Last year, the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family (CRILF) and the Canadian Forum on Civil Justice (CFCJ) sent out a survey to family lawyers in Canada to get a sense of legal professionals’ preferences around dispute resolution methods and the costs associated with these various avenues. 166 lawyers completed the online survey, the results of which are presented in a newly released report: An Evaluation of the Cost of Family Law Disputes: Measuring the Cost Implication of Various Dispute Resolution Methods.

This research is a sub-project of the CFCJ’s larger, multi-year Cost of Justice project, which . . . [more]

[Note: this is but a short summary of the full text posted on the SSRN, February 2, 2018, (pdf.)-Ken Chasse.]

Canada’s federal government will be looking to gain political points and praise in the next federal election, for its “Budget 2017” declaration last March, as to creating Innovation Canada. Its purpose, among others, is to promote and support business innovation, including educating organizations in regard to recognizing what is intellectual property (IP), and preserving, governing, and otherwise dealing with it as valuable property, e.g., teaching that databanks and information can be IP, essential . . . [more]

In the past I have vowed not to make resolutions that just get broken. At the end of last year I polled my Facebook friends to see what they suggested. The best idea came from my Canadian cousin Blaine. “Just have more fun in 2018.” Another suggestion I found online was to ask questions instead of making direct statements. My question was “how can I bring more joy into my life and the lives of others? “

So while I’m reaching out to my Facebook friends and family, I want to include you SLAW readers. One of the pleasant and . . . [more]

My new year’s resolution was to make more time to read for pleasure, principally to ensure I was switching off from work in the evenings and to get away from constantly looking at screens. It’s been a qualified success. I’ve just finished Michael Crichton’s “The Lost World”, which has got me thinking about dinosaurs and their extinction. Inevitably, though, I end up relating those thoughts back to work and law firm innovation for this column.

Operating under a business model that was originally designed for the horse an cart age, law firms are popularly misconstrued as “dinosaurs”, in the sense . . . [more]

Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General is building a new courthouse in Toronto that will combine most of the city’s criminal courts, including all three youth courts, in one location downtown. Designed by a world-renowned architect and filled with technological innovation, it is being celebrated as a step forward for access to justice in the city. But access to justice is not just about access to a courtroom. It is about access to outcomes—outcomes that provide the most vulnerable groups, such as youth in conflict with the law, with the support they need to work towards more positive futures.

As . . . [more]

Canadian lawyers have a legal duty of resolute or zealous advocacy. Law society codes of conduct direct lawyers to represent clients “resolutely and honourably” (FLS Model Code, Rule 5.1-1). The Supreme Court of Canada says that a core aspect of a lawyer’s duty of loyalty is the “duty of commitment to the client’s cause (sometimes referred to as ‘zealous representation’)” (R v Neil 2002 SCC 70 at para. 19).

Not everyone likes those duties. They worry that they implicitly endorse lawyer aggression. They think duties of honour and integrity, and as an officer of the court, ought to govern . . . [more]

Canada’s liquor control and licensing regimes remain under siege; for how much longer provincial governments will be able to enforce their antiquated monopolies over the import and sale of alcohol is anyone’s guess, but the forthcoming Supreme Court of Canada decision in R. v. Comeau is expected to go a long way in answering this increasing controversial question.

While Comeau will be decided along Constitutional rather than regulatory lines, for administrative law practitioners the field of liquor control and licensing remains a rich source of beverage for thought.

For brewers and distillers, especially those of the “craft” or “micro” ilk, . . . [more]

On February 9, 2018, the Int-Law International Law Librarians list was migrated from LISTSERV to Google Groups. The migration was seamless. Joe Schumacher, the Int-Law list manager, did a great job of giving us advanced notice, migrating the list, and following up on any post-migration problems. The email address for posting to the Int-Law list remains the same. It’s been about a month since the migration. Below, I review the new features of Int-Law via Google Groups.

We learned that Int-Law was going to move to a new host when Joe Schumacher posted the following message on Int-Law on February . . . [more]

Canada’s three federal research funding agencies – the Canadian Institutes of Health ($1 billion annual budget in 2016-17), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada ($1.1 billion), the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada ($380 million) – instituted an intellectual property law exception in 2014. It effects the publication of research and scholarship resulting from grants which they have awarded. What began with CIHR in 2008, evolved six years later into Tri-Agency Policy on Open Access Policy on Publications. Under this policy “grant recipients are required to ensure that any peer-reviewed journal publications arising from . . . [more]

Cold sweat. I think this is a fair description of your reaction when you find out that you sent money to a wrong email address. Maybe hot flashes. But it’s bound to be some form of physical stress. And for what? All of the conventional payment platforms are reversible. Your money goes through so many intermediaries and layers of abstraction that it’s not usually a problem to reverse a mistaken payment. At worst, you can sue and claim some form of restitution.

But if you send cryptocurrency to a wrong address, you’re done. No bank to give your money back, . . . [more]

Patents granted in Canada based on patent applications filed in the last couple of decades have been given terms of exclusivity of twenty years. The twenty year term starts from the date the patent application was filed in Canada, even if it takes several years to be examined and granted by the patent office or if the underlying products take time to be approved by the regulatory agencies.

That has now changed as part of compromises made during the negotiations for CETA, the trade agreement with Europe. Amendments to the Patent Act and implementing regulations came into force in September . . . [more]

After five years of ABS liberalization in England (and Wales), it is worth having a look at what has happened. Surprisingly and significantly, the answer is “not much”.

ABS liberalization in England

A decade ago, Legal Services Act 2007 brought about significant changes to the practice of law in England. These changes included allowing what were called alternative business structures to provide legal services where only lawyers were previously permitted to serve clients. The first alternative business structures were licensed in late 2011.

The essential idea of alternative business structures is that constraining ownership of legal practices constrains competition and . . . [more]