In R. v. Neil, Justice Binnie stated that the duty of candour was an aspect of the duty of loyalty. As Justice Binnie put it, an aspect of the duty of loyalty is

a duty of candour with the client on matters relevant to the retainer

The fiduciary duty of candour was the basis for the earlier decision of the Supreme Court of Canada with respect to physicians in McInerney v. MacDonald,

While not previously said quite so plainly, it has long been clear that fiduciaries owe a duty of candour to their beneficiaries. As the B.C. Court . . . [more]

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” Gandhi’s words could be women lawyers’ “call to arms.”

Over the past few months, the conversations regarding the challenges that working women face have been loud… but maybe not so clear. Articles like… Atlantic Magazine’s, “Can Women Have It All?“ and The Wall Street Journal’s, “The Tyranny of the Queen Bee”, seemed like the opening act for the launch of Sheryl Sandberg’s well-publicized book, “Lean In“.

Unfortunately, the message is often lost on those complaining and whining—and even Sandberg’s encouragement is . . . [more]

In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, I put around two thousand lawyers through a hands-on computer course on how they could use a PC themselves. For a few years, one lawyer returned annually. Turns out that his motivation was to re-assure himself that his colleagues were still luddites when it came to IT, and that he had nothing to fear with respect to their catching up to him.

I suspect that he had a good 3 decades start on most. However, one would have to say that now tech is finally being accepted as playing an important role in . . . [more]

I used to race our sailboat, a 35-footer (11 meters) that required a crew of about nine to be competitive. When I helmed, or steered the boat, I would sometimes drag down our performance with three common mistakes:

1. Not good enough as a sailor
2. Tried to do too much
3. Didn’t get my head out of the boat

Project managers often fall prey to the same three mistakes in the context of project management.

Insufficient Skill

I wasn’t a terribly good racing sailor. Indeed, none of our regular crew, equally busy-with-real-world-jobs colleagues, were that good. Over time, we learned to deal . . . [more]

One of the most stimulating and pleasing roles I have, is to be involved with very small numbers of students on Kingston University’s Publishing Masters’ degree, as a supervisor of dissertations and on the advisory board for the course. There are a number of such courses in the UK, including those at City University and University College, both in London, where I have informal links to academics running the courses. I speak to them frequently about their developments.

Over the past several years, such courses have grown, drawing in students from around the world in order for them . . . [more]

In January 2012, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that his government would reshape the immigration system to make it “good for Canada”. This begged the questions whether the immigration had been “bad for Canada” up to now and whether this reshaping was necessary. Nevertheless, the government did proceed to institute a series of reforms that have now become part of Canadian law. Since 2012, we have seen increased Ministerial powers to bar individuals from entering Canada for vague public policy consideration, increased Ministerial powers to declare arrivals “irregular” and imprison the arriving . . . [more]

Last week the Canadian Bar Association held a summit on access to justice in Vancouver. I spoke on active adjudication as a tool to enhance access to justice. My co-presenter, Darin Thompson, spoke about online dispute resolution. In preparing for my presentation, I was reflecting on the skills or aptitudes that disputants bring to the justice process. It is nearly impossible to provide individualized responses to all of the parties that appear before tribunals, however, it is crucial that tribunals have at least a sense of the needs of the community that it serves. In this column, I will focus . . . [more]

A computer trainer I know well tells me that there was much discussion in his company as to whether they should charge for searches that returned no results. After great debate it was concluded that zero hits was a legitimate search result, and, as such, the company should charge for it. I think anyone who carries out research would agree with this: knowing that something has not been considered or talked about is important. The difficulty with this is knowing if zero genuinely is the answer, rather than the result of not using a relevant resource or search term. It’s . . . [more]

More than 1200 legal marketing professionals gathered in Las Vegas for the industry’s largest conference earlier this month. This where marketers with a shared obsession for business development and client retention, sharpen their skills.

Here are the best nuggets from the sessions I attended:

1. Client focus simply defined: always doing what’s best for the client.
2. Understanding the client’s business means being responsive because you understand (and share) in the urgency, follow client directions and never, ever, undermine general counsel.
3. Business strategy knowledge includes understanding the products, competitors and their geographic market.
4. Law firm client relationships are stickier than first thought

Last month, the United States Supreme Court held in Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons that it was non-infringing of copyright to import books into the United States that had been legally purchased elsewhere. The decision upheld the “first sale doctrine,” a concept that says once a publisher sells a copy of a work to a member of the public, the buyer is free to do sell or dispose of the copy as they wish. In Canada, the situation is less clear.

The defendant in the United States proceeding, Mr. Kirtsaeng was a student at Cornell University who bought foreign . . . [more]

Sunday morning 3:30 a.m. and my head finally hits a cushion. I have just done an Amsterdam – Istanbul – Sana’a in 11 hours. By Tuesday evening I have been totally submerged in Yemen, even though I do not speak Arabic. To compensate, I have become very sensitive to all other forms of communication: the voice of my interpreting colleague, the pronunciation of the few that speak English, and the sounds and body movements of those I communicate to.

The Minister of Justice, traditionally dressed, welcoming me in the name of Allah the Merciful, together with his ministry colleague, the . . . [more]

The decision by Justice O’Donnell in R. v. Duncan (on SLAW here) has gained some notoriety in the legal community ((Katie Daubs, “Legal Decision with literary flourish and dry wit making the round…”, Toronto Star, March 29, 2013) and was the subject of a SLAW post by Simon Fodden (The Judge’s Tale, April 2, 2013). In his post Simon referred to a discussion on the Canadian Legal Ethics Listserv, and to criticisms made of Duncan there. I was one of those critics, and will explain in this column my claim that when a judge writes a . . . [more]