In August of 2015 Gerard Comeau of Tracadie, New Brunswick, was the defendant in a trial following an agreed statement of facts. In October of 2012 Comeau bought 14 cases of beer in Quebec which he brought into New Brunswick where he was stopped by the police. Comeau was charged under the New Brunswick Liquor Control Act with illegally importing beer into New Brunswick. The beer was cheaper in Quebec than in New Brunswick. Comeau was fined $292.

At trial Comeau argued that the limitations in the New Brunswick Liquor Control Act were unconstitutional because s. 121 of the Constitution . . . [more]

The Law Society of Upper Canada ABS Working Group delivered an interim report to Convocation in September. In reading some of the subsequent comments, I was reminded of Nick Robinson’s thoughtful paper When Lawyers Don’t Get All the Profits. As he said in an interview with Cristin Schmitz:

I’ve been amazed in this debate how much each side kind of talks past each other, dismisses the concerns of the other side, or the point of the other side.

In its interim report, the Working Group reported that it would not further consider non-licensee ownership or control of traditional practices . . . [more]

Patents have been described as a quid pro quo – in return for disclosure of the invention, the inventor gets a time limited exclusive period to practice the invention. There are a number of rules and restrictions that restrict the ability to extend patent rights – i.e. get more than the patent owner bargained for, including ‘double patenting’ but some of the earlier concerns about extending patent protection through double patenting no longer apply under our current Patent Act which requires that patents and any divisional patents expire on the same day.

Double patenting is a restriction on getting multiple . . . [more]

Do you celebrate your successes? (Or are you too busy?)

Celebrating success – and doing simple things such as saying “thank you” to the team – is one of the best ways to strengthen teamwork, and to build your reputation as someone good to work with.

Okay. What about failures? Do you celebrate them as well?

You should – albeit not in quite the same way.

The thank-you/end-of-project party remains worthwhile, maybe even more important than after a successful project. The people on a project with a less-than-desirable outcome – e.g., a lost case, or a judgment against your client . . . [more]

Recently I was invited to make a written contribution to mark the 100th anniversary, in 2016, of the establishment of Tolley, now part of Lexis Nexis, where I was divisional chief executive until shortly after its acquisition in 1996. I was honoured to be approached and it set me searching through various documents and previously written materials from the seven-year period that I spent with the business. One such item was an article entitled Publish and be Famed (Gazette 93/24, 26 June 1996, p.20) that I wrote for The Gazette, the magazine of the Law Society of England and . . . [more]

When “dear” is an opinion on pricing held by the 80% of society who do not use a lawyer to solve a legal problem, then we have a challenge and an opportunity. Both are big, as is the gap between what clients think they can afford to pay, and what lawyers think they need to charge to be profitable.

Around 25 years ago, Apple was advised that Librarians, Journalists and Lawyers would be the biggest users of IT. Because their raw materials were digitised, and their output could be delivered in electronic form, it was thought that Librarians, Journalists and . . . [more]

A few years ago I decided to test drive a question when I found myself in a social situation with people I didn’t know. Instead of asking “what do you do?” I asked “what do you do for fun?” And I did this for a time at cocktail parties, meetings, wedding showers – wherever there were new faces and friends to meet.

Some people were startled, and had to really think before they could answer. Fun? Do I actually have any fun in my life after I get through working, looking after the kids, getting in . . . [more]

Technology, mobile devices in particular, has reduced the need for lawyers to be in a specific physical location. Lawyers can do their work from home, at a client’s workplace, or while on vacation. This mobility does have its downside: a lawyer of my acquaintance claimed to have holidayed in North Korea simply because no-one would expect him to check his email there.

The ABA Legal Technology Resource Center’s 2014 survey found that 91% of lawyers used smartphones (with the majority using iPhones) and 49% used tablets (with the vast majority using iPads). While these lawyers were primarily using their mobile . . . [more]

In my last SLAW column I commented on the Volkswagen scandal and the classic ethics question: where were the lawyers? In this column I want to use that scandal to consider a more specific legal ethics issue: when lawyers are consulted about a criminal course of conduct, under what circumstances is that consultation confidential and privileged? This question relates to the scope of the criminal-communications exclusion to privilege, and the ability of a counter-party in litigation to gain access to solicitor-client communications. But it also goes to the ability of lawyers who are consulted in those circumstances to blow the . . . [more]

The Supreme Court recently clarified the rules on the role of a tribunal on a judicial review of one of its decisions: Ontario (Energy Board) v. Ontario Power Generation Inc., 2015 SCC 44 (CanLII). The clarifications are useful for courts in deciding whether to give a tribunal standing. Professor Paul Daly has provided a useful overview of the court’s decision on the standing question. In this column, I want to focus on what the court outlined as the basic parameters of what a tribunal can say to the court, once it is given standing.

Justice Rothstein, writing for the . . . [more]

What’s the right pace of change? A ridiculous question, I know; change is usually foisted upon us and we have little control generally. But for the few things we can control, it’s a great challenge to ensure that the pace of change we introduce is just right … not too fast and not too slow.

Our thinking over the past 20 years about what should change and when has been supported by a couple of core assumptions. But some recent information has challenged these beliefs.

The first assumption is that print is on its way out and dead as a . . . [more]

Much talk is heard, many tweets are generated, about the Internet of Things. Interconnected devices are everywhere, from your car to your home to your clothes to your body. This interconnection, it is alleged, will lead to great benefits, though sometimes it is hard to tell how, except for the people who build them.

We have looked at the questions of security they raise and their impact on privacy, as the Net connection pumps out data about your stuff, and by not-very-distant implication about you, to … just whom? With what restrictions?

The privacy authorities in Canada and . . . [more]