The recent appeal decision AA v Law Society of Ontario upheld the Law Society Tribunal’s 2023 decision to licence to applicant “AA” after finding him to be of “good character”—even though AA had admitted to have sexually abused three young children in 2009 (and to hiding this information from the Law Society in an earlier licensing application, which he withdrew in 2017 following an anonymous tip disclosing the abuse).

The AA case and other good character hearings stemming from sexual misconduct involving minors have generated considerable discussion both inside and outside the legal profession about how law societies should assess . . . [more]

This is a slightly more niche tip, but if you’re ever asked to find a a user manual, the Internet Archive has you covered. The Internet Archive Manual Library is “a collection of manuals, instructions, walkthroughs and datasheets for a massive spectrum of items. Manuals covering electronic and mechanical products, instructions on mixing or blending items, and instruction sets for software and computer items are all included.”

If you can’t find the user manual you need there, you can also search for user manuals at http://www.manualsonline.com/search.html and https://www.manualslib.com/. 

— Susannah Tredwell . . . [more]

A Bill recently introduced to Ontario’s Legislature can tangibly relieve the crisis of access to justice and politicization in the province’s tribunals, and blaze a path to better appointments for adjudicators and judges across the country. The Fewer Backlogs and Less Partisan Tribunals Act was introduced by Liberal MPP Ted Hsu, and will be debated in the Ontario Legislature on April 18th.

Ontario’s high-volume tribunals — especially the Landlord & Tenant Board, the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, and the Automobile Accident Benefits Service — have been afflicted by dire access to justice problems in recent years. The root cause . . . [more]

A recent decision of the Federal Court endorsing the position of the Canadian Intellectual Property Office is a warning to patent practitioners on communication practices with their clients. In determining whether there had been sufficient ‘due care’, it found that more was needed than sending email reminders where no responses had been received from the client.

In Taillefer v. Canada (Attorney General), 2024 FC 259, the Federal Court considered the ‘due care’ provisions of the Patent Act for the first since they are implemented in 2019. These provisions allow an applicant to reinstate a patent or patent application . . . [more]

You are in the middle of another busy day of legal practice when your star associate pops their head in your office. “Can I speak to you for a moment?” “Sure,” you say. The next thing you know, the associate is telling you they are resigning from their position and will be gone in four weeks.

This is the reality of the workplace; good associates and staff members move on. Why do people leave? Most often, it is to make a career move that better aligns with their goals. Sometimes, it is also about money. Or it can be because . . . [more]

2024 is off to a good start with several online U.S. legal information stories from the Law Library of Congress.

On January 18^th, 2024 The Law Library of Congress In Custodia Legis blog posted a blog post by Jennifer Davis on the Anniversary of the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act.

““Felix Cohen noted that, “[f]rom the earliest years of the Republic the Indian tribes have been recognized as “distinct, independent political communities’” (Cohen 1941, 122). Despite the early nation-to-nation relations between tribal nations and the United States, self-determination was not codified. After termination policies of . . . [more]

Russia’s persecution of thousands of independent journalists, human rights defenders, anti-war dissenters, and opposition politicians in Russia is well known, especially the arbitrary detention and death of Alexei Navalny. Less well known are Russia’s threats and judicial harassment of people living in other countries – including Canada – for sharing views that dissent from official Russian narratives.

For a seven-month period during 2023 and 2024, a permanent resident of Canada, Maria Kartasheva, found herself in fear of lengthy imprisonment in Russia. A Russian court tried and sentenced her in absentia for her peaceful online advocacy exposing Russia’s war crimes in . . . [more]

Over the last three years we have followed Canada’s ongoing battle to protect and reserve it supply management system for dairy and poultry products in place and negotiated for since the original GATT negotiations concluded in 1947. For the most part these trade disputes have been with the United States before NAFTA and Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) Panels.[1] More recently another of Canada’s trade partners joined the fray – New Zealand.[2] The results were mixed and Canada lost some ground but has been able to preserve its right to maintain and operate its system.

On November 24, 2023,a second . . . [more]

Last year a disheartening record was set for research integrity in scholarly publishing. In 2023, over 10,000 research articles were stamped “retracted” reducing them to ghost research. The previous year the number was short of 6,000, itself a retraction record. Clearly something is amiss in the quiet halls of academe.

When a paper is marked retracted, or rather RETRACTED, on page after page, the journal’s editors and publishers have determined that it has a problem well beyond “correction” or “update.” Corrections, for example, will be issued for a number of Claudine Gay’s articles, as the former Harvard president adds . . . [more]

It’s difficult to find the balance between beating yourself up for a failure and reviewing what went wrong in an attempt to uncover the lessons learned. I try not to stew on past mistakes and quite frankly, rarely categorize less ‘successful’ projects that way. All my project experiences have improved me professionally and helped to fine tune my processes for the next project.

Whether a project is perceived as a success or a failure, I can’t stress enough the value of the debrief. Hindsight really is 20/20. On a project we need a bit of distance to reflect on what . . . [more]

“There are few things more important than one’s name. It reflects one’s identity, individuality and human dignity.” Adam Dodek, “Mispronouncing names isn’t okay, and it has nothing to do with being ‘woke’”

There’s a movement underway in the legal community to focus attention on the proper pronunciation of names in legal settings. There is a growing recognition that the proper pronunciation of names shows respect and is more inclusive. The minimal effort involved in promoting the proper pronunciation of names can result in a more welcoming and respectful hearing room.

In 2022, the Law Society of Ontario recommended the use . . . [more]

As a general principle, citations in scholarly works have two purposes: to prove that the point is supported by evidence, and to allow the reader to find the evidence that the author is citing to. The pain of citations comes from the requirement that these citations be made as brief as possible by painstakingly utilizing a series of standardized abbreviations. The requirement to abbreviate arises mainly from a historical limitation: the scarcity of paper and ink.

I hear from other scholars that readers increasingly choose to read scholarly works in electronic formats and it seems likely that this trend will . . . [more]