Winter has arrived here with cold (for us) temperatures and some icy snow. But there is good news coming from some U.S. government information sources. In October the Law Library of Congress, where I volunteer, announced a new chatbot service.

“We are excited to announce the release of a new chatbot that can connect you to primary sources of law, Law Library research guides and our foreign law reports. The chatbot has a clickable interface that will walk you through a basic reference interview. Just click “get started,” respond “yes” or “no” to its questions, and then click on the . . . [more]

What did 2017 bring? Lots of hard work, but was the dial on justice innovation moved?

Let me briefly beat my drum again why I we must ask this question every year; ministers of justice, chief justices, MPs, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, justice NGOs, tax payers, voters, and revolutionaries.

The past few months, the organisation I run, HiiL, put all the data that it has collected on justice needs and experiences the past four years together. Almost 70.000 voices. Twelve countries. Africa, the Arab world, and Europe. A new Trend Report based on this data will come out in the first . . . [more]

In 1976 Charles Fried famously asked, “Can a good lawyer be a good person?” (“The Lawyer as Friend: The Moral Foundations of the Lawyer-Client Relation” (1976) 85 Yale LJ 1060 at 1060).

Law and morality are distinct. As a consequence, lawyers sometimes represent bad people, and sometimes help people do bad things. There is thus a legitimate question about whether being a lawyer is consistent with an ethical life. Nonetheless, Fried answered his question “yes”. Because of the law’s legitimacy and justification, a lawyer who assists people to pursue their goals and interests through the law can be – is . . . [more]

The pittance received by most musicians through modern distribution formats is hardly news. Records sales have long tanked and online streaming – the trending means of music consumption – is famous (see here and here for example) for paying out a fraction of a penny per listen. By one US estimate, it takes over 172,000 plays per month for an artist to make a living wage. The upshot is that you need to go big or go home – or at least tour a lot. In what follows, I will explain the financial side of the business in Canada, . . . [more]

Two recent reports have recommended expanding the role of law school clinics. The first was the Bonkalo Report released earlier this year which made recommendations for reform to the family law system in Ontario. The second was the recent report of the House of Commons Justice and Human Rights Committee, which examined the legal aid system in Canada.

Justice Bonkalo’s report (discussed in an earlier column) had this to say about family law programs at Ontario’s student legal clinics:

I was very impressed by the extensive and important work undertaken by law students, supported by lawyers, who are obviously committed

We do know that studying law is a stressful process: demanding curriculum, competitive environment, exacting professors. The world of Law schools is hard-core for many students. In fact, research shows that worldwide, law students are among the more prompt to psychological distress and mental health difficulties across all faculties’ students. In line with initiatives taken by Ontario law schools to support students’ mental wellbeing, the Civil Law Section at University of Ottawa started this year a pilot project to tackle first year students’ stress and anxiety. This project was also motivated by the fact that our students have a . . . [more]

Asking questions about professional reliance in BC

BC’s new NDP government recently announced a wide-ranging review of “professional reliance.” Environment and Climate Change Minister, George Heyman, was accompanied at the announcement by Green MLA Sonia Furstenau, who has been on the forefront of pressing for this review after her own experience (prior to her election) in opposing contaminated soil disposal in her own community.

West Coast Environmental Law welcomes this review, which has the potential to improve legal protection for human health and the environment by addressing a major approach to deregulation that has been implemented in BC over the . . . [more]

The seismic industry is of considerable significance to Canada’s oil and gas business. In Geophysical Service Incorporated v Encana Corporation, 2016 ABQB 230 the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench had an opportunity to assess both claims to copyright in seismic data and the power of certain regulatory boards to release copies of such data to the public.

The Court of Queen’s Bench found seismic data was protectable under Copyright law but also found that the conduct of the applicable boards under the legislative schemes authorized their conduct and legitimized their dealing with the copyright works. The decision pertaining to . . . [more]

This column gets published on December 22, when just about the last thing anyone will be doing is reading a column about marketing a law practice. That’s the Friday when everyone who hasn’t already taken off for the holidays is trying frantically to get out of the office by noon for the final frenetic round of shopping. Still, I have to assume that you’ll be back in the cold light of January and looking for something to kick-start the engines for another year. So here are ten New Year’s resolutions to rejuvenate your marketing plan for 2018.

1. Set a . . . [more]

[articles cited without authors are mine]

Lawyers remain the passive victims of the benchers[1] that we ourselves elected to be the law societies’ managers, instead of demanding that they get busy solving the problem of unaffordable legal services (“the problem”). The benchers are to regulate the legal profession so as to, “maintain and advance the cause of justice and the rule of law,” and, “facilitate access to justice,” and, “to protect the public interest,” being, for example, among the express duties of LSUC (the Law Society of Upper Canada),[2] being duties expressly set out in legislation such as . . . [more]

It has been several months now since I was nudged into an early retirement and left my position as Chief Law Librarian of Osgoode Hall Law School after almost 10 years there. This has afforded me some time to look back on my career in law libraries and to consider not only my accomplishments, however they be measured and judged, but also to reflect on the goals I was unable to realize and the projects that were left unfinished. I look back on this unfinished business not only out of a sense of personal regret. Osgoode offered me the opportunity . . . [more]

In our last column, we announced that, over the coming months, we would share the results of the research conducted by members of the Towards Cyberjustice project. Although this is still planned for future entries, we chose to postpone these posts to take the time to underline an important moment in the field of online dispute resolution (ODR): the launch of Ontario’s first online tribunal, the Condominium Authority Tribunal (or CAT).

According to the 2016 Census, “[t]rends in building permits [in Ontario] indicate that the construction pace of apartments, and especially condominium units, has accelerated since the early . . . [more]