Three recent cases have brought to light bad behaviour by criminal prosecutors.

In R. v. Suarez-Noa, 2015 ONSC 3823 Justice Reid ordered a mistrial after the prosecutor suggested “to the jury that the accused had behaved like an animal rather than a human being,” calling the characterization “highly improper” and incapable of being “erased from the minds of the jurors” (para. 10-11)

According to the CBC, in the Nuttall/Korody bombing trial British Columbia Supreme Court Justice Catherine Bruce said the prosecutors “took my breath away” with the “impropriety” of their decision to show a video to the jury . . . [more]

As part of the BCAMI Symposium held June 8 and 9 2015 in Vancouver, Jean Greatbatch conducted a workshop entitled the “Neuroscience of Conflict”. Jean is an experienced mediator and arbitrator with a special focus on workplace conflict, a member of the board of Mediate BC Society and a busy conflict consultant. She completed her LLM in Conflict Resolution at Osgoode and wrote her thesis on the topic of how the brain deals with conflict. In this post I will provide some highlights of her fascinating and insightful presentation. In 90 minutes she managed to provide a great overview of . . . [more]

I have been thinking about discoverability of legal information materials for some time and worrying that in many cases it isn’t as good as it could be. At the Canadian Association of Law Libraries in Moncton last month the exhibitor hall was full of people with the goal of selling attendees information products in various forms. There were fewer people there with the goal of helping make those purchased materials accessible once they are acquired.

Legal information materials’ primary users have generally been subject experts (of various degrees), and this has meant that there has been less pressure to improve . . . [more]

Petitions are an ancient method for people to tell their government (king or Parliament) what they want, and what they don’t want. ‘The relief of grievances’ is a big part of their appeal over the years. Petitions are a way of being heard, if not quite a day in court.

The traditional petition was a list of names and addresses subscribed to the text of the demand or complaint, generally with each person’s signature. The signature gave some assurance that the names represented real people, so the number of names might indicate real support for the message.

It takes work . . . [more]

The benefit that I gained, while participating with Jason Wilson and Gary Rodrigues in a session on the future of legal publishing at the Canadian Association of Law Libraries annual conference, was in learning more about the broad range of issues that both concerned and excited law librarians in their relationships with the major law publishers.

We had set out to explore questions of challenges and publisher responses to them, changing market structures and competitive factors, digital challenges impact on business models and how they need to be altered and who will be the winners and losers. These were . . . [more]

I recently took a course on copyright law. A number of the questions that came up during the course could not be answered with a simple yes or no; often the answer was “in this circumstance, you should talk to a lawyer.” The course made it clear that there are many misconceptions about copyright. For example, several people taking the course believed that you could freely use copyrighted materials if you were not profiting from your use of these materials.

The copyright questions that librarians have to wrestle with often fall into the grey areas of copyright law. As a . . . [more]

Some of you may have seen the Canadian Legal Digital Survey report (or the infographic that gives you the highlights) that was released by my firm, fSquared Marketing, last week. If so, you may have realized that something was missing. But before I get into that, for those of you unfamiliar with the report, here’s some background.

In recent years, we’ve seen various reports and analyses that seek to understand the needs of in-house counsel. However, the majority of these surveys are initiated by, and focused on, the US market. This implies, perhaps incorrectly, that Canadians both find and consume . . . [more]

The communications prohibitions in Canada’s sweeping Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) prohibit, unless exempt, a person from sending a “commercial electronic message” without the consent of the recipient. On January 15, 2015, further prohibitions relating to the installation of computer programs came into force.

CASL imposes significant compliance hurdles for traditional software providers due to its regulation of programs “installed” on a computer system. However CASL does not appear to regulate software-as-a-service to the same extent, and so CASL appears to favour the cloud-computing service business model and supports the expanded adoption of cloud computing in Canada.

Broadly, the software prohibitions in . . . [more]

One of the new features of the updated ADR Institute of Canada (ADRIC) Arbitration Rules, which came into effect at the end of 2014, is the express provision for “Urgent Interim Measures”.

Unlike Superior Court judges, arbitrators have no inherent jurisdiction. They depend upon the Act and the arbitration agreement for their jurisdiction. In some situations, it has been unclear whether an arbitrator has the authority to grant interim relief. In others, delays in the appointment of the arbitrator made it impossible to obtain urgent relief. If parties have to go to court for such relief, it may result in . . . [more]

Access to justice issues have frequented academic, legal, political and mainstream debates for many years (with Slawyers often initiating or driving the dialogue happening in the Canadian blogosphere!). Yet, until now, there has been no identifiable, central platform in Canada where a wide range of justice stakeholders can exchange research and resources, raise questions and share ideas and concerns about access to justice issues. As fellow blogger Karen Dyck notes there is “… innovation in access to justice happening everywhere…[but there is] little evidence of either coordination or collaboration toward what seems to be a common goal.”

In response to . . . [more]

Our firm recently held its Annual General Meeting during which five of our senior partners were asked to share information about their careers and what has aided in their success. We are likely not alone when I say these meetings can be dry, very dry. The group of them asked for my assistance as they were unsure how to make the presentation entertaining.

We had 45 minutes to present 10 tips that made these five people successful. If you do that math really quickly, each person was only given a few minutes to get their point across – and being . . . [more]

In many ways, Canadian law societies are now more transparent institutions than ever before. The Law Society of Upper Canada, for example, has adopted innovations like live webcasts of Convocation meetings, online Annual Reports and a frequently used Twitter account which allow for easier access and greater insight into what goes on at Osgoode Hall and why. And, of course, for those interested in what happens to lawyers “gone bad”, there is free public access to discipline-related decisions on CanLII.

Disciplinary decisions seem to be, indeed, one of the things that lawyers and the public are most interested in. . . . [more]