This July, the Centre d’accès à l’information juridique (CAIJ), funded the addition of 546 Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) decisions to CanLII’s databases. With this addition every SCC decisions originating from Quebec are now available on CanLII (CAIJ’s press release). This effort constitutes one more step in assembling a collection of SCC decisions freely accessible to the public. These decisions are accessible through CanLII, but also through the Judgments of the Supreme Court of Canada website published by Lexum.

The long story of assembling the public collection of SCC decisions

Even though not yet finished, the project to build . . . [more]

I was recently asked to give a presentation on marketing and communications for a national firm. The target audience has various levels of knowledge and experience within the organization. The presentation needed to have a practical component ensuring everyone would have a something to take away. To add a bit more complication, the group did not share a practice or to a large extent a client base.

No problems right? Many of us have been given similar assignments and have been able to come up with topics that we think would appeal to the audience.

I put together what I . . . [more]

As a Bencher of the Law Society of BC, I voted against the accreditation of TWU Law on two occasions—first in the original Benchers’ debate on the subject in April, and then again in September following a Special General Meeting of BC’s lawyers. Both votes were defeated.

Between the two votes, I penned a Slaw column entitled TWU Law and the New Segregation. It was lauded in some corners for capturing the evolved public interest in equal treatment of LGBTQ people, and panned in others for being long on emotion and short on analytical rigor. The latter view noted . . . [more]

Finally, a tablet that can replace a laptop. Much as lawyers love their iPads – and they are great for surfing, e-mailing and presenting evidence in court – they are not true laptop replacements when it comes to business productivity. This is the next true war – consumer tablets have reached a saturation point and consumers are not replacing them as fast as manufacturers had hoped.

Always in search of profits, the major manufacturers have finally come to recognize that the enterprise table market is hot hot hot for any company that can get the technology and the security right. . . . [more]

Most lawyers say they receive the majority of their business through “word of mouth” or referrals, even in the internet age. But how can you improve your referral rate?

Be a Good Networker

Networking and building your system of contacts is the obvious first step in boosting your referrals. To get business, you first need to build your reputation and get to know people so they can develop trust in you and your work.

If you want to boost your referrals, focus more on building relationships with other professionals, strategic alliances and referral sources and strengthening your relationships with existing . . . [more]

Mediate BC has taken the bold step of proclaiming Oct 11 – 18, 2014 as Conflict Resolution Week in British Columbia.

During Conflict Resolution Week Mediate BC will be supporting its Roster mediators who are involved in various activities and events to raise public awareness of effective, timely and affordable problem-solving approaches. Check out Mediate BC’s website for examples of the activities to date. We will also be announcing the results of our 2014 Mediator Survey.

While Mediate BC’s focus is primarily mediation and other consensual dispute resolution approaches, Conflict Resolution Week encompasses a much broader spectrum of people striving . . . [more]

For my vacation this summer I traveled to Amish country in Ohio where we were given a tour of an Amish furniture manufacturing business and welcomed into an Amish home for a meal. It was a thought provoking and humbling experience to see a community that has so successfully and for so long decided how it wants to live and refused to accept the idea that the way the rest of society lives is inevitable. It made me think about the ways the legal community approaches technology and how technological change can be handled.

I had never had exposure to . . . [more]

There has been a fair bit of discussion recently about the pros and cons on online dispute resolution (ODR).

Using technology to help people resolve disputes does have many advantages. It can increase access to justice –both collaborative (mediation) and adjudicative (arbitration). It can be faster and cheaper than other options.

The availability of ODR tools is an important factor in consumer confidence for electronic commerce. People are simply more willing to buy things online if they know there is a way to resolve problems.

But there is one inherent problem with many ODR systems. You can’t look your opponent . . . [more]

Let me start with a confession: I detest marketing terminology. Like any jargon, it obscures meaning. My clients hate it too: they roll their eyes and start looking at their smart phones whenever anyone talks about content channels, verticals, or market segmentation. So when the term “content marketing” came into play, I could feel my lip curl. So now it’s ‘content creation’, rather than writing? That reminds me of when the term ‘data entry’ came into vogue: as one frazzled HR manager commented, “No matter what you call it, it’s still typing.”

Today, law firms and their marketing departments are . . . [more]

Neighbouring rights rarely get much judicial review so the case of Re: Sound v. Fitness Industry Council of Canada 2014 FCA 48 gives some insight as to this regime.

Neighbouring rights[1], rights near to copyright, in this context are rights to “equitable remuneration” in published sound recordings (performers and makers) for the performance in public or the communication to the public by telecommunication in Canada of their recordings under Section 19 of the Copyright Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-42. Re:Sound is a not-for-profit collective society authorized under the Act to administer the performance rights of performers and . . . [more]

The intersection of legal ethics and technological competency has been a recurring theme in Slaw and other forums for a number of years (see, for example, here, here, and here).

Exactly what type of technological competence a lawyer needs to have has been debated and, presumably, will constantly evolve as technology itself evolves (for discussion of what minimum tech standards might look like, see Mitch Kowalski’s and Omar Ha-Redeye’s previous Slaw posts here and here). There is a growing consensus, however, that all lawyers require some level of technological competence in order to meet their professional . . . [more]

[Sarit Mizrahi assisted in the preparation of this column.]

By now, we’ve all heard about the Google Spain SL, Google Inc. v. Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (AEPD), Mario Costeja González decision rendered last May by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). However, for those who’ve been living under the proverbial rock, let us go over the facts:

A complaint was lodged with the Spanish Data Protection Authority (“AEPD”) by Mr. Gonzalez on March 5, 2010 against a Spanish newspaper publisher, Google Spain and Google Inc. due to the fact that, when his . . . [more]