The Mobile Rural Law Van and Indoor Winter Venues

This brief article is another report on the mobile rural law van and the fixed-location winter locations, referred to together as the “law van’, as the project goes through the process from pilot project to implementation as an on-going part of the delivery model. The story of the law van is one of effective innovation. It illustrates how, at its best, innovation is an on-going process. The successes and challenges, the lessons learned of an innovation are building blocks in an on-going process of helping people bring troubling problems closer to . . . [more]

In December, three intelligent, accomplished, and articulate University leaders embarrassed themselves and their institutions in their testimony before Congress. Each of them stumbled in responding to questions whether calls for genocide against Jewish persons would violate their school’s policies. The questions weren’t unexpected or one-offs. Yet, every time each of these Presidents was asked, they stumbled in their responses. Within a few weeks, the Presidents of mighty Penn and Harvard had publicly acknowledged their failures and resigned in the wake of the scandal. Only the President of MIT remains in the top job.

How could this happen? It certainly wasn’t . . . [more]

Were you ever scolded as a child for playing too many video games? Did your parents tell you that your Game Boy was rotting your brain or that you would never make any money playing Donkey Kong? Or (perish the thought) have you ever been the parent doling out such lectures? Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but these common reprises about video games—particularly about their earning potential—might be outdated by a decade or so. In fact, in the creator economy, video game content creators are among the highest paid. As far back as 2014, . . . [more]

Two more data points in the legal news recently (Canadian Lawyer, to be precise) to support the idea that we’re going about this “articling” thing all wrong.

• Former Law Society of Ontario governor Peter Wardle criticized the articling system for failing to ensure sufficient, consistent, high-quality experiential training, as well as the law society for again failing to tackle these problems effectively.
• The Law Society of Alberta is recruiting law firms to join a new program to place articling students who were driven out of their previous firms by discrimination or harassment, a program that’s straining under increased

. . . [more]

In legal as in all service-based industries, client feedback can be a powerful tool that shapes a firm’s reputation and play a significant role in the firm’s success. We often look at feedback solely from a client perspective and how we can improve that client’s experience; we may be missing out on trends that our clients share. When we look at feedback at a macro level, there is information we can take away for prospects, management, competition, and clients.

For prospects:

Client feedback reflects a law firm’s general performance. Positive testimonials and reviews contribute significantly to building credibility, and potential . . . [more]

The Hague Convention on the Abolition of All Forms of Legalization (known as the Apostille Convention) is now in force in Canada. Here is a link to the text of the Convention.

The practical result is that to use Canadian public documents (including confirmation of notarial status and signatures) in about 120 foreign countries, one will not have to go through the two-step process of getting the document authenticated by the province (and/or the federal government) and then ‘legalized’ by the consulate (or embassy) of the country of destination. Here is a list of the countries that are parties . . . [more]

Many people in the legal sector are working toward making the legal profession, and society as a whole, more equitable, which has led to calls to increase diversity in the legal profession. Employers and educators have tried to achieve more impartiality by integrating quantitative metrics, such as LSAT scores, grades, and litigation statistics, into their selection processes. This is better than selecting candidates based primarily on criteria like family legacy, but these processes still aren’t perfect. The selection of athletes a a good comparison. Elite athletes are a group of people with well-defined and generally available statistics going back to . . . [more]

There are a number of resources that provide the text of international arbitration cases. If you do not have access to any of the paid resources, free resources include:

• United Nations Commission On International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) CLOUT database. This was established “​​to collect and disseminate information on court decisions and arbitral awards relating to UNCITRAL texts”. Each case in CLOUT includes a short summary.
• Unilex. This is a “database of international case law and bibliography on the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts and on the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods

. . . [more]

“Cash rules everything around me, C.R.E.A.M. Get the money. Dollar, dollar bill, y’all” – Wu-Tang Clan

While it gets skewed on tv, mediation involves the mediator having no interest in any particular outcome of a dispute. That scene in Friends where Ross “mediates” a quarrel between Monica and Chandler to keep them on track to move in together so that he can live with Rachel isn’t true mediation. A mediator would have nothing to gain whether Monica and Chandler live together or not. In real life, sometimes someone with a specific outcome interest takes on what may present as a . . . [more]

More than a year after the public release of ChatGPT, excitement continues to build about the use of generative AI in the delivery of legal services. Notes of caution persist, too, as examples of lawyers using AI badly continue to trickle out (see, e.g. here and here). Although the full impacts of generative AI on the work of lawyers are yet to be seen, there is clearly an immediate need to discuss the responsible and ethical use of AI by legal professionals. Canadian lawyers have a general duty of technological competence. In previous Slaw columns, I’ve discussed two ways . . . [more]

Alex said with a sigh, “January is like Groundhog Day with billable hours reset to zero, and it all starts over.” This wasn’t the first time I had heard this said. For many lawyers, the New Year comes with a sense of fatigue as the billable hour cycle starts anew. They have a point. The billing cycle is starting again, and the starting point is zero. And yet, how we think about the world defines our experience. If you are interested in coaching yourself through this malaise, read on. Start with a reframe. “The billable hours may reset, but your . . . [more]

Receiving notice from a regulator that there has been a professional conduct complaint against you can be overwhelming and stressful. Many lawyers’ minds jump to the worst-case scenario: Am I going to lose my licence? Fortunately, this is a rare outcome. But lesser penalties or remedial consequences can still affect your career, and even if the complaint is dismissed the process can be lengthy and challenging. Most conduct complaints are resolved without proceeding to discipline at all.[1] This is the goal upon receiving a complaint, and it is often attainable. Your response—or lack thereof—plays an important role in determining . . . [more]