It’s common knowledge that lawyers suffer from disproportionately high rates of depression and addiction, while at the same time there’s the sense that they can’t really talk about what’s bothering them without breaching solicitor-client privilege, or raising questions about their own suitability for the job.

We blame it on various factors: the length and stress of the working day, and on the particular personalities lawyers tend to bring to the table. But for many lawyers the depression and addiction may also be a sign of vicarious trauma – lawyers traumatized by dealing with the traumatized, and by not always being . . . [more]

The two biggest political scandals in the news right now – the Mark Norman trial, and the Trudeau/SNC-Lavalin controversy – were exposed by a reliable source who secretly shared information with a journalist. Increasingly this is only viable way that scandals are brought to the public’s attention in this country.

More traditional methods of uncovering corruption – access to information laws, and whistleblower protections that are supposed to encourage employees to disclose wrongdoing – are increasingly irrelevant. As to the former, we know that much information is categorically off limits, delayed, destroyed, not recorded, or access . . . [more]

There has never been a time in our history when law was more needed than it is today. And there has never been a time in our history when we have taken law for granted as much as we do today.

We live in an age of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) but we are fortunate to also live in a society governed by the Rule of Law. The products of STEM are everywhere around us. The Rule of Law, on the other hand, is largely invisible. The Rule of Law is like the oxygen that we breathe: invisible, . . . [more]

Two important new articles came across my desk in the last week or so. They each offer lists of new skills and aptitudes that will be needed by lawyers and conflict management professionals (mediators, arbitrators, negotiators etc.) in the “new world”.

In the first article, Noam Ebner and Elayne E. Greenberg explore this topic with the provocative title “What Dinosaurs Can Teach Lawyers About How to Avoid Extinction in the ODR Evolution.” (Note 1) They begin with the following salvo to the legal profession:

This paper is a wake-up call for the legal profession: Heed the justice changes

David Steven, the head of the secretariat of the Task Force on Justice, wrapped up three days of meetings in the Peace Palace on the challenge of delivering on Sustainable Development Goal 16.3. He looked at a fulfilled and tired audience at the end of the 9^th edition of the Innovating Justice Forum, the Justice Partnership Forum, and a ministerial meeting.

The gathering produced an important political document that can now be invoked and used to guide strategy making and implementation: the Hague Declaration on Equal Access to Justice for All by 2030. . . . [more]

The Law Students Society of Ontario (the “LSSO”) recently surveyed Ontario law students to better understand the debt load experienced by them and its effect on them. The LSSO Report provides important insights into the effects of increased law school tuition costs.

The LSSO Report has been well received and rightly so. However, the point of this column is not just to laud the report but to engage with it and its observations. In order to seriously address the observations in the LSSO Report, it is necessary to consider the report and to look at the cost of becoming a . . . [more]

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have set the basic framework for the right to be forgotten. Recent case law from Germany offers an insight into its application on the ground.

The right to be forgotten as initially created in the Google Spain case (C-131/12) and now further developed in art. 17 GDPR provides data subjects with the right to have their personal data erased by a data processing controller (most prominently search engines) under specific circumstances. For search engines, though, balancing the diverging rights and interests of publishers and . . . [more]

It doesn’t take too much reading to understand that technology is crucial to the success of any modern law firm. With the mergers and investments in LegalTech continuing to rise, law firms truly cannot invest too much in tech and innovation. I think we can expect to see the below example more often:

A law firm that does everything starts from scratch with founders having both deep business and legal expertise. They commit to being early adopters of technology. It takes spent three years and $5M in custom technology, but they are able to deliver on the vaunted promise of . . . [more]

We are hearing more and more often from SRLs about “sharp practice” when they face a lawyer on the other side of their case.

There are many common elements to these reports, which I find to be largely credible. SRLs believe that their unfamiliarity with the legal system, combined with the tendency of some judges to assume the worst of them – that their cases are without merit, or that they are “vexatious” and abusing the process when they make honest mistakes and misjudgments – is being exploited by counsel on the other side as a matter of strategy.

The . . . [more]

In August 2017, I reported that the SCC would hear an appeal from the Court of Appeal for Alberta (Orphan Well Association v Grant Thornton Limited, 2017 ABCA 124). The case related to the jurisdiction of a regulatory body, not in terms of its governing statute, but in terms of a classical constitutional law question and division of powers. The conflict – or apparent conflict – was between a provincial regulator’s authority on environmental matters and the federal government’s jurisdiction over bankruptcy.

This case involved Redwater, a bankrupt oil and gas company that owned over one hundred . . . [more]

When Dorothy realized she wasn’t in Kansas anymore, she stopped acting as if she were. As far as she knew, there was no going back.

In 2012, the American Bar Association amended its Model Rules of Professional Conduct to confirm that a lawyer’s duty of competence includes awareness of “benefits and risks and associated with relevant technology” to legal practice. 35 states (including Kansas!) have since adopted the requirement into their own rules of professional conduct. Meanwhile, in Canada, our law societies aren’t moving with any sense of urgency. Consultations on the question began in 2017, but don’t expect guidance . . . [more]

Have you ever noticed how hard it can be to get people to listen?

Have you ever had a challenge getting your point across, even when it was about something of critical import?

In conversations with lawyers in private practice and in-house counsel I frequently hear about the difficulties they run into advising clients and colleagues on alternative courses of action, or risk prevention measures to take.

It is so easy for important advice to be discounted because the lawyer is seen as not getting the big vision, or being too risk averse, or creating unnecessary roadblocks.

Next . . . [more]