Earlier this month, the government of British Columbia introduced Bill 21, the Legal Professions Act. This bill amalgamates the Law Society of British Columbia and the Society of Notaries Public of British Columbia into a new corporation, Legal Professions British Columbia (LPBC), while also creating a licensing and regulation structure for paralegals. It could be the most consequential development in Canadian legal regulation in more than 100 years.

The British Columbia legal profession’s leading organizations (the Law Society, the Canadian Bar Association’s BC branch, and the Trial Lawyers’ Association of BC) strongly oppose Bill 21, with the . . . [more]

The use of demonstrative or visual aids at mediation is more widely accepted by lawyers and mediators since the legal profession began its rapid embrace of technology. Arguably, the pandemic accelerated this implementation. The technology adoption started with the exchange of electronic mediation briefs, improved access to scanned documents, and the use of video software, like Zoom and Teams. Now, counsel more commonly use Power Point or slides and electronic documentation in their introductory remarks, and present demonstrative aids in their Mediation Briefs to bolster arguments by visual communication.

Through technology, counsel can now utilize a variety of demonstrative aids . . . [more]

Case Commented On: KMN v SZM, 2024 BCCA 70 (CanLII), overturning 2023 BCSC 940 (CanLII)

We have both written previously on myths and stereotypes about intimate partner violence (IPV), one of the most common of which is that women make false or exaggerated claims of violence to gain an advantage in family law disputes (see here and here). In KMN v SZM, 2024 BCCA 70 (CanLII), the British Columbia Court of Appeal (BCCA) recognized the existence of this myth and the need for courts to avoid making assumptions that perpetuate it, holding that it is . . . [more]

The Hon. Roy McMurtry had a stellar career, serving as Chief Justice of Ontario, Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Commissioner of the Canadian Football League, and Attorney General of Ontario. When he passed away in March, many of the tributes rightly focussed on the critical role he played in reaching “the kitchen accord” which led to the patriation of the Constitution with the enactment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, section 35 and the notwithstanding clause. Other tributes noted his participation in the landmark case of Halpern v. Canada (2003), which legalized same-sex marriage.

Because McMurtry . . . [more]

For those of us raised in Canada and who studied law here, it can be easy to forget that the way we practise law is very… Canadian.

While we’re all aware that there are substantive differences between Canadian law and the law of other jurisdictions, it’s much easier to forget that the practice of law varies just as much from nation to nation. There’s more than one way to do almost anything, and the Canadian legal system is founded on a very specific set of choices, norms, and traditions.

Upon arriving in Canada from her native Australia, and despite her . . . [more]

In R. v. Spencer^[1] the Supreme Court of Canada held that a reasonable expectation of privacy attaches to subscriber information — the name, address, and contact information — associated with an individual Internet Protocol (IP) address. In R. v. Bykovets^[2], the majority found that reasonable expectation of privacy extends to the numbers which make up an Internet protocol address even though those numbers might be changed at random by an Internet service provider.

The Facts

The Calgary City Police were investigating fraud in online liquor sales and came across a payment processor who processed the suspect transactions. . . . [more]

In the 1920s, Jackie Coogan became one of Hollywood’s first child stars after playing the titular role of “The Kid” alongside Charlie Chaplin. Having starred in several box office successes, Coogan’s childhood career had earned him an estimated $4 million (roughly $62 million today). When Coogan tried to access his earnings in his 20’s, however, he discovered that his mother had spent nearly his entire fortune. In response to public outcry, California passed the Coogan Act, which aimed to safeguard a portion of child actors’ earnings until they reached adulthood and to protect them from abuse and exploitation. The Coogan . . . [more]

Democratization means making something, usually a public good, accessible to everyone. The democratization of technology related to the internet or the democratization of health care are examples. As digital technologies become more widely adopted in areas touching peoples’ daily lives such as making appointments, applications for employment, being informed about changes in conditions of services or bargains available in the marketplace the reasons for making enabling technologies accessible to everyone become increasingly obvious. In a nation with a long-standing system of publicly funded health care the reasons are obvious although the realization seems to be falling short. In justice democratization . . . [more]

I recently read that when legal aid was first developed in the United States in the 1960s, its primary goal was alleviation of poverty rather than access to counsel. However, over time, some stakeholders, mostly on the conservative side of the political spectrum, expressed concern that this was an inappropriate goal for public policy. This led people working in the legal aid sector to rebrand their initiatives as access to justice.[1] The primary difference between framing initiatives as “access to justice” as opposed to “alleviation of poverty” being that access to justice has a goal of improving the legal system . . . [more]

Note: In this article, the term “culture” is used broadly and is intended to mean anything and everything related to one’s customs, beliefs, behaviours and habits attributable to the make-up of who they are. It embraces the concept introduced to the writer by legendary professor Michelle LeBaron which appreciates that each individual person subscribes to several different cultures. Any one person may have a cultural component of themselves attributable to their age, surroundings, work, etc.

Afsana Gibson-Chowdhury is the founder of Gibson Chowdhury, Clear Collaborative Mediation and a renowned advocate for equity, diversity and inclusion among legal, dispute resolution and . . . [more]

At the beginning of this year, in January 2024, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACtHR) based in San José, Costa Rica launched its first ever AI-powered case law database.This free legal source aims to provide an easy to use access to the regional court’s jurisprudence and important information regarding its procedure and composition. Recently, I had the tremendous opportunity to interview the Court’s Head Librarian, Ana Rita Ramírez and get more information regarding the process of producing this database and its future growth.

What was the journey to carry out this project?

This project represented an ongoing commitment by . . . [more]

Since 2013, the NSRLP has gathered data from self-represented litigants (SRLs) across Canada through our SRL Intake Form. After the publication of Julie Macfarlane’s original study on self-representation in 2013, SRLs wished to continue sharing their stories and experiences with the legal system, so the Intake Form was developed as a means to continue collecting this data, as it was clear there was a significant gap in existing organizations and systems and that SRLs’ contributions and experiences were going unheard. Every 1-2 years the NSRLP analyzes the Intake Form data for the previous period, and writes an updated report . . . [more]