . . . [more]

This is the second half of our discussion and scorecard on the CUSMA/USMCA poison pills. For detailed discussion on dairy and dispute resolution, see our last column.

Autos: A Canadian Solution, a Qualified Win for both Canada and the U.S.

The opening U.S position on autos was that all NAFTA-qualifying vehicles must have at least 50% U.S. content, and 85% overall North American content. Both Canada and Mexico rejected this position. It was some lateral thinking by Canadian negotiators during the January 2018 round that led to a new approach. The Canadian concept entailed the use of a formula . . . [more]

In this submission we will again demonstrate that the PRISM Report’s prediction of too many practising lawyers in Ontario badly missed the mark in the first few years that it studied and that it can be expected that it will continue to do so going forward. Indeed, new years of data confirm our view that not only was the PRISM Report incorrect, but it now appears more likely that the number of new practising positions will at least match the number of new lawyers than it is that there will be a surplus of lawyers during the forecasted period of . . . [more]

Have you ever had a difficult foreign, comparative, and international law (FCIL) question and didn’t know who to ask for help, where to begin to look, what resources to use? After consulting local resources first, including your nearest FCIL librarian, you can check GlobaLex legal research guides, contact FCIL specialists on the INT-LAW listserv, or consult with country/subject experts listed in the AALL FCIL-SIS Jumpstart directory and guide. And you can use “Ask a Librarian” services for reaching international legal information specialists such as Ask DAG, Ask a Law Librarian (of Congress) – and Chatbot?!, and Ask a (Peace Palace) . . . [more]

A few years ago, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) was reported here to be considering a project on identity management and trust services. That report outlined some of the legal and practical issues that these matters raise, and some of the options for going forward.

To nobody’s surprise, UNCITRAL did adopt a project on this topic, and its Working Group on Electronic Commerce has been considering it since 2017. A list of the principal policy documents and records of the Working Group’s discussions is here.

Recently the UNCITRAL Secretariat has released two Working Papers in . . . [more]

On November 30^th, 2018, 16 months after the start of negotiations, the leaders of Canada, Mexico and the United States signed the Canada United States-Mexico-Agreement (“CUSMA”) or the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (“USMCA”)[1]. Signed on the margins of the G-20 Summit in Buenos Aires, the agreement is made up of 34 chapters and a dozen side letters. Ironically, it does not include the word “trade” in its title.

CUSMA/USMCA = NAFTA-Minus

In our previous article we addressed the continuing uncertainty that has been a central theme in the tough and sometimes divisive negotiations. The U.S. . . . [more]

Over the next few articles, I’ll introduce the Ten Laws of (Legal) Project Management and then go into some of them in practical, how-do-I-apply-this detail.

Why ten? It feels like about the right number, a manageable number that sums up basic project management maxims and guidelines. (I hear one of you saying, That’s as high as he can count without taking off his shoes. I know who you are, too.)

1. First Effectiveness, Then Efficiency

Efficiency is doing things right, but effectiveness is doing the right things.

If you’re headed in the wrong direction, marching off course ever more efficiently . . . [more]

The Law Society of British Columbia’s E-Brief for January 2019 states that LSBC has established a Futures Task Force:

“… to look at the future of the legal profession and legal regulation in British Columbia. The task force is expected to identify anticipated changes that may improve or disrupt the future market for legal services, consider and evaluate the factors and forces driving those changes, as well as make recommendations to the Benchers regarding the implications and how the Law Society and the legal profession might respond to the anticipated changes. … Send your comments or questions to communications@lsbc.org.”

Bill C-75, the Criminal Code amendment statute, passed the House of Commons in late 2018, and has received first reading in the Senate.

The bill could wipe out the criminal law practices in student legal clinics in most provinces across Canada. For decades now, student legal clinics across Canada have been representing low income persons for summary conviction criminal offences. These clients are not eligible for legal aid, and would be unrepresented except for the work done by law students to assist them. Each year, hundreds of low income persons will be left to defend themselves.

Why has this happened? . . . [more]

My beat on SLAW.ca is typically, if not all too predictably, the copyright trials and tribulations of scholarly communication. I’d be the first to admit that matters of access to this body of knowledge are relatively straightforward compared to what takes place next door with patent licensing, especially when pharmaceuticals are involved. Still, such patents disputes, which often involve government, university, and industry, can shed light on my interests in legal reforms that restore some part of intellectual property law’s original intent to promote the progress of science and encourage learning for the benefit of all.

This has led me . . . [more]

Lack of access to family justice and the increase in self-representation in family proceedings are growing concerns. According to the Ministry of the Attorney General’s Family Legal Services Review (the Bonkalo Report) in 2016, in over half of all family cases in Canadian courts, one or both parties are not represented by counsel. The report made several recommendations to the Ministry and the Law Society of Ontario, including the need to support the expanded use of legal coaching and other unbundled legal services, and the need to address liability concerns for counsel who are willing to act under . . . [more]

I was bemused, recently, when a highly-respected and knowledgeable professional publisher intimated to me a partial preference, presumably based on a degree of evidence, for content which was aimed at lawyers, that did not rely on or make significant reference to rules. It caused me to ponder, as a sometime law publisher and one who holds certain systems of rules in high esteem, on their value, not least for purposes of providing information to lawyers and their like.

It is not within my competence to attempt to deal in any depth with the complex jurisprudential analysis that has always . . . [more]