Teaching a class on Foreign, Comparative and International Legal (FCIL) research makes complete sense in Tucson, Arizona. The city of Tucson is located an hour away from a major international border which is constantly featured in local, national and international news. The proximity to the US-Mexico Border makes the University of Arizona College of Law, the ideal place from where to study and analyze other national legal systems, how to compare them and the impact of international law and transnational emergencies. These are some of the themes students engage with in my class, among many others. However, I also strive . . . [more]

My mother instilled within me the mentality of not going along with what everyone else is doing. It is a fairly common parental lesson, really. Typically presented in the context of all of one’s friends jumping off of a cliff with the question posed of if you would, too. While I wonder why everyone is jumping – there might be good reason and that information is needed to determine the best course of action – Wikipedia explains the lesson as “a rhetorical question used to discourage the interlocutor from blind obedience”.

There are no less than 20 articles already on . . . [more]

Systemic racism is a reality in Canada. At many junctures in life, a person’s access to opportunities and fair treatment will be affected by their race, skin colour, or indigineity. The legal profession, in order to do its essential work in our society, must recognize and confront systemic racism.

So far, most formal efforts to do so have focused on racism’s effect on lawyers, law students, and others who work in the law. (See for example the action plans from the law societies of BC and Ontario, as well as Alberta’s “My Experience” project). These are worthy . . . [more]

Last October, I was appointed a director on the board of Canada Legal Information Institute (CanLII). Becoming a director on the board of CanLII is a dream come true for me. It represents not only a personal achievement but also an opportunity to give back to a cause I deeply believe in – free access to legal information. I’ll share my journey and the reasons behind my decision to join CanLII’s board as a director.

A Quest for Access to Legal Information

My journey into the world of legal information access began during my time as a law student in . . . [more]

In a recent edition of my Substack newsletter, I made eight predictions about what the legal sector would look like in ten years’ time. The eighth entry on that list was titled “Unfulfilled Justice”:

Universal access to justice is still a distant dream. Regulatory change has made it easier for people to become lawyers and para-professionals, so the supply side of the market is growing. But the demand side still suffers from a lack of civic education around legal rights and remedies, and legal institutions (especially the courts) have held out against change.

That last parenthetical observation about the . . . [more]

It has been challenging times for law students these last several years. The current 3L cohort began their studies in the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic and has been attending law school in times of economic uncertainty, technological change and heated world conflicts. Recently, students have been struggling with processing the crisis in the Middle East including the deadly and horrific terror attacks of Hamas on Israeli civilians, its hostage taking, the ensuing devastating Israeli military action and the death of too many Palestinians. Our student communities are suffering. So many of them have friends, relatives and loved ones . . . [more]

This year, I checked an item from my bucket list. I went to Monaco to attend the Formula 1 Grand Prix. For race fans, Monaco does not typically offer the best racing on the calendar (fortunately, this year, it had an exciting ending), but there is an allure that has pulled fans to the Mediterranean for the last 80 years. I bookended the summer with a trip to the Brighton Speedway in eastern Ontario to take in an evening of dirt track racing, including the ever-popular min-van race. You could say the very opposite of Formula 1.

At one extreme, . . . [more]

How far does a generic drug maker need to go to exclude liability for inducing patent infringement?

In drug patent cases the product monograph is key in assessing whether inducement exists. In the case of off-label uses, it is customary for a generic drug maker to exclude any references in the innovator’s product monograph that teach the off-label use. How far such edits must go is put in doubt by the Federal Court of Appeal decision in Apotex Inc. v. Janssen Inc., 2023 FCA 220.

The test for a finding of inducing infringement was confirmed by the Federal Court . . . [more]

Contrary to popular belief (i.e., that of my closest friends and family), a lot of people care about the McGill Guide. This is evidenced by the many tweets, blog posts, and articles that refer to the Guide. As the Citations Editor of the 10th edition, I’ve read all of them. While I found many to be insightful and helped me through the course of my mandate, I noticed something: few seemed to understand the actual process behind writing the McGill Guide. This article aims to fill this conceptual void by providing a firsthand account of how the 10th edition was . . . [more]

“You’re a lawyer — you must like arguing!” While this may be true for some lawyers, when it comes to conflict with their closest colleagues, many would rather avoid the pain and discomfort.

Although interpersonal conflict is often thought of as a battle between two people, I have learned that conflict is about tension between people when they differ in beliefs, behaviours, opinions, or values.

Some lawyers will approach the issue with colleagues, senior lawyers, and partners head-on and in doing so deliver what the other person feels as a gut-wrenching blow. Other lawyers are more passive; they either avoid . . . [more]

As Noel Semple, wrote earlier this year here on Slaw, each year, over 100,000 Ontarians seek justice from Tribunals Ontario which, as he points out, is far more people than will start civil lawsuits in the Superior Court of Justice each year.

In Ontario, adjudicative tribunals have jurisdiction over matters ranging from housing and tenancy disputes to employment law matters, social benefits disputes, and other types of legal matters, so when we talk about everyday legal problems – increasingly captured in legal needs surveys such as the recent Statistics Canada Legal Needs Survey and the CFCJ’s Cost of Justice Project . . . [more]

Compensation is a reflection of value, but also has the purpose of motivating workers. Where compensation is a fee split, make sure that your offer is accomplishing both of these objectives.

I work predominantly with small to medium-sized law firms in Canada, so my comments here reflect that particular marketplace. And within that market, over the past five years, it has become increasingly common for law firms to compensate Associates through a fee split: paying the Associates with a percentage of their collected revenue instead of a salary. This appears to have started due to the challenge in finding and . . . [more]