Public works often impose heavy losses on those in private property nearby. Under what circumstances should they be compensated? That should have been the question in Heyes v. Vancouver, now Susan Heyes Inc. (Hazel & Co.) v. South Coast B.C. Transportation Authority 2011 BCCA 77. Alas, it was not – Heyes was decided on whether the transit builders had been at fault.

Ms. Heyes’s company designed, made and sold maternity clothing in Cambie Village, Vancouver. Her business was severely disrupted during construction of the Canada Line, a regional transportation system connecting downtown Vancouver, the City of Richmond and . . . [more]

Linkedin is the most common starting point for most lawyers when it comes to social media. In recognition of that, I want to showcase a few features of Linkedin that you may not currently be using. 

Status Updates

The status update box has been around for some time now but it is relatively underutilized in the legal community. You can find the status update box either beside or directly underneath your photo on your linkedin home page or your “edit my profile” page. It is a simple white text box that you can update as frequently as desired with a . . . [more]

Indian Kanoon, Dr. Sushant Sinha‘s innovative free-access-to-law service for India, has recently received attention from several sources in the technology world.

First, Indian Kanoon (the Hindi word “kanoon” means “law”) has been included by La Chaire en information juridique de la Faculté de droit de l’Université de Montréal in its IDRC-funded of the sustainability of free-access-to-law services. Second, MIT’s Technology Review India in March 2011 cited Indian Kanoonin its recognition of Dr.Sinha as one of India’s “Top Innovators Under 35.” Most recently, Indian Kanoon was the topic of Dr. Sinha’s VoxPopuLII post entitled

In May, Dr. Sinha . . . [more]

It’s my opinion that too many people buy insurance policies that should be avoided. I’m not talking about auto, home, health, life and long-term disability insurance policies. Ignore these at your peril. I’m talking about insurance policies that offer questionable value for most people because they are over-priced or offer unnecessary protection.

Here are five examples of insurance policies that I believe most people should avoid.

Mortgage Life Insurance

Banks love to offer life insurance policies that pay off the mortgage if you kick the bucket. But before you sign up, ask yourself, “Who do I want my money to . . . [more]

Digital Evidence in Criminal Law is hot off the presses — the first in Canada to deal with digital evidence in a criminal law context. The book is so recent that I had to review a digital copy — rather fitting under the circumstances.

Released in late April 2011 it is destined to become the bible of digital evidence for criminal law litigators. Civil lawyers will also find it helpful reading even in their watered-down-rules-of-evidence world.

A wee caveat before I launch into the review: author Dan Scanlan has been my colleague in the Victoria Crown Counsel Office for the . . . [more]

I must start this post with a confession that the title above is borrowed from a song by Vancouver artists “Said the Whale”. It is not only a great song but also a great topic statement for a subject that has been consuming my attention of late; that of orientation programs for new lawyers in British Columbia. Although the context in which this topic arises for me is province-specific, I know from conversations with young lawyers and law students from across Canada that law firm orientation programs, or rather oftentimes the lack thereof, should be a topic of significant interest . . . [more]

As the client and service provider relationship evolves, the new normal for lawyers is that clients want more and they want it for less. So how do you successfully maintain and grow relationships with your clients without continually discounting rates?

The most effective way to learn more about your clients and about the relationship you have with them is simply to ask them. However, the development and implementation of a succinct client interview process is not something to be taken lightly.

There are many objectives behind interviewing clients. By asking clients for feedback we are telling the client that we . . . [more]

The UK has faced a barrage of information-related news recently, from how it is obtained, to how it is restricted, and how it affects individual rights of privacy and freedom of expression. When you come from a country such as Australia, with robust defamation laws, the intense media coverage by the British tabloid press of anyone in the public eye can be quite a shock. It is the scurrilous nature of much this information, the level of detail revealed, and the distortion of facts in salacious headlines that still surprises me, despite living here for more than seven years.

Recently . . . [more]

Maritime Law Book has been re-designing its website. As of the date of writing, I hadn’t seen an announcement. It was just something I happened to notice on May 3, 2011.

The change I’m going to talk about isn’t the most obvious one to a casual observer, but it is a very welcome one. The change I particularly want to notice is that people can now create links like this one to cases reported by Maritime Law Book:

http://search.mlb.nb.ca/?IW_BATCHSIZE=20&IW_SORT=-11&IW_DATABASE=OAC&IW_FIELD_TEXT=271+O.A.C.+135+\\+MLB

The best way to cite a case is to provide a hyperlink. Because of that, the people who report cases on . . . [more]

The Law via the Internet 2011 International Conference will be held at the University of Hong Kong on June 9 and 10. This will be the eleventh international gathering of promoters of free access and innovation in legal publishing.

This year’s meeting will give a new opportunity to assess if Free Access to Law is here to stay? The published program seems to reveal expansion. No one can say for sure about the long term sustainability of free access, but after 20 years the number of countries where the approach is used continues to increase. The growth is especially important . . . [more]

Regular readers of my SLAW column will know that, while I’m an ardent supporter of initiatives that enhance the efficiency of our criminal justice system, I am also a regular critic of how that same system deals with the deluge of domestic-related charges that clog our courts on a daily basis. For these very reasons, a promising new pilot project has recently caught my attention.

The Integrated Domestic Violence Court (IDV) has ambitious plans to combine cases from two of Toronto’s busiest courthouses: the criminal courts of The Old City Hall and the family courts housed at 311 Jarvis Street. . . . [more]

[This is the fifth in a series of columns about the trends, theories, principles and realities that have influenced the redesign of the new library of Osgoode Hall Law School – part of the renovation and rebuilding of the School currently underway.]

The topic of this column was suggested to me when I read Karen Sawatzky’s interesting column on “Future Ready Libraries”. In her column, Karen refers to The ARL 2030 Scenarios (Washington, DC: Association of Research Libraries, October 2010), which imagines four possible futures for our research libraries. I find such exercises interesting and a good catalyst . . . [more]