The Canadian Open Access Legal (COAL) Citation Guide/Guide canadien de la référence juridique en accès libre (RJAL) is now available: https://canlii.ca/t/7nc6q

Over the course of two years, law librarians from across Canada worked together to create the COAL-RJAL Guide. The English version of the Guide is now freely available and hosted on CanLII (2024 CanLIIDocs 830), and the French version is in progress. The Guide is intended to be used throughout the legal field and incorporates feedback contributed by reviewers from Canadian courts, law firms, law journals, law societies, and law schools.

The COAL-RJAL . . . [more]

The bar examination landscape in the United States seems to be in a state of upheaval. The National Conference of Bar Examiners (NCBE) is in the midst of developing a new bar exam, called the Next Gen Bar. Meanwhile, California’s State Bar considered scrapping NCBE entirely and hiring Kaplan to write an exam for California.^[1] Though California has now paused this plan, it’s clear that they were looking for other options and thought it might be possible to write a new exam.

I once heard a teaching expert joke that she could teach anything. She would take a bet . . . [more]

Throughout my career, I have been attracted to and fortunate enough to work on various initiatives that push the envelope in particularly challenging and fast-moving areas. This work can sometimes induce anxiety due to its unpredictable nature and pace, but it is never boring and it is often highly rewarding. That being said, nothing I have done in the past has come close to the pace of change and potential for impact than working in the management of risk for artificial intelligence (AI) implementation.

The unique combination of the speed of advancement of AI technology combined with the slow pace . . . [more]

As a faculty member of Simon Fraser University, I recently participated in a SFU Faculty Association vote on a motion “calling upon SFU to divest from Israeli commercial interests, suspend partnerships with Israeli universities, and offer concrete support for Palestinian faculty and students.” Such motions have been common across universities around the world during the “situation in Gaza,” as the motion calls it. The inordinate loss of life and suffering of the Israel-Hamas War has led to campus disruptions that have not been seen since the Vietnam War roiled campuses more than half-a century ago (during my student days at . . . [more]

This column is a cautionary tale for adjudicators who use social media such as the platform formerly known as Twitter – although equally applicable to other social media platforms such as LinkedIn. In Law Society of Ontario v. Diamond, 2024 ONLSTA 8 (CanLII), the appeal panel of Ontario’s Law Society Tribunal, found that the current chair of the Tribunal should have recused himself from a conduct hearing based on comments he had made on social media prior to being assigned to the panel, related to the lawyer whose conduct was under scrutiny (Jeremy Diamond of Diamond & Diamond).

Jeremy . . . [more]

In my last post, “The Potential for Reducing Claims with Plain Language”, I noted that poor communication is a leading cause of professional liability claims against lawyers. Convoluted client letters and emails may lead to clients making decisions on matters they don’t fully understand. A plain language approach offers the potential for reducing claims risk for lawyers and their clients in addition to making the law and legal processes more comprehensible for self-represented litigants. Fortunately, a plain language approach in legal training and an increased emphasis on plain language legal writing, including judicial decisions, is underway.

But has . . . [more]

Karnov Group, the legal and professional information business based in Sweden, looked somewhat courageous and heroic when around the end of 2021, in one swoop, it agreed to buy significant legal publishing assets both from Thomson Reuters and Wolters Kluwer in Spain and France. Now with offices in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, France, Spain and Portugal, Karnov Group employs more than 1,200 people. The Spanish-French conquest helped to turn Karnov from a Nordic entity to a leading European one and, perhaps, set the scene for expansion of Napoleonic scale; that may yet be the plan.

After a short time, however, . . . [more]

Why be mediocre? Smart strategy developed thoughtfully and executed astutely ignites success that is stratospheric.

Strategy within many law firms is considered optional. These firms prefer to do what they’ve always done, then sweat and bleed to grind out results.

That’s because they choose to play it safe and run with the rest of the competitive herd. But running with the herd does not protect you from harm, it simply makes you one of many.

Playing it safe is a prevalent trait within the risk-averse legal services industry. But how tiresome and dull, not to mention frustrating. This is precisely . . . [more]

Recently, I attended the Trilogy Tour.

For those of you who are not familiar with it, this was a four hour concert with Enrique Iglesias, Ricky Martin and Pitbull.

Pitbull was last to perform and within a few minutes of starting, he stopped his band and apologized to the crowd that he screwed up.

I did not understand why he stopped as all seemed to be going great, yet he explained to the audience that he dropped his mike and we deserved to know that he is there to give a great performance and admit his mistakes.

I was shocked . . . [more]

It seems that the world is experiencing more serious and intractable conflict. Our brains are hardwired to focus on bad news, which is everywhere and which can lead to stress and even despair. As conflict management professionals, what can we do to navigate these stormy times?

I offer a hat tip to Tammy Lenski for linking to this article by William Ury:

3 Ways to Make Conflict Less Destructive

William Ury is well known to most of you as an acclaimed mediator, co-founder of Harvard’s Program on Negotiation, co- author of the famous “Getting to Yes” and author of “Possible . . . [more]

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You know the look. A genuine smile, a pleasant surprise, a comfortable pride, man-to-man, he says “Hello! How are you?” a little too loud in a . . . [more]

The House of Commons adjourned for the summer on June 20, 2024. A number of federal bills received Royal Assent the same day, including two omnibus acts, Bill C-59, the Fall Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2023, and Bill C-69, the Budget Implementation Act, 2024, No. 1.

While not all the amendments made by these acts came into force on Royal Assent, a number of them did. However, the federal Justice Laws Website has not yet added these changes to the consolidated legislation and, based on previous patterns, the consolidated legislation will take a while to be updated.

As . . . [more]