I am pleased to participate in this regular series of posts from the Council of Canadian Law Deans (CCLD) sharing insights and ideas on Canadian legal education. This past summer, I explored the impact of design principles on the justice system and since then, I have been reflecting more on the impact of design principles on Law Schools.

Has our legal education system developed as a series of ad hoc measures, policies and programs or has it been designed according to a plan? This question is being asked more broadly in Law Schools as legal academics and lawyers bring design . . . [more]

Judges and politics don’t mix. Political involvement by sitting judges is an accepted taboo. Political involvement by former judges is a relatively recent development. But as the political candidacy of former Chief Judge of the B.C. Provincial Court Carol Baird Ellan is showing, there is a serious danger of political blowback against the bench as an institution when one exchanges her black judicial robes for the Blue, Red or Orange colours of a political party.

The Progressive Conservative Party is running an attack ad targeting the NDP’s so-called “star candidate”. The ad is found at www.youbethejudge.ca and says:

Carol Baird

Cloaked in several “cliches and meaningless metaphors” (in the words of a colleague) is an announcement of a research partnership intended to improve access to “Thomson Reuters vast and unique datasets”. This could lead to significant developments in legal research. Then again maybe just cliches and….

Thomson Reuters to launch data and innovation lab in Waterloo, Ontario
By GlobeNewswire, September 16, 2015, 11:00:00 AM EDT

NEW YORK, September 16, 2015- Thomson Reuters, the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, today announced the establishment of Thomson Reuters Labs – Waterloo Region, in Ontario, Canada. The Lab will . . . [more]

Dealing with mental health issues like depression, stress and anxiety is fraught with age-old taboos, stigmas and obstacles to openness – and none of it gets any easier when your job is to be the calm voice of logic and reason in an argument. It might make good business sense to keep your concerns to yourself, but ignoring the issue – for example, depression, anxiety or stress – won’t make it go away.

They say acknowledging you have a problem is the first step to recovery, but how do you know whether you have the kind of problem that needs . . . [more]

I challenge international law scholars to write about the unpopular, the weird, the old, the outside, the unexpected, the obscurities buried in ancient tombs, and the unsafe topics that do not make headline news. – -Lyonette Louis-Jacques, 1 CJIL 108 (2000).

The very first issue of the Chicago Journal of International Law featured articles on “What’s Wrong with International Law Scholarship?”. In my piece therein on “Gaps in International Legal Literature,” I bemoaned the prevalence of the expected and the mainstream and challenged scholars to look for difference, to leave the beaten path, and find gaps that can . . . [more]

Introduction

In my June column, I outlined one of the papers from the Second National Symposium on Experiential Education in Law, which took place at Elon University in Greensboro, North Carolina in June 2014. The Alliance for Experiential Learning in Law and Elon University School of Law hosted the symposium.

This column will focus on Part V of the papers from the symposium, Creative Initiatives at US Law Schools (all the papers may be found at http://ow.ly/O8YQJ). The US, with its large number of law schools, has the advantage of scale to allow its schools to act as . . . [more]

For the first time in recent memory, the Federal Court has issued an interlocutory injunction in an intellectual property proceeding. In April, the Federal Court of Appeal upheld the injunction issued to Rickett Benckiser LLC.

The standard test for issuing an injunction is set by the Supreme Court of Canada in RJR MacDonald which requires the moving party establish:

• a serious issue to be tried;
• irreparable harm will result to the moving party if the relief is not granted; and
• the balance of convenience favours the moving party.

Of these three parts to the test, finding ‘irreparable harm’ is typically . . . [more]

When the Chief Justice of Canada highlights global liberalization of legal services regulation, recognizes that our old monopolies are fading, says that the legal profession must embrace new ways of doing business and that the question is not whether our rules should be liberalized but how, even those most resistant to change must take heed.

On August 14, 2015, Chief Justice McLachlin addressed the Canadian Bar Association annual plenary in Calgary . In her remarks entitled The Legal Profession in the 21st Century, the Chief Justice suggested that the legal profession must ask itself three questions:

• First, where does

Can efforts to avoid charges of spoliation of evidence involve violation of privacy norms?

Evidence

Data storage has become very inexpensive. Finding information among masses of data is steadily becoming more manageable – one can turn loose the power of Google or other search engines on one’s own business data. One can use various forms of predictive coding to sort files for particular topics or for degrees of sensitivity: what’s relevant, what’s privileged, and so on.

On the other hand, it can be dangerous not to keep data. The rules of evidence have always included sanctions against spoliation. In days . . . [more]

The number of electronic resources in libraries is steadily increasing, despite the fact not everything is available electronically and it is unlikely that will ever be the case. However, while books are generally easy to use, this is not always the case with online resources. Lack of consistency or clarity in interface design means that there may be content or features that are not immediately obvious to the casual user. Librarians employ a number of tools to help users to get the most of these resources, with training being one of the most important.

Training is not one size . . . [more]

On 26 August 1996, Business Week asked: “What’s Wrong With The Internet”? One criticism was that “Good Stuff Is Hard To Find”. Their suggested solution was: “Artificial intelligence will make search engines more discerning.”

One year later along came Google. It found the stuff you were looking for, without scaring you off with talk of artificial intelligence. Google helped more of us join the information revolution.

Meanwhile, today we should be on the road to driving nirvana via real automobiles. A problem for too many is that the “driverless car” is as scary as the “horseless carriage” would have been . . . [more]

While legal-related self-help materials may be “accessible” (available in plain language) they are not always “deployable” (actually used by a person to deal with their legal problem). I learned this lesson the hard way. Recently, I was asked to create a simple list of civil negotiation and conflict resolution “tips” for use by people unrepresented by counsel. I figured this would be a relatively simple task drawing on my legal and mediation background. I also assumed that I could mimic plain language and aimed for a Grade 9 level. I shared my draft with my colleague for comments and, thankfully, . . . [more]