Have you ever felt like running away?

In the middle of doing work or going through a stressful moment, you imagine how wonderful it would be to just go somewhere far away. Perhaps the image of a desert is something that you are imagining now as you read this. No one to bother you; just you, the ocean, white soft sand, and maybe someone to serve you a delicious meal?

Escaping the moment that is causing us stress or anxiety is something that the mind does in order to cope. When we go on vacation, we are giving our minds . . . [more]

Recently, the law societies across Canada came together to launch Ours to Protect, a national campaign to raise awareness about the importance of the rule of law. In Canada, when we talk about threats to the rule of law, we tend to glance nervously at chaos in other countries, especially the United States. The United States has provided a dramatic study in how quickly respect for legal norms can erode. The Trump White House openly vilified judges who ruled against it – accusing them of abusing their powers and even suggesting they be impeached or prosecuted. Some years . . . [more]

As artificial intelligence becomes embedded in commercial, administrative, and professional decision-making, disputes involving opaque or unpredictable system behaviour are becoming increasingly common. Traditional litigation struggles to address these conflicts, which blend technical uncertainty with evolving legal and regulatory principles. Mediation offers a proportional, flexible, and forward-looking process capable of bringing clarity to the “unexplainable” and helping parties navigate accountability in an AI-driven environment.

Although the term AI was originally used in 1955, our awareness and use of it have rapidly accelerated through the launch of OpenAI’s GPT series. OpenAI released the GPT-3.5 model in November 2022, and its latest . . . [more]

Recently, some folks have asked me about my views on whether government lawyers can strike. A full legal analysis, including labour law and constitutional considerations,[1] is not something I am able to provide here.[2] I offer instead some reflections from my individual and idealistic perspective – which some may well consider romantic or unrealistic. This perspective draws on what I consider to be the spirit, if not necessarily the letter, of the rules of professional conduct,[3] given that those rules themselves cannot address every situation.[4] In doing so, I assume that such a strike would be . . . [more]

The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) took action^[1] to establish a framework to limit botnet traffic before they reach consumers’ devices.

The CRTC plays a limited role in regulating telecommunications service providers (TSPs) under the Telecommunications Act and protects Canadians from online harms under the Canadian Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL).

Botnets are networks of computers, cellular phones, and other devices that have been infected with malware, allowing third parties to control the devices without the knowledge or consent of the owners.

After consulting with various organizations, the CRTC gathered input on blocking techniques and which activities to block to establish . . . [more]

When I sat down with lawyer and author Katherine Reilly to talk about her new book Legally Zen, I surprised her by starting at the end. It felt right: the final chapter is where she introduces the idea that has stayed with me most—the concept she calls “Gen Zen.”

Reilly is not the stereotype of a mystical explorer. She is a senior civil litigator with almost twenty years in practice: formerly a partner at a national law firm in Vancouver, later counsel with the Ministry of the Attorney General in Victoria, and now back in private practice. She has . . . [more]

On 5 November 2025 the Department of Justice updated the Justice Laws website to, “enhance usability, accessibility, and consistency across government platforms.” per the Canada.ca redesign. However, Justice Laws has been adapting to the evolving digital landscape for over three decades, sometimes with incremental changes and sometimes in noticeable design leaps like this latest iteration. Looking back at its earliest versions reveals how far the provision of electronic federal law has come. This blog post will review the visual history of the website in an effort to show how design choices have always communicated ideas about access to law . . . [more]

As 2025 draws to a close, this column looks back on three high-profile areas of development in Canadian legal ethics and lawyer regulation over the past year. It also flags several major court cases and disciplinary proceedings from 2025, as well as cases to watch for in the year ahead.

Three High-Profile Areas of Development

1. Rule of Law Concerns

The first year of Donald Trump’s second presidential term sent shock waves through the American justice system. In the spring, it was reported that U.S. federal judges were experiencing “unusually high threat levels” amid often vicious partisan attacks. Some began . . . [more]

In just a few weeks, the Legal Design Journal (the LD Journal)[1] will launch its second edition. Published online and free via open source, the journal is gaining in popularity and success since its maiden voyage in June of 2025.

Unlike some open-access academic journals, the LD Journal does not charge its authors publication fees or its readers a viewing/downloading fee – it is known as “diamond open-access”.

The LD Journal is the first of its kind. An academic journal that connects academics and practitioners of legal design by combining three separate elements: articles, a studio showcase, and . . . [more]

If you’ve been adrift on the internet desperately trying not to drown in the flood of legal information, great news! You’ve found a raft!

No, that’s not really funny. When you’re representing yourself, trying to get to the information you want does often feel like drowning. There’s so much info, mostly not what you need, so you wind up flailing about desperate to stay afloat while the currents try to pull you under. Or you get caught in whirlpools of misinformation. Or weighted down by too much case law.

Few make an intentional choice to dive in and go DIY-lawyering. . . . [more]

When starting a PhD thesis or other long piece of writing (any substantial intellectual project really), choosing the right topic is a significant part of whether the end result will be successful. Graduate students choose their topics in many ways. Some see postings for PhD positions within research groups and apply to work on a project with a particular researcher. Some may start a degree program and decide on a topic after they’ve spent time with the subject. And some have a passion for a particular topic and want to spend several years working deeply on it to move the . . . [more]

In a bizarre procedural twist, the Ontario Divisional Court issued two contradictory decisions on consecutive days in the same case. Two written motions for leave to intervene in Dosu v. Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario was sent to two different judges – Justice Sharon Shore and Justice Shaun Nakatsuru – who rendered opposite rulings. Justice Shore dismissed the would-be intervenors; the next day, in a separate ruling, Justice Nakatsuru granted them intervention, setting the stage for what appears to be an embarrassing judicial outcome for the court.

The anomaly in the motions outcome – essentially a legal coin flip yielding . . . [more]